linking motherboards

[shades]

does anyone know a way to link two motherboards together? i`m not refering to the beowoulf clusters, i`m interested in a direct linking of the motherboards...
tnx

[jdharm]

If not a beowoulf cluster for parallel processing, then what exactly is it you are trying to accomplish? What is the nature of the 'direct link' you propose?


Josh

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[shades]

let`s just say i want to link the motherboards in a more intimate way :). Through their IDE, got any idea?

[jdharm]

I'm still unclear on what you are trying to do. What is the purpose? I'm not being nosy, its just that there is no way to say how to do a thing if we don't even know what it is we are trying to do.


Josh

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[shades]

i want to use the ide controler to connect two motherboards, i was just wondering if anyone has ever done this and if it`s possible. i`m about to do it myself :), don`t know if i`ll get anything good out of this (probably two messed motherboards) but i`m a curious person...

[jdharm]

Hmmm. Let's try this another way.

Yes. You can plug an ide cable into one motherboard and then plug the other end into another board.

But then what? What do you expect this link to accomplish?


Josh

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[dromjalgat]

supposing you linkied them via the pci slot.?

I have no idea how to do this or even if its possible.

the idea is to create somethink more like a dual processor motherboard rather than a loose bow-wolf (sic) system

[shades]

did u try anything like that? :))

[Brf]

How about duct-taping them together? Maybe take your shoelace and stick it into a spare PCI slot on one board and an ISA slot on the other?

[dromjalgat]

The duct tape or the PCI to PCI? ;-)

No I never tried randomly connect two motherboards via pci slots, presumably I would have to make up some cables to solder to a couple of old pci boards and figure out which pins to link to which pins. Then I would have to get a nice big trash can to put the resulting trash into.

Ho Ho Ho the duct tape gag was VERY funny.
The IDE connect was pretty funny too, but I personally have no idea if some sufficiently wizardly wizard couldt hook two motherboard up via their IDE sockets. If anyone knows that this is fundamentally impossible please post it.

My best answer to the question is that IDE sockets are used to connect fairly dumb devices like hard disks and drives whereas PCI is used to connect all sorts of components like graphics cards, network cards, disk controllers, sounds cards etc etc etc

off hand I have never heard of a pci cpu plug-in card,

I am basically a database software programmer with an interest in hardware. Ive coonected systems using beowulf and set up dual processor motherboards, so I understand the difference. Essentially what Im fantasing abaout is something in between the two.

I know that if you did make the physical connections and didnt fry the motherboards you would still have to write some fancy software somewhere btween the bios and the operating system to route instructions across the motherboards. I know this is never going to happen but neither is faster than light travel, so humour me OK?

[dromjalgat]

ok I googled "PCI CPU" so now Ive heard about them

[Brf]

I was kidding about the duct tape. We tech-types are trying to figure out what the questioner is trying to accomplish by linking two motherboards.

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Brf on 03/11/05 10:49.</FONT></P>

[dromjalgat]

so whats the answer?

[jdharm]

My opinion...

So I think the answer is that yes, the physical connection across a pci or ide bus is probably easily done. Any yes, if you do it right you might even accidentally bounce a few 1s and 0s back and forth. But I would imagine that the "data" would be low, component-level interaction. I can't imagine anything you might get across the connection would be accessible or even meaningful on a practical (or impractical for that matter) level without some outrageously convoluted and time consuming bit-twiddling software being custom written.

But then I'm not an engineer who designs these systems, I just keep them working. My conception of the architecture of these things may be way off.

Josh
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[Rushpro1851]

sorry, not possable (unless there are some 3rd party BIOS chips) cool idea though!

[sirchicken]

Ive been thinking baout the eaxact same thing, just lately.
Ive been wondering ig it would be poissible to run 2 independant systems(2 MBs cpus and 2 lots of memory) within the same case. I was hoping ot be able to link them via a pci bus, so that when the processor load on one got high 90% + it could shuffle some realtime processing over to the other system(providing that it had available cpu time).
It would also be really cool if they could access the same set of hard drives (probably through the raid architecture).

