Those three brown slots on the bottom look kind of like EISA.
You sure you can't use ISA cards in them?

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

it only has PCI

I can see EISA as well, and EISA slots are compatible with ISA cards...

In case you do end up having to use a PCI card eventually:

Obviously, there are really fancy ones out there, so I assume the main idea is DOS compatibility.

Have a look at Phils computer lab, he's very much in love with PCI solutions.

At least here in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, the Terratec TTSOLO-1 is bloody everywhere. Phil swears by it and it's a cost-neutral option.
The SB Live! is said to have rather good DOS legacy drivers - I didn't check.
The Terratec Xfire 1024 is one of the last cards to include a waveblaster header, if that's a concern. I did not enjoy it in Windows games, EAX killed performance, but maybe I was to stupid back then.
And, people keep ranting about how great the aureal vortex chips are, so maybe a Diamond Monster Sound will do.

Need correct power supply to go with this. Also needs memory boards too, and processor boards too.

Finally, one last hurdle is sourcing a front panel to use the board.

Cheers,

Excluding DOS, any PCI card with real DSP (Live!, Vortex, etc) will help to improve performance in games with DirectSound 3D support, if you won't use EAX or other additional effects. But yeah, in your case it's easier to just use ISA sound card.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

Hello, I am getting a Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 server it only has PCI so I was wondering what the best sound card I could get with dos compatibility because I plan to dual boot 95 and nt 4 would an AWE 64 PCI be a good option or would something better work?

Hi, I apologize in advance, I will not really answer to your question 😁
So you are getting this machine.... In which configuration? 2 CPUs, 4 CPUs? 166MHz or 200MHz? How much RAM? It was shipped either with 64MB or 128MB initially.
Tell us more, that is a super cool machine. How many disks are in? Which size?

That brings up the next thing: Windows NT is the right OS (when you want to go with MS)
But Windows 95? Noooooooooo. When it has 4 CPUs 3 CPUs would just heat up for nothing. That does not make sense.
And DOS compatibilty? Sorry, but that just does not make any sense. This server is just not meant to run Windows 95 or DOS games.

So when you really want to put a sound card in, which is a bit weird in my opinion. The question is which sound card is well supported by Windows NT 4 .....

CoffeeOne wrote on 2022-03-02, 23:25:

Hi, I apologize in advance, I will not really answer to your question :D So you are getting this machine.... In which configurat […]
Show full quote

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

Hello, I am getting a Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 server it only has PCI so I was wondering what the best sound card I could get with dos compatibility because I plan to dual boot 95 and nt 4 would an AWE 64 PCI be a good option or would something better work?

Hi, I apologize in advance, I will not really answer to your question 😁
So you are getting this machine.... In which configuration? 2 CPUs, 4 CPUs? 166MHz or 200MHz? How much RAM? It was shipped either with 64MB or 128MB initially.
Tell us more, that is a super cool machine. How many disks are in? Which size?

That brings up the next thing: Windows NT is the right OS (when you want to go with MS)
But Windows 95? Noooooooooo. When it has 4 CPUs 3 CPUs would just heat up for nothing. That does not make sense.
And DOS compatibilty? Sorry, but that just does not make any sense. This server is just not meant to run Windows 95 or DOS games.

So when you really want to put a sound card in, which is a bit weird in my opinion. The question is which sound card is well supported by Windows NT 4 .....

Ill be more than happy to tell you more about it once it is working but I made a new post and I am getting this error. Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 claiming their is a cpu error

Hey before I continue with it anyone know about this error I am getting Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 claiming their is a cpu error

My vote is ESS Solo all day. It’s a fantastic card with jaw dropping DOS compatibility and sounds great

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

Hello, I am getting a Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 server it only has PCI so I was wondering what the best sound card I could get with dos compatibility because I plan to dual boot 95 and nt 4 would an AWE 64 PCI be a good option or would something better work?

audigy 2 zs seems to be a really good card for these old systems. I believe they have cpu offloading built into their design also so helps with performance.

As others have said it was probably designed for windows nt but you may find compatibility is better with many programs in windows xp? May be worth trying both.

