Cool! God (and LC) knows I love these 3000 questions! Let me give this
a shot:

***** charles wrote:
The Linux group I attend just got a ProLiant 3000.
It had just one cpu and 64M of ram and 6)hds.
One of the other members got another P2-333
that matched and got the ram up to 851M.

I would like to start by saying that you can do a rather easy upgrade
to a PIII motherboard. I have three tested working spares in my garage.
You could then use a pair of Slot 1 CPU's as high as 600M.
Unfortunately, your machine now uses PC66 ECC SDRAM (851M of PC66 is
actually quite an impressive amount, I have never acquired PC66 sticks
higher than 64M...you must have a couple of 128's). The new motherboard
will require PC100 ECC...to a maximum of 4G (8x512M). Still, faster and
faster.

1. what do I need to download and how do I
need to run it to update the cmos in the box?

2. how do I get the smart start to work properly?

I'll take these two at the same time. You downloaded an ISO image of
(hopefully) SmartStart 5.50. You need to burn this onto a blank CD
using THE SLOWEST POSSIBLE BURN SPEED. Don't ask us WHY this is
necessary, we just know that it works. When you get this bootable disk
properly burned, you can boot to it and run the System Update
utility...if it says that your bios is up to date, then it is. If you
get the faster motherboard (that I mentioned above) then 5.50 may have
a newer bios for you.

3. how many and what size scsi drives do I need
to get to load up the box to its' largest size
using both pri/sec scsi connectors from the
motherboard?

4. what configurations are supported by the scsi
controller on the motherboard (jbod or raid)?

Again, two questions at once. Your "onboard" SCSI connections (you have
two) will NOT handle RAID of any kind. You will need to get a PCI RAID
card to accomplish this (and I HIGHLY recommend that you do)...I have a
box full of them. Your onboard connectors will only recognize your hard
drives as individual devices. You can (I am pretty sure) load in a
maximum of ten 36.4G drives...if you can find them. You will find that
drives, in the sleds, come in two sizes...thin and thick. You can only
hold a total of six of the "thicker" drives, but it is easier and
cheaper to find 36.4 drives in the thicker format. If you can find the
thin 36.4 drives, it is possible to have a single RAID0 partition of
364G....that is the absolute maximum (as far as I know..I could be
wrong).

5. if something is wrong with the hardware how do
I determine what it is?

Major hardware problems will be evident during boot up...either through
a "failure to boot up" or through messages displayed on the boot
screen. If you get through the boot up, you should be good to go (as
far as OS loading goes).


thanks for any feedback,
charles......

My pleasure. You can safely expect our resident guru, LC, to sound in
with some extra advise. If his recommedations conflict with my own,
please follow his. I just happen to have a lot of "3000 specific"
experience...he is the "all things Compaq" man.

Jeffrey Alsip