Well since it was asked, there are certainly CF to IDE adaptors out there
and are fairly common for mini-itx setups. SATA however might be another
matter, I haven't kept an eye open for them in a while.
I am looking at doing something similar with the remnants of my workstation
when the MB crashed, I can pick up an ASUS rackmount Dual-940 combo for
about $250, and I have most of the other components. Benn looking at
putting together a Pd processing box for shows that I would access via SSH
and X-Forwarding to program as needed. Mini-Itx was something I kept a
close eye on for a while, and stil keep an eye on for this type of purpose,
but not to close lately. Not a bad project though.
Seablade