First off I'm just a normal guy who starting running seti@home a year or so back, no problems, just like the idea of doing my bit, told lots of folks how easy it was, felt good. Things have changed. Running OSX 10.2.8, swiched to BOINC, or did I, 'cause nothing seems to be happening except for my old seti@home still happily crunching wu's in the background. But are the results going anywhere, I don't know, is there indeed anybody out there, and by that I mean just across the pond guys. What is happening to these wu's?

Tried to find the answer in the Community and have discovered that I am certainly not alone in this respect. Its no good our colleagues in the 'puter world banging on about what a bunch of Luddites we all are 'cause we can't seem to get a handle on BOINC.

For me it is just not working, and that is a crying shame, 'cause it should be for everyone who just wants to contribute. My ISP (BT) does not support broadband for Mac above 10.2, no doubt others do, but it would cost me to change and get OS upgades.

Dazed and confused, any way out?

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If you read the warning on the downloads page at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php, it says "Macintosh OS X (10.3 or higher)", and if you read a little farther in the details for each download, it further says you need OS X 10.3.9 or higher to run the advanced GUI version. You can run OS X 10.3.x for the simple GUI (MenuBar), or in Terminal. Your problem is that you're trying to run BOINC with OS X 10.2.8, and BOINC doesn't support it. The solution is to upgrade your OS to 10.3.9 or just buy the new Tiger (10.4).


C

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Join Team MacNN

I know this is a bit off-topic for SETI but I'm in the UK too and I can tell you that certain ISPs don't charge for you to migrate your broadband to them and they're a LOT cheaper than BT. Check out PlusNet for example, which will run with any OS as far as I'm aware, as you don't need any third party software to set it up.

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To follow on to this. Ditch BT. It's actually incedibly easy to move broadband provider, if you go for a decent one, and by decent that doesn't mean expensive. If BT say they won't support the fastest growing computing platform that's their loss. Go and look at adslguide.org.uk for info on the best of the bunch.

As to Boinc. It does seem to be a step backwards in terms of usability. I've been running Seti, permanently, on various OS9 machines for years with no trouble at all.
This Boinc thing is difficult, confusing, and in short - just pants.