I participated in Seti Classic for several years and managed to move up past 99.1 per cent with 6124 WU's when I switched to BOINC. I'm running one system with dual Pentium III's running at 1143mhz and a laptop with a Pentium III 1ghz. I seem to be moving backwards with BOINC since on 11/14/04 my stats showed 22,336 total credit and 272.8 RAC for a total position of 3,426/57,527 (94.04627%). I did move up to 3368 but today (12-14-04) it shows 32,753 total, 349.5 RAC, for a total position of 3,454/62,578 (94.28209%). Are more people with faster computers joining BOINC causing this or is there another reason?

Bob B

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With the LHC & Predictor Sites both down more people probably switched over to Seti until they go back up again ...

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Yes, but as you mentioned, one of the reasons can be that people have more and more computers, wich are faster and faster. You said that you had over 6K units for seti classic. I hac only about 2500, because I joined the project in december 02. Here, as you probably see, I have quite a lot of credit, compared to you, as we started at about the same time. I think that there are a lot of users like me, so don't be surprised...

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<img src="http://www.boincstats.com/stats/banner.php?cpid=d2319b8f0ad14565556d0ba45b64e779">

It's like I keep going backwards...i think the #of users is encreasing . I get close to 98.7% then slip back again.
I need more hz. more fsb, more multiplyers. more $$$$$$$$$$$

849 / 62,578 (98.64489%)

> It's like I keep going backwards...i think the #of users is encreasing . I get
> close to 98.7% then slip back again.
> I need more hz. more fsb, more multiplyers. more $$$$$$$$$$$
>
> 849 / 62,578 (98.64489%)
>


Who doesn't? :(

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<b>X</b>

> I participated in Seti Classic for several years and managed to move up past
> 99.1 per cent with 6124 WU's when I switched to BOINC. I'm running one system
> with dual Pentium III's running at 1143mhz and a laptop with a Pentium III
> 1ghz. I seem to be moving backwards with BOINC since on 11/14/04 my stats
> showed 22,336 total credit and 272.8 RAC for a total position of 3,426/57,527
> (94.04627%). I did move up to 3368 but today (12-14-04) it shows 32,753 total,
> 349.5 RAC, for a total position of 3,454/62,578 (94.28209%). Are more people
> with faster computers joining BOINC causing this or is there another reason?
>
> Bob B
>

You answered your own question.

3,426/57,527
3,454/62,578

5000 more people joined in this interval. It's safe to assume they have more/faster computers than you do.

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Bob,

It is probably my fault ... I restarted 4 of my machines that were off for a month so, I appolgise for the slippage ... just kidding ... :)

One of the other side effects of the improved rigor compared to SETI@Home Classic is that your "place" will move based on the actions of others which is not true of CLassic. For example, I did have machines down for nearly a month. They have been running for a week now and yet I am still losing ground in the stats.

Part of the reason is, of course, the fact that I have to wait for others to return their results and I have to be part of the quorum of results to get credit. So, at the moment I am still losing ground in the SETI@Home status.

The other point was that with only SETI@Home and cp.net running a lot of people are doing more SETI@Home than before. In my case I was doing all 4 active projects (and a small dab of Pirates) so as to contribute to everyone. In part because I am doing documentation too ...

---

> One of the other side effects of the improved rigor compared to SETI@Home
> Classic is that your "place" will move based on the actions of others which is
> not true of CLassic. For example, I did have machines down for nearly a
> month. They have been running for a week now and yet I am still losing ground
> in the stats.
>
Count me in that group too....I had 8 machines doing Boinc, went down to 7 for awhile and then down to just 2 for almost a month. I had switched them nack to Classic so i could get over the 50,000 mark. I did that and now have 14 of my 17 total machines doing boinc. That means that I am part of the reason you are slipping! Sorry!
I will be moving 3 of those other 4 over one day but not unitl I exhaust my SetiQueue's files. I still have about 350 Classic units to process and at about 35 a day it will take awhile.
I have 1 laptop I will not move over, it crashed doing Boinc during the Beta test and I am just not willing to loose it again. Probably not Boinc, but better safe than sorry! 3 of the other 16 are machines we use daily, the other 13 are Boinc ONLY machines! They were bought REAL CHEAP, like $50.00US or machines we upgraded from.

