The transition is not going as smoothly as I hoped here.
My old clients aren't working.
I currently only have a box and a half running on the new supplied client and lack the time to sort them all for a couple of weeks.

UncleVom :(



UncleVom

Yeah I noticed last week that most of my computers ran out of work & stopped processing anything as a result. It seemed that installing SETI@home Enhanced overtop did not work. So I uninstalled BOINC, deleted the BOINC folder, then did a fresh install & also installed the Crunch3r versions.

All 8 of my computers have been converted over except 1 which seems to have a failing hard drive (my Athlon XP 2000+ - a top producer!). When I have more time this week I'll test it & if necessary get an RMA & a replacement drive as quickly as possible.

Another change besides the transition to SETI@home Enhanced is that optimized versions of BOINC & SETI@home no longer report huge gains in credit over the regular versions. Supposedly these versions were over-reporting. It's explained on the BOINC message boards. That explains why we have all been dropping like rocks in Recent Average Credit over the last 2 weeks. But I guess that is affecting everyone that used optimized versions & we will eventually settle down to a new average at some point.

> The transition is not going as smoothly as I hoped here.
> My old clients aren't working.
> I currently only have a box and a half running on the new supplied client and
> lack the time to sort them all for a couple of weeks.
>
> UncleVom :(
>
>
>
> UncleVom
>


Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

Turns out 2 of my computers are out due to bad hard drives!!! Grrr......

My laptop is the other. Fortunately both are covered under warranty...

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> Turns out 2 of my computers are out due to bad hard drives!!! Grrr......
>
> My laptop is the other. Fortunately both are covered under warranty...
>
> Jay
> Hardware/Support Moderator
>


That sucks, laptops are especially bad with the frequent spinning up and down of the drives. I'm convinced power saving kills drives.

I usually replace a drive with a new one rather than wait for the turn around, sometimes that allows me a chance to possibly access the data of a dying drive in a master slave situation.
Then send the dead one in for warranty.

I always check warranty replacements and if they are old or have remanufactured stickers they will not be trusted in an important situation.

I seem to be getting my RAC comming back up slowly.
I like the award of credit based on flops, but the standard software sucks and I haven't found anything that is optimized for the AMD64 dual core CPU with SSE3 in Linux. (Crunch3r seems to be involved in a feud with some at setiathome and has suspended his clients)
Faster machines give away a lot without the enhancements and AFAIK if you do the work and get credit for the flops then doing it in 1/2 the time by taking advantage of modern instruction sets is not cheating.

UncleVom

> That sucks, laptops are especially bad with the frequent spinning up and down of
> the drives. I'm convinced power saving kills drives.

Actually I turned that off - just the LCD shuts down unless battery power is too low in which case it hibernates.

> I usually replace a drive with a new one rather than wait for the turn around,
> sometimes that allows me a chance to possibly access the data of a dying drive
> in a master slave situation.
> Then send the dead one in for warranty.

Good idea. In my case $ is a factor & it died at a bad time to do that. I have no spares at the moment.

Of course you can get an advanced RMA which gets the replaacement in your hands faster.

> I always check warranty replacements and if they are old or have remanufactured
> stickers they will not be trusted in an important situation.
>
> I seem to be getting my RAC comming back up slowly.
> I like the award of credit based on flops, but the standard software sucks and I
> haven't found anything that is optimized for the AMD64 dual core CPU with SSE3
> in Linux. (Crunch3r seems to be involved in a feud with some at setiathome and
> has suspended his clients)
> Faster machines give away a lot without the enhancements and AFAIK if you do the
> work and get credit for the flops then doing it in 1/2 the time by taking
> advantage of modern instruction sets is not cheating.

Yeah I don't understand this feud. Now if you go to Crunch3r's site, it redirects you to Einstein@Home! I figured this was bad news - when I checked the SETI@home boards, it seems Crunch3r has not only stopped contributing his clients but has deleted the source code from his PC & asked people to stop using his client. Make what you want of it - I'm not telling you what to do.

BTW I agree with your opinion on not cheating. It's too bad they can't work together to just improve the core clients.

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

Well I got both of my replacement drives & both computers are up & running again. I decided to install Windows Vista beta 2 on the Desktop. Interesting - when checking my computers on the SETI@home page, it shows as Longhorn not Vista. They should call all Windows XP computers Memphis then. We'll see how SETI performs given the fact that all 512 MB are used up (about 556 MB with nothing open & SETI running).

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator

> Well I got both of my replacement drives & both computers are up & running
> again. I decided to install Windows Vista beta 2 on the Desktop. Interesting -
> when checking my computers on the SETI@home page, it shows as Longhorn not
> Vista. They should call all Windows XP computers Memphis then. We'll see how
> SETI performs given the fact that all 512 MB are used up (about 556 MB with
> nothing open & SETI running).
>

Glad you got your boxen back in the harness.

Well Vista's going to be interesting.
You are braver than me, I don't normally run XP even though I have a CD and license sticker, too much hassle when juggling hardware.
I will have to get Vista at some point, I need to stay current on the stuff to be able to fix it, but don't have much use for it beyond that.

UncleVom

> > Well I got both of my replacement drives & both computers are up & running
> > again. I decided to install Windows Vista beta 2 on the Desktop. Interesting
> -
> > when checking my computers on the SETI@home page, it shows as Longhorn not
> > Vista. They should call all Windows XP computers Memphis then. We'll see how
> > SETI performs given the fact that all 512 MB are used up (about 556 MB with
> > nothing open & SETI running).
> >
>
> Glad you got your boxen back in the harness.
>
> Well Vista's going to be interesting.
> You are braver than me, I don't normally run XP even though I have a CD and
> license sticker, too much hassle when juggling hardware.
> I will have to get Vista at some point, I need to stay current on the stuff to
> be able to fix it, but don't have much use for it beyond that.
>
> UncleVom

Well I put Vista on an extra desktop PC - not my main PC. So if it blows up then so what - nothing to lose data-wise. A co-worker of mine tried an earlier beta of Vista months ago & it immediately crashed after he did something (loaded a driver?) & was dead in the water. So far I have not tried much with it yet but it's still alive & well (with all drivers loaded too). & (most importantly) BOINC works!!! However I need more RAM - 512 MB & with little more than BOINC running, over 550 MB RAM are in use.

Jay
Hardware/Support Moderator