FR Folding@Home Project Update -- We're in the Top105 of all teams with 6.4 Million points

Stanford University's Folding@Home Stats page ^ | 5-26-06 | soccer_maniac

[soccer_maniac]

Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread.

Our FreeRepublic team of 337 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).

Currently, the team is in 103th place (with 988 active CPUs - 36,400 completed Work Units and more than 6,4 million points).

This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please see the links posted below (or read one of the previous 17 folding threads)

[SC Swamp Fox]

[Uriah_lost]

We are on the move!!

[soccer_maniac]

Thanks for the chart. Gotta love the straight increase on the first graph.

DUmmies should be embarrased by their miserable performance. They're libs and they have no shame :)

[Drango]

First, the hot:
940D + ECS 945P for $259
X2 4200+ + ECS K8T890-A for $329

OK deals:
930D + Gigabyte 8I945PL for $279
X2 4400+ + Asus A8R32-MVP for $649
FX60 + A8N32-SLI for $999

http://newspaperads.mercurynews.com/ROP/ads.aspx?advid=32664&adid=3024228&cat=3525

[houeto]

Bump!

[LTCJ]

Egon, you have Freepmail.

[soccer_maniac]

We're only 184,887 points short of #99 (currently team "MSI HQ Red Rockets"). We should march into the Top 100 in 6 days.

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

[HKMk23]

Donator: HKMk23
Team: 36120

First work unit launched 20060527 12:20PDT

[MrBlueSky2005]

Earlier this month, my primary HD on my old computer crashed, giving me the perfect excuse to retire the venerable six year old machine and replace it with a new machine with a 64 bit AMD Athlon X2 4200+ w\ 2GB RAM. Needless to say, thats upped my production quite a bit. There are several computers selling for under $1000 with similar specs and they are worth every cent. :)

This summer, I hope to get a cheap new HD and bring the old machine back online to crunch a few extra WUs AND I will be throwing our family machine and laptop behind the cause. So, that should be 5 CPUs crunching results soon...

[dfwddr]

Welcome to all new members!!!!! :

[DocRock]

I just posted over on the Elizabeth Taylor Has Alzheimer's Disease thread with a link to our folding thread. I hope we can recruit a few more folders to help find a cure for this terrible disease.

[HKMk23]

OK.

I ran on ahead and just installed the Windows GUI version of the software and THEN discovered that it monopolizes my OpenGL pipeline so none of my other OpenGL apps will run.

So, now I want to switch over and just run the Console client, but I also don't want to lose the progress I've made.

Can I pull it off or am I SOL?

[HKMk23]

I took the risk, held my breath and...got it done; successfully switched from the graphical WIndows client to the Console client.

FReeper 4CJ had this post from back in December 2005 that gave me the clues I needed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1537549/posts#94

For anyone else who cares to switch from the Windows graphical client to the console client "on-the-fly", here's all I did.

First, note that I already had the Graphical Client installed and actively working. So, I popped up the display, right-clicked and hit "Quit" so it would save it's work and stop.

After that, I simply followed the same procedures 4CJ laid out in the post linked above: uninstalling the graphical client, creating a shortcut to the console exe with the -configonly switch, launching it, and electing to run the application as a service. I used XP Pro's services.msc to start the FAH service and, like a trooper, it picked up my WU right where the graphical client had left off, which I confirmed with a quick peek at the FAHlog.txt file.

[andyk]

Welcome aboard!

[Drango]

Welcome new folders! We have some very unofficial protocols you may not know about.

1. If you have folding questions, please ask. Others are glad to assist.
2.  If you have technical ‘puter skills please share ‘em with other “folders” as we all were beginners at one point. If you have no technical skills don’t let that stop you from opining on a ‘puter problem, it’s never stopped me.
3. If someone passes you on the list, it is OK to snivel about your lack of “folding” power. It is also cool to blame you lack of CPUs on your spouse who watches the budget like a hawk.
4. Borg every computer you can, but always get the owners permission. Borg, borg, borg.
5.  I you have taken out a second mortgage on your house to upgrade your ‘puter, please let us know.
6.  The Freeper folding flux capacitor upgrade is generating impressive point increases.
7.  Use Freepmail to communicate to others how we jimmied the results at Stanford to get extra points. In no case should you discuss the methods in an open forum. If you must, use the code.

01001101 01100001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100001 00100000 01000100 01010101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101011 01110011 00100001

http://www.adcott.net/binary/

[JCEccles]

Happy to assist.

So far, I've just had my main home Windows XP computer (3.06 GHz, 1.4 GB RAM) on task (I use an Apple iBook for FReeping). It's been purring away 24/7 for about a week now. I may put two more computers on task, after I get back from my trip next Friday.

The only problem I've had is about four instances of the program aborting for some unexplained reason and sending to screen the annoying Windows dialog box asking if I want to send an error report to Bill. I just click "don't send" and reboot the program. The first three instances seemed to follow the completion of a work unit, but I had an incident today in which the program showed me about a third of the way through a work unit after I rebooted.

I'm not enough of a computer nerd to know exactly why this is happening.

[HKMk23]

Are you running the console client or the gee-whiz OpenGL graphics version?

[HKMk23]

Thanks for the welcome.

Off to a bit of a rock start, but I'm beating the issues.

The switch to the console client solves conflicts with my OpenGL applications. Now I just have to ventilate my cabinet to prevent heat buildup when the cabinet is closed and the machine is folding.

I have one of those computer cabinets with four doors; two above the desk and two below. When it's closed, the CPU is enclosed in a volume of space below the desktop that it is capable of heating to unacceptable levels. Left closed, on a normal day, it can cause the CPU to stop executing; forcing a reboot after amply ventilating the space.

I plan to open the back of the cabinet and install a quiet 6" fan -- perhaps two -- to force the heated air to exhaust behind the cabinet. This will pull cool air in around a 1" gap at the floor and keep the machine running at acceptable temperatures.

[andyk]

I happen to appreciate your taste in handguns. :)

You're definitely right to be concerned about the heat build-up in an enclosed space like that. Until you get that option resolved, you can throttle your CPU usage down by going to the advanced tab of the FaH configuration. Whoops, I just remembered that you're using the console version now, so I assume that setting would be in a config file somewhere...

[ezsmoke]

I recieved another bad WU. It was taking a lot longer per frame than usual, about 12m compared to the usual 8m. I noticed it late and restarted the client and recieved the error message below. A 400 frame Tinker (p1152_L939_K12M_ext_from638) on frame 172. That always kills my points per day. For a day of work I got a partial point value of 6.


[19:55:06] Received faulty work unit.
[19:55:16] logfile size: 113664
[19:55:16] - Writing 114176 bytes of core data to disk.
[19:55:16] end (WriteWorkResults)
[19:55:16]
[19:55:16] Folding@home Core Shutdown: BAD_WORK_UNIT
[19:55:21] CoreStatus = 72 (114)
[19:55:21] Sending work to server