Can I get some IT help?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Jones
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Michael Jones

Michael Jones

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A little back ground:
I'm not a complete idiot around computers;I built my recording computer, and its smoking fast!, but I am an idiot when it comes to networking or linking 2 or more computers.

So, here's my delima:
I have 3 PC's. One is used for the internet. One is used for video capture, and the other is used STRICTLY for recording. The latter has nothing on it except the OS, some device drivers, and my Nuendo recording s/w.
In Nuendo, I can of course mix down to just about any format, but if I want to post a file on the 'net, I have to copy it to CD, and load it on my internet computer. CD's are cheap, but I can never seem to keep them in stock, and I have enough coasters.
Likewise, if I want to D/L an updated driver, I have to copy it over.
And, transfering files from the video PC to the recording PC.... well, its easy enough using CD's or ZIP drives, but there's gotta be a better way?

The internet PC uses an ethernet card to interface with my cable modem.

Questions:
1.) What's the simplest way to link these PC's together?
2.) Am I better off keeping them separate?
3.) Instead of linking them to copy files, should I just get a "flash card" I think they go up to 32 MB now
4.) If linking the internet PC to the recording PC is a bad idea, I'd at least like to link the video capture PC to the Recording PC.
5.) And lastly, would linking the video PC to the recording PC degrade the performance of either?

(I told you I was an idiot!) :o
 
Buy yourself the Belkin 4 port DSL/Cable router at MicroCenter (it's on sale now for $9.99:eek:)

Plug your cable modem into the router and your three computer in as well.

You will need to set up networking, but your new router will have instructions to do so. Probably software too, but the software these things have is usually just a redundant TSR that does the same thing that your computer could do without it, depending on your OS.

Carl
 
Michael Jones said:
Questions:
1.) What's the simplest way to link these PC's together?

See my post above. If you are ambitious, I'll walk you through setting up TCP/IP with your new router so that you don't have to waste resources with a redundant TSR

2.) Am I better off keeping them separate?

I don't see why you would be.

3.) Instead of linking them to copy files, should I just get a "flash card" I think they go up to 32 MB now

"Sneaker-net" is so 1970s. Get with the new millenium and get yourself ether'd up. :D

4.) If linking the internet PC to the recording PC is a bad idea, I'd at least like to link the video capture PC to the Recording PC.

Not a bad idea at all. You can always put in safegaruds like passwords and firewalls. You don't even have to share anything beyond a single folder between all your computers. Just dump your files into this folder and move them out to an unshared one locally. Piece of cake.

5.) And lastly, would linking the video PC to the recording PC degrade the performance of either?

I don't see why it should, unless you're running bare minimum or something. Networking does not take up a lot of resources. In a small network like yours will be, traffic will be so slight, you won't notice it at all.

(I told you I was an idiot!)

Did I argue? :p

:o
Click to expand...

Carl
 
Michael Jones said:
The internet PC uses an ethernet card to interface with my cable modem.

Questions:
1.) What's the simplest way to link these PC's together?
2.) Am I better off keeping them separate?
3.) Instead of linking them to copy files, should I just get a "flash card" I think they go up to 32 MB now
4.) If linking the internet PC to the recording PC is a bad idea, I'd at least like to link the video capture PC to the Recording PC.
5.) And lastly, would linking the video PC to the recording PC degrade the performance of either?
Click to expand...

First of all: Don't be too paranoid about performance loss when connecting a DAW to a local area network. Big studios do it all the time.
A fairly simple yet effective way to connect them would be with a network card in each computer, one switch to hook them up together and sharing a drive/partition/folder on the internet PC to be able to swap files between them all.
Just don't share any drives on your recording or video PC so that they can't accidentally be accessed when you're recording that magic take.
Hooking your recording PC up to the internet PC (which would get 2 network cards) does not mean that it can access the internet or is accessible from the internet. If you don't specifically want your recording PC to connect to the internet through the internet PC, you'd just have a closed network between the three computers. Which in your case may be just the thing that you want. Keeping the video and recording PC's as clean as possible.

So if you want to put music online, you'd upload it from the recording PC to the internet PC and then from the internet PC to a server on the internet.

It is also possible to hook computers up together with USB which in some cases will be more convenient but imho not something you should consider seriously. I'd rather go for something that is specifically designed for its task.

Flash cards.. Better use USB memory sticks if you want to go this route. Fairly cheap, convenient, can store a lot (128MB is very common and bigger ones are also available). Just plug it into a free usb port and and it will pop up as an extra drive your windows explorer.
 
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