Well... I have the opportunity to turn the 3 to 4 year old Windows XP desktop into a general file server that I could record to. Is there any information on this? I was thinking of using the hard drives on there along with Gigabyte Ethernet to have a disk to record to for certain projects. Do I have to format the drives for Mac OS X? How do I find out if this is possible? Is there an online tutorial to have a use for the old desktop that mom and dad replaced with their laptop?

Using a PC running WIndows XP as a file server would certainly not be rock solid, nor very fast.... I would suggest you to install a linux distribution (debian or fedora are my favorite), and setup it as a file server.

Linux can (and generally comes with) Samba, NFS and AppleTalk network sharing protocols that all are seen by OSX.

If you're new to linux, you will certainly be a bit disoriented at first, but onces your server is setup, you will never had to worry about your PC. With WIndow, that's another story

Just my 2 cents