Hello;
I just finish the VMware ESX 3.5 class. Never having had my "hands on" a an ESX server, I got home all exited and ready for some more. Driving home from class I remembered my old "faith full" Win2K RADI5 67.8 Gb (3 drive) dual P-III 1Ghz, 1.5 Gb RAM, that I had some ware in my garage. A year ago had been replaced by an IBM xSeries 345.
Literally got home and started moving things around till I found it. Back in my home office powered it up and LOL and BEHOLD. Old Faithfull up and running with all services running just as it had been a year ago.
Downloaded the ESX 3.5 trial iso image (you got 60 days). Burned CD and proceed to install ESX....... That was last night about 7:00 pm. 19 hrs later (with only 4 hrs of sleep) the thing still not running.
The ESX installer will not detect my Adaptec 2100S (AIC-7892B). This are the messages;
-"No drives have been found. You probably..."
If I manually try to ADD device and select Adaptec AHA-2740, 28xx, 29xx, 39xx (aic7xxx)
-"Loading AIC 7xxx driver"....
Nothing, back to Devices
If I do F2 in Select Device Driver to Load, select fd0, installer reads floppy but ask to insert again. I have searched all the Internet for a drivers, starting with Adaptec site, but nothings working. I have tried different BIOS settings, and different PCI slots.
Like I said system will boot to Windows. ESX installer does see bout of the nics.
May I should have said this in the beginning, but I am strictly a Windows Admin. No Linux, or UNIX like OS experience.
I have searched for a HCL to see if the MOBO chipset is supported, but not lucky finfing it. The AIC-7892B and the motherboard BIOS had been upgraded to the lasts revision. This is the MOBO information;
CPU
Dual Socket 370 for Intel® Pentium® III (FC-PGA) and CeleronTM Processor.
Supports PIII 500MHz-1GHz processor.
Chipset
VIA® 694DP chipset. (North-Bridge 510 BGA)
PentiumR III FSB @133MHz
AGP 4x and PCI Advanced high performance memory controller.
Support PC100/133 SDRAM, VCM, ESDRAM technology.
VIA® VT82C686B chipset. (South-Bridge 352 BGA)
Advanced Power Management Features.
Dual bus Master IDE Ultra DMA 33/66.
FSB
66/100/133MHz FSB
Main Memory
Four 168-pin unbuffered DIMM using eight memory banks.
Support a maximum memory size of 2GB.
ECC (1-bit Error Code Correction)
Supports 3.3v SDRAM DIMM.
Slots
One AGP 4x slot.
One CNR (Communication Network Riser)
Five 32-bit Master PCI bus slots.
Supports 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface.
Promise IDE RAID
Dual bus master IDE Ultra DMA 100.
Up to 133MB/sec burst transfer rate (through PCI bus).
1394 PHY Controller
TI® TSB41LV02 PHY Digital-to-Analog Transceiver.
Supports up to Two 1394/1394A v 2.0 Compatible Data Channels.
1394 Link Layer Controller
TI® TSB12LV26 1394 Link Layer Host Controller.
IEEE 1394, 1394 OHCI v1.0 & 1394A v2.0 compatible.
Supports 100/200/400 Mbps High Throughput.
3.3V & 5V Operation for PCI to 1394 Interface.
On-Board IDE
An IDE controller on the VIA VT82C686B chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 operation modes.
Can connect up to four IDE devices.
On-Board Peripherals
1 Floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes.
2 Serial ports (COM A + COM B), 1 Parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode.
4 USB ports.
1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR.