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Does worldgroup nt support dual processor servers, or will there be no advantage of using dual cpus with worldgroup?

Malakai wrote:Does worldgroup nt support dual processor servers, or will there be no advantage of using dual cpus with worldgroup?

I do not beleive it will support more than one directly but the NT server will take advantage of it.

Joe

ccs wrote:

Malakai wrote:Does worldgroup nt support dual processor servers, or will there be no advantage of using dual cpus with worldgroup?

I do not beleive it will support more than one directly but the NT server will take advantage of it.

Joe

I have a dual Pentium MMX 200mx server (old one) with NT 4.0 SP 6.a, which I use to run and test software before I put it on my main servers. Most software isn't written to take advantage of the dual processors, but NT is, and this old server operates like a single NT 4.0 500-800mhz sever. My WG 3.2 runs great on it.

With the faster servers, I can't tell the difference between dual and single. I manage a dual Xenon which sits next to a single Xeon server, both running MS 2003, and performance seems the same. <they are not mine to play with so I don't know how well WG would run on them>

--the problem is getting matched processors that work well together, found out the hard way you can't pair just any two chips.

Toyduck

Thanks for the answers. How fast of a pc do you think i'd need to run majormud full speed? I've tried it on a test server at p III 933mhz, and it has some problems going in and out of some places in the map. Some 2-second delays and such from room to room some times..

I have my eye on a few quad 700mhz cpu pIIIs and xeon servers.

Malakai wrote:Thanks for the answers. How fast of a pc do you think i'd need to run majormud full speed? I've tried it on a test server at p III 933mhz, and it has some problems going in and out of some places in the map. Some 2-second delays and such from room to room some times..

Make sure you have enough RAM. If you are running server version of NT - 2000 - 2003, there is no such thing as too much. The requirements MS puts out are minimium; not optional/functional requirements..

How much did you have on your test PIII/933?

Toyduck

512MB RAM, Windows XP sp3.. Part of the problem could be the older hard drive on it, but it's not too slow compared to some others. The servers I'm looking at will have appx 2gb RAM.

Malakai wrote:512MB RAM, Windows XP sp3.. Part of the problem could be the older hard drive on it, but it's not too slow compared to some others. The servers I'm looking at will have appx 2gb RAM.

Yes, I would recommend at least 1gb RAM, more if possible. I'm running mine on MS server 2000 with 2GB ram. I'm using IDE drives, plan on switching to SCSI RAID when I can afford it. Even with newer IDE drives I notice an occasional lag also, which seems to be during drive access. It's not bad and I don't think WG is responsible for it...

Toyduck

Well, I ended up getting a dual 1.26ghz server w/512mb RAM. It'll probably be about a month before it's on-line, because of waiting for shipping and having to buy a scsi hard drive for it. I know it's not going to be the fastest server out there, but it should do a bit better than the 950mhz one.

thanks

Well, the server was suppose to be delivered today, but since the shipper chose fedex, who knows when/if it will arrive. You will not believe how much trouble I've personally had with fedex over the years. I'd say the last 3 packages that were sent here had the delivery screwed up.

They some times say they attempted delivery and no one was home to receive package, even though that's not true. Other times, they say they can't find the address.

So, each and every time, I have to call them, email them, etc, and explain that I went through this the last 10 times with their company and am fed up with them. (FedUp with FedEx, yeah).

We get all of these apologies and "we'll try to delivery it again"

The last package, that was suppose to be here in around 4 days ended up coming 1 month later, after many phone calls.

All fedex would have to do is to find the address once, mark it on their GPS, and then deliver the packages in a timely manner each time, but we have to go through this crap almost every single time.

Also, even when fedex could find the addresses before, 10+ years ago, they were never delivered on time. If I next day some thing, and it doesn't arrive until 3 days later, then there is some thing wrong.

When I bought PCBoard COD, in the early 90s, they were pretty good, even stayed up late delivering packages, with the exception of not being on time. The lady that delivered that to me delivered it at around 9:30PM, and that surprised me, but it was cool that they actually delivered their packages instead of fiddling around with themselves doing who knows what.

Well, I guess we'll wait and see how many "delivery exceptions" there are this time.

I've had the same problem with FedEx recently on TWO packages (separately sent).

They try to deliver (a signature-in-person required box) during the DAY to a residence (or at NIGHT to a business!)... then they 2nd and 3rd day they claim to have tried to come but never came.

This is a repeated problem - it seems to have been FedEx Ground both times, which is a different service with different package centers, etc.

I now avoid FedEx like the plague.

I doubt it. worldgroup was written on Nt 3.51
way way before dual processers came out, I think.
jeez, mbbs was written on a 386 cpu machine.

frcorey wrote:I doubt it. worldgroup was written on Nt 3.51
way way before dual processers came out, I think.
jeez, mbbs was written on a 386 cpu machine.

the unreleased 1.1 prolly on an xt

Well, a lot of new applications are supporting SMP, due to hyperthreading, etc. So, maybe if worldgroup ever does get an update, that would be another thing that could be put on the support list.

