rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Hello all i am just looking into this front end. I am pretty savvy i think and have my roms and pc games all neatly organized and properly done up. Here lies the problem for me and what i am looking for. In my home my dell t7500 is the big dog in the house dual xeons 192 gb ram with windows 7 pro and the graphics card is a 1050ti. With what i am trying to accomplish is relocating the t7500 out of my room and leaving my wife and my t7400 in our desk. i want to put the t7500 in the cabinet in the garage which is air conditioned and protected with air filters. With moving everything out there i had an idea to "map" a new front end to the network to where me my wife and family can all add a shortcut and serve to each computer from the t7500. To also take it a step further each person maybe get there own account? to avoid people overwriting each others saves {i really hate when my wife deletes my old rpg saves}. so i dont know if i have illustrated what i am trying to do correctly but i guess in a sense i want a launch-able front end for everyone to have access to even guests that are on my network? Before i get the why dont you install and such and such to each computer my t7500 is running a little over 20tb of data so that would be idiotic to replace drives and also for when my friends come over it would be hard to have everyone install and set up the same end as me as i am the techy in the group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 So LaunchBox isn't exactly designed to be on one PC and then run from multiples. That goes as far as Windows will let anyone. However, the solution would be to install LaunchBox to each machine and point it to the games on the network. So when you run an import, you tell it where the games are on the network. Assume you put the emulators and LaunchBox all on the same drive, and have it point towards the network, you should be able to take that install of LaunchBox and put it on another machine, media and all. If LaunchBox and the emulators are on the same drive, LB will see the emulators from a relative path. Doing it this way ensures people have their own saves, the emulator is not being gimped by the network, and LaunchBox can operate on it's own, also allowing people to keep their own favorites and playlists. As long as the rom path is the same from any PC, copying the install should suffice. However, if the path is different from each PC, you can carry over the LB Install, Emulators and media, but will need to re-import with all the media boxes unchecked. That is the simplest way to do it, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 okay and what about the emulators can i attach those to the install of launchbox and copy those as well essentially dedicate a drive on my server for roms save everyhing copy one folder over to a usb and just copy it into each persons computer already set up? all systems all box art everything and with the system already set up to launch and look for drive "z" on the local network? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 i have a little luck with emulation station doing that but in the end the problem was installing pcsx2 into each computer and dev11 and what not and getting all those up to par and in the end it continued to save to my t7500 resulting in overwrite in saves lol when i tried to make the drive read only it came into issues with the virtual memory cards because it could write its been a hassel to say the least and ive already tried kodi and hyperspin and with hyperspin i just couldnt keep up with teh updates and programs and finding the glitches lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 If the emulators are added to your LaunchBox install from the same drive as LaunchBox, it will use relative paths. Anything you add to LaunchBox, all from the same drive, uses a relative path, meaning a drive letter is never assigned. It just assumes the folder structure is the same on which ever drive you're running things from. So if you need to assign a drive letter, just make sure it's the same drive letter on each PC. So if your server is Drive Z, and you import your games from drive z on one PC, make sure the other PC has Drive Z and the same structure. You'll run the importer, assign the emulators, download all your media. All the media is in the LB folder, and the emulators on the same drive. You should just need to move LaunchBox and the emulators (that entire drive structure), to another PC, and it should work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 awesome thank you very much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Just to add usually if you setup LB to use a server share it will assign it say in my case \\WHS2011\Emulators\Arcade\MAME\ROMs now when you copy this over to another PC on the same network this structure is totally usable. You can also setup all the media assets on your server by changing the folder paths under Manage Platforms but I've never tried it for assets and don't know what your performance would be like just know its possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 You could tell LaunchBox that the media is on the server too, but I would advise moving as much as you can from the server to the PC's. Later, bigger, more intensive games may cause issues over networks as is. It would also depend on how big your library is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 (edited) I would advise you to test all scenarios and see what your performance is like if you can get away with only having one copy of images for all your clients that is always a win and if you need to keep them all locally because performance isn't good enough you can go that route also. By the way I'm impressed with your dual Xeon 192 GB of RAM setup there, its terribly overpowered for a home machine but still impressive. That's the kind of system they install like 25 VM's on and put it in the server Room Edited March 9, 2017 by DOS76 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 yeah well i know i 3 ironwolf 10tb drives and they are almost full of games pretty much windows and roms and such from wii and back thats alot of drives to run through the house and i dont think i can justify spending the 4 to 5 k on drives which will fail i have talked the wife into purchasing ssds finally to rotate out drives for more reliable and better speeds. other than that i have a power edge in the garage already that turns on every 48 hours does a full backup and turns off again to save disk usage and power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 yeah she was my work rig i got a good deal honestly the t models all came from work basically i got the ram online for i think 900 and the riser board from servermonkey and the cpus where amazon i think the wife got the graphics cards from best buy i originally wanted to get a couple founders 1070 gb for sli if i needeed it but the 1050ti is running ps2 at 8x and not even breaking a sweat lol so eh why spend more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainmorrell Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 as far as my network its all hard wired no wifi and its cat 6 from a gigabit switch eventually im going to run amplified hdmi and home run my servers through the walls to where my desk doesnt even have a tower just a few cables running to wall jacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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