Posts by Purple Rabbit

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Welcome to the 10 year club (Message 908586)
Posted 18 Jun 2009 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I'm almost there!
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Has it been 10 years allready (Message 874323)
Posted 10 Mar 2009 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I have no idea how I found SETI. It's been almost 10 years after all! It kept my 486DX2-66 (still works) warm on many cold nights. I never did figure out how to get my Heathkit H89 to do SETI tho :-)

Little did I know how much money this would ultimately cost me. My 486 has grown (I won't tell how you grow new computers from a 486) in to a small garden running multiple projects on my house network with BOINC. At least I now have an excuse to buy the latest computer even tho I wouldn't need the latest and greatest wiz-bangs for my normal use.

As a pack rat I've kept all my old computers. The H89 and the 486 still work, but can't do anything useful these days. I'm still running a couple of 1.3 Celerons (upgraded from the eye-popping 600MHz P3 they started with). They don't do SETI anymore, but they still can do SOMETHING. My electric company loves me.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Welcome to the 9 Year Club (Message 647887)
Posted 24 Sep 2007 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I've now survived for 8 years. To think that I started with a 486. It still works, but it's in pieces on the floor at the moment. I got carried away "improving" it :-)
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Slowest computer contest (Message 417856)
Posted 9 Sep 2006 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
My 486DX2-66 (upgraded with a AMD 486-P75/133 processor) with 96MB RAM running Win98SE has got to be in the running for Chief Dinosaur. It has a "Pentium Rating" of P58, but it's still just a 486.

It has been running SIMAP continuously since February: Dinosaur. It takes 2 days to complete a task. It started with SETI Classic in 1999 then moved to BOINC/SETI. It only took 12 days to do a SETI (Classic and non-enhanced) WU :-) SETI enhanced is probably a bit beyond its capabilities, but I haven't tried it. It also did Predictor tasks in 6 days.

Not too bad for a 60 watt room heater :-)
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Problem in downloading workunits (Message 272572)
Posted 31 Mar 2006 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
The project has been having server problems. It is low on work right now. Be patient and you will get work soon.

BOINC has a built in capability to cache work if that is what you mean by proxy. Increasing your time interval to connect will increase the amount of work you will have on hand. Your computer is asking for 172800 seconds (48 hours)of new work. This will give you quite a few work units to work on. The BOINC-Wiki has more information here:

http://boinc-wiki.ath.cx/index.php?title=Work_Buffer
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Are there any "old" CPU's out there? (Message 237442)
Posted 25 Jan 2006 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
You might find the thread "My 486 (Please Don't Laugh)" interesting.


Yes. My 486 is still happily giving me a completed WU in a little over 12 days. It's a weed growing on my farm :-)
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Seti_enhanced & client_state errors (Message 218300)
Posted 19 Dec 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
And there are people still using 486's taking over 60hrs to crunch a unit here, so length of time to crunch isn't really a factor.


My super 486 (Pentium 58 equivalent) takes 12 days to run the current WU. It does this reliably, but slowly. It's dedicated to crunching so only power failures and operator-head-space errors would corrupt the client state file.

I doubt that it can run SETI Enhanced, but I'm going to try it just to see if it works.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 204133)
Posted 5 Dec 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Most of my downloads and a couple of uploads made it. An interesting observation: I have seen 3 uploads stuck at 108%, then crashing. Looking at the file size and bytes transferred, the percentage looks about right. I assume it was doing a whole bunch of retries before giving up.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized BOINC 5.2.7 for Windows and Linux (Message 193829)
Posted 24 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I'll try to build a new version for P3 and post it when it's done to take a further look into the problem you've got.


Thanks. I would appreciate that a lot. I'm willing to test your changes.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized BOINC 5.2.7 for Windows and Linux (Message 193825)
Posted 24 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
@Crunch3r---It looks like you're done with John. Please look back several posts to my similar problem. It may be more intriguing since I am running kernel 2.6.13 on a current release of SuSE.

It looks like network access breaks the process.


11) Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized BOINC 5.2.7 for Windows and Linux (Message 193774)
Posted 24 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I also tried the 5.2.7 p3 SSE BOINC client on my 1.3 GHz Celeron, 640 MB RAM, SuSE 10.0 and never got past the benchmark. The benchmark runs fine and gives me about what a Windows machine would have (double), but as soon as it tried to do something, it crashes. Sometimes it waited until a network access to crash. I'm sorry that I don't have the error files. I have been "optimizing" the system :-)

The P4 SSE2 BOINC version runs great on my 3.0 GHz P4, 512MB RAM, SuSE 10.0 machine. The Windows BOINC version also seems to be running great on my 3.4 GHz P4, 1GB RAM, WinXP.

Since I'm a newbie to Linux I have assumed my problems were an operator-head-space problem, but maybe there's a problem with this configuration running on a Celeron?

Anyway, thanks a bunch for the BOINC clients. They level the playing field for Linux vs Windows.

Edit: I just tried the 5.2.8 version with the same results.The stderr file shows:

2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Starting BOINC client version 5.2.8 for i686-pc-linux-gnu
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] libcurl/7.15.0 OpenSSL/0.9.7e zlib/1.2.3
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Data directory: /home/rick
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [SETI@home] Found app_info.xml; using anonymous platform
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Processor: 1 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Celeron(TM) CPU 1300MHz
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Memory: 630.70 MB physical, 1.00 GB virtual
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Disk: 11.73 GB total, 10.93 GB free
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Version change detected (5.2.7 -> 5.2.8); running CPU benchmarks
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [Einstein@Home] Computer ID: 434387; location: home; project prefs: default
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [Predictor @ Home] Computer ID: 170903; location: home; project prefs: default
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [SETI@home] Computer ID: 1601549; location: home; project prefs: default
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [rosetta@home] Computer ID: 51161; location: home; project prefs: default
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] General prefs: from rosetta@home (last modified 2005-11-09 18:50:12)
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] General prefs: no separate prefs for home; using your defaults
2005-11-24 17:34:01 [---] Remote control allowed
2005-11-24 17:34:03 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
2005-11-24 17:35:02 [---] Benchmark results:
2005-11-24 17:35:02 [---] Number of CPUs: 1
2005-11-24 17:35:02 [---] 1349 double precision MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
2005-11-24 17:35:02 [---] 2432 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
2005-11-24 17:35:02 [---] Finished CPU benchmarks
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [Einstein@Home] Deferring computation for result w1_1174.0__1174.2_0.1_T12_S4hC_2
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [rosetta@home] Resuming computation for result 1di2__abrelax_rand_len10_jit02_omega_sim_19011_0 using rosetta version 479
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [SETI@home] Deferring computation for result 24ja04aa.11699.17040.497156.116_2
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [---] Resuming computation and network activity
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [---] request_reschedule_cpus: Resuming activities
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [Einstein@Home] Restarting result w1_1174.0__1174.2_0.1_T12_S4hC_2 using einstein version 481
2005-11-24 17:35:03 [rosetta@home] Pausing result 1di2__abrelax_rand_len10_jit02_omega_sim_19011_0 (left in memory)
2005-11-24 17:35:08 [rosetta@home] Sending scheduler request to http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta_cgi/cgi
2005-11-24 17:35:08 [rosetta@home] Reason: To fetch work
2005-11-24 17:35:08 [rosetta@home] Requesting 3191 seconds of new work
SIGILL: illegal instructionStack trace (3 frames):
/home/rick/BOINC/boinc_client[0x8180243]
[0xffffe420]
12) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 192157)
Posted 23 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I must agree with you here at this point. electricity is very expensive.


Oh please! My 486 runs about like a 60 Watt light bulb. It's no big deal compared to air conditioning or even my two P4s. I'm an engineer who is a real pack rat. I found a useful thing for this machine to do. It's more of an experiment than anything else, but I made it do SOMETHING!

I'm just really thrilled that it can do useful work. Yes, It'll be retired shortly, but the point was that it could still do useful work.

I thought that I would make an announcement that 486's aren't really dead (but almost). They can still do useful work, but not competitively in the BOINC world.

13) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 188894)
Posted 14 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I have a few spare cpu's gathering dust, free to anyone who can use them.

