Hi

Recently I bought a new motherboard and assembled a PC.
The config is Intel P4 2.4ghz D845GVSR 256mb RAM,on board sound card,Dlink external modem.
I used the HDD and cd rom drive of my old pc (a branded IBM PC) for the new one.
I am dual booting Win XP and FC3 on the new pc.

Now I have this old pc as a spare PC for which I bought a HDD(40 gb) and also got a crossover cable.

old pc config
Celeron 500mhz 64mRAM 40gb HDD
CDROM drive. No floppy drive
I have connected these 2 with the crossover cable
I connected the HDD of the old pc as primary slave (IN THE NEW PC) and loaded ubuntu.
everything got loaded but grub was not configured.

Questions/Problems
1.I have disconnected this HDD and now is attached to the old pc.
I cannot boot this old pc as no boot loader exists.
How can I load GRUB on this pc or for that matter any OS
This pc does not have floppy drive, and cannot boot from cd.

2.If option (1) above is possible then how do share my monitor/keyboard and mouse between these 2 pc's


Thanks
Ninad Bapat

(1) You can try booting from the network. I don't know how, but I'm pretty sure it's possible.

(2) How about a KVM switch? I have an Iogear GCS612A that has worked fine for Windows, Mandrake, and Slackware.

Hi

Can sharing of monitor/keyboard be done with software instead of buying hardware.

Thanks and Regards
Ninad

You can use VNC to control the other computer but VNC isn't the fast solution that I've been searching for myself. The problem is a network can only run so much speed compared to a video cable going directly into the video card. So in otherwords, most software solutions would be eventually running your video signals through the network in some way (by png, BMP, etc in VNC) and this is always slower than the hardware solution. But software remote controls have other advantages, like you being able to copy/paste between computers and share a mouse and keyboard over the network.. instead of having to use a keyboard and mouse kvm switch, without clipboard capabilities.

If you make your own custom applicatoins, you could utilize two processors at once by sending remote control signals to the computer..and launching things remotely from one PC over the network, but usually it gets complex and sometimes you are just better off using one computer with two monitors.

I use multiple computers when I know the need for two processors is present.. i.e. when you are downloading a large file like an ISO it's useful to run two PC's.. Let one PC suck up all the CPU power and separate it from what you are doing on the workstation. But if you are just browsing the web or editing multiple text files at once, it's overkill.

I still wonder how VNC would perform over a 1000MB Lan.. I think it's not mainly the lan speed though, but the fact that the computer has to parse/get the images and display them through the processor.

You can get a KVM on newegg.com for about $20 shipped. Then set up samba between the two to share files. Also have the second tower wake on LAN, make a icon on your main computer, this will let you wake the other computer when needed. All you have to do is hit "Ctrl Ctrl" to switch between the two. This will be the simplest method.