I just want to know..
How do I get projects or tasks?
What is the difference between "attach to project" and "attach to account manager"?
And how many GB does this program take?
Is it going to damage my computer?

How do I get projects or tasks?

Terminology first.

Projects are what you attach BOINC to, like Seti, Einstein, Enigma, Milkyway, etc.
Projects release tasks, this is the work that their science applications 'crunch' (calculate).

What is the difference between "attach to project" and "attach to account manager"?

Attaching to a project is just that, you choose which project to attach to and go from there. You have to do this per computer.

Attaching to an account manager is mostly for people with multiple computers, where you tell it which of the account managers to use. On the pages of the account manager, which is an external site, you choose which projects you want to attach to and then only have to sync BOINC to that. See this entry in the BOINC Wiki for more information.

Account managers are BAM!, Grid Republic and Extremadura@home.

And how many GB does this program take?

That depends on which project you attach to and how many days worth of work you want BOINC to cache.

Seti uses about 32MB RAM per Seti Enhanced task, which are about 350KB big.
Climateprediction.net can use up to 1.5GB RAM per model, which can be 150MB big.

Is it going to damage my computer?

Not if you maintain your computer, keep it clean, periodically take out the dust bunnies etc. Of course, computers being finicky as they are, there's no real answer to this. Any program can damage your computer. Just booting up can damage it. The only true way not to damage it is not to use it at all, unplug the case from the wall and put it in the attic. ;-)

Do check the BOINC User Manual for a lot more info.

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"How do I get projects or tasks?":
Just "attach to project" (very few people use account manager - you probably do not need it)


"And how many GB does this program take?":
BOINC itself - about 20 MB
Projects - depends on the project, how fast your computer is and how many days of work you want to be "kept in stock/reserve/queue/cache" on your computer.

SETI usually needs less than 100 MB hard disk space
(one SETI workunit/task is 350 KB or 8 MB for Astropulse)
(but if you have a $5000 top computer you may use/need 5 GB hard disk space)

(On my older 500 MHz computer with 256 MB RAM and 20 days workunit cache BOINC+SETI use only 30 MB)


You make the restrictions using Preferences:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Preferences







"Is it going to damage my computer?":
Where did you get such impression?!

2-3 million computers worldwide are running this programs -
did you hear in the news "One million computers exploded today because of SETI computation"? ;)

But check the temperatures:

Temperature Monitoring Programs
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=59292

.

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)