BaptistBoard Folding@Home Project

7 Active CPU's with a rank of 9194!

Welcome aboard Nate2!

 

Would love to join, but I am not online much any longer. Maybe an hour or two a week usually.

How long does one need to be online before his computer is really useful, and what about connection speed?

I'm on dial-up still. (And won't consider broad band till it's below $10 a month.)

 

Barnabas, are you on a dialup connection? Me too, and though I haven't tried this folding application, my guess is that it won't work very well unless you have a cable connection.

 

Yes, I do have a dial-up connection with Verizon. But it is like a cable connection, for I do not dial up, per say. I just log in. And I still do not understand where did I go wrong, but I had to delete the program because it interfered with the regular operation of my computer. It definitely did not work in the background, as it supposed to.

 

Since I'm not totally sure I understand this, but maybe I understand enough to be dangerous(!), I do have a question...

Is the security level of my computer and personal information compromised in any way?

The way it's been presented, I'm thinking there's nothing to lose...and a lot of good can possibly come from doing this.

CJ

 

A couple of things to mention. Distributed programming started with project "Seti@home" and was used to search through data from the big radio-telescope in Puerto Rico. Although I'm not sure what people here think about the SETI program, it was very interesting the way it worked and there were some people found by the billions of clock cycles used on outside computers. These "hits" will be reviewed by Berkeley (the college hosting the program), on leased time on Cray mainframes.

In my book, crunching numbers for finding diseases is a much BETTER use of computer time, but the SETI program did prove out that distributed computer is great.

There is ONE word of warning that I wish to make to those considering using it. It is NOT advised to be used on a LAPTOP. WHY?

Modern laptops have non-dynamic processors which can actually be stopped. When they are not in use, the clock cycles are either dropped to a lower level or turned off completely. These shut-downs or slow-downs may occur hundreds of times a minute, but it lowers the average number of clock cycles tremendously. In other words, the processor only runs during the times it needs to do something. For instance, a word processor may only turn on the processor when it has a key hit or does an auto-save--or is commanded to do something else. The rest of the time, the processor is essentially idle (except for housekeeping of windows).

The point is, distributed processing forces the computer to run during these slow periods--it can cause a processor in a laptop to overheat or run hotter than normal continuously. A proccessor running at 2 GHZ uses a LOT of power while it is processing. Therefore, you not only pull heavily from your power-supply or battery, but you may reduce the life of a portable's chip-set.

This is the ONLY negative to this. Otherwise it is perfectly safe and certainly will be helpful to the organizations crunching tons and tons of data. It is a unique form of donating to the prevention of disease.

Please do not take this as a negative--I highly recommend it. I just don't using your laptop.

.........Great program.

 

Does it matter what kind of processor is in the laptop? I only have a laptop and would like to participate. I have a Centrino processor.

 

Well...I jumped in too! I use an antique for a puter' but I'll do what I can. I just downloaded & installed & if I understand a little about it the WU they sent me will take abouta week to run.(I told ya it's old) but ole'Betsy's got lots of time on her hands!!

 

Sue just downloaded this, and it appears to have really messed up her computer. She's taking it in for repairs now. First the computer froze, then she rebooted, and now can only get a black screen and a notice saying that the file is corrupted or needs to be reinstalled, but nothing but that shows up and it isn't clickable.

I'd have to say...this is a great project and good idea, but maybe it isn't compatible with certain computer models or other installed programs, and that should be checked into before downloading it?

 

She didn't download the beta version did she? I tend to stay away from such programs with my older system.

 

Thats why I wondered if she used the beta form. If so there may have been sometype of glitch that got her. I've learned that the hard way in the past.

 

I doubt the failure was related. She may have had a hardware problem occur at the same time. Or possibly conflicting interrupts.