Great find! I just got a proliant that looks similar. ...check out my topic at My COMPAQ Proliant 2500 beast

Man that is loud...I guess that's the drive that's failing that's making the noise.
I look forward to seeing what you will upgrade it to.

My dual pentium pro model looks identical except that it has a smoked out front translucent panel instead of the transparent clear one like yours and a darker colored vent thingy at the bottom.

Anyways...having a dual pii is very cool...I really have grown to love my proliant and will keep my eyes peeled for another 🤣

Look forward to seeing your upgrades for this.

Nothing like the sound of old SCSI drives...

Very nice find by the way; nice that you saved the machine having to sit plugged in and turned on just wasting away as well. Any plans to upgrade the CPUs or make it a mixed-use workstation/server kind of machine?

That is a nice computer. I love finding stuff like that. A hidden, long forgotten server tucked away. Great post!

Nice topic! I also love finding treasures like this, and bring them back to life 😉

Beautiful machines like this one still have much to offer, congratulations and keep us updated on any changes.

retrofanatic, Yours looks like the sports GTI version with that black grill. Mine looks like the corporate version in all white. I like both though. The drive bay window is tinted but yours seems a bit darker. While I think that is a bit of a pain in "real life" I can imagine swapping backup tapes people removing or simply leaving the door open, it was one of the things I loved about it at first. Does yours support Hot swap HDD's? doesn't look like it but this is the 1st time I've seen the HDD caddy mine uses as well. (the newer version HP kept is better/stronger) My 256MB sticks are the exact same as yours as well!

SOOO I've been updating firmware all over the place. BIOS done, 9.1 GB HDD's all done the USB floppy emulator made those 6 floppys painless 😀 Sadly it didn't fix the dying drive (not that I was expecting it would)
The Smart Array 2SL was a bit harder. 4.50 is the latest version but running that sys it needs 4.30 or later, Guess what there is no such thing. You want 4.40, then 4.50!

I plugged in my 1Ghz CPU, doesn't boot. (already had to upgrade the VRM's, mine maxed out at 450Mhz CPU's cost £20 each) Looking around I'm either limited to 500 of 650Mhz. I'm also unsure what the max HDD is supported. I've tried a Ultra 320 72GB I had which works so trying to find a 146 or 300GB and see what happens. Good thing is none of this is expensive so can find out at little cost. 2 more 256 sticks of ram (same type as the 2 already in there) have already been ordered.

I've installed NT4 more for just a test run, its been years! It feels so quick and light weight. Its a PDC, just casue I can. the only users will be my and my Mrs shes got a Mac running OS 10.9 and can surprisingly access the shares out of the box. Where I had to make 1 reg change on my Win7 laptop.

chinny22 wrote:

retrofanatic, Yours looks like the sports GTI version with that black grill. Mine looks like the corporate version in all white. I like both though. The drive bay window is tinted but yours seems a bit darker. While I think that is a bit of a pain in "real life" I can imagine swapping backup tapes people removing or simply leaving the door open, it was one of the things I loved about it at first. Does yours support Hot swap HDD's? doesn't look like it but this is the 1st time I've seen the HDD caddy mine uses as well. (the newer version HP kept is better/stronger) My 256MB sticks are the exact same as yours as well!.

"GTI sports version" 🤣..That's a good way of putting it 🤣...I do like the all white also....mine does support Hot swap but you need a special kit to set it up. ..When i found mine it had a small bag inside the case with the plastic hdd mounting rails needed to install drives in the drive bays...lucky those were included or else i would have had to make something to mount some drives or go hunting on ebay...I'm happy with just having non hot swap HDD's for now but it would be cool to have that option.

Funny that you have the same ram chips as me 🤣...I'm surprised compaq used these as they obstruct the pulling out of the bottom motherboard tray so they have to be removed before the tray is pulled out...oh well its worth doing that to have 50ns speed for my memory 🤣.

I am looking forward to doing some dos game testing on mine. I'm looking for speed with the oldest dos games i can run on it without compromising compatibility...especially with sound hardware.

I don't know if you already know but there is a lcd temperature readout option available to fill in the void close to the top of the front of the case...it's available for the 1600 and my model 2500 as well...doesn't look like yours had that option installed...or did it? I found a couple on ebay and was thinking of getting one. ...do you know anything about them? If so, What are they used for exactly? I wonder if it is even worth buying.

So yours doesn't even use a HDD caddie? Interesting Always liked the newer (than mine) Compaq drive caddies, but never thought much about what came before them. And my Ram isn't original. Strange thing is the Compaq branded stuff it 133Mhz rated at CL3, So I'm also hoping I'm getting that extra .1 of a second out of it, lucky mine don't block the tray however either.