73 de n4oqk


I figured a fellow ham would have a well stocked "junk" box :-)

73 de WA3VTF
14) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 188331)
Posted 12 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
"If you throw it away on Monday, you will discover an urgent need for it on Wednesday"


What??!! Have you been in my basement? Need any vacuum tubes? I've got a bunch :-)
15) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 188323)
Posted 12 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
I believe that your 486 must have 32 MEGs built in with 64 Megs added on many of the older MB's had built in ram with the ability to add more.


No. I've taken the darn thing apart too many times to miss that :-) I had 32MB RAM to start with 2-16MB SDRAM in the first 2 of 4 slots. Last year I bought 2-32MB SDRAM modules to add to the 3rd and 4th memory slot. Oops, didn't work. I finally settled on removing the original SDRAM and put the 64MB in the first two slots. I never could get the 3rd and 4th slots to work. I have no idea who made the motherboard. Still, it reports 96MB and that gets me around the SETI restriction. I can hear it swapping while running SETI, but Predictor doesn't seem to swap much at all.

I'm lucky in that I still have the original keyboard and monitor. I stuck one of my extra serial mice on it. The 486 works fine, just slowly :-)

It's interesting to see comments that range from: "Why would you want to do that? Donate it to a museum." to "Cool, that's great". I don't know how long I'll let it run, but I'm going to get another 32 cobblestones tomorrow after 12 days :-) I guess the engineer in some of us (or is that pack rat) is always seeking a use for old stuff.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 187929)
Posted 11 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
You could try Vector Linux


I'll take a look at it.

I probably couldn't give my 486 away let alone get $10 or so for it. As Martin said, it's not about efficiency or money. I have this puppy and I want to see it do something. My 30 MFlops (.22 credits/hr) is good for something. I'd pull out my Heathkit H89 (2MHz Z80 processor) if I thought I could get it to do something useful. :-) Why? Just because...no other reason.

17) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 187803)
Posted 11 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
11-13 days for ONE work unit? I real waste of electricity!!

Electricity is relative. I recently (last 9 months) got two more P4 computers. My electric bill has doubled since then. Dinosaur is a pimple on the elephant. It's a harmless endevour :-)
18) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 187802)
Posted 11 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Hi!
I was very happy to see your posting, and I'm not laughing at all!

<snip>

I think we should keep each other informed about our progress - I'll post my experiences here in this forum.


@Martin I certainly will keep you advised. I'm a real newbie to Linux so I haven't tried compiling anything yet. I'm a retired engineer, but I'm a hardware guy! This Linux stuff is new to me. I'll take the plunge soon. That's the whole point, I want to learn.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : My 486 (Please Don't Laugh) (Message 187795)
Posted 11 Nov 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
With the imminent demise of SETI Classic and the concern about what old machines can do I'd like to report that my 486 runs BOINC just fine. My 486 (Dinosaur) is able to run a SETI Classic work unit to a successful completion in 11 to 13 days. Running a SETI BOINC WU is very similar.

Now this isn't just any 486. It was originally a 486-DX66, but it's been upgraded to an AMD 586-133 (super 486 running faster with a Pentium rating of 58). Dinosaur has 64MB of RAM, but it reports 96MB. I think its reporting of 96 MB is important to get around the 64MB restriction for SETI. This is some weird motherboard thing, but I'm not complaining.

I have found that I can run SETI and Predictor on Dinosaur. Predictor WUs take about 4 days (one hour on my 3.4 GHz P4). Of course I do each project one at a time.

Before someone asks why, it's because it's there! I bought the darn thing in 1993 and I wanted it to do something useful. It may be trash, but it can really do some useful work.

A question: Dinosaur is currently running Win98 SE. What's the latest LINUX distribution that supports such an ancient machine? I'm running SuSE 10.0 on my "real" machines and there is no way this will run on Dinosaur. I've got SuSE 5.3 (kernel 2.0.35) in a box, but this seems really old.
20) Message boards : Number crunching : **THREAD CLOSED, THREAD CLOSED** (Message 177587)
Posted 13 Oct 2005 by Profile Purple Rabbit
Post:
Uploads and downloads are still sporadic here as well. However I've downloaded 10 (out of 11) WU and uploaded 3 WU (out of 6). It looks like a network snafu to me given the servers seem to be happy.


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