I'm beginning my search to create a render farm and I was hoping you could help with a few questions:

1) can a render farm be created with only blade servers? (and possibly one desktop)
Or do I need more than one desktop
2) Do blade servers need any specific software (OS or anything) installed on them?

I wanted to try using these
IBM 300 X Series Servers PIII 1.0GHZ 2 HDD9.1G
What OS could i run on these?

Yes they can, i don see why nt. You cannot compare server processors with ordinary ones plus the network bus level, high ram, optional SAN or NAS storage medium, Low power consumption, easy expansion, KVM Switch for headless operation, and other features. As much they are more expensive,they are cheaper in their commercial long run, than multiple ordinary pcs networked together. (2)There is some SCSI needed and there isn't any OS you can't put on this babes,id recommend linux and a Free NAS (O.S) storage server for your render output.