Server not booting

[Doug Hardie]

I have been tasked with bringing up a "new" server.  It appears to be fairly old equipment though.  I do know it was previously used.  Its a Arima NM46X with dual AMD Opteron processors.  The unit appears to be working since it has some form of Linux installed on the disks and that boots and seems to run.  However, I have tried booting from CD 8.2 and 8.0. using Disk 1 and Repair disks (AMD64 and i386).  They all die just after the first stage loader.  I get the system version line and then the spinner stops dead.  The CD is an external USB unit and its left running.  The motherboard doesn't recognize a USB stick for booting unfortunately.  The motherboard manual is dated 2006 so I think its just too old for that.  Any ideas on how this can be corrected?