---

If you slip backwards, try to bring in a really fast machine for a test during a couple of weeks. Then evaluate the situation again.
Other possibility buy a couple of very el cheapo machines and turn them on. Evaluate again after some time.

The cheapest method is certainly bying only motherboards (preferably with graphics card on board), with the fastest processors you can afford. Get as much of these within your budget. Obtain depending on local situation free (dumped) floppy drives, powersupplies etc. from friends, neighbours, ...
Mount them all together in a selfbuilt rack. Control everything from a central computer via network cards. (Use a free OS like Linux on a floppy - again you don't have to pay).
In this way you get along the road more and more capacity.
Over the years everything has grown here and now I run BOINC and SETI together.

I got a lot of mail asking if I had a sort of calculating center. (Grin). Well that is nearly true...

Greetings from Belgium ;-))

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> The cheapest method is certainly bying only motherboards (preferably with
> graphics card on board), with the fastest processors you can afford.

One additional note is that you can get MB with network card built in. I would also caution against going the cheap route on MB. I bought a pair of MB with CPU as package and did not use one of the MB but bought a higher end MB. The processing time difference between the two machines is fairly significant.

---

@ Paul

You're quite right (as often)... But I wouldn't appear as a bragging person.
So when I buy something for my own use I try for example to have on a motherboard the following :

-cheap doesn't have to be "bad" e.g. if you can have the Gigabyte board at practically 60% of the price of say the topline Asus, but with the same specs so buy two Gigabyte and the Asus will be given a run for the spent money in finished WU's.

-You can even try to buy some older boards. Very often shops give discounts on models that have a shelflife of say a half upto a year. I happened to buy five at once of these and got a very high reduction. The number of blades count too in the running for the WU's.

- decent chipset with enough growth possibility towards the immediate future (say a year or so). In that way I don't get stuck immediately as new processors come out.
- eventually but handy if present, graphics on board (must be possible to disable ) for the purpose must not be top of the bill since I run Seti always graphics disabled to enhance speed
- must have network card on board preferably 100Mb / 1Gb of good quality. i.e. not to much relying on processor force ! There is a huge difference of chipsets here. This can give a very big difference in speed for the processor under load while communicating!!!

(advice: read much magazines and keep on reading about hardware and go on the web to places like Tom's hardware site to mention one. Ask and keep asking What, Where, How does this have to function, be inquisitive and curious, do read as many books on hardware where you can lay your hands on...).

Even if the chipset should be somewhat slower this should not be to much of a drawback, since you're in this way enormously economising on cases, drives, etc.
The only requirement is that you are patient and handy with soldering iron, hacksaw, etc... and have a reasonable notion of electronics.
(I used to built my own printed circuit boards, made my own radio gear and designed model helicopters in the past, so no problem here).
For the same price as a fully built desktop I guess in this way you could have three mayby four boards operational. Even if some of the boards or the processors are somewhat less, this is easily counterbalanced by the amount of boards in the rack.

There are further advantages, in this way you don't have to buy serveral keyboards, mice and monitors. Furthermore everything can be arranged on a relatively small footprint, so you're economising on space.

There happens to be lots of information on this kind of setup on the web. Look for computer farms or computer blade setup etc.

You can even get away with Linux on a floppy and get Boinc running that way from a shared couple of dedicated drives on a central machines using only the floppy as a startup and via your network card to your central machine.

By doing so you will eventually stumble in a lot of headaches, but it is a hobby no? and the journey will be the reward.

An alternative way (but far more costly) is to use boxes and link them together with the following if you're the not-so do-it-all-yourself type:

You can use an 8 port KVM switch (DKVM-8E) from D-Link. They are stackable and can control electronically (on screen - selectable) upto 64 computers.
The cost for the 8 port version +/- 250€, comes with three sets of cables.

Before I happened to use a mechanical switch, but this one i.e. the D-Link is much faster and much more reliable and a real luxury to operate if you have to control a lot of hardware from one point.
The rotational selector of the former mechanical switch (el cheapo solution) rapidly showed serious signs of wear and tear and hence bad connections ending up in frozen computers and reset and sometimes dataloss.

VNC can be a (cheap)but not in every circumstance flawless solution, but certainly does not offer the same comfort as the hardware solution (always for everything maximum speed).

As you see I walked different way's at the same time, but had a lot of fun in doing so...(no I'm not a company, nor do I have any connection with a company, but sometimes I get the question where I do do need that kind of computing power for, most of the time I reply that I'm trying to calculate where I did left the black hole in my memory... (grin) ).

