sys specs: amd athlon xp 2000+ soltek drv5 mobo 512 DDR 2700 When I enabled ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" and used the mirrorselect package to select a mirror near me, i did an emerge rsync and an emerge -u world. The ftp i connected to gave problems with several packages i tried to install. The files that are on the ftp aren't the right size. This FTP: http://ftp.tu-clausthal.de didn't work for me.
this is a known problem because that particular mirror limits the size of file downloads via http. The admin of the server contacted me and asked to have the http part of their mirror removed from our list of mirrors. their ftp service still works fine. closing bug as wontfix.