Quoting Amadeus (poff@sixbit.org):
> I am thinking of running  asimple netbsd fileserver on my network to serve 
> files to windows users (samba) (maybe 4-8 computers, fairly intensive).
> 
> I want to know if there are any big limitations using an old PC (266mhz) to 
> do this.
> 
> I was thinking of buying maybe a pci scsi card and a scsi hard drive, but I 
> don't know if this will make a difference in performance from an ide hard 
> drive, at the most ata 100.
> 
> When you a running a fileserver, what are the biggest hardware 
> limitations? CPU? Memory?
> 
> I can only have a 100mb/s ethernet card as the interface, so presumably 
> it's not too important to upgrade the hard drive. I also have a 166 pentium 
> PC with EDO ram, but maybe that's pushing things a little.

You really want disk.  If you can, a nice EXTERNAL RAID which you
reach via SCSI would be best.  I have a vendor I like that does
50-60MB/s writes.

Failing that, a pair of 15kRPM SCSI drives attached to a SCSI/160
board will make your file servee's happy.

I might watch RAM, I might crank up the caching on the box if you
have enough RAM.

I might blow $200 and put in a new MoBo and a 2GHz+ CPU with 256MB RAM.
Then add fast disk.