Wish you happiness and preferably a good health in the upcoming hollidays to you and your family...
Greetings from Belgium ;-))

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H P,

> You're quite right (as often)... But I wouldn't appear as a bragging person.
> So when I buy something for my own use I try for example to have on a
> motherboard the following :

Was I bragging? Did not intend to ...

> -cheap doesn't have to be "bad" e.g. if you can have the Gigabyte board at
> practically 60% of the price of say the topline Asus, but with the same specs
> so buy two Gigabyte and the Asus will be given a run for the spent money in
> finished WU's.

And you are quite right on this one. Though I can't seem to keep up with the evolving termonology and Tom never seems to have information on what I want to know. So, my rule of thumb is looking at cost vs. which manufacturers I have had trouble with in the past. At the moment I am down to Intel MB and Gigabyte (well maybe, lets see if the BIOS update fixes the reset problem) for sources.

We have a big box retailer for electronics here in California called Fry's and I can and do get their "bundles" of CPU and MB. In the last go around I got two 3.4 GHz Intel CPU with 1 MB cache with MB. I also got a "bettter" MB for one, the time differences between the same processors running BOINC are significant enough that I will be taking out the other MB when I can afford to buy another higher end MB.

In the mean time it is faster than the 2.8 GHz, non-HT processor I replaced so I am still ahead, and will get further ahead when I upgrade the MB.

Other than that ... I agree with everything you said. My personal problem does not let me do as much frustration any more ... but, I know I am looking ahead to some when the new BOINC GUI gets here as I am planning to go off Windows on several of my computers and will be miograting to Linux (probably different versions so I can, if I can, make sure that my documentation reflects reality).

---

Its often more difficult to express ourselves in writing than in a real conversation surely when using a foreign language.
I meant the following (you certainly were not bragging!!!) :
-Sometimes I am a little bit afraid to fully expose my machinepark because I don't want to be misunderstood as a bragging person.
I have always been attracted towards machinery in the broad sense of the word and I often plaid with the idea to take some photographs and put them on my website, but in the past I ran in so much strange people knowing my Email adress from my webpages that I had to close this connection. Some even wanted me to built certain machinery for them and even went angry when I replied I didn't have a bussiness and would not do this!!

You know what I mean if you look around on this forum (in some other threads)...I really get sometimes depressed of what people dare to publish.

Sincere greetings,
Hugo Peeters, Belgium,

---

> Its often more difficult to express ourselves in writing than in a real
> conversation surely when using a foreign language.
> I meant the following (you certainly were not bragging!!!) :

Ok, I have a similar problem ... and I was just checking. I was not spun up, I was just confused. So, cool!

> -Sometimes I am a little bit afraid to fully expose my machinepark because I
> don't want to be misunderstood as a bragging person.

Heck, if you have it; flaunt it ...

I would not construe your descriptions of your Machine Park (been awhile since I have seen that term) as bragging. Though Bill Gates position in the fortune 1000 is not in jeopardy I am solidly in the middle class and therefore have a little more free cash than most people.

However, I did not get there easily and so when I was on active duty had to live payday to payday. Yet I was able, even under these conditions, to accumulate hardware. So in that case I was fond of buying cheaply when forced. However, (pronounced as "however comma", sorry, it is the only sense of humor I have... ) in many cases this can be false economy.

So, my usual suggestion for a person that wants to build a farm/Machine Park is to budget for machines and then to buy components that will last ... usually this means that some of them are more expensive. At the moment, few of us wants to run "naked" MB as so I recommend the "Antec style" cases (Antec charges more, but there are clones that are less expensive, probably also made by Antec in that the parts seem to be interchangeable) and these will last through several generations of MB.

If the person is a gamer, I suggest getting one hot video card and the latest machine be optimized in that direction. Then when the money is available, you buy the second case, new MB, CPU, Memory, and an inexpensive video card. The old machine gets the cheap video card. The new machine gets the older video card (this only needs to be upgraded about once every 5 years), and the rest of the new parts.

This is exactly how I built up to 10 machines. With one pair being bought as pure SETI@Home machines and yes I did get package MB/CPU combinations.

> I have always been attracted towards machinery in the broad sense of the word
> and I often plaid with the idea to take some photographs and put them on my
> website, but in the past I ran in so much strange people knowing my Email
> adress from my webpages that I had to close this connection. Some even wanted
> me to built certain machinery for them and even went angry when I replied I
> didn't have a bussiness and would not do this!!

