The best thing I can say to describe this system is that it's a Shuttle on steroids. It's a smidge larger in all dimensions, but gives you an extra 5.25“ bay compared to its contemporaries. This means that, yes, if you so pleased, you could very well have two optical drives. In this small system. Wild.

Getting down to brass tacks though, the motherboard in here spec-wise is very similar to the Shuttle SB61G2. Which means this will make an excellent Windows 98 through early XP machine.

• Motherboard: Soltek SL-B8E-F
• Chipset: Intel 865G
• RAM: Up to DDR 400MHz
• CPU: Northwood/Prescott socket 478 (supports 800MHz FSB chips)
• CPU Cooler: Stock Intel socket 478 mounts
• Power Supply: 250W (stock) SFX, notably lacks SATA power
• Expansion: AGP 8x, PCI, 2x SATA ports, 2x P-ATA channels
• LAN: Realtek RTL8100B
• Audio: Realtek ALC650
• Ports: 4x USB, 3x FireWire 400 (6-pin), 2x serial, 1x VGA, onboard 10/100 LAN, audio (in/out/mic)

The Retro Web also has an entry for the motherboard for this system! Along with some BIOS files (though not all of them)

Note: For the Realtek ALC650, if you're running this on WinMe, you want version A3.45 of the drivers, linked here for your convenience. Realtek still offers “9x compatible” drivers straight from their site but they seem to install the VXD variant which makes WinMe angry. I would highly recommend just installing the drivers through the Add/Remove Hardware (point it at the WDM folder in the linked .zip above) to make sure the proper drivers install.

(It should be noted that these are issues observed with the one example I have. These may be non-issues to others.)

• Sometimes won't start: It'll power on, but won't pass any video and will just sit there like the lights are on but no one is home. Powering it off and on again (or hitting the reset button) is usually enough to nudge it into starting again.
• Sometimes forgets boot devices: Very rarely I'll notice that it'll not detect a bootable OS on the installed hard drive. The hard drive is fine and detected, the system just acts like it isn't there. Once again, seems to be just a quirk, a quick restart and it's fine again.

CPU: I recommend the fastest 800FSB Northwood P4 you can get your hands on. 3.2GHz is probably going to be the most practical here as the 3.4s can be a bit hard to find for a decent price. You can also roll Prescott in here but I would advise against it.

There might be some room for enhancing the cooling, as this runs on a stock socket 478 cooler (and Soltek opted to just use a blower-style cooler to force air out of the case, coupled with the PSU fan), but a Northwood shouldn't cause it to sweat too much.

Video cards: You'll want something on the shorter side, single-slot. I'm a big fan of the GeForce 6600GT, as it's a fairly short card and doesn't run super hot. The stock PSU does have an extra long 4=pin molex connector specifically for the video card, so Soltek did intend for you to run something decently powerful in here. The ATI Radeon X800 Pro (not the XL variant, it's too long) might also be a good card to throw in here.

Operating System: This will gladly run Windows 98 if you want it to. However, if you're open to a little bit of cursed computing, Windows ME runs shockingly well here too, and most notably has network drivers for the RTL8100B out of the box. (I know. I was shocked when networking just worked post-install.)

Early XP will also run just fine on here (but I generally do not recommend taking SP3 on older machines if you can help it.)

If you choose to run any sort of 9x on here and you're running more than 512MB of RAM, it is absolutely essential that you run Rudolph Loew's PATCHMEM after the second reboot during install. For more info, see the guide on installing Windows 9x on systems like this.

Drives: This is an Intel 865G system, which means we have SATA. Definitely make use of it! Spinning rust or solid state, either will be more than enough here. However, as noted in the specifications section, the stock power supply lacks SATA power entirely. You'll need to get adapters to power your SATA drives. Right angle SATA cables are recommended for the optical drive, as space between the drive and power supply can be fairly tight.

WARNING! If you're planning to run Windows 9x on this system (including ME), be sure to go into BIOS (mash DEL at power on) and switch the SATA/ATA controller into compatibility mode for Win9x. You can do this by going to Advanced BIOS Features and then to IDE Configuration.

Change IDE Configuration to P/S-ATA (Win9x/Me), and then set Combined Mode Operation to S-ATA 1st Channel. This will make your SATA devices take over as the primary ATA channel as Win9x will not work (or if it does it'll be very erratic) in Auto mode.

If you're running 2000/XP you can freely ignore this (and leave it in Auto Mode).

Lastly, while you CAN run two 5.25” drives in here, I'd only ever recommend that if you plan to run one SATA, and one IDE (maybe for games that use CD-audio, like Quake). Otherwise, I recommend just using the top slot and leaving the bottom slot empty for cable management.

This motherboard also has a floppy header so I'd definitely recommend throwing one of those in for extra cool points.

The drive carrier being extra deep makes it a bit of a pain to finagle out of place while the CPU cooler is installed. If you can (and don't mind the extra work) I'd consider removing the power supply to give you a bit more room to work. There are two screws at the top, and then it should slide back, then up and out. Be sure to check for cable clearance when doing this! Cables love to get pinched when you're moving the drive carrier in and out of the case.

(To be continued as I dig into this system)