I had quite a number of problems trying to justify a whole slew of different platforms, none of which really spoke to each other too well and most ended up being under utilized (Amithlon/UAE rig, SAM 440, a number of Windows PC's, iMac, Ipad and Xbox 360.
The solution I found: Took a shoddy old case, Asus AMD X2 dual core mobo with 2 GB RAM, 1 32 GB SSD for the OS, 3x 2 TB SATA drives for storage. Threw FreeNAS on that machine, SMBFS/SAMBA on the Amiga variants, etc. Said FreeNAS machine is now headless, and several of the other machines use 1 monitor/keyboard/mouse via a 4 port Cables to Go KVM to save on space.
VNC clients/hosts on all machines, all networked thru a 16 port ethernet router, with a HP 8500 Pro Ethernet and wifi capable printer, and a DLink N Wireless Access Point also linked to said Ethernet router.
Find it a very good solution - store all files on the FreeNAS machine so they can all be accessed from every other machine, and the VNC solution allows me to logon any machine from another - including from my iPad, which I use a lot to access other systems, esp the SAM 440 my BBS is run on.
Whole network was drawn up in Visio, and I keep a printout with detailed info on it tucked away for quick reference (includes specs, ip's, etc for each machine) in case there's a problem with one of the machines in the network.