Im guessing that iif it was possible, it would be acomplished through a pci card with a piggy back system similar to that of the pcix graphics cards. Im guessing the card would need its own processor to manage the ocmmunication between systems, and probably a cahc of some sort to speed up the communication.
It would also need a set fo sfotware drivers to nominate primary processes, assign processor and resource loading etc.
Got know idea if this is possible or not, but it is interesting.

p.s. The reason ive been thinking of this is actually for more of a gaming purpose eg say your running a deddicated game server on one of the motherboards and playing the game on the other, theoretically the server would probably have alot of spare processor time. If during the playing of the game there was a processor spike in either of the MB's they could begin to share the processing. I thought about traditional clustering, but the transmission times wouldnt be fast enough to cope with this type of processing (i think)

[just a guest]

i wouldn't listen to Josh or Brf knowledge . hell they dont even know how to do simple html code lol


Josh
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.jdharm.com>www.jdharm.com</a>

Brf
<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Brf on 03/11/05 10:49.</FONT></P>

[BertImmenschuh]

Someone else doesn't know how to post URLs. On this forum additional coding doesn't have to be added to make a valid URL clickable.
http://www.jdharm.com/

And on this forum it is the vB code that is in play.
http://www.pctools.com/forum/misc.php?do=bbcode

[jdharm]

@ guest

For your information that wasn't meant to be html code. That was the 'markup' code from the old system and it worked just fine at the time. It broke when everything got moved over to the php system.

If you had bothered to look around a bit before posting what seems to be an insult you would have seen a lot of broken code on these forums and that all of it is old.

Like this thread you decided to resurrect. The most recent post is from a year and a half ago.




Oooo. I've got a witty retort, too:

Don't listen to 'just a guest'. Hell, he doesn't even know how to do simple sentences using proper grammar, capitals and punctuation. LOL.





i wouldn't listen to Josh or Brf knowledge . hell they dont even know how to do simple html code lol

[y eye]

939SLI32-ESATA2/A/ASR: Motherboard Part No.90-MXG200-A0UAYZ

939CPU BOARD/CPU CARD/ASR: BOARD/CPU CARD/ASR Part No.90-CXS0D0-00UANZ

The motherboard has a PCI type socket between the first PCIE socket and the main CPU for the BOARD/CARD. The card has RAM slots on board.

This plug and play dual CPU setup is a dual motherboard to go...
It might be a reference for a home made project.
y

[Devildriver]

lol you guys are F*$@ing Retarded USE the Gigabit Ethernet port! why with the IDE? this was an article in pop sci right next to copper plate your ipod google microwolf guy linked 4 ... yes 4 motherboards together .... yea i love that part go look at the pic ... 26 gigaflops wtf that is ........and it runs ubuntu :O yes!

the only other way i know is to make a bigger chipset sandwich

go to pop sci or www.calvin.edu/~adams for info

http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/design/
http://www.beowulf.org/

[akmo0]

The Two pcs connected via PCi AGP IDE SATA ETHERNET or what ever!?

OK so I beleave it is possible on a lvl consider, If that Microsoft wanted this on Windows 7 they could probley emulate your bios , creat the additional patch for all software , write the drivers to the connecting device, plus provide an additional slave OS for the other pc and funtional software for the master.


To even have a chance at this idea I imagine you would have to.

1)Flash both bios and rewrite them both one in a slave format the other as a master.
2)REwrite all drivers to support the cluster. North Bridge may be the Key
3)Have a different OS because Microsoft isnt going to let you program In your special program that syncs proccesses.(in the task manager).
4)you will probley need a Ethernet router with features to deal with data packet collision-If ethernet is your choice
5)Software SOFTWARE SOFTWARE

ITS NOT IN THE HARDWARE ITS IN THE SOFTWARE.