Posted on 11/06/2006 9:41:27 PM PST by texas booster
Time for a new Free Republic folding@home thread.
Our Free Republic team of 396 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 62th place (with 1,030 active CPUs - 79,000 completed Work Units and 14.71 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 20+ folding threads)
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 !!
Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic
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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos
Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12
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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
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 #17 #18 #19 #20#21#22
Bumpity Bump!! Go FR Folders!!
Pinging a new thread on Folding@Home.
We hit some great new milestones this week:
Klutz is #90 of all folders,
JCEccles hit 100,000 points, and
Malsua hit 1,000,000 points over all!
Way to go guys!
I've been donating cycles to United Devices in the cancer research for the last 3 years +. Is this one better?
Pinging a new thread on Folding@Home.
We hit some great new milestones this week:
Klutz is #90 of all folders,
JCEccles hit 100,000 points, and
Malsua hit 1,000,000 points over all!
Way to go guys!
Bump to 200,000.
ping to self for later
bump
Election Eve bump.
Many of our members run distributed computing for other groups, such as BOINC and GRID. Usually we will dedicate a system to each and find a FReeper team to add our numbers to.
F@H is my personal favorite, having started back in the mid-90's with Genome@Home. Just did not think that SETI was very practical as I understood it better.
F@H is dedicated to more pure research than many of the other programs out there, and the results are manifested in over 40 major research papers. Is F@H better than United Devices? No, just another part of the research pie that we support.
If you are on a FReeper team with United Devices let us know. I can create a quick post to advertize that FReeper group.
Please feel free to join us if you have an extra CPU to use!
Anybody using F@H's GPU enhanced client? for ATI GPUs?
I don;t think it makes a difference if u have more than 1 core. According to the website you must install to 2 different directories.
1. Yes, you can. Additional processors must run the console version (with the "-local" command-line argument if run on Windows).
2. Make additional directories for each processor and copy the FAH Console executable file into each.
3. Configure them with the -config switch, filling in settings for each.
4. It is very important to make sure that under the "Advanced Settings" option each copy is given a unique machine ID (from 1 to 8). The first copy will default to a machine ID of 1, so additional copies should be given IDs of 2, 3, 4, etc.
5. Each may then be run out of their installed directory, using the -local switch on windows.
c:\program files\F@H1\FAH504-Console.exe -svcstart -local
c:\program files\F@H2\FAH504-Console.exe -svcstart -local
One thing that I like about F@H is their new use of ATI X1900 video cards to boost performance of protein folding. The program uses the 48 pixel shaders to boost folding power by up to 40 times.
Don't have an X1900 yet, but I am saving aluminum cans for Christmas.
Yup - that sounds like me too!
However that still leaves the big question hanging here - HAS ANYONE began using this new configuration with the ATI X1900 series video cards??
OK, lets try it again.
Download the FAH No-Nonsense Text Only Console 5.04 from Stanford downloads here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
Save it to a download directory or your desktop. DO NOT RUN IT FROM THIS LOCATION.
Make a new folder somewhere safe, such as Program Files. Call it F@H1.
Make a second folder somewhere safe, such as Program Files again. Call it F@H2.
COPY F@H504-Console.exe into the F@H1 directory.
CUT and paste the F@H504-Console.exe into the F@H2 directory.
Enter the F@H1 directory. Run F@H5.04-Console.exe. Enter all the normal stuff (Team 36120, Private_Sector_Does_It_Better, etc). When it asks to "Set Advanced Methods" enter "y".
The Advanced Settings need to have "Run as a Service" = y, and the machine ID needs to be '1' and '2' respectively so the Stanford servers can tell the work units apart.
If in doubt, edit the "client.cfg" file. Make sure that your name and team number are correct, and that each client.cfg has either a '1' or a '2'.
I am sure that I missed some pretty important points, but I will be off to bed soon. We can continue here or you can FReepmail me.
Thank you very much for working through the setup issues.
A couple of us have talked about it, but I do not think any of us have an X1900 to put into the game. DFWDDR was looking at it, among others.
Check out this thread at ExtremeOverclockers where they get one running and posting points:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?s=d1356ab296398398048c0d2b68559adf&t=237623
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