MythTV and some very old EPIA 800's

A couple of years ago, I thought it would be a wizard idea to buy a bunch of Epia Mini-ITX boards, shoe-horn them into a single chassis, and then set each one to a specific task (file server, uPnP media server, mail server, apache server).
Needless to say, the project never really got off the ground and I'm now running all of these applications on an HP ML110, bought for £95, which is running VMWare Server 2.0 64bit.

So, now, I'm left with four Epia boards that I must be able to find a use for, right?

The plan is... use them as dumbish media front-ends. One in the study, one in the living room and one on the kitchen, all able to surf the web, play MP3s and the odd video. Playing BBC iPlayer and youTube would be a bonus.

Easy, huh? Just download one of the many Linux media front ends and off we go? Nope, because most of them seem to need a 686 level CPU and these old Epias are resolutely 586.
MythDora (based on RedHat) refused to boot, because we were missing some important instruction.
I managed to install MythBuntu, but trying to start the MythTv front-end fails with an "illegal instruction" message. Further investigation shows that the MythBuntu distrib (and most MythTv binaries) have been compiled to require a 686 level CPU.
Not to be beaten, I am now going through the relatively tortuous process of recompiling MythTv for a 586 class processor. I'll let you know how I get on ;-)

Update – now working! Details at Compiling and installing MythTV on a VIA EPIA 800 (586) system