[Quarterbore]

Then that is good news! Like I said, I only paid $125 + $35 for shipping for what I bought so it will allow me a chance to learn the basics of running a server and I can upgrade later. I looked at Microsoft's site and they recommend a minimum of a 1GHz PIII for Server 2003 but with the reality that there will likely only ever be one of us connected to that server at any time I am sure I can make do with less.

I have a IT friend that has old MS Server 2000 disks that he does not use anymore so it looks like I can get him a case of beer and wanl away with Win 2000 Server with the keys/COA.

I have been pricing the spare parts and it may be cheaper for me to buy a second server with a secong 1GHZ processor, DLT and additional hard drives in the hot swapable caddies then it will be for me to get the parts seperately.

Here is my box:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...9345&rd=1&rd=1

Our desktop PC are reasonably new (P4s one running 2.0GhZ and the second is 2.6GHz) so the computing power is on our desktop machines like you suggest.

Edit: I got greedy and picked up a second box. The second is another Dell 2400 but with quite a bit more including duel 1GHz Xenon PIII processors, three 36dives, 4Gigs Memory, and the all important 35/70 Tape drive.

I figure the $160 I spent for the first server gives me a cheap box to play with and when I am done I can just move the SCSI drives to the bigger box for 3-18GB drives in RAID 1 for the server software and the othe three 36-GB drives (plus one more when I find it) I will set up as Raid 5. When I get done, the box with the single processor can still be run or I can just keep it for spare parts