CompuServe Messages

John, Thanks for the reply. The machine running 3DS needs to be rendering or playing the keyframer. I don't see it if 3DS is just sitting there. I'm guessing if 3DS is sitting idle, the problem is still there, just more intermittent. I would expect my system to act like yours – if the 3DS system is rendering, the other computer sees a delay. I have a batch file that I run to sync the clocks before I run 3DS. The network cards are running at there normal slow pace, so I don't think the speed difference of the machines makes a difference. I even went out and bought new lan cards – I had EtherExpress 16 and bought the PRO/10s. The Intel EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI lan cards are out, running at 100 Mbps – think I'll trade up. Doing the DIR test is a test to expose the problem. I can still render over the network, it's just the fact that sooner or later in the middle of the night the master computer is going to crash. I assume the only communication between the two computers is the slave accessing the master network control file. Since both systems have two 1G drives, they are self contained – I have all 3DS files local, and render to local. The way I use the system now is this – run 3DS on both computers without the network, load the network and transfer the files to one hard drive, unload the network and transfer to PAR. Hey, it beats using floppies. Now what was that cayenne pepper trick… Thanks again. Byron