Recommendendations for a small form factor system

[David King]

> I'm looking to buy or build a small form factor system with a microATX
> motherboard.

I have a VIA EPIA VT-310DP (dual 1.0 GHz) (I have dmesg and whatnot  
posted at <http://www.ketralnis.com/roller/page/dking? 
entry=via_epia_vt_310dp>) in a Morex Venus 668B case (mini-ATX, but  
this board should do micro-ATX too if I'm not mistaken). I got both  
for pretty inexpensive from http://www.logicsupply.com, they have a  
lot in the way of small systems and they were pretty good to me.  
They'll probably boot one of their boards up and email you a dmesg if  
you can tell them how, they're pretty responsive.

> I develop software for a living and mostly write LAMP or
> perl code around mysql databases. I need something I can lug around
> that has good speed. I've many EIDE disk drives that have customer
> projects on so I need SATA and EIDE support. This box has to run  
> FreeBSD,
> occasionally Red Hat and also windows. My budget is $500-$750. I'd
> like a gig of ram expandable to at least 2 gig, a separate graphics  
> card
> (I'll rarely run X but occasionlly need to boot windows).  As much
> cpu as I can afford. I'd thought only AMD was in reach but see now
> that some of the Intel core 2 duos are under $200 (intels DG965OT mobo
> with a  E6400 chip looks sweet). I need 100baseT NIC, onboard WiFi,
> a DVD drive and a couple of USB ports. Sound is not important. A PCI
> slot would be nice too.  If possible not anything that will overheat
> when I really crank through a large database. I write GIS code and
> often have databases with millions of points. I've looked at a lot
> of boards but thought the members of this list would be better and
> telling me what is fast and works out of the box with a current
> FreeBSD release.
>
> Thanks for any advice.