(Vanity) Folding@Home FReepers - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan

self ^ | 01/08/2005 | self

[texas booster]

OK, new thread for the next week.

First, a big shout out to the SETI and BOINC members who have added CPUs to the effort. Remember, its Team 36120, NOT Team 0.

Next, congrats to all for bumping our team up to 384 processors and 192 user names. We have a number of new users in the team, with nearly a dozen folders now from GetLoaded.com all popping onto the hit list this week.

Special mention to Klutz Dohanger, who has quietly volunteered 80 systems to fold. That is 20% of all of the Free Republic Folders systems actively engaged in research. He is on a pace to pop 100,000 points personally before the end of January.

Malsua, uriah, Ken in Texas and Andrewksu are solidly in the top 10. Malsua is continuing to add (fast) systems and is now the number two folder on the team. Andrewksu will be the next member to hit 10,000 points. Great job!

Free Republic Folding@Home Stats Page

On the global front, Free Republic Folders is now listed at # 624. We are poised to overtake (today):

Flowers of Happiness (awww, ain’t that sweet)
SpongeZone
Team Redneck Beatdown
Go Navy!
French-Krew
and the Rochester Institute of Technology

As we continue to grow there are a number of milestones coming around the bend:

Top 600 by Monday
Top 500 within eight days
Top 400 within three weeks

We have 430,000 points so far. We will reach:

500,000 points by Thursday
750,000 points by Jan 24
1,000,000 points in early February

Thanks again to all that are helping us advance science and promote the peaceful use of computers.

Extreme Overclockers Stats for Free Republic

[texas booster]

Another week, another burst of new folders. The most important stat of all that we talk about is this:

The more protiens that we fold, the more likely we are to help find a cure for the ailments that cripple and kill us.

Good job everyone!

[texas booster]

Laundry bump out to the Folding@Home ping list!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off the list.

Have a terrific week.

[Drango]

Want to start folding? It's VERY easy.

1.)Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html . Type in your desired username. 2) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for our FreeRepublic member team! 3) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

Remember: 36120 is our number

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Drango]

[ken in texas]

Thanks for the stats summary in your post... it's amazing how far this team has moved in such a short time.

I have one more machine that I might be able to use but I'm fighting some network issues right now. Plus, after taking two weeks vacation at the end of December, I'm now back at my day job.

[ken in texas]

Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

Not quite true... the GUI version sets itself up to start when you log on to Windows (XP, at least). If you stay logged on it keeps running. Plus, if you're going to advise people to run as a service, please at least mention which of the various Windows versions should be downloaded.

I personally find the GUI version to be quite suitable where only one instance is to be run: it's stable and permits one to readily check on the progress. I fear that in the interest of trying to squeeze an extra per-cent or so of progress each day, some people have been talked into running the console version and now find that they are in over their head when trying to find out information about the progress of the Work Unit.

Other's opinions and mileage may vary.

[uglybiker]

Ya think we'll ever find the mis-folded protein that causes liberalism?

[ken in texas]

LOL. We'll need quantum computing to handle that problem!!

[Drango]

Ken I agree. Although I posted the words, they aren't really mine. (said in my best Clinton weasel speak). They are a cut & paste repost from earlier threads.

For people just starting off and have a Windoze box, the NT/2000/XP 5.03 version is the way to go IMHO. http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

[Flyer]

Laundry bump

Hey, that's my line!

Bump!

[brityank]

Got a 400 Frame 241 Pointer that should hit by 02:00EST Monday.

Fold On Bump.

[TAdams8591]

The above computerese is Greek to me. Can anyone explain it in English?

[texas booster]

I liked it so much I added it to my repertoire.

[Stentor]

.

[texas booster]

http://folding.stanford.edu/science.html

The above link describes what doctors are looking for and the science of protein folding.

There are certain types of scientific problems that require huge numbers of processors to computer. Folding@Home is a project that works to advance medicine by borrowing unused time on normal computers to fold proteins.

Diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and even many cancers are believed to result from protein misfolding.

Many folks from FR have banded together to donate our computers to advancing science. Our team is advancing through the rankings and now is about #600 of 43,000 teams.

Some people like pretty goldfish for a screen saver or a Microsoft logo prancing across the screen. We prefer pictures of proteins dancing during down time.

[ezsmoke]

Going along well but my laptop(AMD Athlon 4 Palomino 1.2GHz) hates it. It is very hot! I had to add an external fan on the back. I added an old AMD K7 700MHz and Intel P3 500MHz this past week. I was going to add an old AMD Athlon Thunderbird C 1.1GHz but the motherboard (Asus A7V133) and power supply(Antec 300w) is fried.

I may be able to add some newer faster computers later on.

[TAdams8591]

Thank you kindly for the explanation.

What is protein folding?

