Optimized BOINC and SETI software, specifically CrunchR's

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Profile roguebfl
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Message 229260 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 9:39:42 UTC - in response to Message 229248.  
Last modified: 11 Jan 2006, 9:40:49 UTC

You want my ancient Gigabyte board with the Athlon 900 I used with it? That should make up the difference. :-)


your calling that Ancient?!? I only just retired my K6 !


I guess the boat is slow to get the new tech to you folks out there off the Mainland? ;-)


Nah Linux greatly expaned it's useful life span for me.

Speaking of ancient tech, I have not one but two old 486 boards with slots for that cutting-edge VLB (VESA Local Bus, for you newbs) bus! One of them still has a Cyrix CPU on it. And VLB SCSI cards, Promise and Adaptec, to go with each. I also got me three Iwill motherboards, P54TS, P55TU, and P55XUB, with awesome embedded 20MBps Fast SCSI! Each one cost me about $450 back in the day. Now I realize why I'm still poor. 8-/

Oh, and truly ancient tech: an old/original Microsoft mouse, with a solid metal ball and BEARINGS instead of teflon slider pads!

Mark


Well mise are one of the few thing MS got right ;) BTW SX or DX for those 486?
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Message 229453 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 17:52:41 UTC - in response to Message 229260.  

BTW SX or DX for those 486?


The one I seem to have, that Cyrix still stuck on one of the boards, is of course DX. I don't recall that Cyrix ever made an SX, though perhaps they should have, considering their reputation for sloooow FPUs. The boards themselves are 3rd-party generic and can handle either.
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Message 229473 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 18:11:17 UTC

I have an old Chaintec mobo (5TTM M201) with a cyrix/ibm 233 attached to it that still works.

Think I could get that cranking out some uber WU times? :)

Plus, there's an Intel Pent 75mhz (oc'd to 120) around here somewhere...
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Message 229542 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 18:46:02 UTC - in response to Message 229260.  

...Well mise are one of the few thing MS got right ;) ...

Very much not.

The mouse idea was stolen from another company.

In my view, Microsoft have actively and very expensively stifled many aspects of computer developments. The flip side of that is that we have gained lesser but useful benefit of low hardware costs from enforced hardware mediocrity.

Happy crunchin',
Martin
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Message 229600 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 19:36:23 UTC
Last modified: 11 Jan 2006, 19:37:27 UTC

Sad sad sad. Intel 386SX 33 MHZ here. Anyone still remember the days of the turbo button and the MHz display? I thought it was super cool when they got the display to read 100 finally.

Oh, and the reason Microsoft is having so many problems is that they steal, and the government doesn't like competition.
Matt
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Message 229679 - Posted: 11 Jan 2006, 21:21:06 UTC - in response to Message 229473.  

I have an old Chaintec mobo (5TTM M201) with a cyrix/ibm 233 attached to it that still works.

Think I could get that cranking out some uber WU times? :)

Plus, there's an Intel Pent 75mhz (oc'd to 120) around here somewhere...


what did you mean, my father has an old 286 with NEAT chip, and 512 KB memory, and an old 20 MB Harddisk...

so have i to call back this old good Comp....

lol

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli


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Message 229854 - Posted: 12 Jan 2006, 0:37:52 UTC - in response to Message 229600.  

Sad sad sad. Intel 386SX 33 MHZ here. Anyone still remember the days of the turbo button and the MHz display? I thought it was super cool when they got the display to read 100 finally.

Oh, and the reason Microsoft is having so many problems is that they steal, and the government doesn't like competition.


you sreousle still have that in opertation? what it doing?

I remeber them. my first PC was DEC 386SEX25 which I upgreaded to 12MB of ram I learnt the meanin of patiace surifing the web on it with 14.4K modem
uninstall dyslexica.o : Permission denied


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Message 229955 - Posted: 12 Jan 2006, 3:21:36 UTC - in response to Message 229854.  
Last modified: 12 Jan 2006, 3:22:19 UTC

Sad sad sad. Intel 386SX 33 MHZ here. Anyone still remember the days of the turbo button and the MHz display? I thought it was super cool when they got the display to read 100 finally.

Oh, and the reason Microsoft is having so many problems is that they steal, and the government doesn't like competition.


you sreousle still have that in opertation? what it doing?

I remeber them. my first PC was DEC 386SEX25 which I upgreaded to 12MB of ram I learnt the meanin of patiace surifing the web on it with 14.4K modem


Gerald, you're just too young! You missed out on all the really fun stuff, like the debuts of the Apple and Tandy and TI-99a. And overclocking NEC V20/25/30 chips, back before CPUs even had heatsinks and fans. "Case fans? What are those? There's a fan inside the power supply, what else do ya need?" :-)

Not only do I remember the "days of the turbo button", I still have three AT tower cases here that I'm now using to reassemble some of my dusty legacy parts into working stuff. All three have turbo buttons, and two have the two-digit LED speed displays... which, BTW, have to be programmed to show a specific speed with a tangle of pins and jumpers on the back of them (sure hope I can find the instruction sheets)!

