PowerEdge 2300 & NEC 465 Won't Boot To CD

Hi,

This is very unusual ... I would recommend 2 things.

1. Removing, inspecting and reseating the data cable at each end going to the CDrom.

2. If there is no added hardware, the only other thing I can think of which would cause this anomaly is the NVRAM is corrupted. We need to clear the NVRAM via jumper (called ISA_CLR) on the motherboard, then enter the System BIOS and reset to the default settings.

Check the section on System Board Jumpers in the Installation and Troubleshooting Guide

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed / replaced from this post by Dell>

Once this is complete, enter the System BIOS. Light the 3 keyboard LED's (Caps lock, Num lock and Scroll Lock). Hold the ALT key down and press the E key. The system should beep once. Then hold the ALT key down and press the F key. Then reboot the system. 

Mark,

I tried your suggestions and neither helped.

I noticed one thing that was strange.  Prior to your response I had cleared the NVRAM by jumping the ISA_CLR and restarting.  When I did it that  time the BIOS went back to A02 but the ESM stayed at A40.  I did not know about the "Num Lock / Caps Lock / Scroll Lock, ALT E, ALT F" procedure.

I tried to clear it using your procedure which did reset the time and date back to 1998 but it did not reset the BIOS or the ESM and now when I reboot I get a "Settings Error - Run Setup" message between the memory check and the RAID Controller startup.  Everything in the BIOS Settings looks fine.

There is a cap on the end of the SCSI cable after the CDROM drive.  It seems a little loose.  Is that some kind of terminator?  Is it possible to set termination on the drive itself?  I don't have a chart of the CDROM Jumpers but pin 1 and 3 are jumped.

Or, there is no cable but could I attach the CD to the unused Adaptec 7890?

Or, if I added an IDE ATA card could I boot to an IDE CD drive and still run the SCSI RAID drives?

Failing all of that could you supply the Dell part numbers for a replacement SCSI Cable and replacement SCSI CD Drive that matchs the Poweredge color scheme?

Thanks

Mike

Hi Mike,

I believe the problem is the "cap" at the end of the cable. This is a terminator and should not be loose. Pins 1 and 3 should be jumpered on the CDrom.

The cable part number is 1900C and if needed the CDrom part number is 5060V.

An IDE controller has never been tested in the PowerEdge 2300.

Thanks, I'll order the cable and give it a shot. 

On the other hand, I just got an ad for a Poweredge 600SC for $400.  I'm not sure why I'm diddling around with this 2300 except now i've got so much time an frustration invested it's the principal!

Mike

Mark,

I ordered the cable. 

In the mean time and for future reference can I add an IDE card to the 2300 and run IDE hard drives and CD drives along with the RAID / SCSI drives.

My thought would be to run the OS on the SCSI and stick a big IDE drive for storage.

I used to have a Micron computer with SCSI but when you added IDE you could still access the SCSI drive but no longer boot to it.

Thanks again,

Mike

Hi Mike,

Again, an IDE controller has never been tested in the PowerEdge 2300, so I cannot be positive, but I see no real reason an IDE controller should not work just fine.

However, you will probably have the same booting problem as you had with the Micron computer. This is a common problem when running IDE and Scsi in the same computer. 

Mark,

Just to let you know, it wasn't the cable, it was the drive.  I guess one of those one in a million failures that computers love to create happened.  I dug out an old IBM SCSI CDR drive and it worked fine.  I'm going to order a replacement Dell drive so the system still "looks pretty"!

Thanks for all of your help.

However, since I have your ear.   I have extra 4649C drive carriers.  Is there any particular "spec" I need to look for when buying an extra SCSI drive for the system?

I have looked through pages of forum messages where people supply the link to a drive and  you answer back whether it will work or not.  I wondered if there was anything in particular to watch for so I don't have to post a message everytime I see a good deal!!

Thanks again for your help.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Basically any 80pin, 1" thick, Ultra 2 LVD Scsi drives upto 73Gb will work. U160 drives should work as well, but they will slow to the U2W speed.

The PowerEdge 2300 requires the latest System Upgrades to support the larger drives.

If a 160 is on the same cable as two U320 drives, are you saying the U320 drives will slow down? If so, I guess I should remove the U160 drive since I don't really need it.

Hi,

The Scsi throughput will slow to that of the slowest component. The PowerEdge 2300 has a U2W controller, so any hard drive connected will only run at U2W speed (if at all). While theoretically U320 drives are supposed to backwards compatible, I have seen instances where these drives will not work with the older controllers.

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@Vanyel2000 wrote:

I have a Poweredge 2300 server (Service Tag 07HW3) It originally came with Windows NT which I did not have the password to. I reformatted the drive and loaded Windows 2000. Everything was working fine. My original intent was to load Windows 2000 Server as a test before upgrading our server at work.

Before loading Win2000 Server I updated the BIOS to A14, ESM A40, (Embedded Server Management v5.21 / System Backplane v5.35)

Now I can't boot to the CD. I have read all of the previous posts and made all of the suggested settings in the BIOS and the SCSI setup on the Adaptec cards.

When I boot I get the following:

Phoenix ROM BIOS Plus Version 1.10 A14

Dell System Poweredge 2300/400 (440GX)

(1) 400 MHz Processor, Processor Bus: 100 MHz, L2 Cache: 512K

Poweredge 2300/400

Embedded Server Management Firmware Revision 5.21

System Backplane Firmware Revision 5.35

Poweredge Expandable RAID Controller BIOS 1.43 Oct 20, 1999

Copyright American Megatrends Inc.

HA-0 (Bus 2 Dev 10) Type: PERC 2/SC Standard FW 3.13 DRAM = 16 MB

1 Logical Device(s) Found On Host Adapter

1 Logical Device(s) Handled By BIOS

ADAPTEC AIC-7890 SCSI BIOS v2.01 Dell 001

No SCSI Boot Device Found

SCSI BIOS Not Installed!

ADAPTIC AIC-7860 SCSI BIOS v2.01 Dell 001

SCSI ID: 5 NEC CD-ROM Drive: 465 (Then the boot pauses for 45 seconds)

6 ARCHIVE Python 04106-XXX

SCSI BIOS Not Installed

I downloaded CDENAB.exe. The server will boot and appear to load but can't read any CD's

I find it difficult to believe the drive has failed. It worked perfectly until I updated the BIOS & ESM.

Help!

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