Personal computing discussed

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dolemitecomputers
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 1:10 pm

I just setup a DVD drive in my main computer (see my thread in the graphics section). I have my laptop and other computer networked under windows 2000 (main) and windows xp (laptop). I want to be able to share the drive and play a movie on the laptop. The problem Im running into is that the drive does not show up as a drive on the laptop but as a shared folder so the DVD software cannot recognize it. Is there any way to force windows to recognize it as a drive? Do I use the "map a network drive" option?
 
ANApex
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 1:16 pm

First off explain how you shared the drive. I'm not familiar with XP yet but assuming it's very similar to 2k there are ways that you could share a drive that would be displayed like you are saying. So please explain the steps you took and we'll see if we can get you fixed up.
 
dolemitecomputers
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 1:38 pm

I am setting this up from windows 2000. To share one of the drives I just right clicked on it and selected sharing. Then I selected to share the drive. I typed in a name for it and then selected apply. Once I do that the drive shows up on the other computer but as a shared folder.
 
combo
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 2:16 pm

Try mapping the drive, or there is another way I can explain when im not in school.
 
dolemitecomputers
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 2:41 pm

You're right combo. If I map the drive it shows up as a drive letter and drive under my computer.
 
ANApex
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 2:51 pm

yep mapping was the way to go I just wanted to be sure you were sharing it the correct way first before I spouted that out. It seems strange to me that XP would auto detect network shares and display them as a folder. Oh well one more reason for me to not use it :wink:
 
fink
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Fri Jan 11, 2002 9:02 pm

I hate to tell you this, but playing DVD's or video files over anything but a gigabit network is impossible. There is just not enough bandwidth in a 100T network to carry high quality video.
 
keifront
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 8:19 am

On 2002-01-11 20:02, fink wrote:
I hate to tell you this, but playing DVD's or video files over anything but a gigabit network is impossible. There is just not enough bandwidth in a 100T network to carry high quality video.


I haven't got a problem with this I can play video files from over my network without a clitch.
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Steel
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 1:46 pm

On 2002-01-11 20:02, fink wrote:
I hate to tell you this, but playing DVD's or video files over anything but a gigabit network is impossible. There is just not enough bandwidth in a 100T network to carry high quality video.
That may be (somewhat) true for uncompressed video, but not for a compressed video stream. DVD is 6Mbps and would play just fine over a high quality 10baseT connection. Even HDTV is only 24Mbps - would work fine over a 100TX connection.
 
Forge
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 2:03 pm

fink - my latest monster 1600x1200 DivX stream begs to differ, as does the MPEG2 stream I started with. 100baseT streamed 16x12 MPEG2 quite nicely, thanks. Was near capacity, and congestion is minimal, but it's quite doable.
 
dolemitecomputers
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 2:04 pm

I did get it going and it is too slow. The frame rates seems very low but the movie does play. It could be because the laptop is about half of the computer the other is i.e. processor, memory, bus etc.
 
Steel
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 2:14 pm

If your laptop is using a PCMCIA network card as opposed to a Cardbus or integrated one, I could see that happening. There's also the overhead in Windows networking to consider. You could try NetBEUI instead of TCP/IP for filesharing, I've found it to be a bit faster.
 
TwoFer
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 6:44 pm

IIRC his notebook is running XP, which doesn't support NetBEUI by default... you can add it, I understand, but as I'm boycotting XP I dunno how to do it. :)
 
Steel
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Sat Jan 12, 2002 8:01 pm

I think I remember it mentioned that it's in a seperate directory on the CD. As I'm also boycotting XP, I can't be for sure. :wink:
 
fink
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Tue Jan 15, 2002 1:41 pm

Ok - I stand corrected. "I" have never been able to get it to work over 100T ethernet, guess others must be doing something differently than me to get it to work....
 
fink
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Tue Jan 15, 2002 1:41 pm

Ok - I stand corrected. "I" have never been able to get it to work over 100T ethernet, guess others must be doing something differently than me to get it to work....
 
Fugazi
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Tue Jan 15, 2002 3:59 pm

From MS Knowledge Base:


Install NetBEUI on Windows XP


The files necessary for installing the NetBEUI protocol on Windows XP are Netnbf.inf and Nbf.sys. Complete the following steps to install NetBEUI:
Insert your Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and browse to the ValueaddMSFTNetNetBEUI folder.


