Hardware of this machine.
box: Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 with psu.
power supply: Seasonic 350W, active PFC
motherboard: MSI RS480M2-IL (MS-7093)
memory: 3072MB (2 x 512MB + 2 x 102MB) 4 slots - max memory is 4 GB
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ @ 1.8 GHz
cpu cooler: Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu.
hard drives:
ad0: 152627MB <WDC WD1600AVJB-63J5A0 01.03E01> at ata0-master UDMA133
ad4: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 190782MB <Seagate ST3200822AS 3.01> at ata3-master SATA150
ad8: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata4-master SATA150
sata - this motherboard only supports sata / 150.
optical drive: acd0 <NEC DVD RW ND-3540A/1.01> ATA/ATAPI revision 0
video: ATI Radeon X550 Series (RV370)
display: LCD monitor 1280 x 1024
sound: snd_atiixp - IXP_AUDIO_400 IXP AC'97 Audio Controller
network: re0 - Realtek RT8139 (A/B/C/810x/813x/C+) Fast Ethernet Adapter
usb: IXP SB400 OHCI USB Controller, IXP SB400 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller
firewire: VT6306 VIA Fire II IEEE-1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller
other: Hauppauge PVR-350,
bios: v3.5 (W7093AMS V3.5 070105)

OS testing: FreeBSD, 

Work log:
2011-10-01: today I replaced one of the older WD Elements 500 GB (2) usb hadr drives with the new WD Elements SE 1 TB.
old drive:
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da3s1d    451G    404G     11G    97%    /d6

<WD 5000AAK External 1.06>         at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,da3)
new drive:
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da3s1d    902G    421G    409G    51%    /d6

<WD Elements 1023 2005>            at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,da3)
That's all.

2011-08-28: I added a new external hard drive today, a WD Elements SE, 1 TB, 2.5 inch usb-powered drive (model: WDBABV0010BBK-EESN). It shows up in /var/log/messages on FreeBSD as:
Aug 28 19:20:00 kg-quiet kernel: umass5: <Western Digital Elements 1023, class 0/0, rev 2.00/20.05, addr 7> on usbus2
Aug 28 19:20:00 kg-quiet kernel: umass5:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: umass5:11:5:-1: Attached to scbus11
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: da6 at umass-sim5 bus 5 scbus11 target 0 lun 0
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: da6: <WD Elements 1023 2005> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-4 device
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: da6: 40.000MB/s transfers
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: da6: 953867MB (1953519616 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 121600C)
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: GEOM: da6: partition 1 does not start on a track boundary.
Aug 28 19:20:01 kg-quiet kernel: GEOM: da6: partition 1 does not end on a track boundary.
I just temporarily connected it, so I can label and newfs it.

2011-01-11: the boot hard drive (ad0 - Seagate 120 GB) is failing, so today I bought a WD 160 GB Caviar, 7200 rpm, 8 MB cache, model WD1600AVJB as a replacement. The new ad0 is (from /var/log/messages):
ad0: 152627MB <WDC WD1600AVJB-63J5A0 01.03E01> at ata0-master UDMA133
the old one was:
ad0: 114473MB <Seagate ST3120026A 8.01> at ata0-master UDMA100

2009-11-19: newest BIOS is v 3.9, released 2006-02-13.

2009-03-20: I removed two hard drives 120 GB (ad1 <ST3120026A/8.54> ATA/ATAPI revision 6) and 200 GB (ad4 <ST3200822AS/3.01> Serial ATA v1.0) and added two new 1 TB ones:
ad4: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata2-master SATA150
ad8: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata4-master SATA150
Since these drives are from the 7200.11 range, I first upgraded the firmware on them, using instructions and  bootable iso image from Seagate. Now the internal drives in the machine looks like this:
ad0: 114473MB <Seagate ST3120026A 8.01> at ata0-master UDMA100
ad4: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 190782MB <Seagate ST3200822AS 3.01> at ata3-master SATA150
ad8: 953869MB <Seagate ST31000340AS SD1A> at ata4-master SATA150

2009-03-19: spring cleaning inside the machine. Lots of dust. The rubber rings for the silent hard drive box inside the machine have broken again. I must find a way to fix it. I just used wire to hold the silent box.

2005-09-02: downgraded bios from V3.8 to V3.5 (W7093AMS V3.5 070105), because the nVidia GeForce 6200 TC (TurboCache) gfx card didn't work stable. Later learned that this motherboard doesn't work well with nVidia gfx cards at all.
2005-08-29: upgrade bios from V3.3 to V3.8 (W7093AMS V3.8 072105). After upgrade, the network controller was disabled in the bios.