Got a dual Pentium Pro machine.....Need some help...

Hey guys, I picked up an older dual pentium Pro machine, its a Zeos Pantera. Its one of the later built ones with IDE built onto the board...I have a bunch of SCIS Ultra 2 HDD's at 4.2gb a peice and I want to throw some of them in it, But first I have a odd little problem.....

When I turn the system on, ( I need to install a OS like Win2k on it)...It will start checking the RAM and stuff.....well It did anyway, its got like 800meg of ram, or a little over..(i think) ..The problem just started when I finaly found my Win2k disc, ( Original one anyway)....It restarts itself.....And it does this continualy....

So...Any ideas, it just started this when I was ready throw an OS on it.....The only thing I can find is that on the other side of the board, at the very right it says "3v Supply" and there is one remaing AT connector with 3green and 3 black wires, I thought about plugging this in....But theres space for 2 AT connections at this 3v supply, and theres only one extra connector besides the 2 other AT powerconnectors that go on the OTHER side of the board....Am I sopposed to plug this thing in anyway, If so how?

I have abolutly no experience with servers and this dumbfounded me...because it had been posting fine without this connector....
Then again it was stripped when I got the sucker, no HDD....So Ive thrown a 6gig on the IDE channel until I find a PCI ultra2 SCIS card for teh other drives...

I hope someone understands all that.....

BTW it has 2 200mhz procs I belive with an American Magnetudes posting logo....if that helps...

1st try booting off of the win2k install disks. If you don't have them, there is a program on the win2k cd that will make them for you, I belive it is under the bootdisk folder in the root. IF that fails, try booting off of a dos bootdisk with cd drivers and SMARTDRV (have to have it loaded), then go to the i386 folder and run winnt.

2nd I highly doubt you have 800megs, I think more like 80megs, but that is stilll more than enough for win2k.

3rd I heard of that connector, but if it is one, I think you may have a ATX power supply, check if the main cable currently leading to the MB is in 2 parts or one. Also if it trully is a AT, no wonder your system runs so unstable, probubly the moment the cd drive spins up the PS trips or something. Due to the age of the system it might not support booting from a cd. Also the rebooting maybe caused by the first boot device being the c drive and when the bios doesn't find a MBR it reboots. So check the bios, AMI are visually similar to award bioses. Did you get computer under the assumption that is works (eg. is it a dumpster computer or hand me down scrap) because the PS may be the wrong kind?

Also don't worry I have heard of that 3v connector so it isn't proprietory.

Keep in mind that Win2K needs at least 128 MB to run. If you don't have that much, it will cause big problems. It probably won't install, at all.

You could try some kind of Linux on it, just to see if it will work. Look up Knoppix. It is a Linux that runs completely off the CD. You don't even need a hard drive. If you can load it and mess around, that might tell you if your hardware is working, right.

cmcquistion said:

Keep in mind that Win2K needs at least 128 MB to run. If you don't have that much, it will cause big problems. It probably won't install, at all.

Click to expand...

The minimums the XP and win2k installers need (or otherwise they say you don't have enough memery and terminate (MS did that intentionally)) is 64 mb. I personally verified the win2k installer (8mb of shared video memery from a 64mb pc and installer halt). If you install with 64mb then reduce the RAM in the system, it will boot. I don't belive the system will load to a GUI mode with less than 26, anyways the kernal needs 22mb. I have used 32mb win2k systems, they trash your drive alot but still usable for IE. 64mb is the minium for any win2k system I would use on a regularly (not cracking/folding node) used machine.

I don't use XP but I belive your computer will nearly freeze because of XP gui bloat if you use under 64mb. I would recommend 160mb (128mb & 32mb) for XP before it becomes usable, 256MB is fine and you won't get any more performace out of your computer after that (except for disk caching, but the stupid NT kernal still swaps thing to HD even with a gig of ram).

With 2k less than 96mb and your customers will think the machine neds to be RMAed. 128 is fine for day to day. 256 if you like multi tasking.

Angry wanted me to reply and say that the connecter is AT and he said he needs more info on what its does and how to use it

NewBlood said:

Angry wanted me to reply and say that the connecter is AT and he said he needs more info on what its does and how to use it

Click to expand...

?????????????????????????????

hmmm....

That extra power connector, I still havent figured out what its for but the computer seems to be posting fine again..now im just trying to get it to detect an IDE drive, also.....

I found that it has USB oboard and Ive gotin teh ram up to like 104meg now....bulk88 you were right it only had 80, but i have old almost trashed compaq servers that Im using parts from....But still lacking in a compatable scis ulta 2 card.....

ARG!!....

It started restarting again when I was trying to figur out how to get it to boot of the floppy drive.....Weird....

Gonna have to figur this out.....

BTW I accidently posted under Newblood last.....


Me and him are both working on getting this thing going....