Copy Nbf.sys to the %SYSTEMROOT%System32Drivers directory.


Copy Netnbf.inf to the %SYSTEMROOT%Inf hidden directory.


Click Start , click Control Panel , and then double-click Network Connections .


Right-click the adapter you want to add NetBEUI to, and then click Properties .


On the General tab, click Install .


Click Protocol , and then click Add .


Click to select NetBEUI Protocol from the list and then click OK .


Restart your computer if you receive a prompt to complete the installation.


The NetBEUI protocol should now be installed and working.

NOTE : %SYSTEMROOT% is a Windows environment variable that identifies the directory where Windows XP is installed (for example, C:Windows). To view the value associated with %SYSTEMROOT%, as well as other environment variables, at a command prompt, type set , and then press ENTER.



Why not IPX? I thought that was supposed to be fast as well (maybe just games though).
 
Mr Bill
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Sat Mar 16, 2002 10:15 pm

Thanks for this thread guys. This is something I never tried on my network and I'm off to try it.
 
Mr Bill
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 1:31 am

OK, on my home network I have three PC's with 10/100 NIC's sharing a Dlink DI-704 10/100 switch and by using VNC two of them share the same monitor, and etcetera. Also I can hook up a KVM box to any two of these PC's because they are all sitting side by side (my tiny Beowulf cluster).

I shared my DVD drive over the network. Then I installed WinDVD and found that YES! I can play DVD's over the network from the shared DVD drive. Smooth. But no sound!. Too bad the good sound card is in the same box as the DVD drive. Deal with that later.

So, then I think what if I open a VNC window to the PC that has the DVD drive but play it through VNC on the other PC and monitor. So this works, I have a VNC window playing the movie with sound but no picture (its greyed out). This is either a VNC problem or WinDVD is detecting transmission of signal over IP and blocking it. I'm going over to the VNC website and read up on this. But if any of you have ideas they would be welcome.
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Speed
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 3:47 am

VNC simply can't keep up with all the changes that a full motion video puts to the screen. Every desktop program that I know of is designed to save bandwidth, so it's just not the right kind of program for the job.

You can 1) get the DVD drive, software and sound card on the machine that is hooked up to the monitor, 2) buy a second monitor, 3) invest in a streaming media server, or 4) get a KVM switch.
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Mr Bill
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 9:38 am

Speed wrote:
VNC simply can't keep up with all the changes that a full motion video puts to the screen. Every desktop program that I know of is designed to save bandwidth, so it's just not the right kind of program for the job.


Agreed, that sounds like the best explaination.

Speed wrote:
You can 1) get the DVD drive, software and sound card on the machine that is hooked up to the monitor, 2) buy a second monitor, 3) invest in a streaming media server, or 4) get a KVM switch.


Yeah, I'll go with 2 and 4 since I have those already. I'll share the DVD drive over the network; play DVD's on a different PC using the shared DVD; use the KVM switch between the non DVD PC's to give it the second monitor.

I think its pretty cool that it works.
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Speed
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 10:05 am

Looks like a plan to me. Of course all the fun is in trying to rig things up that was never intended to work that way. :D
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dan@imprezion
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 10:31 am

Terminal Server into the laptop, VNC cant keep up but terminal server can.
 
Mr Bill
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Wed Apr 10, 2002 8:23 pm

What is a terminal server?

Right now I am sitting here watching Six String Samuri on the other monitor. I see about 3% CPU utilization on this Athlon 900 MHz PC with the DVD drive, but 85% CPU utilization on the K6-3 450 running WinDVD and playing the DVD as a network mounted drive. The sound uses the hardware on the PC actually playing the video. This is cool.

Speed said: "Of course all the fun is in trying to rig things up that was never intended to work that way."

You are right on there. ':P'
 
Speed
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Re: What is Terminal Server

Wed Apr 10, 2002 8:49 pm

First a little background. Back in the first age of centralized computing, when there were mainframes and dumb terminals, the terminals were connected to the computer by serial lines similar to the ones used for modems. When local area networks became popular, somebody invented a device called a terminal server that interfaced the old, hard-wired serial lines to the new, packet-switched LAN. So instead of having to have a dedicated serial line to the mainframe, you can get to the mainframe using a networked PC and terminal emulation software.

