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Compaq Systempro XL restoration to full Service

S

Shadow Lord

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So a few people have been asking me about this and wanting pictures posted. I had planned on giving the system a better write up but I got distracted with the AMI Enterprise III restoration during the pandemic (and I guess the pandemic too ;) ) so this will have to do. I am happy to answer any questions people may have.

I got my hands on a pretty complete/in box Systempro XL Dual 486-50 system thanks to Chulofiasco a while back. The system has been sitting and waiting patiently for some love.

When I got the system it came with:

1. 2 x 486-50DX Processor Boards
2. 32MB of ECC RAM
3. IDA Controller Board
4. 1 IDA HDD but not the correct cable in the case. This drive never spun up for me but that could have been me as much as the drive. Initially I thought I had the correct cable in there but I later found out it was a regular SCSI cable. The other issue I have come to realize is that many Compaq branded/purposed drives do not spin up on power on. I had, incorrectly, assumed that I did not hear the drive spin up the drive must have been bad where as this could have been an issue of the drive not getting the proper signal to spin up do to the incorrect cable. One of these days I will go back to testing it out but I am not holding my breath.

Initially, the system booted fine but by the time I got it there was no signs of life. It turned out the problem was two leaking capacitors in the PSU. Having repaired the PSU I attempted my first boot:



Lots of error message but most of them were to be expected. The processor error was a bit concerning (and rightly so). This picture does not show it but there was also a CPU cache error that went away when I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version.

The system defaults to 16MB of RAM (regardless of actual memory amount) until the ECU is run.

The battery on the RTC in this system (like the AMI Enterprise) seems to be still intact. That is, after setting options and time and unplugging the system for a few days correct time and machine config were retained. However, after sitting in a warehouse for a few years the system had lost all of its settings. Luckily many of the errors on that screen were easily addressed by running the ECU.

One thing to note about the ECU: Initially I used the latest ECU (2.58) which was still hosted on the HP WWW site. However, with that ECU on every run I would get an error indicating the clear CMOS pin was set (even when it wasn't). I initially attributed this to low voltage on the RTC battery. Thanks to Maeslin on Vogons I was able to get a replacement RTC setup using coin cell batteries.








However, the error persisted - at this point this could be due to an issue with the board (although it is unlikely given that it functions perfectly fine in every other way) or it could be that the newest ECUs, due to changes in the Proliant line and use of CD-ROMs to boot, produce that error (more likely in my opinion). An extensive testing of ECU versions from 2.26B (what came with the unit) to 2.58 seemed to confirm this. The older ECU versions did not produce this error.

In fact version 2.40 (which I have given a copy of to Mr. Slug for his extensive EISA CFG DB) is the last version not to cause the error on my Systempro XL. A few other notes on the ECUs:

1. Version 2.30 is the first version to support the larger 32MB recovery partition needed for the later Compaq utils.
2. Version 2.34A corrects a bug that caused the ECU to ask for the date every time it was run (even if it was already set correctly). I would recommend this as the oldest ECU to use on the Systempro line. I use 2.40 myself and if you don't mid getting the error you can use 2.58 - it requires one extra press of the enter key but works fine otherwise.

The CPU error was more of an issue. I stripped the system to the bare minimum and tested each CPU card separately:



One of the CPU boards consistently would give me an error. After multiple different config attempts and a number of Google searches it became apparent one the boards was bad. At first I was hoping it was just a bad CPU chip but swapping CPU chips in between the two cards did not relieve the issue.





Nothing on the CPU board was repairable by me so that only left replacement as an option. Luckily, I was able to find a replacement in the UK and I was up and running in SMP once the new board arrived.
 
Upgrades Galor!

Upgrades Galor!

Now that I finally had a booting system with all the basics working it was time to upgrade.

Compaq did a number of things right with this system. However, they made a strange choice for safety. The system will not turn on if the case cover is not on. Now back in the day your average Compaq technician may have had a custom tool to bypass this safety - I had to improvise:



I managed to get my hands on a NIB memory addin card and a ton of 32MB SIMMs later the system was upgraded to 512MB of memory (256MB on the motherboard and 256MB on the addin card).



As the original HDD was apparently not working I upgraded the system with a Compaq Wide SCSI-2 EISA Array controller with Cache. The boot drive is a 10K Seagate Cheetah 4.3GB HDD drive. The data array is made of six Seagate ST32550W Barracuda 2.1GB drives in a RAID-5 configuration.

I also installed a Server Manager/R Board (a very early remote control board for offsite management) that uses a modem for offsite access (vs. LAN). One thing to note about this board: it is listed as compatible with the Systempro line. However, my first board was consistently reported as not compatible by the ECU. Quite by accident, in an obscure PDF, I found a note indicating that for the Proliant line you needed a certain revision of the board or later. I was able to get my hands on a later revision of the board and the ECU was very happy about that. Both of my boards are called "Server Manager/R" and have the same part numbers. The only way to know revision numbers is to see a picture of the actual board. Interestingly, the ECU uses a different CFG file (CPQ7001) for the later revision boards vs. the earlier revisions (CPQ7000).

