HP LC II Netserver PNP BIOS

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Tue May 31 22:53:29 PDT 2005


Well the SCSI disks in it are probably slower seek time than
modern IDE.  You actually don't learn a lot from SCSI on those
systems since all the work is done for you - the drives are all
setup identically and the cage takes care of termination.  The
big win with SCSI on that vintage is that back then SCSI drives
had MTBF of 100,000 hours, IDE more like 10,000 that is why
everyone running servers used SCSI.

clamav is going to run like a dog on anything slower than a 1Ghz
system.  What the clam scanner has to do is tremendously cpu
intensive.  And clam isn't multithreaded so SMP does nothing unless
your running multiple clamscans at the same time.

You can probably jazz up X by turning off the integrated video
and adding in a good video card.  I think the video onboard were
really crappy Trident chipsets with small amounts of ram.  These
were servers after all, intended to just sit there, nobody used
the video for anything.

Ted

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Denny White
>Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 4:22 AM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: RE: HP LC II Netserver PNP BIOS
>
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>
>Hi Ted,
>All I've got and can afford is right now is the old
>stuff I already have. I want to use the Netserver, not
>only to experiment with dual processors, but also because
>I have never worked with scsi or hardware raid before,
>only ide. You're exactly right too, what you said about
>folks like me trying to milk way too much out of old
>systems. It's a PII 300 dual-processor, not that the 2
>processors help a lot, and I do have smp in the kernel.
>I've watched top's output while running a clamav scan.
>The whole thing bogs down. X is slow too, but works.
>Thought about overclocking, but don't want to burn it
>up yet. Still okay tho, for nfs & ssh on my lan and
>later a firewall box too. Added this to the kernel
>
>options		EISA_SLOTS=12
>
>and rebuilt it, but it doesn't help. I'll keep on picking
>at it until I'm satisfied I've tweaked it all I can.
>Thanks for the help and advice.
>Denny
>
>
>
>On Mon, 30 May 2005, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Denny,
>>
>>  I used to admin a network with a number of those systems on it
>> but it's been years since I've dealt with one, so I've forgotten
>> everything from the BIOS screen.  But I did know that HP had the
>> manuals online, so when you said you had no manual for it, I
>> naturally assumed that you were unaware that HP is still supporting
>> them (after a fashion) and that a few minutes work would get you the
>> manual.  Now, if you had posted something like "I read the manual
>> and the option isn't in there" that would have been different.
>> You could try running eisaconfig on it and setting the Operating
>> System parameter to SCO Unix or some such, but I don't know if this
>> is even an option, much less if it would work.
>>
>>  I have a customer that ran one of these systems for years with
>> FreeBSD 4.X on it  (4.8 I think) so I know that the 4.x series will
>> at least run on them.  As I recall these are Pentium 200Hmz systems,
>> correct?  If so, FreeBSD 5.X won't get you anything more than
>> what you would get for 4.X.  These systems made really
>> nice, solid little servers in their day.  Even today they are
>> good for small tasks like network monitoring, etc. and if I were
>> in your shoes I would certainly want to use the system if I had
>> something for it that wasn't too taxing on the CPU.  But you
>> are like a lot of people who have posted on this forum in the
>> last few years who have tried pushing older hardware to run
>> FreeBSD 5.X, sometimes it works but most of the time it doesen't
>> seem to.  I never even bother booting 5.X on anything that isn't
>> at minimum a Pentium II 500Mhz system nowadays.
>>
>>  The only other suggestion I would make is to ask in a hardware
>> forum, or on Usenet in a hardware forum.
>>
>> Ted
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Denny White
>>> Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 10:07 AM
>>> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>>> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>> Subject: RE: HP LC II Netserver PNP BIOS
>>>
>>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
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>>>
>>>
>>> Spent several sleepless nights searching
>>> hp's site before asking my question. Guess
>>> I refused to accept the obvious, that you
>>> could only reserve resources for non pnp
>>> devices that fbsd couldn't probe. I also
>>> tried acpi, since the docs say it has a
>>> different method of probing. See, I did
>>> read it. I just hoped someone else might
>>> know something I'd missed or didn't under-
>>> stand. Always try to do my research before
>>> posting on here. Don't always understand
>>> what I read, but I keep reading. And I don't
>>> post questions like "Help", or "I can't
>>> install FreeBSD, what'll I do"? But hey,
>>> thanks for being there, old sport.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, 29 May 2005, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>>>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of 
>Denny White
>>>>> Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 3:40 PM
>>>>> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>>>>> Subject: HP LC II Netserver PNP BIOS
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay, the following definitely shows the
>>>>> BIOS in this old Netserver is PNP. I ran
>>>>> biosdecode on it and got this:
>>>>>
>>>>>  	Slot Entry 10: ID 00:0d, on-board
>>>>>
>>>>> Can anyone tell me how to disable PNP in this
>>>>> particular computer? I have no manual on it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Resource.jsp?l
>> ocale=en_U
>>> S&taskId=115&prodSeriesId=50440&prodTypeId=15351
>>>
>>>
>>> RTFM first, then come here.
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>
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