Old ProLiant 800 dual Pentium Pro, 512MB; worth the effort?

[Andy Bender]

Howdy, y'all; we have an old ProLiant 800 with dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro CPUs, 512MB, and coupla 4.3GB SCSI disks. I believe that it's a "Model 4050." BIOS is the latest.

It's been running Win2K Server Standard SP4 adequately well, though the disks are noisy and slow.

I tried to install a PCI IDE/SATA (has both based on a VIA VT6421A chipset) RAID adapter. SCU sees the adapter correctly as a "Mass Storage Controller." I tried to reload Win2K Server on an attached ATA disk, and this works correctly.

However, can't boot from the PCI RAID card. BIOS setup only seems to support booting from the floppy, the onboard IDE interface, or the SCSI card to which the disks (and DAT device) are attached.

Given the age of this thing, and its $0 market value, I feel like I'm just wasting time on it.

The intention was to use it for an old Paradox database application that's still used by one group until the old app is replaced. It's not that difficult to move the app to a newer server.

Whaddy'all think? Thanks much.

APJ
The OC
SoCal, USA.

[Modris Bremze · Accepted solution]

I think with older machines one should stick with what works. If something is not working (as you want it to) after reasonable hours spent fixing it - ditch it, as it is probably not worth the effort.

[Andy Bender]

Thanks for your note, Skip. Yup; agreed, so out it goes to e-waste.

[u84823]

I'd love to get my hands on this machine, if you would consider looking into shipping cost to the UK?

[Andy Bender]

If you'd like this system, please contact me directly at jazzbaritone (at) yahoo (dot) com.