Apologies as i'm not that clued up on some of the terminology, but when you say a server, does that mean a computer running something different to Win7, I remember the server where I used to work but that had some different form of windows on it. Or does it simply mean the two computers are talking to one another?
Also, when you say the server is its own machine, so what, you'd take the current computer, have that as a server off to the side, and use the new one primarilly for working?
The above answers may explain this anyway, but If i understand you correctly, you have the two computers wired up and they can both see the drives on each other, for the likes of max you would just have the external file paths all pointing to the same location on one of the computers. So youre working away on the primary computer, get the scene just the way you want, so then you open the file on the secondary computer and simply hit render. That right?
Thanks for the help.