[Shuruga2]

I picked up a IBM NetVista machine to use as a file server.
It's 1.8ghz with 1280 ram IDE0 200g, IDE1 120g (win2k3), IDE3 200g with an integrated NIC.
I've installed an IBM desktop pro 1000/100/10, a RocketRaid 1820, 2 500g sata drives, and a couple fans. I use both NICs as only one other computer has gigabit and they connect directly.

The problem is that 3 or 4 times out of 5 the machine will not boot into windows. After the initial bios device check screen the rocketraid screen pops up, detects the drives then goes to a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left. The times that it works it goes back to the original bios screen before going to windows boot.

This machine now has the rocketraid trying to inject it's stuff at boot, as well as two cards that are looking to see if they can boot from the network (I've turned that off and back on in bios with no change). To me this 'feels' like it's the weak spot.

I've tried moving the cards around in the slots.
I've run memtest on all of the ram and tried booting in single sticks and combinations.
I've reinstalled windows 3 times on two separate drives.
I've unplugged all the drives but the windows one.
Same as above but also unplugged the fans.
I've disabled all the extraneous stuff in bios (serial port, sound, etc).
With the rocketraid card out it goes to the cursor slightly less often.
The rocketraid has the latest bios.
The netvista has an older bios. I upgraded it but got errors saying the cpu wasnt recognized.


I've tried to be systematic but I cant find anything that always causes it or always fixes it.

I'd like to get some ideas/thoughts on this please.
(This machine ran great for 6 months as a smoothwall box. It only had a 40g drive,a dvd rom, an older ibm NIC, and only 768 ram.)