Alright, I've placed orders for both 5500 and 5000 parts. I actually had already ordered a 5000 board on 2/8, seeing it was cheap. But then hesitated after eisapc suggested 5500. I actually found 5000 easier because there's no separate power cables, power switch, or power backplane (not a fundamental issue because I probably can make a substitute). I also found full 5500 systems for sale. https://www.serverworlds.com/hp-proliant-5500 … proliant5500pro, but it was too late.

Also 5000 does support the more common EDO RAM. This says
the 219286-001 board supports both. I haven't seen any other memory board mentioned, so it seems EDO & FPM is more common than FPM only.

https://www.kingston.com/unitedkingdom/en/mem … iant-5000-6-200

If the system has a serial date number X706 XXXX XXXX (or lower) or has been purchased prior to February 1997, it will require a BIOS version E16 and FP/EDO memory conversion kit (219481-B21 or 219286-001) available from Compaq.

1------------------------5500 minimum parts-------------------------
2306561-001   motherboard 
3306582-001 (2)  CPU board
4219209-001 (4)  VRM, 40W
5  or
6296203-001 (4)  VRM, 48W         got this
7
8270183-001   memory board
9EDO, buffered, ECC DIMM, size <= 512MB. Must be installed 2 at a time and with the same timings
10169286-002   power supply 
11328708-001   power cables
12306571-001   power backplane
13328710-001   power switch
14271930-001   diagnostics display
15
16------------------------5000 minimum parts------------------------
17219287-001  motherboard
18219448-001  or  219447-001 (rack)   power supply
19219409-001 (2)  CPU board
20219388-001   CPU board terminator            sounds useful for testing and because I probably don't want to buy all 4 PPro CPUs at the same time
21219209-001 (4 + 2 for motherboard)  CPU VRM, 40W         didn't see an option for 48W needed for the fastest PPro with 1 MiB cache
22219286-001 (2)  memory board
23199819-001  Remote Insight             allows seeing POST codes; not bought yet, but sounds useful
24EDO, buffered, ECC DIMM , size <= 256 MiB. Must be installed 4 at a time and with the same timings

The price for the 5500 is insane.
I could sell you mine for half of that price incl. shipping. (must check)

Dont mix up the remote inside with the management display.
First is to remote control the server via LAN/modem, second is just a Display installed to the machines front panel.

I need to check my spares, so I might provide you some boards. (Populated memory boards and CPU boards lacking CPUs and VRMs)
This might take some time as they are stored remote.

I could sell you mine for half of that price incl. shipping.

Appreciate your offer. I think just some parts is good enough. I think I'm stuck on getting a power switch and power cables for 5500. I'm mostly interested in seeing the power of an early, 4 CPU system and want to put it into a smaller, open frame, case.

I discovered a 200 GB archive of Compaq's FTP site on archive.org. I found manuals for PL3000, 5000, and 5500. But I don't think it's a jackpot because they don't describe the power backplane or switch, which is where I'm stuck.
The manual for the Pentium2 (Xeon) based 5500 does describe that the power switch is attached to a peripheral board, which the PPro version doesn't have. It seems on the PPro version, the switch is connected to the 11 pin "Switch/Interlock Floppy Power" on the motherboard. It seems I got the power cable wrong. It seems it's 306566-001 instead of 328708-001. I tried ordering 328708-001 several times, but it was always cancelled due to being unavailable.

Would greatly appreciate a higher resolution picture or pinout of the cable that has an LED, a floppy power connector, interlock switches, and what appears to connect to a power switch. Same for the thick 10 & 12 pin power cables, and the 13 pin one that connects to "AUX PS CONN" on the board. If the cable is straight (the same pin on both ends are connected), then just say that.

The power backplane looks right to me, dont forget the cables connecting it to the motherboard.
Took somepictures yesterday but found no time to upload these yet.
Unfortunately the box I picked had PII CPU-boards equipped, but the motherbaords and the peripherals are the same.
No Idea, where the quad PPro is hiding?

Memory is 72 bit wide, not sure if this is parity only or if some motherboard logic does the ECC from these?

