"Matthias Koch-Schirrmeister wrote in message

Am Fri, 02 Sep 2005 04:38:47 +0000 schrieb Eric:

basically, fileserving
appliances (threw wireless cards into them and then placed them in a

closet,

out of sight and mind).  Their only purpose is to just spit out MP3's,
pictures, video, ect.   What could be better homes for also crunching

SETI?

No idea what locks the machines up, but have you considered running Linux
on them? As long as you don't have the X server running (the graphics
desktop), even a 500 CPU should do the job. Samba works perfect and rock
solid as a file server, and the whole set rids you of all virus and most
malware concerns.

I've been running an AMD 500 w/128MB RAM as file server, mail server and
domain controller in a network with 80 Windows NT machines and some 200
users. It was far above any Windows server.

LOL, actually that very idea has been in the back of my head for some time
now.

I've been wanting to, eventually, do just that but want all the data/files
on ext2(3)fs and not fat32 (currently) afterwards.

Problem is that all three of them are so full that there is no room to
juggle.  Need two empty cups to juggle three cups of water.  I'm not
trusting of any attempts of non-destructive conversion either.  :^)

Been looking at and pricing some standalone NAS stuff lately though.
Afterwards, switching the dumb boxes to Linux will be cake.

Cheers!
-Eric