I saw in Matts' post that he thinks the new "Beta" app will take 4 times longer. As a Beta tester I can say it will currently take 10 times longer. If they plan to release the new app in approximately a month, then it'll take you 120 days for a wu or 3 Wus a year. You realistically won't be able to make the deadline. They currently have a 2 month deadline.

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.

You could try Vector Linux

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surely if as suggested the "past it" 486 is put to rest and shutdown and put in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten, surely this is a waste of the hardware and resources?

most of the "cost" of cumputers is in the manufature and disposal, have a read here

surely if as suggested the "past it" 486 is put to rest and shutdown and put in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten, surely this is a waste of the hardware and resources?

most of the "cost" of cumputers is in the manufature and disposal, have a read here

I just paid Newegg 115 bucks for an AMD64 Athlon 2800+ Clawhammer, but just watched an OLD P4 2.4 400Mhz processor sell for $124 (plus $11 shipping) on Ebay, maybe you could sell the 486 on ebay and buy a whole new system???? I can't believe ebay prices, sheeshh.

I can't believe ebay prices, sheeshh.

By definition there are no bargains at any efficient auction, because you "win" by agreeing to pay more than anyone else. The more potential buyers, the greater the risk of overpaying. Having a large number of bidders favors sellers, small number of bidders favors buyers. There's a lot of behavioral-finance analysis of this kind of thing, but it's a bit off-topic here....

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.

surely if as suggested the "past it" 486 is put to rest and shutdown and put in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten, surely this is a waste of the hardware and resources?

most of the "cost" of cumputers is in the manufature and disposal, have a read here

Donate it to the local museum or tech college for display purposes.

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Account frozen...

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.

A few years ago we had around 30 old 486 machines that had been retired and were living amongst the dust, spiders, and old Honeywell/Bull stuff in the storage barn.
12 of those have since been put back into regular service as router/firewall machines using the Freesco package. Freesco is Slackware Linux based, uses a 2.0.3x kernel, and runs completely off a 1.4mb floppy diskette is so desired. It can be loaded onto a HDD as well. Most of the old 486's have 16 meg of memory and a couple of the born again machines are routing/firewalling for offices with over 50 workstations and servers with varying OS's lashed up to it. Many others are doing the same jobs for in-home networks. And sadly, a couple of the old 486's headed out to Leroy's farm with us to end up on the losing end of a few small arms target practice sessions.

If you're interested, I'll post some benchmark results like the ones you provide on your site. Provided I have any success, of course...

That would be great. Especially if you would manage to run official BOINC CC (in benchmark-only mode would do) to have a couple of numbers to compare ...

I managed to run your BOINC CC's on my 486!

Benchmarks are
Official BOINC 5.2.5:
Whetstone: Timed out
Dhrystone: Timed out

Metod BOINC generic 5.2.5:
Whetstone: 18 MIPS
Dhrystone: 55 MIPS

Official BOINC 5.2.7:
Whetstone: Timed out
Dhrystone: Timed out

Metod BOINC generic 5.2.7
Whetstone: 18
Dhrystone: 48

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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"

how much ram does seti need? i have a old p3 with 64mb of ram that does nothing and i want to crunch on it. can i?

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how much ram does seti need? i have a old p3 with 64mb of ram that does nothing and i want to crunch on it. can i?

it's said it needs 64Meg, but that's 64M free (not used by OS). It might work with a Linux OS and "maybe" windows, but I wouldn't count on it. NO promises. Wouldn't hurt anything to try. My P3-500 took 7-9 hours/result with optimized application. My Celeron 500 is taking 12 hours/result. Note: P3-500 died and was put to rest.

Getting a 486 to crunch BOINC.....that's freaking awesome!! You might not get much credit, but just getting it to work is an achievement in itself.

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[
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 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.

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how much ram does seti need? i have a old p3 with 64mb of ram that does nothing and i want to crunch on it. can i?

it's said it needs 64Meg, but that's 64M free (not used by OS). It might work with a Linux OS and "maybe" windows, but I wouldn't count on it. NO promises. Wouldn't hurt anything to try. My P3-500 took 7-9 hours/result with optimized application. My Celeron 500 is taking 12 hours/result. Note: P3-500 died and was put to rest.

My 486 system is currently not able to crunch Seti because of too little memory. I have 64MB installed, 61MB free, and when I try to download WU's, I'm told that it's not enough :-(
I use Debian Linux.

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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"

My 486 system is currently not able to crunch Seti

about 5 months ago I found my ole 486 DX 50 and tried to get it back up and crunching. The problem I ran into was a lack of a keyboard with that big old 1" round connector on it, and NO PS/2 mouse. LOL I trashed it.

The problem I ran into was a lack of a keyboard with that big old 1" round connector on it, and NO PS/2 mouse. LOL I trashed it.

My 486 got that exact same connector! I've still got the original keyboard, I think, but what I'm using right now is a 1"-to-PS/2 converter, and then connect it to my KVM switch. It works.
However, the mouse is different. The 486 hasn't got a PS/2 mouse port either, so I tried to connect my PS/2 mouse to the 9-pin serial port with a converter attached to my KVM-switch, like I did with the keyboard. That didn't work. Luckily I still had my serial port mouse, so I'm using that instead.

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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"

I think you're right on the mouse,...now that I think about it. I didn't have that or a ps/2. (still don't, probably never will)

You could try using a PS/2 to AT convertor for the keyboard. If I remember correctly, 486s use 9 pin serial port mice. Doubt you can buy those anymore.

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I just recently retired an AMD XP2000+ Win2000 box. I have that, and a dual PII Xeon 450MHz with 1 meg cache on each CPU, an Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz, and an Athlon 800MHz SLOT A, all sitting on my junk pile. They take up more electricity to run then they are worth for W/U production. Next week, I will be putting an AMD64 3500 online, and retiring my Athlon XP2100+, cause at 4 hours per W/U, it isn't producing enough to pay for the electricity it eats. It's RAC is only 136.56. All these machines can crunch SETI perfectly, but there has to come a point where their efficiency versus their energy consumption gets one's attention. I am trying to replace all my older, low production machines with ones that will put out enough production in W/U's to justify their energy consumption...

Regards, Daniel.

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Ship to:

MMCIastro
123 Anytown
Mycity, SC. 12345

next day air is fine if you're paying.

[edit] I'm just bidding on the 2000 and 2100, no need for intel or OOOOOLD AMD