A few days ago I won a Ibm Netfinity 5500 m20 server on E-bay. It has 2- Pent 3 Xeon cpu's running at 550 mhz each with 1 mb catch each, 512 ram, Cd, floppy, etc. It also came with 1 9.1 gig 10k rpm scsi HD. It boots, but for some reason the on board raid card wont detect the hard drive, and I can't put Windows on it. I up dated the serveraid thing with a disk I made from an ISO that was on IBM's site to con-fig it. When I tell it to look for the hard drive it says none are found. Can some one plz help me. I have tried every thing I can think of. I can't put windows xp on it cuz it says no hard drive found and then has me restart the server. Should I buy a few more of the 9.1 gig and try them to see if the other one is faulty? Plz fellow Pimps lets put our ideas together, and fix my darn server prob. The inside led light thing says that there is nothing wrong, but when I take the hard drive out it lights the faulty light so I know it knows it's there PLZ help the server newb.

Ignore this if you've tried it, but...

When you're just starting to load XP, you have to press F6 if you want to load SCSI (or SATA) drivers from a floppy. Otherwise it'll say "no hard drive detected". The links below may help, though they're targeted at Windows 2000 (since that's more of a server OS).

Installation instructions for IBM ServeRAID under Win2000

Download ServeRAID drivers

Still trying to get it to work =(

OK now I found the problem. The cord thing from the hard drive card wasn't plugged into anything.(smacks head) Now though I have no darn idea were to plug it into. I think it has an IBM raidserver2 on-board raid thing. I am not sure were to plug it into the motherboard. Also should I use the on-board or should I buy another raid card?

What, there isn't a raid thingy for the cable thingy?

If it has onboard raid i wouldn't see any reason to not use the onboard.

Quote: Originally Posted by koolgreen OK now I found the problem. The cord thing from the hard drive card wasn't plugged into anything.(smacks head) Now though I have no darn idea were to plug it into. I think it has an IBM raidserver2 on-board raid thing. I am not sure were to plug it into the motherboard. Also should I use the on-board or should I buy another raid card?

okay...first off...koolgreen - relax! Take a breather....and stop stressin'. Now help me out, so I can try and figure out what you've got. (pictures would help BTW). Current hardware inventory says that you have dual P3 Xeons, 550 MHz, 1 MB L2 cache on each, and 512 MB RAM, CD, floppy, and two 9.1 GB SCSI drives. Can you ID the SCSI drives for me? (i.e. make and model # if possible), if you can't, don't worry about it. (trying to find out what kind of hard drive you have so I can tell you what you may or may not need to do to get it to work. i.e. 68 pin, SCA, etc?)

You also said that you have an IBM ServerRAID 2 in there? Is it a 2? 2L? 2M? ??? Can you tell? Does it say on the card. (For those that don't know, I highly doubt that it's quote/unquote "onboard RAID" The ServerRAID typically is a separate RAID card that is installed.) What I'm picture is probably a case between 1.75" and 3.5" high (1U or 2U), standard 19" EIA rackmount, with a riser and the RAID card installed on it.

Why don't we start with that first. If you can, also look around for a Windows 2000 or XP driver from IBM. If you can't find it, maybe I can help you find out what you actually have; and track down the Windows driver for you. (You will also need to ensure that the drives are configured on the RAID card if the RAID configuration has been cleared.)

UPDATE OK I found out that i needed a raid con-fig CD so I found it on IBM, and was able to get the on-board raid to finally find the drive. (last owner took his raid card, and didn't plug it back into the mother board) for some reason though when I try to install Windows XP it says that it doesn't see the hard drive, and reboots. I found a floppy SCSI driver image on the disk. My new question is WTF am I supposed to do with the driver image file? Do I just slap it on a floppy, and do the F6 thing? or do I treat it like an ISO? Also this is one big huge heavy mofo(about 110 lbs) I am sort of mad that I had to gut most of the server to get to the on-board raid hook up.

Quote: Originally Posted by koolgreen UPDATE OK I found out that i needed a raid con-fig CD so I found it on IBM, and was able to get the on-board raid to finally find the drive. (last owner took his raid card, and didn't plug it back into the mother board) for some reason though when I try to install Windows XP it says that it doesn't see the hard drive, and reboots. I found a floppy SCSI driver image on the disk. My new question is WTF am I supposed to do with the driver image file? Do I just slap it on a floppy, and do the F6 thing? or do I treat it like an ISO? Also this is one big huge heavy mofo(about 110 lbs) I am sort of mad that I had to gut most of the server to get to the on-board raid hook up.

Is the SCSI driver an actual floppy image, or is it just a file? I know that normally for Adaptec SCSI drivers, that it comes in as a zip file or something like that, where you can unzip it and put it on the floppy. It depends on the image format. There should be a readme or a text file with the installation instructions, typically from the same place where you downloaded it.

But yes, the general idea is to put it on a floppy, and press F6 when prompted to do so for SCSI drivers.