The PL5000 is alive! https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/20na5yjy9udc92 … t=3sni85sy&dl=0

Too bad I got the wrong memory board. Anyone know what's the part # that supports FPM & EDO? I thought it was 219286-001 from the Kingston site mentioned earlier, but apparently that's wrong. Is it 219487-001?

The main hurdle I had was I had to set switch 3 on SW1 to tower instead of rack mount. Before that, the LEDs would power on for 0.1s before immediately turning back off.
Also, I didn't have either of the 2 fans plugged in or tried to fool it.

I couldn't figure out how the interlock works. It's a microswitch that's supposed to close only when the chassis panel is closed, but I don't see anything that could hit the switch. I ended up forcing it on with a rubber band.

Overall, I'm pretty happy and relieved that I got most of the parts rights. So far, the PL5000 is easier to get running than 5500. There's no power back plane or separate cables to hunt down, but the power supply is a monstrosity. Also, the interlock system has fewer elements, just the micro switch instead of a long chain, PSU <-> power backplane <-> motherboard <-> chassis switches <-> switch, then in reverse back to the PSU.

This project is so cursed... i love it. please continue.

Thanks for cheering on. Or you just like watching me bust my ass https://youtu.be/5qAfcyQFk6Y?t=722, chasing down various vendors, asking for obscure power cables, only for them to jack up the price 3x? That's what this vendor did: https://www.newtownspares.com/328708-001/

I'm making my own heatsinks and clips! I saw other people say how hard or expensive it is to get socket 8 heatsinks. I wouldn't mind buying a few for $35, but not 8.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/hea … o-cpus.1245149/
Pentium Pro Socket 8 CPU Cooler

Unfortunately, I cut the clip out of 430 stainless steel, which isn't elastic. Have to use spring steel.

Dell PowerEdge 6450 from parts seems hard. I see even less documentation than for PL5000 or 5500. What were the biggest hurdles?

I have a huge box of the pc power and cooling heatsinks. Dual 40mm fans. Pm me if we can work something out.

luckybob wrote on 2025-03-17, 02:32:

I have a huge box of the pc power and cooling heatsinks. Dual 40mm fans. Pm me if we can work something out.

Yeah I got some of those from liqmat too. They are really nice if a bit loud. But the clips on them are despicable. Exercise extreme caution when removing them, they are so tight they caused one of my screwdriver bits to shatter and sent the remainder of the screwdriver into the pins of the 442FX DBX, destroying it. I was eventually able to locate a replacement 442FX and swap it out, but my prized PR440FX board was out of service for like 2 years because of this

spacesaver wrote on 2025-03-14, 09:09:

The PL5000 is alive! https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/20na5yjy9udc92 … t=3sni85sy&dl=0

I can't believe you got this far! I was sure this would be a project that would take years and never get completed.
Very well done and think you deserve a special spot in the old enterprise iron club

Some progress on PL5000

1. I got the memory boards that support FP & EDO, 219487-001. Now it gets past error 207 (wrong memory board).
2. The next adventure was "1703-SCSI cable error detected."
The documentation said, "Ensure that the integrated SCSI controller has SCSI termination attached."

There board has 3 SCSI connectors and it wasn't clear which one had to be terminated.
68 pin internal, fast, 16bit, SCSI 2
68 pin external, fast, 16bit SCSI 2
50 pin internal, 8bit SCSI 2

I bought both "HP SCSI Cable w/ Terminator" 306579-001, which is 68 pin, and a 50 pin terminator. It turns out it's only necessary to terminate the 50 pin connector.

3. Next, I installed Windows NT 4 to a disk image in VirtualBox, transferred it to a real disk, but couldn't boot it (blank screen). I have the disk connected to a Silicon Image 3114 SATA controller. I am able to boot to a DOS floppy and the SATA disk is detected.

I thought I had to change the boot order in the BIOS, but apparently you can't do that. You have to use Compaq System Configuration Utility, which is installed to a disk.
That was disappointing considering there's 6 ROM chips it could've been stored in (System, Bootblock, Video controller, Keyboard controller, Option, SCSI).

I don't have a CD drive. Eisapc said you could run the setup without a CDROM. I downloaded the SmartStart 5.5 CD and found some floppy images like BOOT144A.DAT. I tried 2, but they all got an error,

1CD ROM I/O failure.   Check CD ROM and CD Drive.
2Error Code: 11
3
4Press any key to restart SmartStart

Do I really need to run the Compaq config just to make it boot from the hard disk?

