IBM eServer... Confusion

[G3R489]

Pointless Intro: So I’ve been building PC’s since I was 13, I’ve had Athlons, A6/A10, FX, Ryzens, Pentiums, i3/i5/i7 I’ve swung at everything I can possibly hit. And because of that I thought, building a server would be easy as pie, it was not.

 

So I ‘recently’ bought had 3 servers off gumtree, for the total of £60.  A HP DL380, A Dell Power Edge (Sold very Quick) and today’s offender a 2002 IBM eServer.

 

Problem: So I’m in the process of trying to load a new OS (Windows Server 2000) onto it, but every time I try and download it off of a CD Drive, the server then try’s to boot by network. It’s more than happy to boot from Floppydisk, and would happily run MS-Dos (only OS I had lieing around on floppy), but it will not under any circumstances load from the CD.

 

Im having some ‘mild’ issues with my switches right now, so I can’t try anything network related at the moment, and due to the server only having 1 USB port, and the fact I would have to run my boot OS, keyboard and mouse through the same 2.0 port, has me a tad nervous. Also I don’t think it will be able to get drivers as I cannot get an Ethernet connection reliably to it.

 

If not, I’m looking to Erase whatever partitions are on the current hard drives, and stupidly sold the only working server immediately. So if anyone has any idea how to erase 320 Ultra SCSI’s using no OS, I’d be over the moon to hear it.

 

TL;DR: Cannot get Server to run an OS that isn’t in floppy. Need Help.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Did you try booting from. usb stick? Those should be able to boot from usb.

[G3R489]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Did you try booting from. usb stick? Those should be able to boot from usb.

Got USB’s ready, but working late today so can’t try yet, though I’ll keep you updated.