I have dual pentium 1 boards and when in dual configuration xp seems like a really good option for most things. Of course in single, I can run k6-3+ chips and drop back to 9x which actually tends to be faster at (most things) but for you your best chip options also support dual so you may as well keep multi processor OS

As others have said, yes I’m pretty sure eisa supports ISA

But there was another port that looked like eisa but wasn’t? Trying to remember. Make sure you know what port that is before plugging into it.

Dos will of course work on this but just like 9x dos is wasted on this setup. You can only use one of the cpus.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:36:

audigy 2 zs seems to be a really good card for these old systems. I believe they have cpu offloading built into their design als […]
Show full quote

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

Hello, I am getting a Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 server it only has PCI so I was wondering what the best sound card I could get with dos compatibility because I plan to dual boot 95 and nt 4 would an AWE 64 PCI be a good option or would something better work?

audigy 2 zs seems to be a really good card for these old systems. I believe they have cpu offloading built into their design also so helps with performance.

As others have said it was probably designed for windows nt but you may find compatibility is better with many programs in windows xp? May be worth trying both.

I have dual pentium 1 boards and when in dual configuration xp seems like a really good option for most things. Of course in single, I can run k6-3+ chips and drop back to 9x which actually tends to be faster at (most things) but for you your best chip options also support dual so you may as well keep multi processor OS

YOu may ask why 95 I am bored so why not for fun I have plenty of others but I thought man a dual voodoo 2 quad Pentium pro computer would be cool af!

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:44:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:36:

audigy 2 zs seems to be a really good card for these old systems. I believe they have cpu offloading built into their design als […]
Show full quote

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-02, 19:19:

Hello, I am getting a Quad Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant 5000 server it only has PCI so I was wondering what the best sound card I could get with dos compatibility because I plan to dual boot 95 and nt 4 would an AWE 64 PCI be a good option or would something better work?

audigy 2 zs seems to be a really good card for these old systems. I believe they have cpu offloading built into their design also so helps with performance.

As others have said it was probably designed for windows nt but you may find compatibility is better with many programs in windows xp? May be worth trying both.

I have dual pentium 1 boards and when in dual configuration xp seems like a really good option for most things. Of course in single, I can run k6-3+ chips and drop back to 9x which actually tends to be faster at (most things) but for you your best chip options also support dual so you may as well keep multi processor OS

YOu may ask why 95 I am bored so why not for fun I have plenty of others but I thought man a dual voodoo 2 quad Pentium pro computer would be cool af!

Edits^

Btw, you may need a special version of xp to do quad… I can’t recall which if any 32 bit xp versions supported it.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/windo … cessors.261610/

You **may** be able to make windows server 2003 work. Which is basically windows xp But I think the same bug that keeps it from working on my dual pentium may prevent it from working on your pentium pro.

You can tey though. Start with server 2003 rtm (research which edition you should use)

Sure 😀 windows 95 should work, but only one cpu will show.

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:44:

YOu may ask why 95 I am bored so why not for fun I have plenty of others but I thought man a dual voodoo 2 quad Pentium pro computer would be cool af!

Under windows 95 it would really be a dual voodoo2 single Pentium Pro computer - aside from consuming power the other three CPUs would effectively not be there. This server would have been designed to run either Windows NT Server 4.0 or NetWare 4.11 though DOS will work fine (NetWare uses DOS as a boot loader). Drivers could be an issue for Windows 9x.

The three brown slots are most certainly EISA though and ISA cards will work just fine in them. Its been several years since I've used this era Proliant so can't remember if you need to do anything from the EISA Configuration Utility when just using them as regular ISA slots - probably worth checking. You'll probably want to run it anyway to ensure everything else is configured properly as some things on the motherboard may be attached via EISA. I'd also run Compaq Diagnostics to see if it gives any more detailed information about the CPU board error. Both the EISA Configuration Utility and Compaq Diagnostics should be installed to the system partition and accessible via F10 during POST IIRC.

