bdwillie Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 Our show computer died a hard death! I have pieced together another machine from the junk I had laying around, got it up and running today. What I have now is an old Lenovo desktop, 500 gig ssd, only 4 gigs ram, 1.6 GHZ Intel Pentium CPU J3710 64 bit. I want to say quad core but not sure. Is that good enough specs to run and schedule shows? It wouldn't be used for sequencing. S6 loaded and set up, found it's networks, just haven't pulled out any controllers to try to run a show. I did look for S6 minimum required specs but have only found Windows 10 or 11, 64 bit stated. This machine only has one memory slot so I would need to completely change the memory installed if 4 gigs isn't enough. 8 gigs looks cheap enough on Amazon, but if I don't need it that would be one less thing to buy. Thanks in advance, and yes all data from the old machine was backed up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 I'm a long time believer of providing as much power as you can afford. Regardless of my ideas, if I remember correctly, just about any reasonable machine will work for playing shows. Where you need the extra computing power is in the sequencer itself. The faster it is and more memory, the easier it is. A decent video card is a good idea too. Get the software installed, install your backed up files (Smart of you!!!) and see if you can do anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdwillie Posted July 15, 2022 Author Share Posted July 15, 2022 7 minutes ago, dgrant said: Get the software installed, install your backed up files (Smart of you!!!) and see if you can do anything. Software is installed, that worked ok, back up files in place, plan on pulling out some controllers tomorrow morning before the daily rain and giving it a shot. Fingers crossed lol! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 Without looking up specs on that CPU, I can only guess and as dgrant said, try it. Does need Win 10 or better - I proved that one last weekend. Try to run a show and bring up the Windows Task Manager and see what it's doing. That will tell you if the computer hardware can handle it. I'm may have to do a computer replacement for this year too. My current show computer that I bought in 2017 as a refurb has Windows 7. I'm going to see if it will take an update to Win 10 this weekend. If it does, I will try it on the show. If that process does not work, I'll just replace it. It's old enough that it wont hurt my feelings if it needs to be replaced. My server is doing fine running the landscape show (and it ran a subset of last year's Christmas show) on S6, but I don't normally run the Christmas show on the server - it does have other stuff to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdwillie Posted July 16, 2022 Author Share Posted July 16, 2022 UPDATE: Pulled some controllers out and hooked them up. Made a show using the 3 animation sequences we use playing simultaneously, along with a batch of musical sequences. According to task manager, there are three apps running (along with the gaggle of crap they call background processes). The three apps were LOR, task manager, and windows server connector. CPU usage never went over 40%, and memory usage never went over 60 % Hard drive was next to no activity. Looks like this old thing will work! Will keep everyone posted. Might still upgrade the memory to 8 gigs just because..... 18 hours ago, k6ccc said: My current show computer that I bought in 2017 as a refurb has Windows 7. I'm going to see if it will take an update to Win 10 this weekend. My server is doing fine running the landscape show (and it ran a subset of last year's Christmas show) on S6, but I don't normally run the Christmas show on the server - it does have other stuff to do... Jim, were old WIN 7 machines 64 bit? Don't know myself. I have one of those also that someone gave me that they hardly used since new. I haven't looked into it at all and just assumed it was 32 bit. If some were 64 bit maybe I can set it up for a backup. I never thought about using our server either. Nowadays ours just holds photos and is a movie storage tank for our network media player. It does back up the household machines at night, Wonder if LOR could be added to it's duties hmmmmm.🤔 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 Win 7 was available for both 32 and 64. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 1 hour ago, bdwillie said: Jim, were old WIN 7 machines 64 bit? Don't know myself. I have one of those also that someone gave me that they hardly used since new. I haven't looked into it at all and just assumed it was 32 bit. If some were 64 bit maybe I can set it up for a backup. I never thought about using our server either. Nowadays ours just holds photos and is a movie storage tank for our network media player. It does back up the household machines at night, Wonder if LOR could be added to it's duties hmmmmm.🤔 Yes my old show computer is 64 bit Windows 7. What OS is your server running? Mine was running Windows Server 2012 r2 (essentially the server version of Windows 8.1) until six months ago when it got upgraded to Windows Server 2019 Essentials (essentially a server version of Windows 10). The hardware is a Dell R710 rack mount 2U server. It is running S6 just fine EXCEPT that I can't run Sequencer because servers generally don't come with high grade video (not normally a requirement for a server), so it does not meet the LOR video requirements. Didn't for S5 either. All of my LOR files are saved on the server - the data drive (D:) is four 1 TB spinning disks in a RAID 5 configuration with a 5th drive as a standby (that gives my almost N-2 redundancy - unless 2 drives fail in quick succession). All three computers map the LOR directory on the server as L:\ so file transfer between computers is not really needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdwillie Posted July 16, 2022 Author Share Posted July 16, 2022 12 minutes ago, k6ccc said: What OS is your server running? Jim, Currently running WHS 2011, on an older HP Compaq refurbed business machine. Has 25 TB in the drive pool (running stablebit drive pool) with folder duplication turned on for the important stuff), 2 tb client backup, and 1 TB for the server system backup. 12 drives total. there are 5 4TB drives I picked up used from a buddy when he updated his to I think 10TB drives. Not using any raid type configuration, just folder duplication. It has been running 24/7 since 2012/3? or so and has been rock solid so far, just swapping out an occasional failing drive if needed, or adding one for the pool.. I thought about upgrading to 2019 essentials but haven't. Can you still run stablebit drive pool in 2019 essentials? I don't run my LOR files from the server, but do back them up to it. Now I will have to see if it will run on WHS2011! Sounds like a project for next week! Was 2019 essentials expensive? Does it still back up the client computers on the network? Just dug out that older WIN 7 machine and discovered it was Vista, not WIN 7. Oh well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdwillie Posted July 16, 2022 Author Share Posted July 16, 2022 1 hour ago, TheDucks said: Win 7 was available for both 32 and 64. Just dug out the old WIN 7 machine and I was wrong, It was a Vista machine. Will be stripping it down for parts now I guess! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 23 minutes ago, bdwillie said: Just dug out the old WIN 7 machine and I was wrong, It was a Vista machine. Will be stripping it down for parts now I guess! Really a shame that Showtime is not available NATIVE for Linux. Older hardware does fine on Linux. BTW you do not need lots of cores (RAM Yes!) for a SHOW (only) computer. That ones job is I/O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 43 minutes ago, bdwillie said: Now I will have to see if it will run on WHS2011! Sounds like a project for next week! Was 2019 essentials expensive? Does it still back up the client computers on the network? I am going to guess that S6 will not run on WHS2011, but it's not hard to try it... 2011 was the last WHS line was based on Server 2008 r2 - and it was replaced with the Server Essentials line with 2012. Server 2019 Essentials is the last of that line. A quick Google search found Server 2019 Essentials for about $300, but I was able to get a deal. 51 minutes ago, bdwillie said: Can you still run stablebit drive pool in 2019 essentials? I am guessing yes. I had never heard of it, but a quick look at their website makes it largely sound like a software based RAID, but I could not find any hardware / OS requirements. 53 minutes ago, bdwillie said: Does it still back up the client computers on the network? I am running it as a domain controller so all the other computers log into the domain. The Domain sets filespace on the server for everyone's home directory, so when someone goes to "My Documents" or anything under that, it is actually on the server. The only files on each local computer is the OS and programs (and a few files that programs insist on putting support files on C:). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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