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[RobertsIrwin]

**(sorry for the long post in advance)**

Hi folks...my two boys (7 & 5) have been playing MC for several months.  They play mainly on iPads.  They figured out on their own how to join each other in games.  They then asked me to set them up with the computer based version.  I am an IT person doing mainly project/program management but do a little app development and database stuff...with just basic hardware skills.  I usually get all my hardware from my job and don't keep up much with it.  

So, I have several old computers around the house I'm trying to repurpose to build my kids a MC setup.  I have a pretty good HP server machine, 5 gig RAM, with an eval copy of Windows server 2008 R2.  I had to buy a video card to get it to run MC...something about supporting OpenGL ... I bought a $90.00 video card and it works ok.  It gets laggy at times but I don't know if the problem is Demo version of Windows Server, RAM, processor, vid card, etc.  

I have another old blade server that has like 8 gigs or RAM ...but is I guess too old to handle any of the updated video cards.  I bought the same $90.00 vid card I used in the HP to find the slot wasn't right...I actually took the blade server to Best Buy and the tech told me it would not support PCI and/or PCI Express...he said I would not be able to find a video card that would work in the old blade server that would support graphics needed to run the MC client.  I also have several older laptops around but most of them seem to have a similar problem with the error OpenGL not supported.  

So...after all that here are my main questions:

1.  Should I get rid of demo versions of Windows and switch to Linux?  I really don't want to purchase any OS software.  I've done some searches and it looks like many people are having luck using Linux.  Are there any other free (or very cheap) OSs that will run MC??

2.  Can I still use the blade server to run a Minecraft server without using the same machine as a client as well?

3.  For diagnosing speed/lag issues is there a best practice in what to look for first such as graphics card vs. ram vs. OS tweaking vs. hard drive speed etc etc ??

4.  The boys use a feature Join Game with the iPad...it seems to be looking for open games on "Wifi Networks" ... is there a way that an iPad user could join a game that was being hosted by a pc based server configuration?  The server would be on my home network...but hard wired.

Thanks for any advice.  Again I apologize for the long post ... once I get my feet wet and some of this initial setup sorted out my posts should be much shorter.

ER

[nleiknl]

If having issues with low framerates try: http://get.spout.org/

[Kitarn]

Quote

4.  The boys use a feature Join Game with the iPad...it seems to be looking for open games on "Wifi Networks" ... is there a way that an iPad user could join a game that was being hosted by a pc based server configuration?  The server would be on my home network...but hard wired.

No chance, sadly enough. The Minecraft app on iPad is the Pocket version, which differs considerably from the pc version. Gameplay between these two versions is not possible. (Unless you were to install the Pocket version on a iOS emulator of some sorts. In which case I would congratulate you on your achievement)

[madjoshzombie]

RobertsIrwin, on 05 January 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

4.  The boys use a feature Join Game with the iPad...it seems to be looking for open games on "Wifi Networks" ... is there a way that an iPad user could join a game that was being hosted by a pc based server configuration?  The server would be on my home network...but hard wired.

For the fps issues I would try installing optifine which is harder to do or getting a program called Game Booster which closes unneeded processes running in the background which may cause you fps to drop.

Links- Optifine: http://www.minecraft...-and-much-more/
   Game Booster:http://download.cnet...4-10913645.html