20 years and counting!

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FreeLance

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Message 1994686 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 3:11:54 UTC

I joined 20 years and a few days ago with a 486 DX33. With 8 MEGS of ram. And I remember watching the graphic slowly slowly work its way across the screen. And it seemed to take forever to process one unit. Life had me moving around a lot but I'm retired now, and a few months ago I decided to see if SETI @ HOME was still running ... and I'm back in the saddle again.

Great to see Team Canada doing SO well, contributing so much to the overall effort. Congrats to every active member.. and to those who contributed in the past :)
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Profile paulo brito
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Message 1994710 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 8:29:00 UTC - in response to Message 1994043.  

20 years - amazing!
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Profile Mr. Kevvy Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $250 donor
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Message 1994713 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 11:15:31 UTC - in response to Message 1994588.  
Last modified: 22 May 2019, 11:29:31 UTC

As example of how far the technology has progressed in these two decades: I happened to save a screenshot of the old SETI@Home app. pre-BOINC... this is from 2000:



While the current work unit is almost complete with just over 9 hours elapsed, notice that 169 work units have been completed before this in 4900.3 hours. This works out to very close to 29 hours per work unit. (I was running SETI@Home on some very pokey work computers as well as on previous, much slower, computers at home which is where this screenie is from.)

On the the most recent computer I put together (well, vastly improved with fresh video cards and liquid cooling) each GPU completes a work unit in 38-42 seconds. Running four in parallel and with the CPU also contributing whatever it has left after keeping the GPUs busy and housekeeping, that machine is completing a work unit on average just over every 9 seconds (and as Dr. Korpela has noted, far more actual analysis on those work units is being done than was being done on that year 2000 one.)

Result: Roughly 11,600x improvement over my first SETI@Home computers. :^)
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Profile MajorTom
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Message 1994735 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 13:25:01 UTC
Last modified: 22 May 2019, 13:50:21 UTC

yes Mr.Kevvy the performance improvement the last 20years its just amazing...

hrhr the old screensaver... had about 4 1/2hrs for one wu at this time ('03)... but ofc disabled the screensaver =D for better performance

had a dual cpu socket machine, so I could run 2 seti threads at once and now we could buy 32core CPU's in one physical die, capable of 64threads
and can be outperfomed by one single GPU '^ ^like mentioned

for who miss the old seti page and wanna sneak through some stats... the wayback machine has it covered

seti classic

uhaaa Im getting nostalgic again =D so much black and purple '^ ^
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Profile Corvid
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Message 1994759 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 16:06:20 UTC

Congrats on 20 years SEIT@home.

I too lost access to my original account from 99. Not that the amount of work done by those old PCs would even be noticeable compared to the amount of work done by my newer machines over the years. I just wish I had that original join date.

I miss the old screen saver, you could really see all the processing that was going on. Of course, with how quickly work units get completed now, all that information would flash by to quickly to see.
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Profile Defense Engineer

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Message 1994763 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 16:42:58 UTC

Wow. I didn't realize I was that close to the beginning the project!
SETI@home member since 11 Jun 1999

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Profile Mike Bader Project Donor
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Message 1994800 - Posted: 22 May 2019, 22:25:23 UTC - in response to Message 1994763.  

May 18th
here
Mike Bader
BOINC V7.16.5
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_join_form.php?id=5 - Join Our International Team
[img]http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats.php?
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Profile CyborgSam
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Message 1994814 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 1:05:42 UTC - in response to Message 1994713.  

As example of how far the technology has progressed in these two decades: I happened to save a screenshot of the old SETI@Home app. pre-BOINC... this is from 2000:

Thanks for that, it brought back fond memories. I ran SETI and then Folding@home on Macs before BOINC. I remember turning SETI's fancy graphics off because it slowed down the GUI too much.
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Profile ChristianZehring

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Message 1994815 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 1:13:55 UTC
Last modified: 23 May 2019, 1:16:56 UTC

Congratulations SETI@home!
I remember the day I heard about it and instantly decided to join. That was in Oct 12th 1999 - a little bit longer for my personal 20th anniversary.
And yes, a single WU took ages compared to my current PC. I still got the certificates for completing 100, 250, 500 and 750 WUs - I was so proud of those achievements.


