> However, you can add one of these for ~30USD:
quoted text
>
> sili0 at pci3 dev 1 function 0 "CMD Technology SiI3124 SATA" rev 0x02: apic
> 4 int 1 (irq 5)
> scsibus1 at sili0: 4 targets
>
> And an external drive(s)

Thanks for the tip (yet another device I didn't know existed). The
rackmount hard drive enclosures I googled cost more than the system in
question. I guess I'll have to MacGyver something to keep my dirves
from sliding all over the place, unless you have another piece of
hardware up your sleeve.

quoted text
> all real sun amd64/i386 gear i had my hands on over the previous years
> was horrible. and that is mostly due to the management processors
> being so incredibly bad.

I'm very ignorant, as you can tell, about technical computing. I
thought that a good system = good OS + good CPU + robust components. I
mean to say that although the functional design of each component (say
RAM, motherboard, etc) makes a difference, I just assumed that there's
not a huge amount of variation in performance of these components,
just in quality (endurance). Nobody needs to bother addressing this
statement, suffice it to say that one can know more than all the
people around him about something, and still know almost next to
nothing about the subject :)

Thank you all for the insightful discussion.

-Scott