Computation Errors on S@H running on old Mac Mini

Message boards : Number crunching : Computation Errors on S@H running on old Mac Mini
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Profile Geoffrey Liu
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Message 1757005 - Posted: 17 Jan 2016, 2:23:38 UTC
Last modified: 17 Jan 2016, 2:26:22 UTC

I booted up my Mac mini for the first time in an eternity, and installed BOINC to run. Right now it's configured to exclusively run SETI@Home, but the only problem is that every work unit it downloads throws a "Computation Error" after running only for a few seconds. I went into Advanced > Show Event Log but all it says is that the work unit completed, with no description of the error.

My Mac Mini is a late 2005 model (I believe), and has the following specs:


  • 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 (I originally suspected that SETI@Home doesn't support PowerPC but right now I'm not so sure since BOINC says it supports PowerPC)
  • Mac OS 10.4.11
  • 512 MB DDR SDRAM


More details available here: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=7909827

Some of the tasks that have failed: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=7909827

I am running BOINC client version 6.12.35. Please let me know if I can provide any more information. Debugging tips are also welcome.

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Profile Donald L. Johnson
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Message 1757036 - Posted: 17 Jan 2016, 7:32:22 UTC

There is a dedicated thread here that deals with PPC Macs and Seti@Home MB v8 issues.

But the bottom line is, Eric's oldest Mac OSX machine is running OSX 10.5 while you (and I, and others) are running 10.4.11 The Mac OSX v8 app compiled under OSX 10.5 will NOT run properly on OSX 10.4 and earlier systems. Unless you can find a way to upgrade to 10.5 (the last OSX that supports the Motorola PPC cpu), you cannot run Seti@Home MB v8 apps. So once the MB v7 resends die off, our PPC Macs will not be useful to Seti@Home.
Donald
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Message 1757042 - Posted: 17 Jan 2016, 8:44:23 UTC

First while BOINC may support a articular hardware and operating system combination projects have their own set of priorities that may restrict what can be used.
Second, while Eric doesn't have the appropriate hardware and software to port the SETI@Home applications to an older (or even a current, rare) combination the project does not preclude someone with the hardware, software and skills from porting the applications, submitting them for testing (although that may need some co-ordination to get test machines set up) and then getting them released as "stock" or "optimised" applications.

(I can think of at least one combination where people have done such in the past - the Raspberry Pi where someone did porting and got it through its tests.)

The key thing is just now there are a lot of changes happening to the application source code so if anyone wanted to venture forth in this manner they would do well to wait until the "stock" applications have matured somewhat before starting out with code that may not be producing correct results.
Bob Smith
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Message boards : Number crunching : Computation Errors on S@H running on old Mac Mini


 
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