[texas booster]

Each of your cells contains about 2 meters of DNA, all folded into the tiny space inside the nucleus, which is a million times smaller. As you might imagine, these long, thin strands can get tangled very easily in the busy environment of the nucleus. To make things even more complicated, DNA is a double helix, which must be unwound to access the genetic information. If you have ever tried to unravel the individual fibers in a piece of rope, you will understand the knotty problems that this can cause. To help with these problems, your cells build several different enzymes that untangle and relax DNA strands. DNA, RNA and over 50,000 protiens all unfold in the process of keeping you alive every heartbeat.

http://folding.stanford.edu/education/protfold.html

Check the link out. It doesn't bite.

[Clara Lou]

Regarding our drop in production, I wonder if a lot of folders might not be turning off their computers.

Here's something that's affected my statistics. For some reason, FAH opts to send my not-so-powerful home PC 400-frame workunits. The first one took nearly two weeks--but it finally gave me a burst of 239 pts. [I did turn it off a few times and also lost a night's work when my PC froze for reasons unknown to me.] Now FAH has sent me a new 400-framer, which will cause my PC-processor to have no points for about 10 days. So, it seems like I'm not producing.

On the other hand, FAH sends my G4 laptop 100-frame WU's that are only worth between 50 and 100 pts. that finish faster. I'd have thought my laptop would get the high-pt. value WUs and my PC would get the smaller pt. value. Whatever.

[Paladin2]

A quick review of the highest point contributors shows a declining output - this is the most likely cause of the recent minor decline.

For example go to:

K-Z extra info

Review the second graph. Similar for some others.

[Clara Lou]

Interesting. Some drop off to zero. I wonder why?

[ken in texas]

I have noticed that I'm not getting 600 point units any more... they're all in the 40 - 150 range. Perhaps Stanford only had a specific number of high-point work units available -- now we're down to running the 'normal' stuff. I don't know.

[Paladin2]

There's likely all sorts of factors.

If you look at the active vs. total members of teams in the 600 to 700s rankings, many have but a few die-hards that are still active. The teams are like a super-NOVA where after the initial burst, there is a low residual level of output.

In our case [~200 active members], if all team members were to keep going with one computer each putting out 50 points a week, we'd have 10,000 points per week, which would put us at a sustainable ranking of under a hundred [if we amassed 5 million points initially].

In my case, I am currently running all the hardware I can assemble here in my personal, at home, "computer lab" [my name] [Mrs. P2's name = "this room looks like a junkyard"]. This results in approximately 100x my "normal" CPU cycles worth of points a day. At some point in the next few weeks I will begin to throttle back [~$30 extra/mo in electricity] in the "lab" and see if I can convince the IT folks at work to let us run FAH on the computers at work which do have plenty of truly "unused" CPU cycles.

'Till then it's great fun to watch the team smoke up the rankings.

[Paladin2]

Seems like for every 600 pointer, one has to do penance with some 41, 44, 48 & 51 pointers.

[papasmurf]

I believe they send the wu's they need to have done sooner-to the machines that a history of consistent completion.

My lappy #1 has been folding 3 times faster than any of my other 7 machines I have on, yet I have rec'd a 41, 46, 41, 41 in the last 4 draws.

I'm hopin' for another 600 pointer...but I understand that that the research is what guides them.


:O)

P

[papasmurf]

...and now another 48 pointer...

:O)

P

[Paladin2]

I received my most recent 600 pointer Thursday night. Since then, they've all been below 200.

PS. Thanks for posting the pics of your "trailing edge" hardware collection. Helped partly convince someone that I'm not necessarily the "only one".

[DocRock]

Bookmark

[Clara Lou]

I'll bet that's what I find tomorrow when I check my laptop. At least they're processed quickly!

[Bush_Democrat]

So, how do you find out how many points the job you're working on is worth? I can see in th display how many frames it is, but nothing about the points.

[Drango]

click here to see how many points you will get
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html

[papasmurf]

I think my 8th cpu will finally show up now. I just went into the garage and checked the 3 boxes I have running there. 1 of them, was stuck on finished and attempting to connect...which is where it was last night when I last checked. ( it's on a separate subnet, so I can't monitor it from here)The NIC indicator lights showed power, no connection. Rebooted it and it connected again. I think I'll shut it down and put a new nic in it. (it had a built in nic).


:O)

P

[Paladin2]

A quick review of the project summary page at Stanford shows that there are only three projects left in the 1140 -1150 range (all of the 600 pointers). Seems like it could be that there are fewer left to hand out.

Remember that those projects were awarded ~2x the normal # of points to get people to take them (long time to complete and relatively large HD and RAM requirements).

Fat times in the laundry room are coming to an end.

[kingu]

Here at work, there's one 741 pointer that will take six days, a 241 pointer that is taking 4 days, a 270 pointer that is taking 4 days, and a 55 pointer that is taking a day.

