Hoping that I can turn around and use the Compaq Utilities to reformat the drives (and lose the data) but at least get back to where I can boot.

Before you reformat, I'd consider using the smart array utility to remove the arrays you added. This should erase the small amount of data that the controller puts on the drive that defines the array and hopefully you will be able to access them with the on-board controller.

The smart array should not mess up any data. It's also more than likely a better controller than the on-board.

good luck

I didn't do anything with the array controller software, never even loaded it..
but when I put the smart array card in, drive started flashing.

Smart arrays don't do anything until the logical drives are defined. The drives should flash because it tries to read the array configuration. If you had these setup on the onboard controller as a raid it may be reading that info but that's sounds wierd.

I'd put the drives in the original locations and rerun the onboard array utility. The data should be fine.

If the drives are already striped and part of an array then your best bet is to do as te_conway suggested and boot with fingers crossed. Re-double your efforts to ensure that the drives go back in the same parts of the chain they came from.

If they aren't part of an array then I'd mount them on a 'safe' machine and pull the data to a safe location before attempting any award-winning gymnastics on the RAID utility.

Zen of Jazz have you tried to see if it was a hardware related problem by installing WinNT 4 to see wether or not the cpu board is defective by swaping CPU's as well... just a suggestion really!!!

I wonder where went our friend zLinuxz!!! probably Zzzzz

OK, No, didn't install NT4, as I don't have a copy. Drives have NOT be configured as raid, simply as 2 9.1G, 2 4.3G and the 2G boot.
Machine will not boot to linux with the drives connected to the onboard controller, linux gets the perpetual rolling SCSI parity errors.

Only one drive has data I care about, but once again, it doesn't wanna boot up. Can't mount the drive after linux has booted, so don't know what to think, at this point.

If you did not have a raid and you care about 1 disk, I would change your fstab to look at the 2.1gb boot only.
Once you can boot fine, add the data drive as a new drive and use a disk utility to view what partitions are on the disk, then change you fstab to reflect these partitions and it should boot with the data drive mounted.
You may want to do an fdisk /mbr too, it won't hurt the data an will restore the mbr to it's default.

THANKS!

that's useful.

Zen/Jaz

It's not just you. I have a 1500 with the dual board and have the same issue when installing Redhat 8. The server had been running win2000 for over 2 years so I don't think it's a hardware issue.

I've never had any issues with the Smart array controller, once the logical drives are built on the controller the physical are completely hidden from the os.

Please keep us updated if you find a solution to the dual processor issue...i'll do the same.

This solves the problems (so far):

Change APIC mode in bios.
Build your system part and start with F10
At the main menu, select "System Configuration".
Press CTRL+A. The following window is displayed:
"Information: Advanced mode is enabled"
Select "Configure Hardware".
At the "Configuration Complete" screen select "Review or modify hardware settings".
Scroll down to APIC Mode in the Advanced Features section, and press ENTER.
The following three options will be displayed:
Full Table Mapped
Full Table
Disabled
Select "Full Table".
Save the configuration by pressing F10 and exit the System Configuration Utility.

Also need to use the new mem pram and leave a gap between 640K and 1M

may need to specify cpqarray device manualy

I have been struggling and wrestling trying to load Redhat 8 onto a single processor proliant with the smart array controller -- and have seemingly hit a dead end after getting the cpqarray loaded when it can't find any hard drives onto which it can install.

I read some doom and gloom on trying to get Redhat 7.3 loaded on this machine, and am just looking for confirmation from somebody that redhat 8 will or won't load --- and if it won't then what will work?

well, I know mandrake 8 runs on the single processor version..

I had similar rolling SCSI parity errors on my machine, it was ACPI that was messing it all up. Nackard pretty much all I/O.

I put the the kernel boot parameter:
acpi=off

This solved all sorts of problems with SCSI and USB and loads of other stuff.

Sniff

Well I know this may be a little after the fact, seeing as how this thread was started almost 4 months ago...

I also have a duel Proliant 1500 (p200) 200mbs ram and 5 2.1 gig hard drives. Though I do not have the raid card.

I have tried to install a number of versions of Linux onto this system with absolutely no luck. I got all sorts of errors from unable to find that SCSI hard drives to the most common; Linux was unable to find the correct amount of ram for this system. It kept reporting only 16mbs of ram when as stated above you can see the system has 200mbs. The distros that I tried were Redhat 8, Readhat 7.3, Mandrake 8- 8.2 & Slackware 8. From what I was able to diagnose the issue dose revolve around the CPU/Ram daughter card.

Well needless to say after much frustration I decided to load win2k server to see if in fact I was dealing with a hardware issue. As it turned out I was not and win2k server loaded up with out a problem (not surprising seeing as how Proliants were designed for NT) but this is not what I wanted the server to run. I wanted it to run Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, BSDi, Solaris…etc) After checking the HCL’s of a number of software venders sites I was able to find an OS that I could readably obtain for a low cost (20.00 USD) that would actually run on this system, Solaris 8 for Intel (I would recommend Solaris 9). Yah I know it is not Linux but it does still kick the crap out of win2k any day.

If your interested you can download it from
here