The board has its own backup battery. Again surprisingly the backup batteries seem to be still working. However, I did source and build a "new" battery pack just in case:





I have not been able to find any documentation or software for the server manager board so aside from testing it and knowing it works I have not been able to make any real use of it. If anyone has any info or SW for this board please do get in touch.

The system has built in video. But it is a very basic VGA resolution with a max output of 800x600x16. It is adequate for DOS and you can run WfW or NT on it but you really need a bit more real estate in Windows to keep from scrolling around all the time. I would like to get a QVision 1280/E for the system for higher resolution and color depth but those all seem to have dried up (even though outside of very basic business use they are pretty crappy video cards).

I did manage to get a QVision 1024/E so at least I am now sporting 1024x768x256 in WinNT4.0.



To round things out I installed a Compaq EISA 100Mbit NIC and a Compaq 56K V.90 Fax/Modem in the system as well. The modem is ISA based but it does report a board ID to the ECU. With that info I wrote a custom CFG file for it so now it is configured through the ECU. I have also passed the custom CFG to Mr. Slug for his collection.



 
Even more pictures!

Even more pictures!

And the system installed next to the compaq 9000 Series Rack

Fun Fact: From power on to WinNT 4.0 Server logon screen is 10 minutes 12 seconds long. Most of the time is spent in the memory test!





 
Nice machine, never seen one in the flesh. Seems like EISA gear is not very common anymore (not like it ever was but still).

That machine was built around the time where servers were still custom made and very expensive. Once the later Pentium 2 era came about that pretty much ended and by the P3 times I think most everything was a standard MB.
 
keenerb said:
Great looking system.
Click to expand...

Thanks. It was initially in great physical condition and now it is functionally fully working. For example today we had power loss (still on going) and the system did a graceful shutdown from the Compaq R3000 UPS (a rebranded Eaton in the rack next to it).

Unknown_K said:
Nice machine, never seen one in the flesh. Seems like EISA gear is not very common anymore (not like it ever was but still).

That machine was built around the time where servers were still custom made and very expensive. Once the later Pentium 2 era came about that pretty much ended and by the P3 times I think most everything was a standard MB.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The Systempro as I have it configured now would have easily been a 100K purchase back in the day (the base config I believe was 14K to 16K). The Everex Step Megacube is also a very nice custom design. I think the high end custom server market continued for a bit later then P3 (for example I have a Prolaint 3000 dual P3 Slot 1s in the rack next to the Systempro) with all custom HW. The 5500 of the same time period was a quad processor which was quite rare at the time. I have an Asus board that takes P3 and is a custom design with built in recovery console. But I agree with you that "server" grade meant less and less and definitely by P4 era was meaningless. Now a days "server grade" seems to be making a comeback but its more of a std based affair instead of each manufacturer going at it on their own (e.g blade servers).
 
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I just meant custom boards used to be the norm and in the P2/P3 era they were the exception.

I have a HP dual P2 server (Netserver?) that is a custom multi part board and a Zenith Data Systems Z P60 board with RAM and CPU on separate cards (EISA also and probably an Intel design) and I guess you can call the IBM PS/2 series like the 9595 custom with CPU and RAM complexes.
 
Nice! Had an opportunity (many years ago) to get a SystemPro 386/33 in a company scrap sale. Turned it down. Regret it to this day....:mad:
 
Hey!

Picking up some of my Compaq projects again, most notably the Systempro and was doing some digging. From having seen you over on Vogons, I see you are also here and have done a more comprehensive write-up of the Systempro you have.

Your system is very interesting and is different from the Systempro's I am familiar with, if anything... you have what looks like Proliant parts in the Systempro, is that right!? I have never seen these 486 cards before... what is the ceramic chip without a heatsink? - possibly a cache controller?

This system is entirely incompatible with the two Systempro's I have here, the 1st gen Systempro and the Systempro LT. The XT looks a different animal altogether and i'm confident that being a later gen, the XT may even even have improved performance compared with the first crack Compaq had at the dual 486 system which uses two Deskpro 486/33L CPU cards.

It's great to see! Thanks for sharing.
 
Hi,

The Systempro XL was the last of the Systempro line. It was a real SMP machine and could operate in SMP mode with any SMP aware OS (OS/2, UNIX, NT) unlike the earlier Systempros that were 386 based and had asymmetric multiprocessing (i.e. you did not need matching processors you could have a 386 and a 486 plugged into the same system). These required a specially written HAL to work under NT. There is rumors of a special version of LANMAN Server that supports multiprocessing on the Systempro. I have never found it though.

As for the parts the system is an EISA system (like the earlier models) the only difference being EISA had matured by then and there were a number of EISA manufacturer's and options including a number from Compaq that could be used across systems. The Systempro evolved into the ProSignia and Proliant lines so it isn't surprising that EISA cards from those systems work in the Systempro (for the most part). For example my system has a video card, Smart Array controller, and 100mbit NIC that are properly not period appropriate for a 1992 system. However, they are all Compaq boards and are supported well by the management SW. The only issues is that (I believe) the last version of the management SW, 5.xx, seems to have dropped support for many of the EISA and monitoring functions in the Systempro. For example I have not been able to find any software to run the Server Manager/R board even though that board was used in the ProSignia line as well.
 
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