Phoenix PC

[drezha]

I've seen this done on another forum/DC team and I tried getting it to go on TPR but there was little interest. (Check out our effort here..)

Basically it's to join small PC's into one user. You know the old machines you all have and they barely score much. The P2 at the bottom of your desk you really dont want to throw away but it sits there and slowly crunches? That Duron you upgraded from and didn't get round to throwing out?


The idea is to get together as a team and run these machines as one user. Try and drum up some interest in crunching (I know you chaps are already pretty good, but it's a bit of fun) I'd throw my low power 533Mhz machine in.

If others fancy chucking in support, we need to come up with a username for the user and a project/projects to run.

As a start, I suggest malaria control.net as it runs with little RAM (my 533MHz CPU with 512Mb RAM is on it). Maybe a non BOINC project as well?

Because the single machines dont give much credit each, people wont really miss them. Is it something people are interested in?

Maybe a limit to the CPU's that can join? Like anything under a certain BOINC benchmark or under 1Ghz? Thoughts?

[meshmar]

Maybe a limit to the CPU's that can join? Like anything under a certain BOINC benchmark or under 1Ghz? Thoughts?

That sounds like most of my pharm

I'm have started upgrading/moving out older systems, but I still have slot 1 P3's crunching - I even have a K6-2 laptop with 64MB crunching

[drezha]

Well if you could spare one to this users, it would help! Certainly double the theoretical users input so far :p

[Frederic Brillouet]

I've got an amd athlon 550 MHz and a P3 1 GHz being silent in my room. Eventually I might use them, but the thing is that there will be 2 new puters running 24/7 then here as well and i think the oldies will be a waste of electricity, I might try and put them in my mothers office at work though

[drezha]

Get one of them running something useful as well. ;)

Mine's running a webserver as well.. Or even put them on for a couple of hours a day.

[drezha]

I'll assume no one's interested then?

[Frederic Brillouet]

I'm not saying I'm not interested, its just that it will take some time to prepare the things and I'll need a new wireless internet router and connectors to be able to get them online. (unless I put them in my mothers office at work, what will have to wait till after new-year

[Steve Lux]

I have every runnable computer available to me already running. The only working computer I have left is an old pre-internet W95 P1 Toshiba laptop that doesn't have a network port, no USB ports and the only comm cards I have for it are pre-cardbus PCMCIA dialup - while I use DSL. They just don't sell pre-cardbus network cards.

It's less an issue of interest than of available equipment. Over the last several months, on and off - mostly off, I have been piddling with some old boards and components but have been unable to accrue a working combination. Just the week before last I made a donation of about 30% of my old computer stuff to an elderly retired guy that likes to piddle around with old computers.

[vaughan]

I'm out of action for another week or so but from memory all my old computers got their innards transplanted with Q6600s. I figured it was a waste of electricity running an XP2100 when for roughly the same power usage I can run a quad core.

[gatekeeper53]

I have a closet full of old gear but when I upgrade I tend to use everything but the motherboard and CPU and sometimes the memory. Or I put it together and give it to families that have kids without a computer. I tend to give away about 15 to 25 computers a year. It seems that word has gotten around and I get calls from teachers about twice a week looking for someone a computer that only needs the power to word process.