> -----Original Message----- > From: Adam Thornton <[email protected]> > Sent: 15 May 2018 16:35 > To: Dave Wade <[email protected]>; [email protected] > Subject: Re: Restoring a PC Server 500 P/390 > > > > > On May 14, 2018, at 11:29 PM, Dave Wade <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: cctalk <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Adam > >> Thornton via cctalk > >> Sent: 15 May 2018 03:03 > >> To: [email protected] > >> Subject: RE: Restoring a PC Server 500 P/390 > >> > >> I Frankensteined a P/390 together out of a P/325 server and the PCI > >> P/390 card back in the day. > >> > > > > I am told the PCI card is rather choosy about which servers it will run in. > > The > system came with most of a P330 as well, but no case. > > > It is pretty picky. It did not run in a whitebox PC I had at the time, but > the PC > Server 325 was close enough to its expected host that it was happy. I would > guess that any of the IBM x86 server machines from the right general era > would work. > > That machine now lives at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, although I > do not know if they have it available for use. >
OK I got a PCI P390 card in the bundle of spares but have nothing PCI server style to run it in. Where I worked we binned loads of X330's which might have been usable... > > > > > > It’s the RAID card that’s the problem, and it seems to have always been > temperamental. Did you use RAID in your P/325? > > > I don’t think I did. Have you tried just putting a different (OS/2-supported) > disk controller in and just not doing RAID? > That’s, in effect, what I did. Whilst there were Microchannel IDE Controllers I have never seen one. There are no IDE interfaces on the "Planar" so every thing must be on the MCA bus. So I bought a BusLogic BT646 SCSI card on E-Bay. I also bought an Adaptec card as a spare. I think I struck lucky with the BT646. It is a simple SCSI/2 card, no raid but it does have a BIOS with support for two bootable drives and a >4GB drive option. OS/2 has drivers for it so it works out of the box. The OS/2 boot disks find the drive and install the proper drivers. To compensate for the slower "narrow" drives I bought a SCSI2SD card that puts an SD card on the bus. OS/2 just sees it as a up two four drives depending on how I configure it. At present I have two 4gb drives. The card in it is 32gb so I can add 2 x 12gb drives or 1 x 24gb or some other mix. The CD ROM sites on the same bus. I haven't tried the tape drive yet.. > > > >> > >> I used mine to run VM/CMS and Linux (under VM) quite well. > >> > > > > I was thinking of trying Linux. I assume you ran Debian? > > > Indeed I did, although also SLES. I assume you found my NASPA article on > Debian on 390 from 2004? > I think that’s the one... > Adam > >
