Proliant 3000 and video cards

[L G Thomas]

I want to press this mothballed Proliant 3000 back into service as a web server running Linux (Debian).

This server has dual PII/333 CPUs, 320 MB RAM, three 4.3 GB SCSI drives (RAID 5) and three 18.2 GB SCSI drives (RAID 5). This should be perfect for a little web server for a small business.

The screen resolution simply isn't adequate for KDE under Linux, so I wanted to install a new video card. I picked up a cheap ATI Rage XL (8 MB) and put it in.

Now the server won't start. I've tried several different things, so I'm not sure which trial resulted in which outcome. At one point, it wouldn't recognize the SMART SCSI controller; at one point, I got one long and three short beeps (and no output). If I take the card out, all is fine.

I thought the ATI card might be bad, so I tried it in another (Win 98) box, and it works fine.

I also tried a Number Nine Imagine 128 (4 MB) card, and saw similar, the-ProLiant-won't-boot-if-it's-in-there behavior.

WithOUT the extra video card, it passes SmartStart diagnostics and boots just fine.

I *DID* remember to disable the on-board video with the DIP switch on the corner of the motherboard with the video card was in the server.

Clearly, there's some resource contention, but I can't figure this one out. PLEASE HELP!

Does ANYONE know how to get a PCI video card to work in the Proliant 3000/333?

[L G Thomas]

Well, I finally figured it out. I had contacted HP/Compaq's support, and their response was a less-than-helpful, "Check the DIP switch on the motherboard" and "we don't support third-party hardware." I had ALREADY checked the DIP switch and had *said* so when I sent them the question. Perhaps "DIP" is the operative term here. But I digress...

The problem was SOLVED by moving the SMART 2-DH controller from slot 1 (the bottom of the motherboard, AWAY from the processors) up a couple of slots (I tried slot #4, and it worked; others slots probably would have, too), and putting the new video card into slot 1. The first time I tried to fire it up, it ran like clockwork.

I would have expected PCI card to auto-configure in any slot, but apparently, with the SMART card in Slot 1, it wasn't willing/able to negotiate a set of resources that would work, but by changing the slot, it all works fine now.

Perhaps this will help someone in the future.