I am thinking of running a media server in a back room. I already have a couple of raid arrays in my desktop that I plan on switching out. My question is, what would you recommend for optimal performance. I HAVE an old motherboard with Slot 1 (currently 500 mhz) and support up to 768 megs of sdram, as well as 4 pci slots. I wanted to use it, but if it won't work that will change. I want to get a gigabit lan on it, and stream HD, movies, music, etc off of it. So, will my setup work, what would you consider minimum? Also while we're about it, I plan on running Samba (still learning about it) is there a way that my different raid arrays (for example, a R:\, an S:\, etc each about 500 gbs) can look like one drive from the network? It would make it easier.

I know that Suse 9+ has a new filesystem type, i believe its called XFS that can make multiple volums appear as 1 single visible volume (makes adding extra drives REALLY easy) but im not sure if it works with a Raid array (though i suppose there is no reason why it shouldnt, i just can't confirm that it does =D ), by streaming HD movies do you mean ISO's of DVD movies or striaght from HDTV tuner cards?

If your going through with this i cant recommend enough, get a few cheap xbox's and chip 'em. They make the best front ends i have ever seen, using XBMC. Simple to setup, can run off samba shares, loads of functionality and extensible with scripts.

AMD Athlon64 3500+
1024MB 512x2 Dual Channel Corsair TwinX
Coolermaster Wavemaster
120GB Seagate SATA HDD
Gecube X800XT Platinum
Logitch 5.1 Surround
LG 16x Dual Layer DVD
Countle

Both ISO's and hd content. I have an xbox and am planning to chip it. I never reallix that XBMC was that wonderful, i will definitely check that part out.

If i may ask, how were you planning on getting the output to the different tv's etc? Using a couple of cheap PCS as front ends? direct cables from the server?

Decoding DVDs and HD content would be pretty intensive for an older PC like that and you probably couldn't do more then one thing at once while streaming HD content.

As for the xbox, as far as i'm concerned the Xbox with XBMC is THE best front end media player out there, sure it may have the occasional bug but it works fine with everything i throw at it and it looks fantastic on a TV.

I've tried all sorts of media centre solutions from front end PC's running Windows Media Centre, or Myth TV (Linux Based), to having a direct output straight from the server and the best solution is what i have setup right now. Ill clue you in on min, it might give you some ideas:

Server
P4 2.66
1G 333 Ram
2 x 200 G HDD
Running Suse 10 (files are on different samba shares)

The 2 xbox's i have running as front ends use a Netgear wireless gaming adapter for streaming. I also stream to another 2 rooms that are just running PC's that are just normal computers but hooked up to the TV's in the respective rooms.

The wireless runs it fine but if you can i would use a wired solution.

AMD Athlon64 3500+
1024MB 512x2 Dual Channel Corsair TwinX
Coolermaster Wavemaster
120GB Seagate SATA HDD
Gecube X800XT Platinum
Logitch 5.1 Surround
LG 16x Dual Layer DVD
Countle