ok, I am not a newbie here but I am definitely NOT an expert when it comes to linux.

I built myself a server to run as a virtual server and samba share server, here is part of my system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard
PROMISE SATAII150 TX4 PCI SATA Controller (X2)

(following not really applicable, I just like to brag )
CORSAIR ValueSelect 4GB (4 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS 300GB SATA (x6) attached to the PCI promise cards (1.5TB software raid 5)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3120827AS 120GB SATA attached to the motherboard (OS)
Western Digital 7200 400GB SATA attached to motherboard as backup drive.

here is the thing I plan on running Debian and only 2 basic apps (VMware server and Samba) and then the mdadm app suite with monitoring software for my raid system.

all easy enough to do, right? WRONG.

I decided I wanted sarge to be the Host OS due to the fact it is the STABLE build, I know the debian crew have high standards so "testing" (etch) would work fine, and that was the OS I started with but I discovered some rather interesting drawbacks with all the versions of debian:

ETCH i386: installs and runs and samba installs fine BUT VMware runs terribly slow and does not utilise the full potential of my processor... this in and of itself aggrivates. so I HAVE to have amd64 version of debian, testing or not.

ETCH amd64: recognizes my nic and my SATA controllers BUT the amd64 version of etch has no viable apt repos and this makes installing samba next to impossible (I keep getting missing file errors when useing apt and end up haveing to hunt down the files needed useing my workstation... mostly the files apt is looking for do not exist and I end up installing a diferant version of diferant packages... I find this to be disconserting when I want to be CERTAIN the system I have running is STABLE!). I checked mirror.espri.arizona.edu debian-amd64 mirror and found that it (and many others like it) are actually built for sarge and sid even though the etch installer tries to use them! this makes for a very broken installation and limited functionality!

SARGE i386: Install does not recognize my nic when useing the netboot cd, and it does not recognize ither of my 3 SATA controllers when useing the install DVDs I have (3.1r0).

SARGE amd64: there is no cd or dvd images and of course netboot does not recognize my nic!

I have tried adding in an older nic I have that I thought sarge recognizes (3com 3c59x/3c9xx PCI eathernet listed durring install of debian) I have an old 3com the label on it says: 3c905-tx, but debian does not auto recognize it nor does it see it when I try to manually load the listed driver. I also have a linksys LNE100TX but again the installer does not recognize it. so I am thinking that possibly the installer does not even recognize my PCI bus which would explain this.

The motherboard has an Nforce bus and the integrated nic is included in the chipset driver provided by nvidia, but I have no idea how to convert their shell script into a viable driver for installation.

please does anyone have any ideas how I can get debian on this system?

Etch is in the process of moving to the official Debian repos. The problems with xorg7 have delayed that process, but there should be a complete Etch repo in the next 2-3 weeks. With the AMD64 version, I would have questions about the likelihood of a really stable environment. That goes for any 64-bit OS, not just Debian's.

Are you sure Samba and VMWare have a 64-bit version? If they do, and you install only Debian's base system (no X, no Desktop), I think you have a good chance to be successful. I think that my recommendation would be that right now, in the interest of stability, you might be better off with the 32-bit OS. It can probably be tweaked to run at an acceptable speed.

I know samba has a 64 bit version, infact I found one in the sarge repo,

as for vmware, according to their rep I spoke to the linux installer is archetecture independant... they claim that I can install it under any OS but if I use any archecture OTHER than what I actually have (IE if I use i386 on an amd64 system) it will run but it will be slow and or will not function properly... so basically I ahve to have amd64 OS for vmware to install correctly.

actually I plan on running a sevierly stripped OS, the problem is for everything to work the way I need I have to have SOME basic packages and because the repos are not functional I cant even install samba, I CAN install VMware because I always maunually recompile my own kernels, and once I recompiled that VMware was able to install and so was my chipset/lan/audio driver, that was great but I couldn't get samba installed.

no VMware will not run 64bit operateing systems if I do that. the purpose of this server is a testing bed for operateing systems for my job, many of the operateing systems I will be running will be 64bit, additionally the fact that at any point in time I will be running 10~12 Virtual machines will sevierly dog the system. so it is 64bit or bust.

see above: cant run 64bit operateing systems, and volume of operateing systems running concurrently make running i386 impractical.

actually I have 64bit testing installed and just samba is not working, so all I have to do is install sarge (amd64 version) as a virtual machine in VMware. and then inside that compile the kernel version used in the sarge installer. if I do that would it be possible to build a driver disk that will allow me to preload the needed kernel modules for this? I have not build a driver disk before, and though I have read articles discussing it and read of other people doing it, I cant find any real information on HOW to do it. could someone point me in the correct direction for this?