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Old 08-20-2002, 08:04 PM
tgibbs tgibbs is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Boston
Posts: 13
Thumbs up running a headless netTunes server

I was excited to get netTunes, because I'd been wanting to set up an old beige G3 Mac as a "jukebox" in the lab to replace our ailing CD player. There wasn't really room for a monitor where I wanted to situate it, so I was hoping that netTunes would allow me to run it "headless".

So after setting up netTunes on the G3, I set it up (without a monitor) next to the stereo receiver, plugged it in, & went to one of the other Macs, and tried to log in--only to find that although I could see it in the client's server window, the client failed to log in. So I shut down the G3, dragged over a monitor, plugged it in to the G3, rebooted, and tried again. NetTunes worked fine. Shut down, took off the monitor, restarted--client couldn't log in.

At this point, the light began to dawn. I remembered that Macs are able to sense the resolution of Mac monitors. What happens if there is no monitor? Maybe the Mac never even generates a desktop image.
I was thinking about unplugging the monitor after startup, which probably would have worked, but I didn't like the idea. If I had a power failure, or system panic, or something, I'd have to drag that monitor back.

So instead, I plugged in a Mac-to-PC monitor adaptor, figuring that it probably had to ground the appropriate pins or whatever to fool the Mac into thinking that a comparable Mac monitor was attached. This solved the problem; my netTunes server is now running happily without a monitor.
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