So over time, it's working out to be 50 points or so a day per machine (4 of them.) They won't all show up at the same time, but that's 200 points of my production a day.

The other three machines, a laptop, and a couple desktops, crunch when idle - the two desktops pop out about a hundred points a day, and the laptop can do about the same. So my average should show up at about 500 points a day in a week or so.

[kingu]

I use FAHMon to keep track of how many points a work unit is worth. Sometimes on the beta test units or on units just added to the queue, the point value doesn't show up for a day or so, but it has been generally accurate. And it gives an idea how long the work unit will take to finish.

I love it here at work - since three of the computers I'm using don't have traditional displays, I shared the folding folders over the local network and have one machine check the status on four computers. At a glance, I know how most of them are doing.

[ChadGore]

[Drango]

Humbled by the power users here, and deep in shame about my lack of CPU vitality I have found an old, semi-dead, '98 box that was hidden in my garage. Yes, it was hidden under old laundry. I'm busy configuring it as we speak and with luck I will be able to resurrect it. I will NOT be out folded!

[Drango]

What my garage (and office) sorta looks like...

[Clara Lou]

LOL!! Are those running? I have one or two of those around--my son's leftovers. I think I'm going to make myself be satisfied with just two processors, though.

[j_tull]

I'm one of your BOINC to Fold converts, but have noticed that the WinGui client will only use 50% of an otherwise idle Pentium D. Poked around the settings, found a slider moved all the way to the right, but can't get it to use more than half the available resources. Othewise, glad to be aboard.

[prion]

Home from vacation and back folding! Of course, I've only got the one CPU, so I'm kinda down the list, but I'm folding my little heart out...

[ken in texas]

The WinGUI is using everything available... you have a processor with Hyper-Thread support. Windows treats it as a second processor, but it's not really a full-blown processor in and of itself. It merely gives the machine the capability to sometimes run two threads simultaneously, plus Windows' reporting of CPU usage is inaccurate or misleading.

Some suggest that you should run two versions of the console program to keep all available thread execution pipelines busy; I'm not in favor of that if you're trying to process work units as quickly as possible.

I posted a more detailed discussion of Hyper-Threading from the F@H support forum here for those that missed it.

[FrogMom]

I'm on my 6th WU. Three have been small, three have been 600 pointers. My graph looks like a yoyo - I fall for the 3 days it takes to put out the 600 pointers.

Interesting stuff.

[ken in texas]

... My graph looks like a yoyo ...

Look at it like investing for retirement... daily value might fluctuate, but over time there's more and more. After a while you should have a fairly predictable daily / weekly average point accumulation to look forward to.

[HangThemHigh]

Thanks for the tip on FAHMon. That is exactly what I've been wishing for for use with the console version. I've been dumping the log into Excel and plotting progress and was wondering how to automate the process. This is much better.

You rock!

[fnord]

please remove me from your ping list, thanks

[RebelTex]

Hiya Tex.

I have a few really old systems (286, 486, P-II, P-III, P-IV, AMD Athlon) that I might crank up if I can get them configured correctly. I don't want to use Windows because they can't run XP. On the one of them, I plan to run Win 2K as a server (unless I can figure how to set up a server in Linux), and I'd like to use Linux on the others.

The problem is that when I played around with Linux a few years ago, I couldn't find drivers for all the old stuff - lic nic & video cards and don't have time to find them all now (that's why I never really got into Linux).

So, my question to you (and any Penquins out there) is this: What is the latest greatest flavor of Linux (Red Hat, etc) that can recognize and auto load drivers? What simple applications or Lindows will that OS run? Are there any auto scripts available to install? What firewalls and antivirus programs are available for Linux (especially the recommended flavor)?

Oh, yeah - I really don't want to subscribe to any version (like Red Hat requires) - I prefer freeware or shareware (no cost or one time fee).

I don't really have a lot of time to relearn it all, lol, and I don't want to use Win 95 or 98 because of security. (I will network these on a separate node from my everyday systems.)

Thanks for any info that you or anyone else can provide. (Keep in mind that this is a spare time project which may take weeks to complete.)

RT

[kingu]

Download and burn onto a CD rom the live CD version of Mepis from http://www.mepis.org Then boot each of the PCs using the disk - if it finds everything, install it onto the hard drive (or just run it from the CD and use a USB dongle to store the F@H software/files.)

I've resurrected old laptops using this method and it has found virtually every device driver needed, a feat that not even Windows XP SP2 seemed to be able to do.

There are plenty of variations out there, and others might suggest other versions, but that one has worked for me. Actually, I gotta get another copy myself - I just gave away my last live disk to someone who was trying to recover their pictures and documents off of a virus infected PC.

[kingu]

I only rock because someone else put it on the thread as part of the first couple replies a couple posts before. FAHMon rocks!