I tried that floppy in VirtualBox with the SmartStart CDROM in, but got the same error.
Does that mean I need to have a SCSI CDROM? That would be disappointing. Would be even more disappointing if the config utility has to be installed to a SCSI disk.

I had a complete PL1600 which is younger but still predates the DL/ML rebranding maybe similar?

Mine didn't need SCSI CD drive, in fact the internal IDE didn't support HDD's, only removable drives.

For the configuration utility you could either run it from within smart start, have it create a FDD or have it install itself into a small partition onto your hard drive. (even their desktops of the era did this rather than a bios chip, was just how Compaq did things during this era)
Personally, I always ran from CD.

NT4 is very delicate, if you run the NT4 setup disks does it find the hard drive on real hardware?
Smart Start is going to have trouble as well as it'll be expecting some Compaq branded SCSI card, but 1 step at a time!

chinny22 is correct.
Try to solve the config problem first, so you will be able to select the proper boot device too.
This can be either done by the SMARTStart CD or by the Floppys created by Smartstart.
Boot144.dat is probably the dos image needed to boot the Smartstart CD, the Images for the 3 ECU disks hide somewhere else.
I need to check on the CD for the folder name

Installing the System Partion on the HDD is highly recommended, as it gives you the ability to run the config from HDD instead booting of CD or FDD for every cnfiguration change.
This has to be done prior to installing the OS.
The Smartstart CD has an option to install the drivers needed to the HDD prior to OS installation.

Installing to SATA will probably not work as it is not detected from the Smartstart CD due to lack of drivers.
So at least for the system HDD a SCSI HDD is needed.
You can try to work in the SATA drivers to the CD boot image and the files to install, but I doubt this will work.

Found this post from a guy very close to my situation (no SCSI CDROM). 2 replies saying PL5000 can't boot from IDE drives.
https://community.hpe.com/t5/proliant-servers … 00/td-p/3210734

That makes sense if the BIOS doesn't have any support for an IDE controller. But it doesn't say anything about mystery storage devices with a ROM like the SIL 3114. That ROM should hook INT 0x13, which allows DOS or any other OS to read/write disks without needing its own driver. You can clearly see in the screenshot above that the SIL3114 ROM is being run and detecting the disk.
This baffling behavior is making me conclude that Compaq's BIOS is not using INT0x13 for loading the boot sector. I'll do an experiment by booting to DOS on a floppy and check if the SATA drive is detected. If C:\ shows up, then I would conclude INT0x13 isn't being used. If not, then that would be even stranger.

I've created the 4 system configuration floppies by downloading and running this in DOS
https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/archive/ftp.compaq. … 000/sp19619.exe

I didn't see any option to change the boot order. Nor any way to create a system partition. Maybe that's because the system configuration has to be done before those. After flashing the system configuration and rebooting, I got a dreaded 2 long beeps, and 2 short beeps. That means it doesn't think the fan is spinning, but I do have a contemporary fan connected. I just have to fool it.

I'm going to have to get a SCSI to SD card adapter for the boot drive at least. This is quite disappointing since those are only 8bit and 10 MB/s. Anyone seen a 16bit SCSI adapter? Maybe I'll have a slow drive for boot only and use SATA as much as possible.

NT4 is very delicate, if you run the NT4 setup disks does it find the hard drive on real hardware?

I didn't install NT4 on the actual hardware, given that I don't have a SCSI CDROM. I installed it in the VirtualBox emulator. I didn't have any problems with installation, only booting after installing. I had to disable VirtualBox's emulated SoundBlaster, network card, and USB host to prevent it from crashing.

Does PL1600 not support booting from IDE or add on cards? If so, what SCSI drive are you using?

Seems like the PL1600 differs as it does have internal IDE (on the backplane if I remember correctly)
It did support booting from a standard IDE CD drive, but definitely didn't support booting from hard drive as tested this myself.
So would not be surprised by any other strange behaviour, but it's interesting to see how far you can go with generic parts.
Do you see the SATA card BIOS during boot?

