[K12OSN] Server specs....how low can you go?

[ssanders at coin.org]

Chiming in with everyone else on this one, and a question later.

I have run a P2/233 with 512 meg of ram, and it was fairly satisfactory.
At the time, it was serving two clients. As mentioned, RAM and I/O can
be the biggest bottlenecks. For a home/test setup, I am currently using
an AMD 900 w/512 meg, ATA 66 drives, and gigabit link between the server
and switch for the 100mbit clients. It's intended use is basic
web/email/docs and it does well for three or four clients, OpenOffice
and Flash can drag it down some.

Along these lines? As far as recycling old junkers go, what does
everyone think about a dual 533 w/768 meg of ram vs. the mentioned AMD
900 w/512? The dual 533 is the old Abit BP6, and has been reliable for
me (I built it when BP6 was new and hot stuff, several years ago). 

Would the SMP kernel and more ram offset the slower speed of the dual
CPU's? The drive I/O and network would remain the same.