hi I just bought a shuttle ai61 bundled with a tbird@700 it has the amd 750 chipset on board with 128 megs of infineon ram. I want to install windows 2000 server as a domain controler. I'm going to get more ram for it soon. I wanna know is will it be a stable system. thank you for the replies this is for about ten clients.

Hi there: I happen to have the same MOBO with an Athlon 650. Mine is about 3 years old, but the same model MOBO with the same chipset. It is a very stable mobo, BUT, it has 2 issues, at least for me. First, is a simple board and not too "tweakable", so if you don't look for that (like me on that system) is fine. Second, and very important,ENSURE you have a GOOD power supply in regards to juice. basically, try to get as powerful pwr supply as you can afford. Not only do the AMD Athlon and T-Bird are VERY picky CPU's in regards to power requirements, but this motherboard is picky by itself! Example, I had the same CPU on an ASUS MOBo with My 300w/Athlon approved pwr supply and ran perfectly, and on the AI61 MOBO ran underpowered. Changed pwr supply to 400w and all is perfect. And yes, the rest of teh system was still identical. Have heard of the same problem from a couple other people I know who use the same MOBO. To use is as a server it should be fine, but as you know from yours, is not RAID capable as is (if you are planning to run a RAID configuration). My AI61 is for a heavily loaded workstation (My servers are different systems)and I maxed out RAM to the full 768M allowed. I would also max out the RAM completely if used as a server, especially an application server. If used as a file server I would use 256M minimum with Win 2K server, but 128M runs fine. I run 2 servers with Win 2K Server and the difference in gain from more RAM is, not only obvious (as with any PC/Server) but also much more dramatic than with NT Server. Good luck and hope this helps.

thanks Gyspy I've been looking all over the net for some info but just could not find enough. I just bought a in win case for it with a 300w power supply amd aproved i hope it works but in case I have trouble I know where to look first. for the ram thanks for the input i'm going to max it out in I should get all the parts in nexted weekend and should have it built withing the weekend I will post back here to let you how it went. thank you this has been a big help....

I have the AI61 with 700/512. I currently have have win2k pro and it take about 3-4min to boot. This is after a fresh install with a network connection (dsl router/switch) and little hardware installed. I will be installing advaced server and was wondering... How long does it take your system to boot? and any other tips or problems you may have had. Thanks

I dont have the parts in yet but sounds like you have a problem with your network card or a config problem the switch does not matter that much if you have a home network. I use 3com ethernet cards in all of my machines they may cost a little more but you will have a stable network. try to update the drivers for your nic it could be alot of things like dhcp, ipconfig, nic. do a ipconfig/all see what that says. I will post back when I have my server up. gdog_01

well I got my tbird didnt get the server installed but I installed win2k pro runs good no errors yet thanks for all the help see you in a diffrent thread. gdog_01