Hi cobra133

laptop HD, a cd burner, and a mini-itx motherboard from VIA
I have a laptop HD in my VIA and it works fine -- i had to get
a special cable and make my own mounting bracket. This not a bad
idea since the drive is rugged, quiet, cool, low power, and low cost.

pretty much buying parts from internet vendors 10 at a time to build these things
For such a large project this sounds a bit risky. KNOPPIX is good at
hardware detection but as kernels change, there is a risk. KNOPPIX 3.3
worked fine on my via but the usb detection of eternal drives quit
working for 3.4. I am presently using KANOTIX. Hopefully this will be
fixed soon. On the positive side, if you do pick KNOPPIX your hardware
people can run tests to check any add on devices.

KNOPPIX is very suitable for cheaply delivering an operating system
with added programs. There is a lot of debian scientific packages.
It is easy to re-install from the CD.

You may remaster but an easier option may be to try a script I have
written that copies KNOPPIX or KANOTIX on to a DVD and add 4 GB
of your content.

Scripts can then automatically install this data to the hard drive.
The printer configuration can be saved and loaded automatically,
but it may be best to specify a single prefered printer.

http://grow-knoppix.berlios.de/
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11150

Best Wishes,
paradocs