This morning the last of the hard drives arrived. Yippee! I gleefully unwrapped them, placed them into the Proliant DL380 chassis and tapped the Power button.

Let me state that the Proliant DL380 rackmount server is one of the noisiest chassis I’ve ever heard. It sounds like there’s a small aircraft experiencing engine trouble in my office.

After a couple of false starts (in other words, I tried to do things my way instead of the right way) I ran the SmartStart ™ CD-ROM and told the machine I wanted to install Netware 5.x.

But, you see, when the BIOS options says “Netware 5.x/6.0,” what it really means is “Netware 5.1/6.0,” and my copy of Netware 5.0 is system-non-grata.

Then I tried the so-called “manual” method, just booting from the Netware CD and letting things fly. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

That’s right, folks. It is impossible for Netware 5.0’s installer to recognize the array controller of a HP/Compaq Proliant DL380 G3. (Does Apple know that they’re using the “Gx” nomenclature, by the way?)

As things now stand, I’m sitting at my desk waiting for a quote from CDW on the cost of Netware 5.1 plus upgrade licenses for 150 connections. If the price tag doesn’t a) cause heart failures along Officer’s Row and/or b) get me fired, it’ll still be a couple of days before I can start on this project.

Again.

The best-case scenario, right now, is that I’m going to lose my Memorial Day weekend for this stupid project. I don’t want to think about the worst-case scenarios.