Yeah, I hear you.

The ones I love are the ones that want me to troubleshoot their machine over the phone ...

> You know what I mean if you look around on this forum (in some other
> threads)...I really get sometimes depressed of what people dare to publish.

Yes, I find it depressing too.

Having been guilty of that in the past I have been making a sincere effort to "play nice" and if I don't have something nice to say, well, silence is golden.

> Sincere greetings,
> Hugo Peeters, Belgium,

Greetings!

---

Thanks, take care,
Greetings, H P

---

Hi,

> The cheapest method is certainly bying only motherboards (preferably with
> graphics card on board),

Agreed. Running bare motherbords in a rack is also a good way to avoid
overheating problems.
If you drop all unnecessary components, you won't need a big power supply, too.
300-350W is plenty.

> with the fastest processors you can afford.

If you look at cpu prices, you'll notice that the "top notch" models are expensive and have big price differences for little clock speed changes.
Below this there's a "middle range" with cpus not priced very far from each other.
Just buy the fastest "middle range" cpu.
Only get cpus with large L2 cache (512K minimum).

ATM the P4 (with 1M L2) seems to be the best choice. It's a bit slower than the Athlon per WU, but can crunch 2 WUs in parallel via HT.

The Pentium M also looks interesting. I just ordered one to see how it will perform :o).

Also have a look over here: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=dfipm&page=1

> Get as
> much of these within your budget. Obtain depending on local situation free
> (dumped) floppy drives, powersupplies etc. from friends, neighbours, ...
> Mount them all together in a selfbuilt rack. Control everything from a central
> computer via network cards. (Use a free OS like Linux on a floppy - again you
> don't have to pay).
> In this way you get along the road more and more capacity.
> Over the years everything has grown here and now I run BOINC and SETI
> together.
>

Regards Hans

---

@ Hans

Thanks, all info surely is welcome.

Greetings ;-))

> There are further advantages, in this way you don't have to buy serveral
> keyboards, mice and monitors. Furthermore everything can be arranged on a
> relatively small footprint, so you're economising on space.
>
> There happens to be lots of information on this kind of setup on the web. Look
> for computer farms or computer blade setup etc.


This is something I'd really like to do... I looked for "Computer farms"; "Computer Farm" Setup -server; "Computer Blade" setup

Its not returning much information on how to set one up... and what it does return is people saying they have one set up already and it seems like they're just networking multiple PC's together.

I'd love to blade some P4(NON XEON's) together into 1 server box or something. Is this possible?

> Its not returning much information on how to set one up... and what it does
> return is people saying they have one set up already and it seems like they're
> just networking multiple PC's together.

That's pretty much all a computer farm is for Seti or similar, lots of PCs crunching data & sharing a common connection to their data source.


> I'd love to blade some P4(NON XEON's) together into 1 server box or something.
> Is this possible?

Nope.
Blade servers are specially designed to run in a very small space- carefull component layout combined with heatsinks & fans designed soley for the purpose amkes it possible for them to run. Try it with a normal system & they'd either cook themselvs to death or throttle them selves down to a crawl.
The next closest thing is just to run multiple normal motherboards stacked one on top of the other using spacers & standoffs.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Look for
Seti farm, or/and blades, stacked motherboards ... use your imagination and you will find.

However be prepared to have a lot off work. Most cannot be readily be obtained of the shelf and must be made by yourself.
That goes for the connections, cooling, cases etc. You need to be at ease with some wood and metalworking and need tools to cut / weld metal plate and woodworking gear.
If you are handy and have some patience that will certainly not stop you.
Knowledge of Linux is handy by not necessary (it helps to drop the costs, since it's virtually free).

There is a lot of people out there that are having computerfarms and made them all by themselves. For the moment due to circumstances,I do not have the URL's handy, but I will post them here within a couple of days. (I am on the road for my job).
Even with the Xeons it is possible.

Greetings from Belgium ;-))
PS: If you don't believe look at my credits for both of the projects Seti Boinc/Seti Classic all done with homemade gear by myself, so no company or whatsoever...

Especially look at the peoples photographs of their farms, a picture tells often a thousand words. There happen to be lots of people with ingenuity to solve problems of this kind on this very small planet...

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