Windows 95 and NT 4 or earlier: How to run SETI@home.

Questions and Answers : Windows : Windows 95 and NT 4 or earlier: How to run SETI@home.

Author	Message
Eric Korpela Volunteer moderator Project administrator Project developer Project scientist Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 952 Credit: 5,682,479 RAC: 6,386	Message 801718 - Posted: 24 Aug 2008, 18:56:00 UTC
	Unfortunately, current versions of the BOINC libraries are no longer compatible with Window 95 and Windows NT. SETI@home 6.0 and later will not run on those platforms. However it is possible to run earlier versions of SETI@home with some effort. You can download SETI@home 5.27 at http://boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout/setiathome527.zip. The file's MD5 hash is 5a8d29bc51dcd48e8f5b94b28dc5a8c2. Then unzip the file into your BOINC directory (probably "C:\Program Files\BOINC" if you are using BOINC 5.8.16). It contains version 5.27 and an app_info.xml file that should allow you to do SETI@home work. I don't know if any version of astropulse supports Windows 95 and NT, so you'll probably want to set your project preferences to only run SETI@home. ____________
	ID: 801718 ·

Gundolf Jahn Send message Joined: 19 Sep 00 Posts: 3075 Credit: 341,746 RAC: 101	Message 802274 - Posted: 26 Aug 2008, 8:21:08 UTC - in response to Message 801718.
	... It contains version 5.27 and an app_info.xml file that should allow you to do SETI@home work... Only if you replace <version_num>603</version_num> by <version_num>527</version_num>! It contains also two mismatched tags: <file_name>seti_527.jpg</name> and <open_name>seti_logo</name> (should be </file_name> and </open_name> respectively) and I omitted the line <api_version>6.1.0</api_version> completely. And check the size of the download! I had to download twice on each of my machines, because the first one only had 200K of 1.92M (did it on two machines for reproducibility issues :-). GruÃŸ, Gundolf ____________ Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz) SETI@home classic workunits 3,758 SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours
	ID: 802274 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 11987 Credit: 18,105,249 RAC: 55,863	Message 828673 - Posted: 9 Nov 2008, 15:38:54 UTC
	I didn't know that SETI@Home ran on anything earlier than Windows 95 (which technically predates Windows NT 4.0). :p
	ID: 828673 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 439,209 RAC: 396	Message 828691 - Posted: 9 Nov 2008, 16:51:07 UTC - in response to Message 828673.
	I didn't know that SETI@Home ran on anything earlier than Windows 95 (which technically predates Windows NT 4.0). :p Didn't it run on NT 3.5 at one point? ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 828691 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 11987 Credit: 18,105,249 RAC: 55,863	Message 828701 - Posted: 9 Nov 2008, 17:23:10 UTC - in response to Message 828691.
	I didn't know that SETI@Home ran on anything earlier than Windows 95 (which technically predates Windows NT 4.0). :p Didn't it run on NT 3.5 at one point? I suppose it could. NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 were all 32bit OSes. I wonder how many NT 3.5 boxes are still out there...
	ID: 828701 ·

TrekBrew Send message Joined: 31 Dec 99 Posts: 1 Credit: 72,858 RAC: 0	Message 836821 - Posted: 4 Dec 2008, 0:48:53 UTC
	Thanks for the reference to v5.27. My WinNT 4.0 Workstation system had stopped functioning w5.8.16 due to constant messages saying I needed to reset the project. After compying the files referenced, the messages stopped and it appears the system is "back on line"! ____________
	ID: 836821 ·

BlackLuke Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 19 Jul 99 Posts: 164 Credit: 54,828,301 RAC: 0	Message 880656 - Posted: 30 Mar 2009, 0:07:04 UTC - in response to Message 801718.
	Why would anyone want to run S@H under WinNT? WinNT does not support any of the SIMD instructions, so one can't run an optimized client. Even if you were to write a driver to enable the SIMD instruction set, NT would not work because it does not save enough of the NDP context on program switches. So when when the S@H client was idled for a while to do some O/S work, when the client regained the CPU it would not be wroking on the same data. That is bad for accuracy and reproducability of results. The same may apply to Win95 if it predates WinNT. ____________
	ID: 880656 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 11987 Credit: 18,105,249 RAC: 55,863	Message 880663 - Posted: 30 Mar 2009, 0:48:55 UTC - in response to Message 880656.
	Why would anyone want to run S@H under WinNT? What some people run as their OS of choice is of no relevance to the project. Why should the project cut them off simply because they have Windows NT? WinNT does not support any of the SIMD instructions, so one can't run an optimized client. Even if you were to write a driver to enable the SIMD instruction set, NT would not work because it does not save enough of the NDP context on program switches. So when when the S@H client was idled for a while to do some O/S work, when the client regained the CPU it would not be wroking on the same data. That is bad for accuracy and reproducability of results. The same may apply to Win95 if it predates WinNT. Not entirely accurate. Just because the OS doesn't know about the extra SIMD registers, doesn't mean they can't be used, it simply means they can't be saved and restored during context switches automatically performed by the OS. A driver would not be necessary to support SIMD, only an app that saves all registers periodically and then checks the contents of the registers to make sure they haven't changed. But all this is irrelevant. Not everyone is interested in running an optimized SIMD application on Windows NT. The proposed app_info.xml file is simply a built-in mechanism for BOINC to allow unsupported platforms to get work if they have been tested. The files Dr. Korpela is linking to are stock apps and the app_info.xml file simply points to the stock app so that BOINC doesn't try to automatically upgrade the science app to an unsupported version on the OS. ____________
	ID: 880663 ·

musik Send message Joined: 16 Jun 09 Posts: 1 Credit: 0 RAC: 0	Message 908087 - Posted: 16 Jun 2009, 5:48:35 UTC
	thanks for this thread
	ID: 908087 ·

sereoga Send message Joined: 7 Mar 10 Posts: 1 Credit: 0 RAC: 0	Message 976485 - Posted: 7 Mar 2010, 10:57:43 UTC - in response to Message 908087.
	10+
	ID: 976485 ·

Questions and Answers : Windows : Windows 95 and NT 4 or earlier: How to run SETI@home.