[AG-TECH] Access Grid Hardware/Software Questions

Adam Taylor ataylor at ulm.edu
Fri Feb 25 09:51:10 CST 2011


Well, my two cents.

 

We are running a T7500 fully loaded with windows 7 64bit.  We run
everything on it except for the video capture which we run on an Ubuntu
machine.  The reason for this is driver issues with most to not all
capture cards and windows.  We have an Osprey 440 and no matter how hard
we tried we could never get the 4th input to work.  Under Ubuntu, it works
just fine without any tuning, and is as stable as can be.  Any machine
that is a first gen Core2Duo can run the video capture part without a
problem.

 

As far as the sound, we had horrid problems with the Soundblaster X-FI
that came with it.  We ended up taking it out and just using the onboard
audio that comes with the machine.  We have not had a single problem
since.

 

Thanks,

 

Adam Taylor

Computing Center

University of Louisiana Monroe

 

 

 

 

From: ag-tech-bounces at lists.mcs.anl.gov
[mailto:ag-tech-bounces at lists.mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Jonathan Klubek
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2011 8:30 AM
To: ag-tech at lists.mcs.anl.gov
Subject: [AG-TECH] Access Grid Hardware/Software Questions

 

My group at our university was recently tasked by one of our departments
to construct an access grid facility (this facility will also function for
other types of conferencing and classroom needs also).  After much reading
we have determined many pieces we need to get including things such as
several ClearOne, Crestron and Extron products to control the various
audio and video pieces ranging from scaling windows on the projectors and
switching sources to mixing and cancelling echo on the microphones on the
various tables.   The problem we are running into in examining everything
is with the access grid machine itself.  We have looked at the technology
and many of the pieces of hardware are many years old and we are seeing
possible issues with integration as things such as PCI are replaced with
PCI-e.

 

We are looking at going with a Dell Precision workstation T7500 to be the
access grid machine and have thought about adding more memory and a second
processor to it (remember that it will serve multiple purposes. .  My
questions are the following:

 

1.        I see that the software is listed for Linux, OS X, and Windows.
We most likely will be going with Windows so we can support Microsoft Link
also.  This software is listed for Windows XP but does it work with
Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit.  This is extremely important with Windows XP
support coming to a close.  Also, with the increased resources we plan to
use it may be necessary to use 64-bit to take advantage of things such as
4+ GB of memory.

2.       As mentioned before the technologies listed are out of date.  We
are especially seeing this with the video capture cards and audio cards.
I was wondering if the following would be supported:

a.       SoundBlaster X-FI XtremeMusic (D)w/Dolby Digital 5.1 (this was
the card option on the Dell) - if not is there a newer card than the one
listed that is?  We will of course need to integrate with our other
products.

b.      Datapath VisionRGB-E1 PCI-e RGB/DVI capture card

c.       Osprey Osprey-450e PCI-e Analog video capture card

 

If not we are looking for several recommendations of much newer technology
that is supported as we see this to be extremely important.

 

Jonathan

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