If the system partition isn't present a SmartStart CD of the appropriate age should be able to create it, or you can download the appropriate SoftPaqs and load it via floppy disk. As of 2002 I think SP19686 (download, readme) should give you server diagnostics (v S10.38B) and SP19619 (download, readme) for the system configuration utility (v 2.58A).

davidrg wrote on 2022-03-03, 03:13:

Under windows 95 it would really be a dual voodoo2 single Pentium Pro computer - aside from consuming power the other three CPUs […]
Show full quote

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-03, 02:44:

YOu may ask why 95 I am bored so why not for fun I have plenty of others but I thought man a dual voodoo 2 quad Pentium pro computer would be cool af!

Under windows 95 it would really be a dual voodoo2 single Pentium Pro computer - aside from consuming power the other three CPUs would effectively not be there. This server would have been designed to run either Windows NT Server 4.0 or NetWare 4.11 though DOS will work fine (NetWare uses DOS as a boot loader). Drivers could be an issue for Windows 9x.

The three brown slots are most certainly EISA though and ISA cards will work just fine in them. Its been several years since I've used this era Proliant so can't remember if you need to do anything from the EISA Configuration Utility when just using them as regular ISA slots - probably worth checking. You'll probably want to run it anyway to ensure everything else is configured properly as some things on the motherboard may be attached via EISA. I'd also run Compaq Diagnostics to see if it gives any more detailed information about the CPU board error. Both the EISA Configuration Utility and Compaq Diagnostics should be installed to the system partition and accessible via F10 during POST IIRC.

If the system partition isn't present a SmartStart CD of the appropriate age should be able to create it, or you can download the appropriate SoftPaqs and load it via floppy disk. As of 2002 I think SP19686 should give you server diagnostics (v S10.38B) and SP19619 for the system configuration utility (v 2.58A).

Thanks for the help and yes I understand it would be a single CPU again my main reasoning is doing it cause I can if I can find drivers and I like using computers for more than one thing. But I will try these disks!

Winman486 wrote on 2022-03-03, 03:20:

Thanks for the help and yes I understand it would be a single CPU again my main reasoning is doing it cause I can if I can find drivers and I like using computers for more than one thing. But I will try these disks!

Thats as good a reason as any in my book! I found these old Compaq EISA-equipped servers pretty fun to play with.

If the server has a Compaq SMART array controller then you'll need a few more SoftPaqs - I think at least SP19757 (Download, Readme - Array Diagnostic Utility) and perhaps and SP17917 (Download, Readme - Array Configuration Utility) both for Windows NT 4. Some older versions (SP6263 may be the newest) install to the system partition - I assume places running NetWare must have stuck with this version as all later versions seem to require Windows NT.

Edit: Looking at your photos in the other thread you do appear to have a RAID controller - perhaps a SMART-2/P. Probably worth checking the state of its cache batteries. Running the system config utility may also clear your CPU error - if the server wasn't previously running with four processors it might just be complaining because it wasn't expecting them to be there.

I'll second using a Solo-1 based card. If there are unpopulated pads for a Wavetable header, its as simple as soldering on the header pins and it just works. The ESS cards are the sound card equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.

Quad Pentium Pro will require Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003. Windows XP Pro can work only with two physical sockets, but maybe there are some hacks to remove that restriction.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-03, 14:55:

Quad Pentium Pro will require Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003. Windows XP Pro can work only with two physical sockets, but maybe there are some hacks to remove that restriction.

Yeah, isn’t that just weird that it cares wether it’s sockets or cores? That’s gotta be marketing I’m betting.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-03-03, 16:36:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-03, 14:55:

Quad Pentium Pro will require Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003. Windows XP Pro can work only with two physical sockets, but maybe there are some hacks to remove that restriction.

Yeah, isn’t that just weird that it cares wether it’s sockets or cores? That’s gotta be marketing I’m betting.

There were no mulit-core desktop CPUs when XP was designed/released. IBM, HP, and SUN had dual-core workstation/server chips in the mid-late 90's, but multi-core desktop chips didn't show up until Intel shipped the Core Duo in '06 - late in the XP era. I don't recall if XP supported the Core Duo properly or not.