Ah, those were the days, when every card sported IRQ jumpers, Seagate 20MB hard drives were all the rage, having a "green" PC meant having one that could blank yer 15" amber CRT, and the revolution of the 9-pin RS-232 connector meant that everybody had at least one funky 25-to-9 adapter having off the back of the box that forced them to inch everything forward on the desk....

*sniffle*

Mark
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Message 229962 - Posted: 12 Jan 2006, 3:30:47 UTC - in response to Message 229955.  
Last modified: 12 Jan 2006, 3:32:20 UTC

I remeber them. my first PC was DEC 386SEX25 which I upgreaded to 12MB of ram I learnt the meanin of patiace surifing the web on it with 14.4K modem


Gerald, you're just too young! You missed out on all the really fun stuff, like the debuts of the Apple and Tandy and TI-99a. And overclocking NEC V20/25/30 chips, back before CPUs even had heatsinks and fans. "Case fans? What are those? There's a fan inside the power supply, what else do ya need?" :-)


Umm I should have said my first IBM Clone ;) it slip my mind that the Apple IIe+ is a PC too 8)
but being told I'm young is good to hear with my 30th birthday fast approcing 8)

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Message 230084 - Posted: 12 Jan 2006, 9:55:53 UTC
Last modified: 12 Jan 2006, 9:56:53 UTC

Too bad I cant get Seti running on some of my old equipment. Got a dozen Apple ]['s, 4 IIGS's, a TRS-80 Model 4 and a 4P (yes, thats right, PORTABLE that weighs about 50 lbs), an Atari 1040STE, 130XE and a 800XL too.

Oh, not to mention a few commies as well.
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Message 230118 - Posted: 12 Jan 2006, 11:49:56 UTC - in response to Message 230084.  

Got a dozen Apple ]['s, 4 IIGS's... an Atari 1040STE, 130XE and a 800XL too.
Good computers - Have you tried Lunix for the 8-bits and Debian for the 1040STE?

You'd have to reverse-engineer POKEY on the Ataris so that you would have enough RAM just to connect, though...
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Message 230849 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 0:50:59 UTC - in response to Message 229453.  
Last modified: 14 Jan 2006, 1:07:23 UTC

BTW SX or DX for those 486?


The one I seem to have, that Cyrix still stuck on one of the boards, is of course DX. I don't recall that Cyrix ever made an SX, though perhaps they should have, considering their reputation for sloooow FPUs. The boards themselves are 3rd-party generic and can handle either.


Had one of these but it had a spot on the board to install a second FPU, thus making it a DX. I installed one and it made a big difference. That was the only upgrade that could be done since the CPU was soldered to the board.

Also my first was the TI-99a, LoL. Still got my old Osborne 1 portable (only weighs about 30lbs) with its tiny, tiny little screen. Os(CP/M) loaded from 5.25 floppy. But I started out using the big monsters in the early 70's. We sure have come a long ways. Quit shuffling my punch cards, LoL.
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And God said"Let there be light."But then the program crashed because he was trying to access the 'light' property of a NULL universe pointer.
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Message 230959 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 7:55:14 UTC
Last modified: 14 Jan 2006, 7:57:58 UTC

This one is for CrunchR3. Need to know if your P-III Opt for windows is usable on xeon 2 mb cache cpu's. Would try it out, but do not want to possibly return bad WU's.

Wanting to fire up my old pair of web servers to crunch

Quad PIII-550 Xeon with 2mb L2, and 4 gig ram

Will check back for your answer. By the way it works awesome on my dual standard P-III's. Reduced crunch time by an average of 60%.



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Message 230964 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 8:25:16 UTC - in response to Message 230849.  

BTW SX or DX for those 486?


The one I seem to have, that Cyrix still stuck on one of the boards, is of course DX. I don't recall that Cyrix ever made an SX, though perhaps they should have, considering their reputation for sloooow FPUs. The boards themselves are 3rd-party generic and can handle either.


Had one of these but it had a spot on the board to install a second FPU, thus making it a DX. I installed one and it made a big difference. That was the only upgrade that could be done since the CPU was soldered to the board.


Steve:

Okay, so I see that Cyrix did in fact make 5x86 CPUs that didn't have an integrated FPU. However, the one I have is mounted on a generic 486 board that indeed does have a socket for a dedicated FPU, but it's redundant if the CPU already contains one; the the CPU in my instance is in fact a "DX2" that had an onboard FPU. (I'd dig it out again and get more details, but it went into storage almost two weeks ago.) However, Cyrix was also never known for producing efficient FPUs; would it have been possible to "upgrade" the onboard FPU with an external Intel or AMD FPU? If so, it should have resulted in better floating-point performance.

