How can I put the computer and hard drives in a machine room.

[rodrigal]

I want to know what is the best way to seperate the computer and drives from the monitor and Convertors. Right now I have all of this right under my Pro Control unit and it makes a lot of noise, so I want to move the computer, drives, Expansion Chasis, away and into a seperate room, but how far can I run cables from the Farm Cards to the Apogee Convertors, and to the USD adn what about the Monitor???
Has anyone done this???

[Tom Pollock]

I do this. The Digi gear seems quite picky about cable length, so I have a setup where I have a rack with my converters, synch box, and such on one side of a wall, and the CPU, expansion chassis, and drives on the other -- keeping the distance to a minimum. The supplied Digi cables are quite generous in length and more than adequate. The only long cables I need are a VGA extension for the monitor, a USB extension for the keyboard, and a somewhat long serial cable to get from my CPU to my synch box (Opcode 64xtc), and reasonably long 10baseT cables which run from a hub to my ProControl board components. Works great! I'd recommend Belkin extension cables -- available most places. They cost a bit more but I've never had issues.

[rme_uk]

So do I. It's dead silent in my control room. The machine room is next to the control room, so I could keep the Audio and MIDI interfaces in the control room. Then I bought one of the good (coaxial) 10m VGA and keyboard extension cables. I even kept my CD-R in the control room with a long Firewire cable so I don't have to go into the machine room every time I burn a CDR.

Steve
RME London

[ragbor]

Also check out gefen.com for their ex-tend-it, which allows you to extend USB/SVGA up to 330 feet. I have an older ADB/SVGA extender from them on my 9600 and it works great.

[jimmycrack]

We have a studio where all the equipment is in the machine room...70 feet away from the control room. Computer, chassis, converters, synths, and samplers are all in the machine room. The gefen extend-it usb/monitor extender doesn't do the usb reliably. If you ever restart, the usb doesn't work unless you walk back to the machine room and unplug and replug in the usb cable. Instead, I'm using 5 usb repeaters chained together...(available at usbstuff.com). This works flawlessly. Monitor extension from Gefen is great...it sends the signal down a standard cat-5e cable.

[SteveGarman]

Network Technologies Inc. has a cable only solution for keyboard, mouse and dual monitors that you can run easily over 100 feet. I have two Protools suites done this way and they work great. Total cost was about $250 each room.

[Doug Ring]

Steve, is that for a PC or a Mac?

Jimmy, thanks for posting that about the USB extenders - you're the first person I've heard say it works. I want to chain 3 x 5 metre cables together, but at £75 it would be an expensive experiment if it failed. Again, is that for a PC or a Mac?