Hope this helps.

(And yes, they are really heavy systems, most of it is the steel in the case). It can usually take a fair amount of beating. I don't know too much about THAT system in particular, but it's getting pretty close to "carrier class" computer server.

Basically it's only 1 file called win2k_xp.img for xp. There are a ton of others for other OS but they are also all in IMG. I am not much of a floppy person so this sort of file has me a little confused. Also the file is 1.40 MB.

Quote: Originally Posted by koolgreen Basically it's only 1 file called win2k_xp.img for xp. There are a ton of others for other OS but they are also all in IMG. I am not much of a floppy person so this sort of file has me a little confused. Also the file is 1.40 MB.

do you have a link for where you got the image file from? If you can, please post it so that I can take a look at it. Thanks. (there's got to be a tool that would be able to write the image to a floppy)

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...9723&loc=en_US that is the ibm site I got it from. It's the bottem (last)one(sry it's a big fille)

Quote: Originally Posted by koolgreen http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...9723&loc=en_US that is the ibm site I got it from. It's the bottem (last)one(sry it's a big fille)

you do realize that on the site that you provided the link for, it has the driver for ServeRAID for Windows 2000 and XP right there. Download it (

25r5032.exe

348,313

) and run it and it will create the disk for you. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

Crap floppy drive I stole from my other computer is acting weird. Every time I try to get into it through My Computer it says this disk isn't formatted do you want to format disk, and when I try to it says windows can't format this disk and dumps me back to My Computer. The file you provided says disk error when I try to get it to go on to floppy. So it looks like I will have to take the floppy from my server hook it up to my computer, burn floppy, remove floppy drive from my computer, and put it back in server. I guess I will do that tommrow. I will post to tell if it works. (rep for you if it does for all your help)

Quote: Originally Posted by koolgreen Crap floppy drive I stole from my other computer is acting weird. Every time I try to get into it through My Computer it says this disk isn't formatted do you want to format disk, and when I try to it says windows can't format this disk and dumps me back to My Computer. The file you provided says disk error when I try to get it to go on to floppy. So it looks like I will have to take the floppy from my server hook it up to my computer, burn floppy, remove floppy drive from my computer, and put it back in server. I guess I will do that tommrow. I will post to tell if it works. (rep for you if it does for all your help)

I think that out of the 6 computers that I have now or something like that, only 2 of them actually have "fixed" floppy drives. (i.e. that are (permanently) mounted, and connected.) The other 4 uses 2 or 3 roaming floppy drives that I have (depending on which one I find first.) I have so many extra floppy drive cables now, that it's not even funny anymore.

If I need the floppy, I will either jump on one of the system that has it, or attach one to any one of the other systems, and use that. Else; it's USB drive or network. And really, the only time that I would need the floppy drive is when I am reinstalling Windows, or if I am doing hard drive diagnostics.

It can also be the floppy itself too, because I've had floppies that degrade on me over time just sitting there. That IS also a possibilty as well. (more often than not, it's the floppy itself rather than the drive.)

Quote: Originally Posted by alpha754293 It can also be the floppy itself too, because I've had floppies that degrade on me over time just sitting there. That IS also a possibilty as well. (more often than not, it's the floppy itself rather than the drive.)

I can back ya up on that. I recently needed 4 floppy disks to install some drivers during Windows setup, and I had to go through a stack of eight or nine disks just to find four that worked. (I know it wasn't the drive, either, because the two floppy drives I used were very consistent about the disks they did and didn't like)

I've often thought how crazy it is that you can't install the latest consumer technology (Windows XP on a SCSI or SATA hard drive) without using 20-year-old technology, a floppy drive. (Yeah, I know it's possible to build a Windows install CD with the drivers built in, but it takes more time/work than plugging in a floppy drive.)

I guess I better go buy some floppys I have had these for a long time.

Quote: Originally Posted by FunkyFresh I can back ya up on that. I recently needed 4 floppy disks to install some drivers during Windows setup, and I had to go through a stack of eight or nine disks just to find four that worked. (I know it wasn't the drive, either, because the two floppy drives I used were very consistent about the disks they did and didn't like) I've often thought how crazy it is that you can't install the latest consumer technology (Windows XP on a SCSI or SATA hard drive) without using 20-year-old technology, a floppy drive. (Yeah, I know it's possible to build a Windows install CD with the drivers built in, but it takes more time/work than plugging in a floppy drive.)

The one thing that I find even MORE surprising than having to actually use them is the fact that they still cost about the same, and more than the cost of blank CDs.

I remember back in the day, you can buy them in stacks of 50, for about $25 CDN. The cost never really dropped below that. I don't mind using them if that's what's needed/required. But the fact that they either cost the same as they did in it's prime, or the fact that the cost of blank CDs costs less than floppies - that's what surprises me the most. AND....on top of which, even when you DO press 'F6' during the Windows setup that it will only go to the floppy - and nothing else; even though it can load all the other drivers for it before getting there.