I've advanced from the stone age to the iron age - booting into Windows NT, with 16 color VGA, and working Sound Blaster & EMU 8K. I got a Whole New World feeling after hearing the Windows NT start up sound for the 1st time 😀

The bad news is the NVIDIA FX5500 I got is broken, so couldn't test 3D. The good news is multiple processors are being used.

Do you see the SATA card BIOS during boot?

Yes, it's in one of the earlier pictures when I was still in the stone age.

My experiment to see if the Compaq BIOS can boot from PCI storage devices is inconclusive. I have a Silicon Image 3114, which is known to not work on pre 1998 PCI hosts. For me, the C drive was showing up in DOS, but hangs when you access it. I'm waiting for a Promise S150 TX2. I'm currently using an emulated ZuluSCSI drive, which I don't plan on using for long because it's only 10 MB/s. The good thing is it can boot the SmartStart CD, so not necessary to buy a Compaq branded CDROM like eisapc suggested in his 1st post.

Nice system, I always fancied a Quad Pentium Pro, but never got all the bits to build one, just 4 x 1MB cache CPUs. Out of interest what does CPUZ report the memory timings on the [ Memory ] tab?

My SIV utility should report them and I am wondering if they will be the same.

CPU-Z's memory page is all grayed out, probably because it uses SPD, but EDO RAM predates that. Interestingly, your utility does show the timings, but how? It matches the IBM server with the same chipset. It says I have 8 FPM, but I'm using 4 EDO modules with 2 ranks each. It has 18 MT4LC16M4H9 chips on each side.

Nice cache latency benchmark. Does it have a memory bandwidth benchmark also?

spacesaver wrote on 2025-04-08, 14:17:

your utility does show the timings, but how?

It reads the timings from the 450GX Chipset, CPUZ [Memory] should do the same, but guess it does not have 450GX Chipset support. It's the [SPD] tab that reads them from the SPD.

There is Menu->Machine->Memory Speed and also Menu->Machine->Benchmark for CPU benchmarks.

red-ray wrote on 2019-08-22, 10:17:

[*]DBGHELP.dll +PSAPI.dll are absent from most NT4 and earlier systems so ideally copy the attached ones into the Windows NT system32 directory.

Have you added the above .DLLs?

I see SIV reported a GPU, but no core clock, if you do Menu->File->Save Local and post/or PM me the two save files I will see if I can improve things.

spacesaver wrote on 2025-04-08, 14:17:

It says I have 8 FPM, but I'm using 4 EDO modules with 2 ranks each.

The 450GX chipset does not support EDO and they will be running as FPM would. I suspect the 8 rather than 4 is down to 2 banks/ranks. With the save files I may be able to improve things.

Do you plan to add more CPUs?

Do you plan to add more CPUs?

Up to now, I've only installed 2 CPUs and put a terminator card in the 2nd slot. I was afraid 4 CPUs (40W each) would be too hard to keep cool with the 140mm fan.
But given that the main reason for this project is to satisfy my 4 CPU fetish, it's about time.

Note: I have purposely not installed more than the minimum 4 sticks of RAM to prevent long boot times.

After installing them, I got an error saying a CPU failed to initialize. Reseating or installing another CPU doesn't clear the error. You have to go into system configuration and clear the error. This happened earlier for 1 CPU, when I didn't install a heatsink, thinking it will be fine for 1 minute. It seems Compaq deliberately disables the CPU when it detects a fault to prevent melt down.

Next, Windows NT was still only detecting 2 of the 4 CPUs. I realized that's because I have NT4 workstation. Had to install NT4 server and the special service pack 6 with high encryption. Finally, I could see 4 CPU graphs in Windows task manager.

It reads the timings from the 450GX Chipset

That's pretty impressive you spent the time to read the registers from an obscure chipset.

Here are the logs with 4 CPUs installed

I tried the memory bandwidth test and got 180 MB/s. That's a lot lower than the peak 533 MB/s peak. Does the benchmark use all 4 CPUs in parallel? Usually, 1 CPU can't get the full bandwidth.

You don't need to worry about the SVGA chip I'm using. That Cirrus Logic GD5424 can't even do a blit! let alone be called a GPU.