Crap is there any way to flash the BIOS from Windows? This board doesn't have a normal floppy header. It has a "flexible" port that would need some kind of adapter I don't have. I tried burning a CD with the flasher disk image as the boot data. It boots DOS but won't get into the flasher utility.
My current BIOS is 4.06.06, well before 1.4 support was added.
UselessSoftware wrote on 2020-09-17, 01:35:Crap is there any way to flash the BIOS from Windows? This board doesn't have a normal floppy header. It has a "flexible" port that would need some kind of adapter I don't have. I tried burning a CD with the flasher disk image as the boot data. It boots DOS but won't get into the flasher utility.
My current BIOS is 4.06.06, well before 1.4 support was added.
It may work from a (DOS) bootable hdd (wouldn't risk an update from Windows). I've extracted the files from the floppy disk1 IMG file and zipped them in the attached.
I was just in the middle of trying. 😀
It shouldn't really care what it's booting from, theoretically.
Success! But it was setting the SHELL variable in config.sys to A:\PHLSHWRP.HDS
Setting it to start with C:\ still failed because something in their shell was hardcoded to look for something on A:\
So I just had it use command.com as the shell, copied PHLSHWRP.HDS to PHLSHWRP.COM, did SUBST A: C:\ and ran the new .COM file from that subst'd A:
Worked like a charm! Thanks. Now to test the 1.4's...
They work! And I was right the first time, it was an LP 1000R after all. I was at work when I made the earlier posts and couldn't check for sure. But anyway, success. 😀
"Flexible Disk" is just what HP calls floppy disks. I don't know why they do this. It also confused me when I encountered it. It's a perfectly normal drive.
They also call services 'agents' for whatever reason.
The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) firmware is the firmware of the Remote Management Controller (RMC) which provides remote administration services. On the tc3100 this is a separate card. I assume the same is true of your machine.
Is this too much voodoo?
Errius wrote on 2020-09-17, 13:22:"Flexible Disk" is just what HP calls floppy disks. I don't know why they do this. It also confused me when I encountered it. It's a perfectly normal drive.
They also call services 'agents' for whatever reason.
The Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) firmware is the firmware of the Remote Management Controller (RMC) which provides remote administration services. On the tc3100 this is a separate card. I assume the same is true of your machine.
Yes it's just a normal floppy drive, but the issue is that the motherboard has some odd proprietary ZIF connector for it, not a typical floppy cable so I had no way to connect one. And yeah, it always complains about not being able to communicate with the RMC when it boots but everything still works so it's fine.
Not really a fan of this board, especially since I still can't get any PCI video cards working on it. Not even an old S3 Trio64. I'll be on the lookout for something else.
OK, I see what you mean. It's that strange white connector.
I guess 'flexible disk' was invented by sales marketroids because 'floppy' sounded unprofessional or something. I'm sure this has caused a nontrivial amount of confusion over the years.
Is this too much voodoo?
I have a Supermicro P3TDE6, which has AGP (sadly not well implemented) and PCI-X. It's stable and fast, but its lack of proper AGP support is perhaps an issue if you want to squeeze out every inch/cm of performance.
It's quite a challenge to find a dual 1,4S solution which ticks all the boxes. There are plenty of threads on the forum dealing with that issue. At the end, we all have to admit, that in most current applications (i.e. contemporary games) you're as good with a cheaper single solution. Nothing beats the coolness of a dual solution, however (unless it's a quad or 6x6 😂).
How does the flawed AGP implementation manifest itself? It won't accept certain cards?
Is this too much voodoo?
On paper it should do AGP 4x, in reality only the most conservative settings (AGP 2x) work. All available AGP-tweaks in the BIOS usually result in freezes. Still, a very well made and versatile board, and not at all the worst in gaming performance.
Nice that you got them to work!
My dual Tualatin machine is built around the MSI Pro266TD Master-LR which is a fantastic board but very rare nowadays. I had to wait for years until I found one.
There are Gigabyte boards that are easier and cheaper to obtain if you don’t need the AGP port. Look for the GA-6VTXDR-C. It has onboard graphics too, but if I recall correctly it works fine with PCI cards as well. I have that one too and it has been running nice and stable in my home server with Windows Server 2003 for quite some time back in the day. Don’t know how it will compare to others performance-wise, though.
