Older Stuff

July 2011 - Joined SETI@home team GPUUG

My quadraphonic setup: 4 x 40W @ 16 ohms
 

CRTs FTW: Me being old'skool back in 2011 with three CRTs...

Folding@home 5 Million Point Milestone:

I have another computer (Intel Core2 Quad) that runs SETI@home during the day. I plan to switch some of the computers above over to this project once I loose the lead I currently have in the SETI team I'm in..

Some Tips:

• Leave one CPU core free to feed data to the GPU(s).

• I find a 400W branded 80plus rated PSU can power a single GPU. 2x260s can just about run with a 550W branded 80plus rated PSU with minimal other hardware (ideally a 2.5" SATA hard drive and no optical drive) providing you have enough PCI-E power connections (and/or molex connectors for adapters).

• I find a single GPU needs the airflow from a 120mm fan. More cards need more fans.

• Dust filters or periodic cleaning of GPU & CPU heatsinks is a must.

(Your battery is able to charge normally, however it is
reaching the end of its usable life.
Click here for more information)

From doing a bit of Googling, it seems the battery warning automatically displays once the laptop/battery is of a certain age and while over time battery life will decrease most users will notice this anyway, and for those that use their laptop plugged into the mains for most of the time, the warning which displays at each login is annoying and seems to me to be an attempt by Dell to talk customers into buying a new battery whether they need one or not.

Here's how to disable the warning:

It's a startup file that needs disabling. Open System Configuration (Start, type "msconfig"), Click on the Startup tab and disable/deselect the QuickSet item and click OK:

Or so I thought!

T-Mobile have a "Broadband Accelerator" included in their software which compresses all images that are download, and because BOINC downloads images, they arrive compressed and they become deemed as being "corrupt" and this leads to the application unable to successfully download work units.

There is an option in the T-Mobile software (under XP but not Windows 7) to disable the Accelerator, but this changes nothing, and there is an option in BOINC to Skip Image Verification, but this has made no difference.

I tried to manually put the following images in place
(C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu):
seti_603.jpg
seti_609.jpg
ap405.jpg

I watched the list of messages as I fired up BOINC. It recognised that seti_603.jpg was already present and 'skipped' the download of that one. For some reason though, as I found out when I checked on the image files, seti_609.jpg had been replaced with a 0KB one and when I looked back to BOINC at the list of downloaded work units it had failed all the CUDA ones and now they're 'ready to report' straight away as before.

Success with with the standard work units (and Astropulse ones) though as they're working.

So as I've discovered (if I'm correct), the seti_603.jpg graphic is for the standard (CPU) work units, seti_609.jpg is for the (GPU) CUDA work units, and ap405.jpg is, well, for the Astropulse ones.

I'm not sure why the seti_609.jpg got downloaded, overwriting the already present file. I've repeated the process again and it did the same, I've also made it read-only and tried quickly aborting that download from the Transfers list.

I've posted the above on the SETI Forums but no response. To keep my graphics cards busy I've turned to Folding@home and I'm now currently in the top 50 ppd in team CustomPC.

I have also tried getting some sense out of T-Mobile regarding the possibility of turning off the Broadband Accelerator, but that has thus far proved futile, with them asking for details I had already given in earlier, thorough e-mails.

We chose T-Mobile 1) because it worked in our area and 2) because of their Fair Usage Policy whereby they don't charge for going over the 3GB monthly transfer limit but instead cut down on your access. Two months in and I've already managed to go over the limit - I can browse the internet fine and still participate in SETI and Folding but video streaming and strangely (and annoyingly) I can't use FTP to carry out changes to the websites I work on. Jam Legend work initially but I think T-Mobile cottoned on to the heavy downloads and stopped that too a couple of days later. According to the fair usage policy, restrictions were only supposed to be put in place during peek times, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Is 3GB per month enough? In a word, no. 3GB equates to around 100MB per day and you can easily clock up 30MB just by watching a YouTube video... venture over to BBC iPlayer and you'll be screwed! Going over the limit will only cause you problems in the evenings (and weekends?) when you'll be unable to access video, upload pictures and use FTP access (SETI & Folding data transfers are unaffected).

Custom PC magazine ran an article earlier this year about the state of broadband in the UK with the poor telephone network being to blame. For me it is a lack of planning for the future - poor targets are set such as 'we need to provide 99% of people with a minimum speed of 4mb within 5 years... but then by the time the five years is up that 4mb is useless with all the new demands from streaming video and online gaming. The same is the case with mobile broadband that also lacks the bandwidth required because 'it was never designed for today's demands'.

One final issue: For some reason, the application disables the option in Windows to 'Show window contents while dragging'. Bizarre and annoying, more so because there is nothing in the application to say it will do this, or why!