Hey all, looking for some advice on what to do with some equipment I have. I got a couple of old computers from work and was considering setting up a small network at home. What I have;

Main computer = general gaming, internet and so forth. 100gig SATA, 60gig IDE, 40gig IDE
The 60 and 40 gig are just for storage, movies, games, music, photos, etc.

The new ones;
#1 Compaq AP550 workstation, Dual P3 1.0gig with 512 ram and 6gig SCSI drive.

#2 Compaq P2, very basic.

I also have 2 , 18gig SCSI drives to throw in the Workstation
A 3com 8 port switch, and lots of cable.

I have loaded Windows Server 2003 on the workstation so far.
So, what I was thinking, I would like the workstation to be a small server. I'll move all my music, movies and other stuff over there and just keep the photos and personal documents on my main machine. The workstation also has a CD burner, so I want to be able to burn my music on it. Also, I would like to set it up so that when I download music or whatever using my main machine, I can save it to the server. Mapping?

So, my question, how should I go about doing this? I have some networking knowledge, but not much with server applications. Do I just put all my machines on the switch and map the drives on the server? To burn music on the other machine, would I just have to use a console terminal and log in that way? Anyway, like I said, not sure how to configure this whole setup and looking for some advice. Thanks

If all you need is a file server I think that FreeNAS may be a good option for you. I read a little about it and it looks very nice.