What to do with a spare pc??

[sleazy_frank]

Hi all - I'm setting up a dv editing suite at home and I have two machines. One is my main firewire/av in/out and editor machine (With the fastest processor, most ram and hdd space), whilst the other is a slightly mothballed machine that I've just got going again with a 1.2ghz duron and less ram and much less hdd space. I've got the two networked together as I want to use the older machine as a part of my suite, but I dont know what for - the new one out performs the old one by quite a bit. May be upgrade the mobo and cpu and use it as a number cruncher/avi to mpeg2 convertor?

any suggestions??

frank

[flaninacupboard]

dependant on what type of editing you're doing (simple cuts versus titles, transitions, effects etc) encoding the mpeg may be more processor intensive than editing. my setup has an 800mhz machine with 120gig HDD for capturing DV, networked to an athlon 2600+ which does the encoding, authoring and burning, from a 60 gig drive. means i can be capturing away and still use my main machine for games/authoring/burning.