Well I thought I would throw this out there. Yes I did some searching but not able to find a satisfactory answer. As broad as the question is, I am hoping for a few broad ideas. Like the heading states, what could you build with 9 machines? An array? A pile of junk? I just feel that somehow connecting all the CPUs, mother boards, graphic cards ... 6 zip drives, 2 CDROM cardridges, 8 DVD drives, could make somthing kinda neat. It's been a long night, so Ill check back and try and post pictures, or a more detailed list if anyone finds the topic worth replying to. Thanks for any input and constructive ideas!
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What is possible to build..with 4 G3 and 4 G4 and 1G5 all in great shape?
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Interesting idea. The power consumption ratio to processing power would not be ideal I would guess though..
A little network for all your friends to play games on? Things like voyager elite force are fun and would run well. Or warcraft 3. In terms of CPU power those are all pretty obsolete, allowing for overheads you'd be much better off with one or two quad-core hackintoshes/windows systems. If you're just doing it for the experience then I suppose you could play with networking, and running file/webservers, and as the others say, you could fold on them.
Sell them and get a nice Mini for a decent price.
Should be better for rendering, maybe not in pure CPU power, but in terms of better software support.
Even if you want to play a little with networking, a Mini and some VM's will do better and cheaper, especially if you consider the power consumption of 9 PowerPC Macintoshes.
Personally, I would not like to pay the bills for them if they are running 24/7.
Should be better for rendering, maybe not in pure CPU power, but in terms of better software support.
Even if you want to play a little with networking, a Mini and some VM's will do better and cheaper, especially if you consider the power consumption of 9 PowerPC Macintoshes.
Personally, I would not like to pay the bills for them if they are running 24/7.
1. Give them away to someone who does not have a computer
2. Recycle them
3. Sell them - would they be worth the postage?
4. Make a bonfire!
2. Recycle them
3. Sell them - would they be worth the postage?
4. Make a bonfire!
Actually, for a question related to setting up a render farm... Let's say there's an Intel machine on XGrid, sending out rendering info to PPC machines. Does XGrid desciminate between machines and OSes, or does it follow Apple's maxim of "Just Work"ing?
Considering some of those machines would only have a 10/100Mhz LAN, it would be pretty slow. Even with 1Ghz LAN, I don't think it's all that easy.
Assumming the OP was to run Leopard on all of those systems and all the networking is done via a fast switch, you'll still need an application that supports XGrid and there ain't that many to be honest plus different applications requires a slightly different set up.
I know Maya Unlimited, Shake, Compressor and Mental Ray does and maybe Motion as well but that's your lot (i think). Oh, Adobe's After Effects does support Xgrid but you need to install Adobe's own engine there plus it needs a central server for it's data..
In case anyone is wondering, FCP doesn't.
The other option is to use them to crunch/compiling code.