How can I connect 2 computer towers to work as one system?

Question

I have 2 towers, one with Win ME and one with Win 98. I was hoping to connect the two so I can use all the hardware of both simultaneously without using two different systems. Is this possible? If I can do this, will it combine the power of the processor and /or increase the memory size?

I hear of render farms but I don't know how it works...

Answer 1

I think you'll be disappointed with the results using that era hardware but what you are looking for is clustering software.

From the site below:

"Cluster is a widely-used term meaning independent computers combined into a unified system through software and networking. At the most fundamental level, when two or more computers are used together to solve a problem, it is considered a cluster. Clusters are typically used for High Availability (HA) for greater reliability or High Performance Computing (HPC) to provide greater computational power than a single computer can provide."

For a home user, the effort to set this up and develop for the environment is probably not worth the time.

** Edit **
My understanding of render farms is that they are used to split tasks between systems for assembly later. The requirement is that you can sufficiently break down discreet tasks in your application so that you can send pieces out for processing in parallel without dependency on other portions of the tasks. This works great in specific situations (like scene rendering for an animated movie, modelling, and complex scientific calculations).

Answer 2

These sites may give you some help on render farms.

Answer 3

no its not. the best you can do is get a cross over cable and that will mean they are networked to gather. but the sill still be their own computer.