[rescue] HP C8000 workstation - OS?

[Robert Novak]

First, I wanted to thank Justin Haynes and Jonathan Patschke for their
advice.

Today I put a couple of IBM/Patriot 4GB dimms in (from my Opteron 2xxx
server stash) and kept getting a solid #3 green light and nothing on video
or serial console. On a whim, I pulled some KVR400S4R3A/1G sticks that had
been replaced in those Opteron servers with the 4Gb sticks, and the thing
booted up.

I'm pondering whether it's a matter of single/dual rank and/or memory
speed, or chip density... the working dimms are single rank 400mhz
(PC-3200) and the non-working ones are dual rank PC-3200.

The CDs I found seem to be happy, well, the first one at least, and the
"Show System Info" bit shows "B.11.11". Sadly,  the only 68-pin SCSI disk I
could find quickly reports a size of 0 bytes (about 18GB less than I
expected). It could be a sick disk, seeing as it's been in storage for up
to 9 years in non-temperature-controlled earthquake-prone regions, or it
might just not have the right partition table.

Installation/recovery process reports "9000/785/C8000" and I'm amazed by
how quiet this machine is. I will have to work on the memory and the hard
drive... drop the HP 10GBE card and maybe a FC card in... and see what I
can do with this critter.

Robert

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Robert Novak <rnovak at indyramp.com> wrote:

> I picked up a HP C8000 workstation (
> http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/archives_Division/12134_div_v1/12134_div.HTML)
> that appears to be the dual dual-core model with an add-on LVD SCSI card
> and a PCI FXE graphics card.
>
> As I'm working on excavating my DDR1 ECC REG memory and my SCSI disks, I'm
> wondering if anyone on the list has OS suggestions for this.
>
> Note that I'd prefer an OS that I can get updates for without a support
> contract, and that's been updated in the last two years.
>
> That being said, I am looking for HP/UX 11i media to try out, and am
> reading up on the Gentoo options (from what I've found, Debian dropped
> support in 6.0 but there's a Lenny iso I could try). It looks like Linux
> may not support the PCI card, but I'm okay with serial console. I might
> even have an ATI Fire GL in a box somewhere...
>
> Anyone got suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> Robert