Thought I would share an interesting story with you guys, as I'm bored and don't really know what to do about it.
So, on my way back from an outing with friends yesterday we came upon pile three PCs sitting on the curb. Seeing as they were labeled "FREE, CASE ONLY, NON-FUNCTIONAL PCs" I was irritated by how they were not being disposed of properly.
Upon further inspection, we saw some interesting things.
Firstly, one has an XP serial on a sticker on the front. ---Cracking is easy, but this makes that unneeded.
Secondly, another had FOUR FILLED HD BAYS... With identical 80-gig drives. ---320 free gigs? yes please!
Third, none have ram. Not a meg. ---I've got a few gigs in the basement though.
So, in summary: One beige tower with a dead 120 gig drive, one silver monster (4 HDs), one shoebox-like "XPC" with nothing special but with CPU.

All the 80-gig HD drives work, one is corrupted (but mounts after erasing) and they were all RAIDed. I assume one failed and the users mistook that for the whole set being dead.
I'd love to make something from this, and as I have two other PCs at home I figured I'd make a shot at it.
I'm "a mac guy " now, but I've used all sorts of computers all my life. All my computers still run, even the TRS-80. But my only external monitor is a greyscale nine-incher. Yes, really.
What shall I do with this newfound pile of resources?
I've totally stripped the beige box, it's not worth much, but had lots of moderately good fans. I'll make a laptop stand.
I'm kinda thinking simple linux server, considering my monitor limit, but I may get a new one, or a TV-out.
I'm interested in your opinions. It's not really "help," so I think this is the right place for the topic.

Image of the haul: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/814625/Grand%20Haul.JPG

Update:
Got around to looking up parts, the XPC is an SN25P http://techreport.com/articles.x/8002
The Silver box's CPU is an AMD180, 2.5 ghz.
Neither have graphics cards, and do not have onboard ones either. So until I get one, I have no idea if they work.

Nice.
You are a lucky man.
Now figure out how to get those working or modify them to your standards.

Man, that amount of memory screams either a) video editing or b) server or c) computer science experiment at me
Nice find.

Make Linux servers learn networking attain new career.

I figure since other people have posted here I am obliged to produce an update.
I got some more parts! A very old but totally functional graphics card out of a tech dumpster, another 80GB HDD, a pheonix bios chip from a kicked-in mobo, and a 40 GB Sata drive that appears to be dead. Also a new wireless router, but it's only B and therefore not worth using myself.
I plugged the Graphics Card in, attached a Disc Drive, and the one with four HDDs booted up!
The screen sucked, but I worked my way through installing Ubuntu (was going to do Arch, but just used a disc I had on hand).
Ubuntu installed properly, and the machine rebooted.
Then started beeping.
It no longer boots past the BIOS, it appears to be crashing. Tried a new HDD, no change. Reset CMOS, it booted!
Then crashed.

This mobo is either haunted, evil, broken, or all of the above.
Sadly, the other intact* mobo has a different kind of connector, and the graphics card is not compatible, so I'm stuck waiting to find one to test it. Also, I may have fried its PSU by accident. When plugged in nothing happens, and the PC does nothing at all when power is pressed.
*until proven otherwise

Fall quarter is about to start, and I'm not going to have as much time to work on this, but it's not abandoned.
Until then, I've made backups of my laptop to the 4 HDDs.

Any thoughts on the "not booting past bios" thing?

You likely have a component failure on the board. Perhaps damaged memory modules. If the BIOS is when it crashes, there is clearly an interface issue between the bootloader and the hardware