Compaq Proliant 1600 Boot from CD

[Luke Campbell]

Got a proliant 1600 from auction and want to install windows OS.

I tried booting from windows OS cd but it does not search for the CD at all. I know the drive works because if i boot from a bootable floppy disk and can look at the files on the CD but ofcourse you can not start install of server 200 or 2003 from dos unless the scsi drives are setup.
It has 4 scsi drives in and all appear to function properly but i can not even get into bios and boot sequence to try configure anything. Only thing i can do so far is boot from floppy. If i dont boot from floppy the scsi start and checks ok but then ask for system disk.
Hooping for help ASAP

Cheers

[Igor Karasik]

You can use
Compaq System Configuration Utility
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/13227.html

Create 4 diskettes and boot from fisrt diskette - you will be able to change boot configuration and other system options

[Terry Hutchings]

Do you have an array controller installed. If you do, you may require the use of the Smart Start CD to configure the controller. The latest version supported with the PL1600 is 5.5. This is available at the following URL:
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/22678.html

[Mark Matthews]

If you have an Array controller, make sure the drive cage is connected to it. If you dont, you'll need to connect the drive cage to the internal SCSI connector.
The older Proliants didn't have a 'proper' on board BIOS and you had to install an F10 System Partition, using the System Config Floppies as Igor said.
This will put a small (50Mb as I recall) partition on the start of your logical drive.
Then you can get into all the settings (boot order etc) by hitting F10 on bootup.

Mark...