Windows Terminal Services is an extension to Windows that allows users to access multiple Windows desktops from the very same machine. Instead of hooking up multiple consoles to the machine, WTS uses an IP protocol to send the desktop images to the client software on a PC, very much like the old terminal server scheme does. Instead of a single mainframe, WTS uses one or more server grade PCs running Windows NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition or Windows 2000 Server with WTS licenses installed. The idea is to once more concentrate the computing power in the data center, and to save money by replacing PCs with low maintenance thin clients. (The concept is badly flawed, BTW.)

If you're running Windows 2000 Server, you can configure WTS to serve up a maximum of 2 sessions for administrative purposes, without having to pay for expensive WTS + NT Licenses. I don't believe that will really give you the ability to do high quality, full motion video.
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Mr Bill
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Thu Apr 11, 2002 12:18 am

Thanks for the explaination. WTS in its final implementation sounds similar to VNC. But oh so importantly, WTS is controlled by Microsoft. It must really frost M$ that a program like VNC is so tiny, easy to use, and FREE.':lol:'
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Speed
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Thu Apr 11, 2002 3:37 am

The history of WTS makes a fascinating read. It's paying for it that's the tough part. ;) VNC was originally written to support thin client devices, as was WTS. So there are some parallels. Microsoft's RDP (remote desktop protocol) was cobbled together as an alternative to the Citrix ICA protocol. Citrix is the product that started serving up multiple Windows desktops across the network.

Citrix actually licensed the entire Windows NT 3.51 operating system, and released their own custom version of NT as their first successful product (the first version was for OS/2). Microsoft naturally wanted to get in on the game, but for whatever reason, they couldn't do the usual "embrace and extend" thing. So starting with NT 4.0, Microsoft stopped licensing the OS, but instead worked with Citrix to include the basic multiple desktop technology with a special version of NT, giving birth to WTS. WTS used the IP-only RDP protocol, and had no support for file transfer, encryption or having multiple clients per session etc. That left a market for Citrix and ICA.

The ostensible reason for going the thin client route is to reduce the cost of computing, but when you add up the costs of a typical Citrix installation it becomes clear that it's a huge money pit. Even for WTS alone, you need no fewer than three separate Windows licenses per seat -- 1 Windows NT/2000 Server license, one Windows NT/2000 Workstation license for the remote desktop, and finally one Windows license for the client device. Technically you only need a single workstation license if you're running NT/2000 on the client, but if that's the case, you're not doing thin client, and therefore are not saving any money on the client side anyway.

In theory, all of the administrative chores are supposed to be consolidated in the datacenter, so a WTS or Citrix shop will be able to cut back dramatically on field staff. And since it's "just Windows", the existing NOS admins are supposed to absorb the extra workload without complaint. The reality is much different. Because there's simply no facility to work on user registries, except by being logged in as that user, the support role is remarkably similar -- the support tech has to physically track down the user, have the user log in and then relenquish the session, and troubleshoot at that user's desk. Because Windows lacks many of the bulk administration tools that UNIX admins take for granted, even server-side work involves a lot of hand work, either to administer directly, or to set up an automation system from scratch.

In the end, Citrix and/or WTS costs about 4X as much as the traditional PC-LAN setup, and is about half as efficient. Just in case anybody out there has warm fuzzies about playing with the technology...
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Mr Bill
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Thu Apr 18, 2002 10:21 am

Looks like I've gacked myself. After getting WinDVD to play over the LAN sucessfully, its hosed. I decided, naturally after getting things working with newsoftware, to update my fixpack and and ran WinNT fixpack 6 followed by the security update. I had not put the security update on this box prior to this. After the final reboot, WinDVD no longer plays over LAN. This is very annoying and I'm not absolutely sure its the security update that did this but its a mighty close coincidence. Removing and re-installing WinDVD does not restore functionality.

Any thoughts on this?
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Mr Bill
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Thu Apr 18, 2002 10:28 am

I forgot to mention a second possible cause. As you may know some software (k-meleon for example) can't display menues properly unless you install IE6. You can then uninstall IE6 and the menues still work. WinDVD although playing properly, had a distorted improperly displayed control interface. So, I installed IE6 and media player just before the fixpack and security updates to see if this fixed that problem. It did not and of course WinDVD now no longer plays. Uninstalling IE6 and media player does not help either.
 
Mr Bill
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Fri Apr 19, 2002 1:16 am

Switching to backups captain!

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