I looked into the LCD, Don't seem that hard to purchase but I'm not convinced its worth the money. This is a good video of one in action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqU-txwBVbQ

I've been playing with CPU's this week.
I fitted 2 650Mhz CPU's. They are recognised during POST but then get a stop error saying unsupported CPU error. This wasn't overly surprising despite the board supporting the correct multiplier as I have one of the earlier SCSI back plains part number 149046-001 (apparently the BIOS is on this not the Motherboard, which kind of makes sense when you consider the modular design)
So now I've tried 2 Katmai 600Mhz CPU's which work fine. I'm interested if 600Mhz Coppermine CPU's work. but not enough to actually go spend money on investigating so I'll stick with the Katmai's for now. Its a better result then 500Mhz that a Compaq forum post was saying.

I've also ordered 5 300GB SCSI drives. I was surprised how little spare SCSI drives I came across at work. but with SAS/SATA servers already starting to be retired I guess I just didn't realise how long its been since servers moved away from SCSI

This week wasn't the best of weeks for the 1600.
Supposedly anything higher then 450Mhz required a cooling kit for the CPU cage. Bit of research showed this to be some air ducts and 2 smaller fans replacing the currant larger single one. I had a better idea and attached 2 Noctua NF-R8 80mm fans instead to the front of the cage and left the existing large exhaust fan in the rear. That should keep the noise down more then Compaq's idea. The fans are running at full speed as they don't add much noise over the original fans and hard drives. Under normal load the CPU heat sinks are only warm to touch so seems to be doing the trick. Unfortunately the plastic latch began to snap. it still works but now I have to really ram the cage into the server rather then using the latch to leaver the cage in nice and gentle. I shouldn't have to take it out ever again so no big deal lucky.

My 5 Seagate 300GB 10k RPM hard drives never arrived either. Lucky my ebay seller was really good. The parcel was tracked and he could see it showing as undelivered. I was prepared to wait another week but he was keen to get it resolved and sent 5 HP drives still in their caddie's as replacement, extra bonus was 3 of the 5 were 15k RPM. Not that it makes much difference with my controller but still impressed with the no questions asked, fast resolution. I can happily recommend the seller "tier1-recycling"

So that's the server all finished for now. Final specs are
2x PIII 600Mhz Katmai and upgraded
2x 19 Amp VRM Spare# 329267-001
4x 100Mhz 168 Pin CL2 ECC Reg 256MB Ram (1GB total)
Smart Array 2SL
AWE32 (Will replace with an original Live! next time I'm home)
5x HP Branded 300GB Ultra 320 SCSI drives
Original System I/O board #313621-001
Original Motherboard #313622-001
Original Backplane #007314-001 Rev0B
Original FDD
Non Original NEC 52x CD-ROM IDE
DDS2 Tape drive (Not used)
NT4 Server SP6 as PDC
..Pics on the way!

That sounds great....good work! I look forward to seeing the pics.
What games/software are you hoping to run on it? I thought that some old flight sims and maybe even some later DOS and Win98 games will run very nicely.

Thanks for the linkl to the video...I watched the video of the LCD unit in action....actually I like it and might get one to fill in that void in the top of the case, just mostly because it looks cool.

Good work, shaping up to very a nice project now. Get some photos up 😀

Time for some before and after photos

Front Door Cover

Front

Side

Top, Now with added Awe32
[

CPU cage, This had very little dust as they hang upside down in the server, its the brighter colour of the heat sinks that make it look cleaner.

The 2 80mm fans are my answer to the "Thermal Upgrade Option Kit 144003-B22" required when going over 500Mhz, Not the best pic but from what I can work out the larger fan is a replacement for the existing fan, the smaller must go where I've mounted my fans and the plastic bags contain the baffles to direct airflow. I think my solution would be much more quiet, and cheaper!
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/multi-com_2264_2308865

Also to show how dusty it was, The front fan which is the main intake after years of sucking air into the server.

And what was just behind the HDD cage

Both spotless now!
Finally another video showing it load into windows and the raid controller maxing out its array size. Its not as noisy as the video makes out thanks to the mic right next to the HDD's. I wouldn't call it silent though, just a constant fan noise that's noticeable until a TV or music is put on.

https://youtu.be/SmDx2ZM44JU

Next up put it though its paces 😀

(edit update photo links)

Great job cleaning it all up! Must have took a while...looks great!

Love the look of the old Compaq Proliant systems 😀 glad you cleaned it up.

Both of those Proliants are gorgeous. A bit too large and unwieldy for my tastes but still gorgeous.

And I thought my Pentium 4 sounds like a plane.
This Proliant seems to beat it.