Even with it not being supported, I think the server will be a bit faster than the 950mhz duron that it's currently running on. The server will run dual 1.26ghz PIII cpus, not sure how much cache, but probably more than the duron. It'll also be have 1.5gb of ECC Registered RAM. The hard drives I bought for it are only 7200 rpm ultra160, which aren't the fastest scsi drives around (15k rpm is probably the fastest), but since windows xp pro supports SMP itself, there could be a general performance boost. Worldgroup won't be the only thing running, as there will be several other applications running in the background. Maybe one or more of those apps will support SMP as well.

I'm definately going to experiment with it before bringing it on-line though. The RAM, hard drives, etc have already arrived. So, I'm just waiting on the server now..

Malakai wrote:Well, a lot of new applications are supporting SMP, due to hyperthreading, etc. So, maybe if worldgroup ever does get an update, that would be another thing that could be put on the support list.

Even with it not being supported, I think the server will be a bit faster than the 950mhz duron that it's currently running on. The server will run dual 1.26ghz PIII cpus, not sure how much cache, but probably more than the duron. It'll also be have 1.5gb of ECC Registered RAM. The hard drives I bought for it are only 7200 rpm ultra160, which aren't the fastest scsi drives around (15k rpm is probably the fastest), but since windows xp pro supports SMP itself, there could be a general performance boost. Worldgroup won't be the only thing running, as there will be several other applications running in the background. Maybe one or more of those apps will support SMP as well.

I'm definately going to experiment with it before bringing it on-line though. The RAM, hard drives, etc have already arrived. So, I'm just waiting on the server now..

not a bad system there

personally i just built an amd athlon/64-fx 3800+
2gb ram, 250 gb hd, 512mb bgi-nvidia video card and wanna know what
its one i use for just simple game playing and such but i wanted to test something so i temporarily installed wg on it so i could test a c/s problem havok was having and ran into some simple lag problems too.

so its definately in the memory handlers of wg itself.

Well, I've also been reading comparisons and reviews between win 2000 and win xp, and from what I can tell, Windows 2000 does a much faster and better job at database management, at a minimum of 11% faster, and since worldgroup is just a big btrieve database, maybe I'll try to run it in win 2000 this time. I run my door game server on windows 2000 currently.

I'm definately not trying to compete with computer specs here, for 2 reasons. For one, I can't afford a 3+ ghz system, and secondly, I wouldn't use a 3ghz or dual or quad 3ghz system for worldgroup. I just want it to run smoothly. I personally don't think worldgroup will ever make full use of 1.5GB of RAM either. So, there would be no use in upgrading it to the max 4gb this system supports.

Back when worldgroup 3 came out, there were no 3ghz systems, and I'm guessing a lot of people probably ran it on win 95, 98, and nt 3. So, that could probably account for the speed/lag changes between maybe win 2000 and xp and just generally the need for speed increases with each new OS.

well, and win 2000 handled 16 bit code much better than win xp does too.

frcorey wrote:well, and win 2000 handled 16 bit code much better than win xp does too.

i agree with that, windows 2000 handles wg 3.x really good.
and if the client user is using 2k no patching.

Well, I saw the fedex truck driving as fast as they could through the small highway near my home today at 10am, and they didn't slow down or stop or any thing. These drivers don't even look for the houses. It was suppose to be here on the 1st, and it's the 5th, still don't have my server.

The bad thing about fedex drivers is that they contract out and can not be fired by fedex, and they probably never get fired even from their employers, with out multiple extreme circumstances.

Now, some thing similar happened with UPS the last time I had a package shipped from them too. The driver was pretty wreckless. He kept stating that he came to the address and no one was there to receive the package. After 2 or 3 "attempted" deliveries, which I tracked on-line, called them several times, etc.. Any way, they delivered the package to some address like 2 cities away, an address that didn't have any similarities at all.

Now, in this case, they told the driver to go back and pick up the package, and if it was gone or he otherwise couldn't get it, he would be responsible for it. I don't know if they fired him or what, but I know they got on his ass good.

Malakai wrote:Well, I saw the fedex truck driving as fast as they could through the small highway near my home today at 10am, and they didn't slow down or stop or any thing. These drivers don't even look for the houses. It was suppose to be here on the 1st, and it's the 5th, still don't have my server.

The bad thing about fedex drivers is that they contract out and can not be fired by fedex, and they probably never get fired even from their employers, with out multiple extreme circumstances.

Now, some thing similar happened with UPS the last time I had a package shipped from them too. The driver was pretty wreckless. He kept stating that he came to the address and no one was there to receive the package. After 2 or 3 "attempted" deliveries, which I tracked on-line, called them several times, etc.. Any way, they delivered the package to some address like 2 cities away, an address that didn't have any similarities at all.

