Proliant Storage System F1

Next to my workbench are two systems. One is an HP Netserver Pro, ca. 1996,
dual Pentium Pro-166, 128 MB RAM in a sizeable array of 72-pin ECC
SIMMs(eight, with room for eight more!), with five 2.0 GB HP by Seagate SCSI
drives. Although it warns me several times during boot that there is no
SCSI BIOS loaded, and I know that there is no software OS or data on the
system, it eventually completes its self-test and sits there all hummy and
blinky waiting for me to do something. (And it's VERY hummy -- the three PS
fans make a great sound!)

The other one is a Proliant Storage System F1, ca. 1998. I picked it up to
look at it for the first time this morning. When I set out to hook a monitor
and keyboard to it, lo and behold, there isn't any conventional I/0 or
anywhere to put it! The I/0 card has a single SCSI-type connector, wider
than the 50-pin SCSI connector I'm used to seeing. I conclude that this
tower actually amounts to a glorified external HDD enclosure, with five 4.3
GB Wide Ultra SCSI drives each labeled Compaq in big logo letters and
Seagate in small type.

I do have a third machine, but it doesn't look like a viable contributor.
It's a Compaq ProSignia 500 with a single Pentium 150, set up for three
striped 4.3 GB drives of which two are present.

So I'm at a starting point. As I said earlier, I know my way around a PC
but servers are a new idea, and I just want one working machine to come out
of this. Several questions pass though my feeble mind:

How can I determine if the Proliant is even working?

If I put a matching PCI SCSI card in the HP, can I connect the Proliant and
just use it as an external drive? I have a 2940 PCI SCSI adapter card with
a matching connector, but no external cables at this moment.

Is it practical to replace the five 2.0 GB drives in the HP with the five
4.3 GB drives now in the Proliant? What will I have to do on the hardware
level to set the server up to use them? The 2.0 GB drives each hold a
sticker warning not to replace them with a different type. So how do I know
if the 4.3 GB drives are within the scope of this type?

Here's the text of the sticker: "CAUTION /!\ Inserting any non-SCA 23A
drive (SFF8015 23A) will damage your system and/or drive! REPAIRS RESULTING
FROM SUCH DAMAGE ARE NOT COVERED UNDER HP'S WARRANTY. This unit is
assembled with tamper-evident screws."

The drives are all mounted in slide-in drawers; the drives in the HP plug
directly into the system, while the ones in the Proliant are mounted on a
card which mates to the system by a card-edge connector. The connectors on
the actual drives appear to be identical -- a D-shield surrounding a
card-edge pin array resembling a Centronics printer connector, scaled down
in the SCSI tradition.

Once it's working, what is the procedure for loading an O/S? I have
Mandrake 9.1, Red Hat 8, and a Netware 3.0 set available to play with for
starters, and would bring my Linux up to date once I know stuff works; if
the machine ends up being my own(unlikely) I have a school-provided ELMS
copy of WS2003 I can use. Do servers have a boot-order selection like what
we find in a PC? Do they boot from floppy or CD if present, as a PC does?
So far I haven't even found the BIOS setup.

There's enough dumb beginner questions for this morning! Any advice or
insight would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Peter

Peter,

The F1 is a storage cabinet, it is not a "computer". It supoorts
hotswappable drives, provided your controller also supports hotplug. You
should be able to attach that to any SCSI controller, though I would highly
recommend an array controller. You can find these on ebay very cheaply.

wish i had more time to respond right now, might contribute more later.

- LC

"Pelysma" wrote in message
news:XbG_d.8696$GI6.7075@trnddc05...
Next to my workbench are two systems. One is an HP Netserver Pro, ca.
1996,
dual Pentium Pro-166, 128 MB RAM in a sizeable array of 72-pin ECC
SIMMs(eight, with room for eight more!), with five 2.0 GB HP by Seagate
SCSI
drives. Although it warns me several times during boot that there is no
SCSI BIOS loaded, and I know that there is no software OS or data on the
system, it eventually completes its self-test and sits there all hummy and
blinky waiting for me to do something. (And it's VERY hummy -- the three
PS
fans make a great sound!)

The other one is a Proliant Storage System F1, ca. 1998. I picked it up
to
look at it for the first time this morning. When I set out to hook a
monitor
and keyboard to it, lo and behold, there isn't any conventional I/0 or
anywhere to put it! The I/0 card has a single SCSI-type connector, wider
than the 50-pin SCSI connector I'm used to seeing. I conclude that this
tower actually amounts to a glorified external HDD enclosure, with five
4.3
GB Wide Ultra SCSI drives each labeled Compaq in big logo letters and
Seagate in small type.

I do have a third machine, but it doesn't look like a viable contributor.
It's a Compaq ProSignia 500 with a single Pentium 150, set up for three
striped 4.3 GB drives of which two are present.

