Well this morning an unsuccessful attempt to install Gentoo onto mtekktux failed horribly. Memtest86 does not get past 50 seconds before it completely hangs (keyboard lights flash). Something is very wrong with the motherboard/IDE controller. Tonight, the backup motherboard will be tried (have to see if one can find the memory that goes in that one). If all else fails, one will probably get one of those Atom 330 miniITX boards. Though the atom is quite anemic, it should be good at the occasional print job, running apache, and a few other miscellaneous tasks.
Update: It’s dead, the memory that is. The error presents itself with the backup motherboard and a different, known to be good CPU. So that means, mtektux will not get running this week.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]