Compaq Proliant 1500
 

i recently got a proliant 1500 server with 5 scsi drives in a raid array from my bro and i now just want something installed on it but this seems to be impossible since the distros i have do not detect scsi drives.
i tried debian 3.0 and slack 9, with slack i tried all the kernel images but none helped.
freebsd wouldn't even boot for some reason(it was 4.7)
i was wondering how to make use of this perfectly good server and i also have a config cd that comes with it called compaq smart start.

It will probably detect the drives but you are likely to need a raid driver loaded as well.

well here is where me needing help comes in...
i found an article online about a guy getting slack 8 on a proliant 1500 but he had spare boxes where he compiled a kernel with compaq support and then made a bootdisk and a rootdisk and he booted with that and so forth, well i don't have any spare boxes i'm a poor student trying to learn so i went out looking for finished bootdisks and found one for slack 7.1 but i'm not sure if it will work and i don't know what to do with it after i've booted with it(which works)