I've got several of those older pentium pro duallies, and I've found those older rigs have some tricky items in the bios. First off, What vid card do you have in it? One of mine didn't come with the original vid card, and it took me 6 different older vid cards before I found one that was compatible. Something to do with the video memory, I kept getting memory parity issues with it.

Second, I don't doubt that it has that much or at least has the ability to handle that much ram, both of mine have 512mbs each in them. Some of those older duallies were made to serve as web servers, and needed ungodly amounts of ram compared to other systems built during that time period. Mine has 8 ram slots each, and each slot will hold a 64mb stick. One thing about them though with the ram is that the ram that runs in these are ecc edo sdram, specifically designed for these types of rigs (at least that's what mine were). But if you are using a Compaq for parts, the ram you use out of the Compaq might not be compatible with the ram needed in the other rig. Compaq has always been known for having proprietary components in them. I've got several sticks of ecc edo ram out of a compaq, that even though the look identical to the ram I'm using in mine, they do not work in it.

Now in the bios, look for an option to choose what type of os, choose nt to run w2k ( if it has that option, I'm working off of memory here, but mine had unix, os2, and nt for options). Plus there's another selection for memory on the vid card. Mine had some kind of option that disabled all but 1mb of memory on the vid card, which really messed with the computer till I found that option, and a vid card that was compatible with it. Believe it or not, I originally thought my mobo was bad, so I ordered another board from someone on ebay that was selling that specific board. Got it in, instaled it, and ran into the same problem. thought I got a bad board, rma'd it to the guy, and he sent me another one. Installed it and hit the same wall again. After that, I knew it had to be something else, so that's when I started digging through the bios and finally found that option.

Another thing that mine had on it was onboard 60 pin scsi, and standard ide connections. Just seems kind of strange to me that yours doesn't have onboard scsi, most of those older rigs had everything built in.

Bear in mind though, these are just suggestions of things to look for in these older rigs. Mine is a proprietary Hewlett Packard, and is by no means setup the same as yours. These are just some of the hurdles I encountered with mine. good luck getting it together, and don't give up on it, they are truly fun to play around with. You'll be amazed at how responsive and strong they are for how old and pathetic they are. I enjoy mine, and believe it or not they fold for my folding team. And are capable of running two instances of folding on each of these rigs, and still complete a wu with around 30 - 35% of deadline time remaining. that really blew me away, I though for sure these things wouldn't be able to finish a wu on time.

Everybody was right, It only had 80megs of ram, but like I said, I took some ram from the compaq servers and got it up 104mb...

The video card is Diamond Stealth 64.....There isnt any SCSI built onto the board unfortunatly....but the SCSI CD-rom that came in it didnt work anyway so I had to use one from a compaq sever, Works fine so far as it picked it right up....

As far as I know all the EDO Ram is ECC.....
As for getting Win2k on it..I think its my CD as it seems to have an odd scratch on the label side which isnt good at all...So I may to buy a new one... (....

But the BIOs actualy rather easy to get around in as the mouse works in it and its setup like old Windows 3.11.....first time for me...totaly blew me away....But i still havent figured out how to get it too boot of the floppy drive, I set boot sequence to A,Cd-rom, C....I may have to hook up a IDE cdrom and see if it will boot off that....

Also, this thing with it starting to restart on it own after awhile has been going on before I stuck the compaq ram in it....Seems to restart right when it goes to check the ram with or without the compaq ram in....And it does it continualy...It also says that my CMOS batt is low....so that might have something to do with it, you think?

Personaly, I would LOVE to get this up and running...Ive got to many SCSI 4.3 hdd's I could throw in it......

Laterz...

and thanks...

try takin out all the ram but 2 sticks, matching, and have them in slots 1 and 2. (or 0 and 1 of there is a 0) and see if it'll post. and try a couple different pair of matching sticks. and supermicro is the only boards i have seen with that BIOS style (had 2 here) so if you check the board for a model # (look on the bottom ISA slot, in the side towards botom of case for a sticker) it will probably be a supericro (going from the bios style) and the CPUS arent gettin too hot are they? you have good HSFs and thermal compound on there, right?

You could also run NT4 SP6a which will easily run with your RAM. No USB but other than that, NT4 ain't a bad OS and PPro was built for it.

four4875 said:

try takin out all the ram but 2 sticks, matching, and have them in slots 1 and 2. (or 0 and 1 of there is a 0) and see if it'll post. and try a couple different pair of matching sticks. and supermicro is the only boards i have seen with that BIOS style (had 2 here) so if you check the board for a model # (look on the bottom ISA slot, in the side towards botom of case for a sticker) it will probably be a supericro (going from the bios style) and the CPUS arent gettin too hot are they? you have good HSFs and thermal compound on there, right?

Click to expand...

He's got a point there that I forgot about, the ram has to be in pairs. It will not work if the ram is uneven or different sizes. Kind of like rambus. At least that's the way my pen pro duallies are.

In the bios, see if you can find an option for floppy seek and enable that.