I have two processors at my disposal: a 300Mhz laptop and a 1.6GHz desktop. My idea is that if I can somehow network them together so that I can control the 1.6Ghz beast via the laptop, I can get rid of the clunky monitor and excess keyboard. Things have been complicated by the fact that they are running on different OS: laptop on MS2000pro and 1.6GHz on XPpro. I was thinking that maybe I could hook the Inet to the 1.6GHz beast and then on serially to the laptop, but since I am not familiar with such hardware problems, its just a thought. Also include in your reply what I would have to do if the laptop ran on Linux..coz I would really like to do that...ideally. Thanks a ton.
essentially you could run the XP "remote assitance" wizard constantly and take over it that way, but that would be as slow as hell. As far as I know there is no way to share processor power in anyway.
What is it you mainly do on the desktop? Web-surfing? Games? Writing documents? Some applications are better suited to using this kind of set-up then others so it would help if you told us what the machine was for. Whoa, slow down. Don't be too hasty to chuck 'em just yet. You'll never know when you might need them! Yes, seen that one before! I have to admit I don't know a lot about networking Windows machines together but different versions of Windows don't seem to get along together well for some reason. Serially? Your probably in for an uphill struggle there, go for standard network cards. A crossover cable may be good enough but the natural home for a network is across a hub. Connecting both computers together via a hub is generally the easiest route to getting your network going. OK, now we're talking! First of all you need to check that your hardware is compatible with Linux but as it's an old 300MHz machine is very unlikely that it won't be. Do you have any particular distros in mind? Bearing in mind that your machine is quite slow, this also comes under the heading of "What do you use your comouter for", you don't necessarily need one of the more recent cutting-edge releases. If you don't have one and want to try them out then you can always pick up a "Live CD" quite cheaply which lets you run Linux entirely from a CD without changing anything on your hard-drive. Also Linux Format magazine often include whole distros on their cover DVD. The current issue has Mandrake on it so you may be able to pick this up if it is still available. Of course, if you already have a CD/DVD and the last paragraph is totally irrelevant then my apologies for being so garrulous. Once you have Linux running then you will need to confugure a Samba server. This ships as standard on most distros, with the possible exception of very small ones that serve a very particular purpose. Next you will need to configure it to be able to talk to the desktop, this is not an easy process but it isn't necessarily so difficult either. Also there is a very comprehensive guide here plus there is no shortage of help available on various forums, mailing lists, etc. on the 'Net so you should have little difficulty getting the network running provided you are willing to invest a bit time reading the documents and learning how it all works. But better yet, why not simply take the plunge and convert both machines to penguin-friendly boxes. Again this comes under the heading of "what do you use your computers for." If the desktop is a glorified games console then maybe not but even here there may be hope! On the other hand, if you are using it mainy as a web-browser, e-mail machine, document editor, etc. then Good God man, your hard-drives are long overdue a re-partition. Linux is designed to do networking and Internetting in its sleep, in fact, Linux practically is the Internet. Trust me, if you've spend enough time trying to set up a network with Windows machines and then try to do the same in Linux you won't ever look back! Good luck, let me know how it goes or if you need any more help!
Hi Guys, Thanks for the advice. I normaly use my machines for programming C,C++ and matlab (yep, an EE!). The Inet does come in handy roughly 22hrs out of the alloted 24 in a day! So I guess I fall into the couch user category. I am not ready to convert both machines to Linux, coz much of the programs are not Penguin friendly. I do have a MEPIS live CD, and to be honest Im not too damn impressed! Any suggestions?! I talked to a friend about the issue and he suggested just running a server on the big one and logging onto it whenever I need to....that is acceptable, but if I could connect the machines a little more better, say share the processing power required to run a program, that would be ideal. I am an engineering student for godsakes!
I'm curious, what types of programs do you write and what compiler do you use? If they are not penguin-friendly I can only guess that you're writing games or using a Windows-only toolkit. Depends entirely upon what you want to do with the machines and what your knowledge level of computers is. I mainly use Slackware because it's quite simple and stable and doesn't try to be cutting-edge, on the other hand you need to know what you're doing in order to be able to use it as it's not idiot-friendly. If you are new to Linux then I would suggest either Knoppix, which I haven't tried myself but have heard it's easy to get started with, or SuSE 9.3, which has been getting some glowing reports since its recent release. You could also try Mandrake which you might still find on the cover DVD of the June edition of Linux Format. Again I haven't tried it myself but it also seems reasonably newbie-friendly. That depends which machine you are converting. If you are going to turn the desktop into a Linux box then in theory it would be a simple matter of configuring a cron daemon to compile and run a certain file at a certain time of the day. If I have your thoughts corrrectly you would write the code on the laptop, copy it onto the desktop and then the daemon would look for the file and compile and run it from there. Depending on the type of program you are running and how you configure the set-up you would not even need to use the desktop at all, simply upload the source code and download the output (assuming it can be sent to a file). I have not done anything like this myself so I'm guessing here somewhat but it should be fairly simple to set this sort of thing up. However, as the programs are not "penguin-friendly" as you say then I don't know if you can compile/run the programs from a Linux box. In that case the principle is the same except you would write the code on the Linux laptop and upload them to the MS desktop. I don't know for sure but I would be suprised if there was't some kind of scheduling tool available for Windows that does the same sort of thing as the cron daemon under Linux though you may have to buy this software. Hope this helps!
