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Sure, set the bar arbitrarily low and WOW the functionality is just around the corner! 2002 seems an arbitrary limit, why not 1996? Every smartphone on the planet is far more powerful than any desktop of that era, and frankly there's very few smartphone apps that exceed the functionality or graphic capabilities of the time. We just keep finding more uses for additional power (allowing for sloppier, less efficient coding and languages being a big one)

I strongly disagree with your assessment. It is not arbitrary, but 2002 was right about when desktops stopped being annoying. Prior to 2000, with the computers in the 90's, if you wanted to stay busy working on machines all day, you needed more than one, so you could switch to another while waiting on the first (at a job as a prepress operator at a commercial printer in the early-mid 90's, I rememeber several occasions during an evening shift where I had 8 of the most powerful desktop computers of the day working on different tasks, and I was still sitting by waiting for them all, twiddling my thumbs). By 2002, desktops became fast enough to keep up with their applications and the users intentions, leaving little idle time for the user. And if today's smartphones are just as powerful... where are the palm sized desktops, half the size of today's nettops? The Raspberry Pi is intriguing but it is low power to keep it cheap enough for young hobbyists. But there should be a consumer space where reasonably powerful desktops are the same size as an AppleTV.

And consider that over 90% of workers using what desktop computers are used for are using them today for the same things: the office worker's tasks have not changed, but the OS and applications have suffered needless feature creep and the desktops are at least 10-100x more powerful today (at the same cost) for no good reason... as the cheap anemic nettop shows its powerful enough to do email and calendaring, web surfing (research), word processing and spreadsheet tasks, and collaboration, and most conspicuously still has the ability to display video that a 2002 desktop would choke on.

I don't know about you, but if I had a high-resolution binocular HMD I'd want to use it for VR applications (games, 3D editing, etc) occasionally, and a 2002 desktop couldn't begin to handle that sort of pixel-pushing power. Nothing today could either.

Yes, it seems the emphasis has been placed on HD playback with cheaper dedicated chips for HD video decompression, which is sufficient for most users, and not on on-the-fly rendering of massive resolution output, which needs both substantial CPU and GPU power.

To put things in perspective: The human eye can resolve detail at about 60 pixels per degree (and still detect "smoothness" changes of even higher resolutions) and has a field of view of ~180 degrees. That's a 10800x10800 resolution to before diminishing returns seriously kick in, or 56 HDTVs per eye (granted, you'd only really need to render the small area you were looking directly at at that resolution, but still, the pixels would need to be there). Nothing out there today could hope to render a detailed 3D environment at that resolution at a smooth framerate, and certainly nothing that would fit in a pair of glasses could. Is that an unrealistic goal for the current-gen glasses? Sure. But then I remember the days when 640k of RAM really was enough for anyone.

Now that "Retina" displays are becoming a competitive space, I hope this envelope will continuously get pushed, the way that audio has been... even though audio resolution for the consumer has stopped pretty much at 16-bit, its fine for most consumers (though I still wish 24-bit would be the adopted standard for audio distribution -- this is the standard on DVD's, but never made it back to the consumer music industry products -- I wish music was sold on DVD's without video!). But co

There's still a few manufacturers making C2D boards with a limited number of ISA slots : http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.htm and http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/P4BWA.HTM are two examples.

Limitations:
- PCI bus bandwidth is going to hurt you hard. 32-bit PCI @ 33Mhz = 127Mbyte/sec. 64-bit PCI-X @ 66Mhz = 508Mbyte/sec.
- 100Mbit ethernet = ~10Mbyte/sec (assume 10b8 encoding, easier numbers).
- 127Mbyte/sec / ~10Mbyte/sec = 12 100Mbit ports only.

If you aren't deterred by this:
1. Get a motherboard.
2. Get a decent PCI backplane. A quick Google search brings this company:
http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/Peripheral/Backp lane/backplane.HTM
and they have a backplane with 17 PCI slots.
3. Buy 4-port PCI 100mbit network cards (http://www.americanpredator.com they don't list it on their site, but I'm certain they do custom quad port cards, or can point you to somebody that can, $500/card for industrial grade hardware).
4. 17*4 = 68x 100Mbit ethernet ports.

Like http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/SBC/LV-672.HTM which is Mini-ITX form factor, if you're also into space-saving designs.

-Charles

This seems expensive (300-400 euros).

How is the performance of the Geode CPU?

I've seen some VIA C3 boards with 3-4 Nics here.

They have a US Distributor here.
I talked to them in June; with case, motherboard w 4 RealTek nics and the fastest CPU it was $370.

Here is another one with 4 nics.

I'd be using it to run Astaro firewall, which is kind of a pig for CPU and RAM.

If you only need 1 NIC, LOTS of Mini-ITX VIA systems are available for under $200 with case, mb, CPU.
Their power consumption is supposed to be around 13watts + HD.

Here is a Pentium M powered Mini-ITX board.

There are P4 Mini-ITX systems available: Pentium 4

But, most mini-itx systems are very small in size, and strive for quiet or silent operation. So, there are obvious problems with the P4's heat/power requirements. Perhaps a better solution is the Pentium-M in a mini-itx form factor. It has pretty good performance, at a low power/heat level: Pentium M. But, most of the Pentium-M boards are intended for industrial or OEM use, so they are hard to find in retail, and are pretty expensive.

They might be on their way. Here's a 1.7 GHz Pentium M.

I have good news for you the "day" you are waiting for... has passed already.
Buy one of this and one of this
then add your preferite socket 478 processor, some RAM, HD, DVD and you are done...
You could use it as a stove if needed (you never know, you may get hungry playing).

As spotted on linitx.org: 7in x 7in P4 mobo
Should be much CHEAPER to build a system than the one refered in this article...

If you're looking for a very small motherboard, try looking at flex ATX motherboards. They are alot smaller. Also here and here.