Advice needed configuring server

[Paddy]

What a crappy night!
I installed my ATA RAID card into my ProLiant 6500 in order to create a 1TB data RAID 5 array. The server was running a two disk software RAID 1 array for the OS, and a single drive for backup and my webserver.

The server was working before i touched it!

I installed the ATA RAID card and rebooted. The server reported a non-system disk error.
Bugger. I turned out that one of my SCSI disks in the RAID 1 array had died. It must have killed the software RAID, because when the machine rebooted it couldn't find the MBR.

I replaced the faulty drive and removed all the others, then installed a new copy of server 2003. I always do this to ensure that windows doesn't do something stupid like install onto D:

The installation was and is fine. I reconnected the ATA array and got the same MBR fault. Bugger.
It seems that the ATA RAID card is trying to boot. Fine. I disabled that in the BIOS.
The ATA card has an IRQ of 5, which i cant change, and the SCSI has a higher one as it is detected second.

I entered the server BIOS (smartstart) and told it to boot from the SCSI array.
MBR error.

I took the power away from the ATA drives, rebooted and got into a OS.
I reconencted the power and ran my software ATA RAID util which detected the drives but insisted on a reboot before they could be used. £$%"%$$

Crap.

I need to somehow force the server to boot from the SCSI array and not the ATA one.
What seems like a simple problem has taken hours and hours to get this far.

Any thoughts? Anyone want a server???

[Taz]

Is there a boot controller order option before the option to run setup, something like F8 or F9?

[Paddy]

No. SmartStart, which is essentially the server BIOS, configures the SCSI array to be the bootable device. SmartStart does not recognise the ATA card. It can see a device there, but that's it.
The ATA card has it's own BIOS where boot is disabled.

If I connect a ATA HD the server tries to boot from it. If I don't, it boots normally

[Taz]

Smartstart is just Compaq's server configuration tool which simplifies the installation of your OS. It normally creates a partition on the hard disk where it stores it's utils, like system setup and the ACU (Array Configuration Utility). You can then access this partition by hitting F10 when prompted. On newer Compaq's/HP's you can configure some options without going into setup, the basic stuff like date/time and the boot controller order. The 6500 is quite old so I'm guessing it doesn't have this Did you do a System Erase beforing configuring everything?