Thinking back, I'm wondering if we're confusing an "Overdrive" socket on a '486 board with an FPU socket? Further, I've just done a bit of digging and found hints that there might have been more to the "SX" and "DX" designations than just the presence or absence of an onboard FPU; in at least some cases they seemed to also describe the data and address bus widths and maximum memory address space and cache sizes as well (or instead).

How lucky the young newbs are that they've never had to worry about separate chips for floating point! They take its integration for granted now (hell, now we have CPUs with more than one FPU) but it weren't always so. Same goes for Level 2 cache... how lucky we are now to always have it inside the CPU rather than having 32-pin(?) DIP sockets taking up motherboard space! You do recall the definition of the term "DIP", right? Motherboards haven't been DIPpy in such a very long time. Hey, Right Said Fred had a tune "Deeply Dippy"... that musta been their geeky celebration of old tech, eh? :-)

Mark
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Message 230967 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 8:44:59 UTC

BTW, to bring this whole thing full circle...

Since I've fine-tuned my use of CrunchR's app and client, my Recent Average Credit has been steadily climbing; right now it's at 256 and still i'm waiting for it to plateau! Contrast that with my steady RAC values in the low 90's when I first re-joined SETI/BOINC in December. That's quite a remarkable increase. I also seem to be seeing less results returned where granted credit is less than claimed, and more often where it's more; if I understand the granting mechanism correctly, that might be because I'm now no longer consistently returning CPU times longer than the average, and so I'm benefitting from average now instead of suffering from it. My actual CPU times to complete units have also been cut by more than half, down to about 90 minutes now from over three hours in December.

So, I've seen more than 200% increases in credits granted and work units completed per day. I guess this has now become just another "bubbly glowing effusive" testimonial for these optimized apps.

Mark
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Message 230970 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 8:56:02 UTC - in response to Message 230964.  


Thinking back, I'm wondering if we're confusing an "Overdrive" socket on a '486 board with an FPU socket? Further, I've just done a bit of digging and found hints that there might have been more to the "SX" and "DX" designations than just the presence or absence of an onboard FPU; in at least some cases they seemed to also describe the data and address bus widths and maximum memory address space and cache sizes as well (or instead).


As I remember it, the 386 SX/DX were the ones with different bus widths - the SX being 16 bit whilst the DX was fully 32 bit. That changed with the 486. All 486s were fully 32 bit. The 486SX had the FPU but it was disabled by Intel. The FPU upgrade was, in fact, a full 486DX which, when installed, disabled the SX CPU. Of course, it gets more complicated when you include all the compatible CPUs from other manufacturers like Cyrix and AMD.


How lucky the young newbs are that they've never had to worry about separate chips for floating point! They take its integration for granted now (hell, now we have CPUs with more than one FPU) but it weren't always so. Same goes for Level 2 cache... how lucky we are now to always have it inside the CPU rather than having 32-pin(?) DIP sockets taking up motherboard space!


It was actually L1 cache on the motherboard as I remember it. L2 cache didn't come along until cache memory was on-chip, I think.

I remember the DEC LSI-11/23 CPU (as in the PDP11s) which was three chips for the CPU and a fourth for the FPU (optional). My memory doesn't quite go back to the PDP8s. ;)

Be lucky

Neil



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Message 231042 - Posted: 14 Jan 2006, 13:22:48 UTC - in response to Message 230959.  

This one is for CrunchR3. Need to know if your P-III Opt for windows is usable on xeon 2 mb cache cpu's. Would try it out, but do not want to possibly return bad WU's.

Wanting to fire up my old pair of web servers to crunch

Quad PIII-550 Xeon with 2mb L2, and 4 gig ram

Will check back for your answer. By the way it works awesome on my dual standard P-III's. Reduced crunch time by an average of 60%.



It works with the PIII Xeon. Give it a try. :)

Join BOINC United now!
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Message 233085 - Posted: 18 Jan 2006, 15:57:53 UTC

Here's something fun.

I've never checked the 'stats' section of the Boink client, even before I started using Crunch3r's optimized clients. The results are startling.

Before upgrading, the graph was climbing at about 25-30 degrees, after, 50-60. On all 3 machines, regardless of the cpu/windows versions.
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Message 233100 - Posted: 18 Jan 2006, 16:41:48 UTC - in response to Message 229542.  

The mouse idea was stolen from another company.

Martin

Martin, the mouse idea wasn't stolen. It's just a commodity. Read up on the history of the mouse. :)
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Message 233124 - Posted: 18 Jan 2006, 17:19:08 UTC - in response to Message 233100.  
Last modified: 18 Jan 2006, 17:20:24 UTC

The mouse idea was stolen from another company.

Martin, the mouse idea wasn't stolen. It's just a commodity. Read up on the history of the mouse. :)

For interest, see also more on mice here.

Re: Microsoft: Its all a question of emphasis! Don't tell the MS Marketing Dept... They'll likely sue you!!! :-(

Cheers,
Martin
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Message boards : Number crunching : Optimized BOINC and SETI software, specifically CrunchR's


 
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