Proliant 3000 Help!

Lots of questions, so bear with me guys!!

I just bought a Compaq Prolian 3000 from a local junk shop for $30.00. It
has (2) PII 333mhz chips and I think 512mb of ram. There are no harddrives
or trays, but it has redundent fans and power supplies. It seems to boot
OK and has a SCSI card in it also. I need help or answers to the following
questions:

1. What is the fastest CPU I can put in here?
2. Does it support PIII's?
3. What are the VRM moduals and what do they do?
4. How many / what kind of HD's do I need?
5. Any way I can convert this to hold SATA drives?
6. What kind of memory and how much can it take?
7. Should I scrap it and just build new?

Ok.... I think that's enough for now.... I'm sure I'll have more soon.

Thanks for your help!

Curtis McDonald

"cmcdonald" wrote in message
lkaboutcomputing.com...
Lots of questions, so bear with me guys!!

I just bought a Compaq Prolian 3000 from a local junk shop for $30.00. It
has (2) PII 333mhz chips and I think 512mb of ram. There are no harddrives
or trays, but it has redundent fans and power supplies. It seems to boot
OK and has a SCSI card in it also. I need help or answers to the following
questions:

1. What is the fastest CPU I can put in here?
2. Does it support PIII's?
3. What are the VRM moduals and what do they do?
4. How many / what kind of HD's do I need?
5. Any way I can convert this to hold SATA drives?
6. What kind of memory and how much can it take?
7. Should I scrap it and just build new?

Ok.... I think that's enough for now.... I'm sure I'll have more soon.

Thanks for your help!

Curtis McDonald


1. 333Mhz
2. Your model, No. Other models, yes.
3. Voltage Regulator Modules. They regulate the juice so that you are
getting the cleanest 5v or 12v power possible to your CPU's
4. In a single channel (simplex) configuration, 7. In a dual channel (duplex
configuration) , 8 Get Wide Ultra SCSI-3 drives and trays from eBay. They
are dirt cheap.
5. No
6. EDO ECC 66Mhz DIMM's. with the 333's, you max out at 3GB
7. That depends on how much you want to put into this thing. Price out a
SmartArray 3200 controller, and a boat load of disks. It really depends on
what you are going to do with this thing ...

- LC

- LC

Wow... OK...

I am looking for a General Purpose server to host Server 2003 Small
Buisness. I know this is underpowered for that, but I couldn't pass it up
@ $30. So.. If I upgrade the Motherboard, ram, processors, SCSI card, and
backplain, then I should be OK? Will it run the slot 1 XEON PIII's? or
only up to 600mhz? Ram is no big deal, but I am concerned about the SCSI
card and HD's. It seems like I could get a lot more for less going SATA in
a stand alone box for storage. Would I be better off with this 3000
upgraded, or a lower end (AMD Athlon) new box for a 3 user SOHO server?

"cmcdonald" wrote in message
lkaboutcomputing.com...
Wow... OK...

I am looking for a General Purpose server to host Server 2003 Small
Buisness. I know this is underpowered for that, but I couldn't pass it up
@ $30. So.. If I upgrade the Motherboard, ram, processors, SCSI card, and
backplain, then I should be OK? Will it run the slot 1 XEON PIII's? or
only up to 600mhz? Ram is no big deal, but I am concerned about the SCSI
card and HD's. It seems like I could get a lot more for less going SATA in
a stand alone box for storage. Would I be better off with this 3000
upgraded, or a lower end (AMD Athlon) new box for a 3 user SOHO server?




You could do a motherboard upgrade, but it would only get you up to PIII
600. no xeons for this thing. With SBS, you shouldnt need it. if you want
PIII Xeons, look for a 6400R or a DL580 G1. The 6400 will have the best
price-entry point. If the budget doesnt matter so much, look at the newer
ML370 G3 or G4. Healthy little boxes for a nice price that should be able to
take anything that SBS throws at it.

You *can* put SATA in there ... sort of. You wont be able to boot from it
though. Get a cheap SCSI array controller and a couple 18G drives and make a
mirror. Then, find some drive brackets for a couple (2 max) SATA drives and
put them in the 5.25 non-hotplug bays. This can get you a mirror for
datastorage. This is also an unsupported configuration.

Again, its going to depend on what you are going to do with SBS. If you want
to run exhange and sql on it, then you should look for a different box.

- LC

Thanks for the insight! I'm sure I'll have more in the future...

Curtis