SA1100 and Windows 2000

[Netw0rk Geek]

I have taken an old video card and plugged it directly into the riser card slot (Where you would normally plug the riser card into the mother board) and the video card worked fine. I had to of course bend the heck out of the video card face plate to get it in there, and the video card stuck out of the case a few inches, but it worked fine none the less.

I found the following auction on ebay and have one coming. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2045769579) It claims to work with ALL 1U systems and I really can't see why it wouldn't unless the video card wouldn't line up in the back. It is not dual sided, but I personally am only concerned with getting a video card in there and in theory it should work. I will post the results when I receive the riser card and let you know if it works or not.

[CA803470]

The PCI risers you can buy from most retailers won't work (believe me, I have done my research!) This is because of the shape of the chassis. The PCI card needs to line up offset slightly from the motherboard in order to fit. Check out my HOWTO page if you're really interested in loading Windows onto this thing.

http://www.kmghosting.com/hp_sa_1100_windows_2000.asp

[Erik Put]

I just completed the installation of W2K server onto the sa1100.
I purchased a pci riser from a vendor on ebay (he had like 200 pcs avail), took an older trident vga (pci)card.
The pci card will not line up with the back, so you will need to support the card or
find an adapter piece to overcome the 1 cm or so.
Conneted a cdrom drive to the second IDE controller (under debian the cdrom was mounted
by OS!)
and choose the /home directory
for W2K. For dual boot you may just want to limit the hard drive space for this directory prior to W2k install.
I ended up reformating the whole drive and use the sa1100
just with W2K server.
With 600 MHz and 128 MB the preformance is limited and I will add some memory.
Comparing this unit to compaq or dell 1U units US $ 345 is a good deal