So I'm at a starting point. As I said earlier, I know my way around a PC
but servers are a new idea, and I just want one working machine to come
out
of this. Several questions pass though my feeble mind:

How can I determine if the Proliant is even working?

If I put a matching PCI SCSI card in the HP, can I connect the Proliant
and
just use it as an external drive? I have a 2940 PCI SCSI adapter card
with
a matching connector, but no external cables at this moment.

Is it practical to replace the five 2.0 GB drives in the HP with the five
4.3 GB drives now in the Proliant? What will I have to do on the hardware
level to set the server up to use them? The 2.0 GB drives each hold a
sticker warning not to replace them with a different type. So how do I
know
if the 4.3 GB drives are within the scope of this type?

Here's the text of the sticker: "CAUTION /!\ Inserting any non-SCA 23A
drive (SFF8015 23A) will damage your system and/or drive! REPAIRS
RESULTING
FROM SUCH DAMAGE ARE NOT COVERED UNDER HP'S WARRANTY. This unit is
assembled with tamper-evident screws."

The drives are all mounted in slide-in drawers; the drives in the HP plug
directly into the system, while the ones in the Proliant are mounted on a
card which mates to the system by a card-edge connector. The connectors
on
the actual drives appear to be identical -- a D-shield surrounding a
card-edge pin array resembling a Centronics printer connector, scaled
down
in the SCSI tradition.

Once it's working, what is the procedure for loading an O/S? I have
Mandrake 9.1, Red Hat 8, and a Netware 3.0 set available to play with for
starters, and would bring my Linux up to date once I know stuff works; if
the machine ends up being my own(unlikely) I have a school-provided ELMS
copy of WS2003 I can use. Do servers have a boot-order selection like
what
we find in a PC? Do they boot from floppy or CD if present, as a PC does?
So far I haven't even found the BIOS setup.

There's enough dumb beginner questions for this morning! Any advice or
insight would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Peter

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
Peter,

The F1 is a storage cabinet, it is not a "computer".

I had arrived at that.

It supports
hotswappable drives, provided your controller also supports hotplug. You
should be able to attach that to any SCSI controller, though I would
highly
recommend an array controller. You can find these on ebay very cheaply.

wish i had more time to respond right now, might contribute more later.

- LC

This begins to come together! There is an identical connector on the back
of the HP Netserver LX Pro.
So the Proliant was most likely an external upgrade to the HP.

It's a shame Nut Cracker did not have more time. He could explain this
much better than me. I have two F1 enclosures (filled with Compaq
hot-swap hard disks) connected to my Proliant 3000. These boxes are
nothing more than external drive arrays. In my case, each box is
connected to it's own Array Controller Card, that reside inside of the
3000. Being a total Compaq to Compaq arrangement, I am able to run the
Compaq Array Configuration Utility and set the drives in the units to
one of several configurations. It should be possible for you to do the
same, providing that you have an Array Controller. If you do not, you
may still be able to connect this unit to a free external SCSI port, on
your HP, and still use the drives as individual drives (D:, E:, F:,
etc.) though you will not be able to do any striping or mirroring...the
real strength of a true Array.

"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
ups.com...
It's a shame Nut Cracker did not have more time. He could explain this
much better than me. I have two F1 enclosures (filled with Compaq
hot-swap hard disks) connected to my Proliant 3000. These boxes are
nothing more than external drive arrays. In my case, each box is
connected to it's own Array Controller Card, that reside inside of the
3000. Being a total Compaq to Compaq arrangement, I am able to run the
Compaq Array Configuration Utility and set the drives in the units to
one of several configurations. It should be possible for you to do the
same, providing that you have an Array Controller. If you do not, you
may still be able to connect this unit to a free external SCSI port, on
your HP, and still use the drives as individual drives (D:, E:, F:,
etc.) though you will not be able to do any striping or mirroring...the
real strength of a true Array.


Thanks, that's a good answer, reinforces Nutcracker's, and it both helps and
makes sense looking at the hardware. As it turns out the HP has a fast/wide
SCSI port on the back that is connected by cable to a "RAID ARRAY 2" header
on the mainboard, suggesting to me that these two machines were hooked up in
their previous, pre-retirement life. I'm going to try to get them that way
again after scrounging/shopping for two cables, an external fast/wide SCSI
cable and the C15 hi-temp AC cord the HP requires. The drives will stay in
the boxes they're in, all ten can be put to use (assuming all still work)
and reconfiguration should be minimal.

--
P.

Have you had any luck locating the cables you seek?

You might try asking he is the HP products
specialist and would know if there were any of the hi-temp power cords
around.

Also ask him about the SCSI cable, he can probably help out there too.

