I just finished installing my new server at home on an Intel SS4200-E box. The server is an incredible value at $135 on eBay. It has a solid case with 4 SATA ports, Celeron 1.6 Ghz processor, 512 MB DDR2 RAM (which I upped to 1GB), rubber drive mounts, and 4 USB ports. The intended use for this box is for running Windows Home server 2003 w/o any video ports.
How do you get video on the Intel SS4200?
Without any video port, I could see myself spending a lot of time trying to install an unattended Windows install w/a perfect answer file. So, I wanted to find out a way to get this to work with a video card. The Intel SS4200-E has one PCI-Express X1 slot. If you haven’t looked, PCI-Express X1 cards are in the $100-150 range, which costs as much as my Intel server. Ouch. Newegg offers an PCI-Express X1 to X16 adapter card, but its too much hassle since you would need to take apart the case to use it. I decided to go for the route of buying the PCI-Express X1 adapter cable to plugin to my PCI-Express X16 card. Ebay has auctions for PCI-E X1 to PCI-E X1 extension cable in the ~$6 range shipped. However, shipping is slow since the only sellers that carry this item are out of the country.
[Disclaimer: Modify the cable adapter at your own risk. Use a cheap video card and take your time cutting the adapter. Always wear proper safety gear including googles. I take no responsibility for any damages.]
In order to use the X1 cable on your X16 card, you will need to dremel off one of the sides to make it fit. I opened up the end of the shorter slot so that the X16 card fits properly. Basically, one of the slots will fit into the adapter, while the other side is like 1/8 the length of the card. Be careful not to damage any of the pins in the adapter. After you are able to get the adapter to fit onto your video card, connect the other end to the Intel SS4200 PCI-Express X1 slot. Power up the computer. You should see the AMI Bios screen if the adapter works properly. Amazingly, there are a lot of options in the BIOS. An interesting one is the RAID capability. I will be testing out the additional features in future blog postings. Please see the photos below on my install.
