[soccer_maniac]

Folding@Home FAQ for new users:

What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.

Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don’t, into their predestined shapes — and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.

How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.

Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.

How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?: 1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired username. 2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic! 3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

How can my computer help? Even if he were given exclusive access to all of the world’s supercomputers, Standford still wouldn’t have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people’s desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.

There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.

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List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!

Another Folding Clip

Folding@home Client Download

FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats

Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic

Another Stats Page

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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11

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Other Useful Stuff - Links

How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed
Point Summary for Workunits

Stat Image Generator

Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software

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Past FreeRepublic Folding threads

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 Previous

[soccer_maniac]

FR Folding Ping (FRmail me to get on/off ping list) -- we have 299 people on the FR folding ping list!

[capt. norm]

I do a little parttime work as system admin. for a small local company with 86 boxes, nearly all (all but 4) of which are idle after 6 PM and networked with T-1 internet access.

I'm going to try to talk the owner into allowing "folding at home" to make good use of all the idle time.

[Egon]

My shameless self-promotion for this thread:

If you're interested in tracking your folding machine(s) over the web, please Freepmail me.

Available features include:

• Timely snapshot of each machine's progress on it's current project
• Point values for project
• Estimated completion dates/times
• Warning indicators for machines that appear to have stopped communicating or folding
• Warnings for machines that won't make their deadline
• Team ranking status box (courtesy of EOC)
• It's free-- and always will be
• ...other features as time permits, and people request

Beware. It's addictive.

[Straight Vermonter]

BTTT

[DocRock]

Big Bump!

[DTwistedSisterS]

Thanks to who ever publicized this.


The benefits so far:
1) It occupies my time when I'm not doing anything
2) It's really cool to think that something might possibly help someone
3) It's helped heat my room for the past few weeks. I say this because when i close my door, the room gets hotter. I attribute this to the fact that the fan has to run. If this isn't the case, too bad, because i like the explanation!

[SC Swamp Fox]

[houeto]

Bump!

[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...

[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?

[NinoFan]

Am I doing something wrong? I have a P4 3+ Ghz processor, 1GB+ RAM, etc. How long should it take to process a unit?

[dfwddr]

Today's the day !!! Top 100, here we come !!

[dfwddr]

WooHoo !!!!!!!!!!

T.G.I.F.F !!!!!!! (don't ask)

A big THANKS and CONGRATS to all members of the FReeRepublicFolders !!!!

Being on page 1 is a HUGH deal, but everybody please remember the bigger picture, whether you contribute 1 point or a million, we are here to help find a solution to Alzheimer's, Cancer, Mad Cow (BSE), and other diseases.

We can help solve our own future problems.

I'm proud to be a member with such a fine group of people !

[HKMk23]

HEY!!

WE'VE broken into the TOP 100!

I took a peek just now, and we're in 100th place pushing 6.8 Million points.

[JCEccles]

I uninstalled the the Windows XP screensaver version of the program and installed the no-frills console version (Beta). I have it running on two computers now. Not a whole lot seems to be happening. The last line of the dialog box on my main machine reads "Completed 0 out of 50000000 steps <0>." It's been that way for some time, unchanged.

If I bring up the task manager dialog box it shows 98 percent of the CPU usage allocated to FahCore_78.exe. I'm interpeting that to mean the program is doing its thing, humming merrily along, despite the fact that the other dialog box shows 50 million steps still pending, none completed.

I'll add a third machine on Wednesday.

Even though I only came on line with this project 10 days ago with a single machine, I'm already in the top third of all participants in terms of work completed. it looks like the Pareto Principle is vindicated yet again.