I have an older computer I want to hook up to my main computer to start a render farm. What hardware (cables, etc.) do i need? I don't want to share Internet hookup or anything fancy. No second monitor. I just want to use the processor in the second box. I know I'll need a second NIC 10/100 card in my main computer - the one I have now is hooked to my cable modem. Is a crossover cable enough to allow the 2 boxes to communicate?

Actually, -not- sharing internet connectivity would be getting fancy. And for your system to use 2 NIC cards, you would have to convert your main box (at least partially) into a server. I think I'll just step this out.... ;) You say you are on cable; do you have a router? And does it have a built in switch? If so, all you need to do is plug the old box into one of the unused switch ports, install the Cow, and you are ready to go. If you plan on enlarging your farm, then it's easier to plan for it from the beginning TBC....

As I said... This is a picture of the meat of the rendergarden in my office. The small blue box at the bottom of the stack is a Linksys 5 port switch ($29.99 at CompUSA). The gray cable at the extreme right is the patch cable to the router. I did it this way so that whenever I expanded the garden, I only had to plug in the new box, not engage in a major fit of rewiring. The other CAT 5 cables are color coded to match the color of the LED's on the exhaust fans, cosmetic, but cool... ;) Oh, and =none= of the cables are cross over cables. The larger box on top of the switch is a 4 port KVM switch. This allows one monitor, mouse, and keyboard to control 4 seperate computers. You will find that you -do- need to have a monitor on your renderers; you have to be able to shut the Cow down completely to clear it sometimes, if Vue bombs on a render. And as this is Windows we seem to be discussing, then an occasional reboot is forever. You can get KVM switches quite cheaply on Pricewatch.com (that model in the picture was $39), so don't be terrified by the prices you see on the Belkin units at the office supply stores. All KVM switches have a button on them to toggle between the ports, and many of them have a preset hotkey sequence so that you can switch on the fly via the keyboard. If you use a KVM switch, then you will need to factor in the cost of a KVM cable bundle for each computer you add ($20.). These cables are color coded and shielded, and connect your computer to the KVM switch.

This is my rendergarden. The floppy drives and CD drives are there mainly because I had them, and it was a place to store them. Once the OS and software is installed, they could have easily been removed. The stand is a $30 unassembled printer stand, with a cheapy keyboard tray bolted on. I haven't done it yet, but from my reading, a pair of medium sized battery backups will probably suffice for all 4 boxes, as the monitor is the biggest gulper of power, and I wouldn't be putting it on backup. For the garden I have, I run 2 surge suppressor strips; two because I couldn't find one that had 6 standard outlets and at least 2 outlets designed for power packs (for the KVM switch and the Linksys hub). Have I made any sense? I have not had my caffeine today....

I think Dale B has a real power solution, but the cheapest way is one free nic in each computer and to connect them by a crossover cable. You can have more than one nic in a workstation, the difference between a server and a workstation is, that you are not enabled to bridge multiple nics in a workstation, but you don't need this. You can also use microsoft's netmeeting to administer the second workstation. Make shure you setup manually the TCP/IP addresses for the nics, e.g. 192.168.15.1 with network mask of 255.255.255.0 for the first computer and 192.168.15.2 with network mask of 255.255.255.0 for the second. You don't need to enter a gateway if you don't want to share internet connection. For future upgrades you simply add a small switch and increment the IP addresses for the new machines.

Wow! Thanks for the quick responses! I regret having to wait till after work to run off to my nearest computer store. I appreciate all of your advice. I've now got a base to start small with advice on how to expand. DaleB, your setup is a dream - I'm envious. Again, many thanks for the great advice. - Lin

Excellent info Dale thanks!!

Awwww... The nice thing about the 'garden is that I built it up over time, and took advantage of the clear out sales that you can find at the computer shows (none of the video cards cost more than $10, for instance). My current garden was about a year in construction, and mostly built out of leftovers from upgrades, deals too good to pass up, and hardware people gave me because they had no use for it. By taking it one box at a time, you can build a nice little solution out of what amounts to spare change.... Another good way to start is to get one of the lunchbox units; all you need to get extra is the chip, memory, and HDD. Most of them have a 10100 NIC integrated, as well as some form of integrated video. The thing about my solution is that it allows me to access the net from one of the renderboxes, while my main system is acting as the distributed render controller. The RenderCow is a =LOT= more forgiving of extra activity than Vue or VuePro is. And I have to admit that I overbuilt it a bit, simply because if I ever get competent with Truespace, -it- has an add-on for distributed rendering. And it was a nice little learning experience.... ;)

Oh, and the desktop cases came from casedepot.com, and I would recommend checking them out, as you can get some very nice bases to build into. Plus they also sell the Lian Li brushed aluminum cases... >:D

Hey Dale, what's the specs on the computers that are cows?

Gaah; Talk about missing a thread... A bit late, but...from top to bottom: (Rose) Athlon XP-1800, Chaintech Mobo, 512 megs PC-133, 40gb Maxtor HDD, integrated NIC, Jaton 8meg PCI video card. (Betsy)Athlon XP-1800, ECS mobo, 512 megs PC-133, 40gb WD HDD pretending its a Maxtor drive, another 8 meg no name Jaton type video card. (Elsie) Athlon XP-1700, Shuttle AK-38 mobo, 768megs PC-133, ECS GeForce 2MX cheapy from a computer show, Another 40 gig Maxtor HDD (can you tell I used to build up my storage space 40gb at a time?). (Bossy) Athlon XP-2500+, Gigabyte K7 board, 1 gig PC-2700 DDR Ram. Mad Dog Geforce 5200MX (had to get that; the agp port on the Gigabyte board was 4X and above). Another 40 gigs of Max HDD. The top 3 run Win2k SP-2, the bottom runs WinXP-Pro, no service packs. Aside from Norton Utilities, I have almost no other software on the garden boxes at this time. Oh yeah. All cases have 250 watt CompUSA generic Power supplies; with the minimum hardware installed, you can get away with that. Plus it keeps the electrical consumption down. Probably the biggest issue I have with things is the heat. It can get....quite warm....in my little office, with 5 computers purring away. About all the ceiling fan does is move the air around.