First of all, kudos to Andrew Ip for blazing a trail exactly where I want to go :-) After reading two years' worth of mailing list archives (!), I see what kind of struggle it's been to get the m810 walkthrough where it is today.
My question, after looking over the various alternatives, is this:
What Is Going to Provide the Fastest Boot Solution?
I'm going with the pcchips m810clmr (Duron 1.2) board, with 2 generic 512 MB sticks on it. This will be a standalone full-distro machine, at least to start with. Every other piece of hardware that I purchase and install will be based on whatever is going to produce the shortest power-up/init/ready-to-rock time.
I believe someone (Eric?) mentioned a month or two ago that a lot of their machines ended up being solo jobs. I would be very interested to hear what that person had to say about speed comparisons.
Regards, -dBarr.
PS: ca. 3-5 months ago, it was noted that the pcchips m810 line had a bit of trouble just hanging for no apparent reason. I assume this was taken care of, since the discussion dropped off the list. Anyone care to deny or confirm?