Compaq Prosignia 500 troubles:

Over the last weekend my wife bought at a garage sale a Compaq
Prosignia 500 and a NEC monitor and alot more goodies all for $10.00,
WOW but now after turning the big beast
on what I have on the monitor is "Configuration Nonvolatile Memory
Invalid Initialization Aborted" and what follows on the same screen
is the press "F1" key to continue or "F10" key for System Utilities,
when pressing F1 you get Invalid partition table, F10 you get The
System Utilities are not available on this system Press any key to
continue which brings you to: Invalid partition table.

Realizing the guy she bought it from said it doesn't have any memory,
but didn't go into what exactly that meant, no physical memory? I am
thinking that at this moment. The only thing that registers when
starting it is:

[b:c40eb0d75f]"147456kb" Detected, somewhere at 150mb

1. Processor running at 150mhz
2. 172-EISA Configuration Nonvolatile Memory Invalid
Initialization Aborted and then the following:

SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 0: DPES-
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 1: FUJITSU-
m2954S-512
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 2: COMPAQ-
ST32550N
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 3: COMPAQ-
DPES-31080
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 4: ARCHIVE- 4326XX
27871 XXX
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 5: COMPAQ
CRD-254V[/b:c40eb0d75f]

So can anyone give me some advise as to what I have, and what I can do
as far as getting it to work or do I have to go to the shop? Hoping
"NOT".

( added at 4:20am Sun/31st/10/04 ): Also I have been to the hp/compaq
forum and found the Configuration Utility but have not been
successfull in downloading from their site for some reason, would
anyone have another link besides the hp/compaq one. I have done a
google and cannot find another site that offers this download, and
would someone be kind enough to explain what is a "Prosignia 500" and
can I put a Windows OS into it?

The Prosignia 500 is a server intended for small office environments, obviously
a few years ago. As delivered from the factory, it has a special partition for
the system utilities and diagnostics (and maybe BIOS setup, I forget). HPaq may
still have downloads available needed to recreate the special partition and load
it up with the Compaq utility software.

It seems like the major problems are software related. You'll need to get an
EISA configuration utility for the old beast. EISA is a now-obsolete 32-bit
card interface, the first 32-bit cards ever. Systems with an EISA bus require
an EISA configuration utility to set them up properly.

You may need to replace the system battery. It's not clear if this is necessary
from your posting. Just a possibility.

To run Windows adequately, you may well need a PCI graphics card to override the
minimal graphics capability built into the motherboard. I would suggest not
running anything newer than Windows 98. The system appears to have at least 4GB
of disc storage among its several SCSI disk drives. It also has a fairly
obsolete tape backup unit and a SCSI CD-ROM drive, probably 4x.

.... Ben Myers

On 31 Oct 2004 09:07:41 -0500, lid
(Hardryve) wrote:

Over the last weekend my wife bought at a garage sale a Compaq
Prosignia 500 and a NEC monitor and alot more goodies all for $10.00,
WOW but now after turning the big beast
on what I have on the monitor is "Configuration Nonvolatile Memory
Invalid Initialization Aborted" and what follows on the same screen
is the press "F1" key to continue or "F10" key for System Utilities,
when pressing F1 you get Invalid partition table, F10 you get The
System Utilities are not available on this system Press any key to
continue which brings you to: Invalid partition table.

Realizing the guy she bought it from said it doesn't have any memory,
but didn't go into what exactly that meant, no physical memory? I am
thinking that at this moment. The only thing that registers when
starting it is:

[b:c40eb0d75f]"147456kb" Detected, somewhere at 150mb

1. Processor running at 150mhz
2. 172-EISA Configuration Nonvolatile Memory Invalid
Initialization Aborted and then the following:

SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 0: DPES-
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 1: FUJITSU-
m2954S-512
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 2: COMPAQ-
ST32550N
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 3: COMPAQ-
DPES-31080
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 4: ARCHIVE- 4326XX
27871 XXX
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 5: COMPAQ
CRD-254V[/b:c40eb0d75f]

So can anyone give me some advise as to what I have, and what I can do
as far as getting it to work or do I have to go to the shop? Hoping
"NOT".

