I want to Daisy Chain two pc's together to utilize cpu and ram...

[egosophist]

So I have these two pc's,

One's just sitting around and I was wondering...

(after using a SETI program, and after hearing about some dudes who daisy chained a bunch *a bunch* of pc's together to break the satelite encryption for US missle technology *thus my aspirations are much lower*)

Can I use two pc's to up my online gaming experience, improve graphic compiling whilst rendering high rez graphics and video...

So I posit my inquiry... Is it possible? If so, what's the best, most reliable, fastest way to set it up? (forgot to mention, both are xp, one is a couple of years old 256ram, 700mhz cpu Intel II, the other is a 2.4 gig 512 ram Intel IIII).

I know I can go out and buy stuff, I just wanted to utilize what I have around the house, a bunch of kids, a wife, I have no extra money.

Let me know what you guys think I can do.

My whole goal is to let cpu needs and ram needs pull from the second pc when necessary, instead of using the the hardware (disk swap space) which can be slower than snot...

Thanks everyone.

[HeadBand]

no except for mabey rendering BIG stuff but for everything else the speed of the connection between the systems would be too slow to improve performance

[800XL]

What you are talking about is usually called "clustering". In order to do it, the Operating System on both machines needs to be able to handle clustering and sharing loads across more than one set of hardware. The problem basically stops right there, you are looking at a high end version of Windows Server or some flavor of Linux/UNIX.

As for what it can do, gaming is not a really good application. Clusters are typically used for CGI animated video rendering (look up povray), very high traffic database work, and number crunching like the encryption cracking thing. Each node of the cluster needs to be able to get a chunk of data to work on and not rely constantly on communicating with the other nodes to do its work. The more they talk back and forth, the less time they are crunching data. I don't think your average game is structured in such a way as to lend itself to being broken into seperate tasks like that, and I haven't seen any that are designed to benefit from it. Heck, multiple CPU support in the same machine is a fairly recent addition to game programming.

I guess the hole in this theory is you need to consider the pipe between the two machines. If you have a network of 100Mbit, you are still in a similar range to that of your local hard drive. RAM in the "remote" machine might as well be disk swap space locally. By the time your main machine has requested resources from the backup and gotten them, it could have used something local and been done with it.

What you could do is offload tasks to the second machine. Have it run internet connection sharing if you run that on the main system, or run P2P apps over on it vs the main box. Use it for instant messenging or whatever you can find running all the time on your main system all the time. Freeing up resources on the bigger machine will help more than trying to slave the slower system to it.

[egosophist]

Ahhhh,

I see 800XL, I like the idea of slaving other tasks to the second machine, such as mp3 *muzak* and messenger and the like. Now say I decide to do that, no one has written anything for XP? That just sounds odd and sorta sucks... I mean some dude jusy wrote a deal for Ipod that rocks (you can take muzak off yer Ipod back onto the pc).

I hate when things get messy. I mean I can get Windows server, I just don't feel like installing, uninstalling, and all that mess. I hate multiple boots (if anyone has ever tried to delete a linux partition and dual boot...they know my pain).

I found some info on clustering, but I guess if I am not sharing program utility, all I need is some sort of interface so I can use one monitor, mouse and keyboard for both systems. Supposition... can this be done? Mac's I can do this all day until I get sick of the crap, but really...I like the systems...not the OS.

Ohhh well. Let me know your ideas.

Thanks again folks.

[FatalException]

I work in a laboratory with a 32 machine (64 processor) Linux based cluster. I can tell you from experience that what you are looking at doing is not likely possible, even for the rudimentary tasks you want to accomplish.

Clustering works on a "job" basis in most circumstances. For instance, I fire off 50 genome sequences for analysis and 3 hours later, I come back and they're done. Doing it on my stand-alone PC would take over a week. Clustering is more designed for massive applications - analyzing the genome, analyzing weather patterns or nuclear explosions, breaking encryption, etc.

To cluster to play an MP3 or use AIM seems frivolous... the bandwidth limits between the two machines will likely limit the speed of the programs beyond what having them run simultaneously on the same uniprocessor PC would do.

Maybe you would want to hook them up together & leave them on as backup file servers and have them crunch distributed.net encryption codes or seti@home stuff... but that's about the extent of the usefulness of distributed computing with just two home PC's.

[noseBleeD]

hey ego, I created a solution that works!
Turn the computer clock back by 3.2 seconds (on the server), and then watch as the guys start dropping dead before the bullets even hit them. It's amazing!
Even running calc.exe on the server is faster than the client. I opened up calc on the server to test a simple math problem, and as soon as the program opened, the results were already in the window!

[noseBleeD]

I am just kidding of course.
I wonder if you could make some kind of super computer for a science project for a child of yours?

Just a thought.

[egosophist]

LOL...

Man, you had me laughing so hard I had to use an elipses...get it...j/k. My first thought when you said, "and then watch as the guys start dropping dead before the bullets even hit them. It's amazing!", I was like, "Yes I can finally get past that part of Halo in Legendary!" Then I realized I was the but-t *pun* of a very funny joke.

Just got bored and was wondering if I could do something neat with what I have at my disposal. I tend to disable game music when I am playing and have Winamp running in the background. Winamp and ICQ take up some cpu and ram and Winamp3 is a hog. I just wanted to give my online gaming the type of love it deserves without spending a bunch of money I don't have.

Sometimes, with my web work, some idiot will send me very small scans of art and want fliers and cards made from shotty scans. They don't realize an 8"x11" flier is going to be the size of a house in the pc, that at 1400dpi, (and depending on the size and complexity of the logo's and graphics) it could take several hours, even days, to render and composite a good catchy rendition of what they want. I figure with two pc's I could maybe utilize the cpu and ram on the other computer to crunch things quicker. But thus I digress, I know what you are all saying is true...

LOL...I just remembered my buddy got these old IMB fold down keyboard *3meg* computers for --man it was like three for $5. When they started selling them for data processing in the early 80's they were like $4,000-$8,000 a piece. Maybe I could daisy chain 36 of them together to run windows solitaire? Maybe I would know which cards were where before I clicked'em... j/k

Late guys... thanks again fer the thoughts and the jokes~

[The_Shooter]

As for me, I set up a seperate machine to host my network files, my Web space, and any game server I want to set up. Along with many other tasks that I have a need for.
Also by having a seperate machine, I am able to convert home movies to SVCD. While it would prevent me from playing games at the same time with my current system, I would just transfer the files over to the server and convert it. Thus leaving my main machine free to do as I please.
It used to take so long for me to transfer my video from my camera, then convert it, then burn it to CD. Now, I just use my server to do it and just come back later to finish it up.

[noseBleeD]

Well, I had to go back over every post I made because another forum member pointed out to me in his own way that I was probably coming across as kicking good men while they are down. So I just had to come back and clarify that I was j/k.
Is the elipse somehow related to me being so high up there that I got a nosebleed? lol
I wish I was half as smart as you guys, then maybe I could afford another 128 mb stick of ram. lol

I think Shooter is on to something here, so I am going to dillydapple around my dusty parts upstairs and see if I can expand on his usefullness, as well as the other good and gracious fellow forum members that have posted here for you.
Hm, after much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that this is more of a resourcefullness issue now then a multimedia crunching application that spans 2 systems.

I think it's resourcefull to say that the kids would kill you if you took over their machine.
------------------------------------------------------
comp2 <-----------------------------------comp1-----
(Server) -------------->Output<----------(client)-----
-----------------------(Scanner)----------------------

Does this help in any way?