Now, in this case, they told the driver to go back and pick up the package, and if it was gone or he otherwise couldn't get it, he would be responsible for it. I don't know if they fired him or what, but I know they got on his ass good.

yeah had the same problem with UPS.
they delivered it to some other address 4 days late and when i called em they said i was the shippers fault, contacted the shipper and they gave the right address so to make a long story short 2 weeks later find out UPS input the wrong address on the package and still said it was my fault.

i use DHL now. so far so good.

Oh, when I finally got that UPS shipment, I think it had like 5 address labels stuck on it, a note, a copied thing paper from mapquest, and the box was just in terrible condition. Luckily, it was 4-leg ribbon cable for large satellites and not any thing fragile.

Malakai wrote:Oh, when I finally got that UPS shipment, I think it had like 5 address labels stuck on it, a note, a copied thing paper from mapquest, and the box was just in terrible condition. Luckily, it was 4-leg ribbon cable for large satellites and not any thing fragile.

my mom shipped something once and put it in a box that said fragile, just coincidence really only box she could find, and when the package got here it looked like it was literally crushed onm the top, all 4 corners were smashed in, same deal as you mentioned, showed UPS and they said how do we know you didnt do that?

LOL

I once got my brand new Dell PowerEdge 2500 server from
Fedex with a huge dent in the box, they said the server was safe, but after I unpacked it, it had a huge dent in it also.
Dell had to send a new one, and fedex had to eat a 3000.00
server. funny thing is too, the dented server worked fine when I played with it, those servers had the boards away from the
case walls to keep them running cool. looked bad, ran good.
but, one of the 36 gig scsi hd's went bad.

frcorey wrote:I once got my brand new Dell PowerEdge 2500 server from
Fedex with a huge dent in the box, they said the server was safe, but after I unpacked it, it had a huge dent in it also.
Dell had to send a new one, and fedex had to eat a 3000.00
server. funny thing is too, the dented server worked fine when I played with it, those servers had the boards away from the
case walls to keep them running cool. looked bad, ran good.
but, one of the 36 gig scsi hd's went bad.

yeah my presario is like that i can hit it throw it,etc.. the motherboard sits on springs

Well, I finally got the server and was a little overwelmed at the size of it and the fact that it did not have any place for internal hard drives. The cd-rom and floppy drives are also built together, and appear to be like laptop drives. The floppy has one of those fragile ribbon cables (the ones with no ends, just bare metal on the end that has to be pushed straight in to a slot, or it bends up or breaks and becomes useless).

I took the hot-swap conversion kit out of it, which takes up the 2 5.25" drive slots, and will be trying to construct some home-made rails to hold a dvd writer in place, and try to also construct a platform and rails to hold one of the scsi drives in place as well. I'll probably end up selling the conversion kit on ebay, because the server also has 3 hotswap slots built in.

It also has 1 pci slot, 2 pci-64 bit 33mhz slots, and 2 pci 64-bit 66mhz slots. Is there any thing other than network and scsi controllers built for these slots?

I currently have a test setup (not on-line) before getting all of the parts I need to put the new dual cpu server up full time, but I found out the problem with the 933mhz pc and majormud was not the 933mhz processor but majormud itself.

I installed it on the dual cpu system and was still getting a laggy/delayed response moving from room to room... So, I decided some thing else was wrong. Well, I logged on to high society BBS, and the same thing occurs there.

I don't have that problem with swords of chaos or any other program. It seems like MajorMud just wasn't optimized properly.. I don't know if the DOS version had the same problem or not, but I can't see how any of the players can stand it.

Malakai wrote:I currently have a test setup (not on-line) before getting all of the parts I need to put the new dual cpu server up full time, but I found out the problem with the 933mhz pc and majormud was not the 933mhz processor but majormud itself.

I installed it on the dual cpu system and was still getting a laggy/delayed response moving from room to room... So, I decided some thing else was wrong. Well, I logged on to high society BBS, and the same thing occurs there.

I don't have that problem with swords of chaos or any other program. It seems like MajorMud just wasn't optimized properly.. I don't know if the DOS version had the same problem or not, but I can't see how any of the players can stand it.

I can believe that, I heard gameport really butchered lance's majormud code after they bought it.
so I can believe it's engine has problems.

Well, what was the last non-gameport version of majormud for 3.xnt?

Well, my terminator arrived today (yeah, I wish these people would ship their servers with all of the accessories, but they don't) and the new server is on-line. Unfortunately, I'm still using XP, because I don't have a bootable version of windows 2000, and I couldn't get win '9x boot cds to boot to dos or any thing. I guess they don't know what to do with the dual processors or just don't have the correct drivers for some of the hardware.

Any way, I usually install win '98 and then 2K upgrade... but now I guess I need to go out and buy the full version later on.. Can't afford it now :/