( added at 4:20am Sun/31st/10/04 ): Also I have been to the hp/compaq
forum and found the Configuration Utility but have not been
successfull in downloading from their site for some reason, would
anyone have another link besides the hp/compaq one. I have done a
google and cannot find another site that offers this download, and
would someone be kind enough to explain what is a "Prosignia 500" and
can I put a Windows OS into it?

Ben,
He may need a SmartStart CD to get that old beast running again. Yes, setup
is stored on the non-DOS partition.
HH

ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) wrote in message
...
The Prosignia 500 is a server intended for small office environments,
obviously
a few years ago. As delivered from the factory, it has a special
partition for
the system utilities and diagnostics (and maybe BIOS setup, I forget).
HPaq may
still have downloads available needed to recreate the special partition
and load
it up with the Compaq utility software.

It seems like the major problems are software related. You'll need to get
an
EISA configuration utility for the old beast. EISA is a now-obsolete
32-bit
card interface, the first 32-bit cards ever. Systems with an EISA bus
require
an EISA configuration utility to set them up properly.

You may need to replace the system battery. It's not clear if this is
necessary
from your posting. Just a possibility.

To run Windows adequately, you may well need a PCI graphics card to
override the
minimal graphics capability built into the motherboard. I would suggest
not
running anything newer than Windows 98. The system appears to have at
least 4GB
of disc storage among its several SCSI disk drives. It also has a fairly
obsolete tape backup unit and a SCSI CD-ROM drive, probably 4x.

... Ben Myers

On 31 Oct 2004 09:07:41 -0500,
lid
(Hardryve) wrote:

Over the last weekend my wife bought at a garage sale a Compaq
Prosignia 500 and a NEC monitor and alot more goodies all for $10.00,
WOW but now after turning the big beast
on what I have on the monitor is "Configuration Nonvolatile Memory
Invalid Initialization Aborted" and what follows on the same screen
is the press "F1" key to continue or "F10" key for System Utilities,
when pressing F1 you get Invalid partition table, F10 you get The
System Utilities are not available on this system Press any key to
continue which brings you to: Invalid partition table.

Realizing the guy she bought it from said it doesn't have any memory,
but didn't go into what exactly that meant, no physical memory? I am
thinking that at this moment. The only thing that registers when
starting it is:

[b:c40eb0d75f]"147456kb" Detected, somewhere at 150mb

1. Processor running at 150mhz
2. 172-EISA Configuration Nonvolatile Memory Invalid
Initialization Aborted and then the following:

SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 0: DPES-
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 1: FUJITSU-
m2954S-512
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 2: COMPAQ-
ST32550N
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 3: COMPAQ-
DPES-31080
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 4: ARCHIVE- 4326XX
27871 XXX
SCSI Devise Detected - System Board, SCSI ID 5: COMPAQ
CRD-254V[/b:c40eb0d75f]

So can anyone give me some advise as to what I have, and what I can do
as far as getting it to work or do I have to go to the shop? Hoping
"NOT".

( added at 4:20am Sun/31st/10/04 ): Also I have been to the hp/compaq
forum and found the Configuration Utility but have not been
successfull in downloading from their site for some reason, would
anyone have another link besides the hp/compaq one. I have done a
google and cannot find another site that offers this download, and
would someone be kind enough to explain what is a "Prosignia 500" and
can I put a Windows OS into it?

I read somewhere on this forum someone having a similar problem with
the Compaq Prosignia 500, but cannot find it, is there anyone familar
with that thread or information to my problem? As I am still having
the same problem as stated in my first thread here.

Use google to search newsgroup archives... Ben Myers

On 3 Nov 2004 19:10:38 -0500, lid
(Hardryve) wrote:

I read somewhere on this forum someone having a similar problem with
the Compaq Prosignia 500, but cannot find it, is there anyone familar
with that thread or information to my problem? As I am still having
the same problem as stated in my first thread here.