Help: wanting to make old PC in Linux based NAS

[Tr1cK]

I'm a total Linux nub BTW.

At work, we have a networked drive that is about 300 miles away from my office. It just ain't cutting it. I am wanting to take an Athlon XP 1800, 512mb DDR, and a set of 40gb drives I have laying around and make this box. All help will be greatly appreciated. I have no idea what distro to use or anything.

Edit: BTW I do want to take advantage of cd/dvd burning capabilities for backup purposes.

[whig]

To pick your Linux poison surf to http://distrowatch.com/

The software package you want to install to serve files to Windows clients is Samba. CD/DVD writing packages are usually based on the cdrecord package. The various software is there - you just have to find out package names.