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nuclrengnr

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Message 1994820 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 1:46:58 UTC

Congratulations to all the participants. My original account (nuclrengnr) was lost somehow and that made me sad because I too was one of the first group of people to download SETI@home Beta and subsequently many others. Was a member of Team AOL back then. Today I have just finished over 20 tasks, a feat that took almost a month 20 years ago. I am sad to say that the machine I used way back then finally perished just last year (not a bad investment of $10K for 19 years worth of use!)

See you all at the next milestone!
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Cameron
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Message 1994822 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 3:22:34 UTC

Congratulations SETI@Home for reaching the 20 year milestone.

I sometimes wish I joined a bit earlier than I did. But we've experienced the Search together.
We can now collectively remeber the days of individual distributed computing applications.
The days when logged throughput, job queueing, graphs and other things was done by add on applications.

Well done everyone!
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Timothy Norris
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Message 1994872 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 16:09:17 UTC - in response to Message 1994043.  
Last modified: 23 May 2019, 16:16:43 UTC

I just looked up my own info and forgot I had been a member for so long!

I remember getting all excited way back then when I had a "significant hit" show up on my account. I think it ended up being man-made eventually, but the rush of adrenaline was awesome to say the least and has me add every computer I keep running (yes, my electric bill is kinda high, but who cares!) LOL

Happy Hunting!

Tim N

https://boincstats.com/signature/-1/user/40002857/sig.png
https://boincstats.com/signature/-1/team/157785/sig.png
============================
Timothy Norris
aka Zane M Cole - WDC Ranger
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Jan Rustbakken

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Message 1994877 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 17:22:32 UTC

15 May 1999 my searchin started. The team is Seti Norge www.seti.no

Yes my friends, time is going :-). First 20 years done :-)

Founder Jan Rustbakken SETI NORGE
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Profile Reese

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Message 1994925 - Posted: 23 May 2019, 22:42:46 UTC - in response to Message 1994082.  

Goto RUN
Type in Screen Saver
Select BOINC
Apply
BINGO!!!
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vexx
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Message 1995023 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 16:01:05 UTC

一直支持着这项活动,虽然是断断续续的,希望能有找到地外生物的一天!
I have been supporting this activity, although it is intermittent, I hope to have a day to find extraterrestrial creatures!
doctor of clinical nutrition
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Profile Joseph Stateson Project Donor
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Message 1995029 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 16:46:06 UTC
Last modified: 24 May 2019, 16:48:46 UTC

SETI started publically May 17, 1999
It took me 10 days to figure out how to get it working on an unused Apollo work station and (later)
on a "used" SPARCstation. An engineer called me to tell me to change the "nice" setting but
otherwise it was ok. I added more systems as the years went by and watched as other users
ran up huge scores that turned out to be fake. Some of the cheaters were members of otherwise
good clubs that didn't bother to check their own member for faking results.

Will be 20 years exactly on the 27th of this month.
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Profile Terry Byatt (R.T.Fishall)
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Message 1995033 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 17:12:33 UTC

I've been running Seti@home since 2000. I dread to think what the electricity has cost me, but it's worth it. If we don't listen we won't hear.
Life is not a rehearsal
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Eric Mars
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Message 1995037 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 17:41:58 UTC - in response to Message 1994043.  

Patience is stronger than the sword
- Worf
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Mike Ryan

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Message 1995039 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 17:49:36 UTC

Wow - 20 years...

Back in the day we had such humble equipment to crunch with. Computing was so exciting at the time because everything advanced so quickly every year. We very rapidly moved from 200 MHz processors / 32 MB hard drives / dial-up internet (ugh!) to multi-GHz processors / multi-TB hard drives / multi-Mbps internet. Funny how fast that change came, yet the for the 2nd decade we've been "stuck" for the most part in the 4ish GHz range / and a handful of TB on most hard drives. Seems all things taking huge advances these days are related to our phones. Geez, we've got 1 TB of storage on micro-SD cards now, and practically "everyone" on the planet carries a multi-GHz / multi-core / multi-Mbps phone with them everywhere they go.

I'm not quite at 20 years yet (will be in June) but I was pretty close to getting going about as early as I could have. With my dial-up modem taking several minutes to download each work unit. Then hope the thing finished in less than a week.
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Profile PHILIPPE
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Message 1995040 - Posted: 24 May 2019, 18:10:16 UTC

hello

my contribution is 14 May 2000

happy birthday SETI@HOME
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Message boards : News : 20 years and counting!


 
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