Bear with me on this one.

I have my recording Mac Pro upstairs and my grand piano downstairs. I'm getting excellent sound in spite of 50' mic cables. I want to control the Mac Pro from downstairs at the piano. Is there a way to make the notebook mirror the pro? I already duel monitor with the pro so that shouldn't be a big deal making the book be the "other monitor", right?

The other problem is that bluetooth won't work that far (or at least through the ceiling and a couple of walls) so, assuming there's no way to make the book control the pro, would I have to run 50' USB cables to a standard keyboard and mouse to operate the pro?

Until I can afford the upstairs studio room expansion and have the 8' piano hoisted in, I need a work-around.

Thanks,
Kenny

Hmmm......I can't help but wonder how far a USB cable can run. I know I have a fairly cheap and very easy to use Behringer BCF 2000 USB controller that can control playback, specific channel volume, etc. I would suggest finding something like that assuming you could either chain several USB cables (they have female to male extension cables) or a 50' cable. THAT would be worth looking into.

Also, if you are real tricky you could possibly use a 50' network cable and network your Mac Pro and a notebook (defintely with a Mac notebook....not so sure how easy it would be with a PC notebook). This is beyond my experience but I know it is possible.

www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

The way I see it you have two options:

1) Boot the MacPro in FireWire target mode. You would need a couple of firewire repeaters to maintain a good signal but you should be able to use the OS on the MacPro to boot the MBP and take charge of its hard-drives etc.

2) Network the two computers via ethernet. All this will allow you to do is to use the MP internal drives. This technique works very well.

You can't use the MBP as a monitor for the mac pro.

chicken of the VNC

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

You will be able to control the Mac Pro from the MBP. via your network.

That should do the trick.

since it's over your network , it's a bit laggy as compared to direct control.

You could also use Apple Remote Desktop, which is built in to 10.5.