5
name, configure and route the Nexgen inputs and outputs for the production room. Use the naming
conventions in the Excel workbook that was provided to you with your specific configuration. Consult
the WheatNet-IP Manual for further instructions on operating the control surface and console blade.
An important note: the E-6 control surface should be paired with the
mix engine blade in each studio, not with the console blade. This is a
bit counterintuitive. The system display in WheatNet-IP Navigator
should look similar to the screen shot at the right for each
production room. Note that the console blade (designated Prod A-C
here) shows a surface with a question mark (indicating a missing
surface) and no IP address, This is correct. Note that naming
conventions, which again were provided to you in the Excel workbook, are Prod A-E for mix engine, Prod
A-C for the console blade and ProdA-PC for the PC blade (WheatNet-IP driver in the Nexgen
workstation).
III.
Computer Upgrade Instructions
We have found through experimentation that the HP XW4300 workstations with Pentium4 processors
do have sufficient resources to work as Nexgen audio servers. As such, we plan to upgrade existing
XW4300s for use in this capacity.
There are some things that need to be replaced on any of the XW4300s that we are going to reuse: the
hard drive, the RAM, and if using a KVM, the video card. A second NIC will need to be installed for
Wheatnet and it needs to be a gigabit card.
In most applications we recommend a 500 GB hard drive, but it all depends on how much you have
stored on your computers. Typically, audio servers will have very little in the way of stored material.
You will need a total of 4 GB RAM for each computer.
As for the video card, we had issues in Denver with the old video cards not liking the KVM connections.
Evidently some KVMs do not report back the display resolution of the monitor, so Windows7 would
continually (every couple of minutes) change the display resolution. This was very irritating and made it
almost impossible to work, so we recommend new video cards if using a KVM.
Because thermal compound will often dry out and lose its effectiveness, we also recommend removing
the processor fan or cooler, cleaning off any remaining thermal compound from the microprocessor and
cooler and reapplying a thin layer of new compound before reinstalling the cooler.
You will need to install a new license for Windows7 (32 bit). Once the machine comes up with the new
W7-32 operating system, install LAN drivers as necessary and do all the required Windows updates (on
the Start menu type Windows Update in the box and click on the link that comes up). This will take
awhile, usually a few hours.