Much old compaq/hp product inventory is located at www.c-techonline.com
but the small cable stuff usually isn't listed but instead is often
times just thrown away or sold with product; either way it is usually
floating around
the warehouse.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Have you had any luck locating the cables you seek?

You might try asking he is the HP products
specialist and would know if there were any of the hi-temp power cords
around.

Also ask him about the SCSI cable, he can probably help out there too.

Much old compaq/hp product inventory is located at www.c-techonline.com
but the small cable stuff usually isn't listed but instead is often
times just thrown away or sold with product; either way it is usually
floating around
the warehouse.


Thank you! But I'll be looking into local sources first. The power cord I
found online, and I want to check two sort-of-local stores before going to
mail-order. The Wide-Ultra SCSI external cable might be just a little
trickier, but there's more time for that; I'm going to get the HP server up
and running before trying to connect the external cabinet to it.

The more I look at this hardware, and the more I know about the job it is to
do, the more I think we should ditch it and just use one of several
refurbished PC's that are handy. There's a PII/233 in the shop that nobody
would want, for instance, that could be ready for the task in an hour. But
don't tell the man in charge yet -- the one person who will benefit from
making this work is myself, since I may learn more from this one project
than I've retained in several college classes.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'm keeping your post and links.

--
Peter

When you start looking for your SCSI cable, first dentify what type of
connector you need on each end.

Is it 68pin to 68pin, 68pin to vhdci, or vhdci to vhdci etc..

then also determine the length you will need to connect the two boxes.
We have most of those in the warehouse but not listed in inventory.

c-techonline.com wrote:
When you start looking for your SCSI cable, first dentify what type
of
connector you need on each end.

Is it 68pin to 68pin, 68pin to vhdci, or vhdci to vhdci etc..

then also determine the length you will need to connect the two
boxes.
We have most of those in the warehouse but not listed in inventory.

I have two of the SCSI cables you need. One is 10' and one is 12'. They
were given to me for free when I bought a 2500 (actually the guy asked
me to take them as a favor...I said "Well...okay.") I also somehow
acquired one that is 14" long...I have not the slightest clue how I
might ever use that.

These cables are all official Compaq parts...and I would wager that I
can beat the price of any warehouse e-business. After all, I'm just a
dude. Let's not lose perspective...the value of these systems (even
working fully) does not warrent the outlay of too much cash. I like to
think of this newsgroup as a "collection of hobbiests" and I frown on
respondents who try to turn too much of a profit.

"small cable stuff usually isn't listed but instead is often
times just thrown away or sold with product; either way it is usually
floating around the warehouse. "

Like I said above - this stuff is not where we try to make our money.
If you call - make an offer, it can't hurt. If we are going to put it
into inventory etc, then we aren't going to list the stuff for $5 (it's
not worth the time to keep track of the stuff) but you are always
welcome to try and ask for it for that.

"... I frown on respondents who try to turn too much of a profit."

You must not have been following the computer market these past few
years but prices are constantly falling. Not many out there making "too
much profit" maybe there were in 2000 but not so many today. Besides a
super slow down in demand the past four years, new product price drops
have put extreme downward pressure on used product pricing. So there is
little margin left after commission, shipping, testing, refurb,
cleaning etc.

_I_ frown on people who are testy and jump to conclusions. No reason
for that unless there is some sort of repressed hostility for some
reason - in which case seek therapy elsewhere than on the boards.
Pelysma just mentioned " scrounging/shopping for two cables, an
external fast/wide SCSI cable and the C15 hi-temp AC cord" I just
offered a suggestion in response. What's your beef?

So you have some extra hardware floating around good for you. Did you
offer to help Pelysma out with it? I am a hobbiest too, I've got a
PL5500 running in the basement with two arrays and 10 drives and 5
other old computers (running). So what? I also work for a company that
makes used equipment available for people like us to play with.
Otherwise Corps would have to scrap the stuff with no secondary
market-makers around to buy their old stuff, find people who want to
buy the old equipment and then take responsibility for it if it breaks
down.

We don't make our profit on the _sell_ side, selling to people like you
and Pelysma or even 3M or GE for that matter. There is a ton of used
equipment on the market with amazingly low prices from lots of
motivated sellers; being low priced is the only way to survive. We make
our money on the _buy_ side, that is, we only purchase product that we
can get inexpensively enough to sell at market prices and still have
some margin left(we don't even pay attention to cables, they usually
get thrown in a box until they take up too much space).

I hope I have taught you a little something about the used computer
business - its not glamorous, we're not all driving sports cars. We buy
low and sell at market. So maybe you know alot about configuring raid
arrays, maybe you could teach me something about it too? But I bet you
would not be as quick to turn down a raise at your work as you are
quick to criticize others for trying to make a living too. hmm.