Back when I started DC'ing

R

relic

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - August 2007
Joined
Mar 30, 2001
Messages
9,318
<read with crotchety old man voice>

....uphill, both ways, barefoot in the snow.....but about this DC thing...

These days you kids got it easy. Back in the day there was no folding @ home, we here at [H] did genome @ home from Stanford, and we had Win95 and Win98 machines, one of 'em with a modem sharing the 56k dial-up connection to the rest of the PC's....IF you were one of the lucky ones that had a LAN.

Otherwise you had to copy the WU to a floppy and take 'em to the modem-equipped PC or into work and send them from there.

Back then we had real dedication, it was [H]ard to DC...you had to check every day to make sure your systems weren't hung or another PSU fried. Parts were expensive and we traded and shipped 'em all over the country, and in my case all over the world, just to cobble together enough machines to get the team another few points.....


Yeah, back in the day.....


<end crotchity old man voice>
 
I remember those days (does that make me old :eek: ). It's [H]ard to believe I've been lurking around here for 7 years.

I remember when ONE NUT was the god of G@H :D

...and relic it's still all your fault :cool:

 
I don't go quite so far back.
Only 5 years or so here.

I remember when the first work unit worth more that 100 points came out.
Folding G@H work units under F@H when Stanford ran out of F@H work units. 0.7 points of 18 hours folding.
Being told it was your Ram/Overclock/PSU/CPU/etc/etc that was bad when folding frooze your box.

Only running 1 computer ........... :(

Luck ........... :D
 
...it was for SETI, 'cuz f@h wasn't here. I didn't get to the horde until 2001.
Had to put up with endless discussions of pizza boxes.
Had two Cely 350's OC'd to 450 and 500 on air.
Accumulated probably over 10 points a day.
Those were the days of the genome dump. Where you dumped all your accumulated points within a three hour period.
Dirty Bird Lapel soiling dump 75 - 100
Small spastic, yippy dog Dump 101 - 250
The ColinT Memorial Godzilla Cat Dump 251 - 500
Beaver Dump 501 - 1,000
Post Coital Hill Giant Dump 1,001 - 2,000
Big Red Roo Dump 2,001 - 4,000
Brainless Emu Dump 4,001 - 8,000
Rhino Dump 8,001 - 12,000
Elephant Dump 12,001 - 15,000
Fat Bastard Dump 15,001 - 20,000
Tyrannosaurus Rex Dump 20,001 - 25,000
Giant Deep Sea Squid Dump 25,001 - 50,000
King Kong Dump 50,001 - 75,000
Godzilla Dump 75,001 - 100,000
Angry Greek Titan Dump 100,001 - 150,000
Screaming Barbarian Horde Dump 150,001 - 200,000
Blue Whale Dump 200,001 - 300,000
Deadly Aquatic Drop Bear Dump 300,001 - 500,000
Planetary Core Dump 500,001 - 1,000,000
Super Nova Dump 1,000,001+
Click to expand...
ref

My personal best was a Brainless Emu Dump when I ran three modems to do the dump, before I got cable. And it took the full three hours.

Now 8,000 ppd puts you at about #20 on the [H]orde.

 
Hello fellow old'uns :)

Really reduced the number of machines running it, I'm still trying to pay off the credit card bills tht I accumulated many years ago trying to rise up the charts, nowadays poverty means I am probably sinking daily.

I remember checking my stats every couple of hours to see if I had caught x or y and to see if I was still sending units. If I got a lot of easy units then suddenly it went to a long job I panicked thinking the power had gone off at home!

Have to say I preferred DF, pity that ended but I had to join the Oz team as nobody here seemed interested. :(

I remember too the time when somebody got raided 'cos he had all his windows open in his house during winter and also had a big power usage - had to be doing something nefarious the authorities thought until they went a knocking. His son answered the door when he was out if I remember correctly and had to show them his Dad obsession :D

Back to doing some work...if I dont get these servers finished we all know who's fault it will be ;)
 
neevo said:
Hello fellow old'uns :)

I remember too the time when somebody got raided 'cos he had all his windows open in his house during winter and also had a big power usage - had to be doing something nefarious the authorities thought until they went a knocking. His son answered the door when he was out if I remember correctly and had to show them his Dad obsession :D
Click to expand...
That was Mike McHugh's house. Yes, that was a good one. :eek:

To clarify one other thing, OneNutt was the King of F@H. He went head to head with the worlds best and beat him down. I don't think he ever ran G@H.

I started on March 19, 2001 doing the original folding at home. One WU = One point. I soon built a Duron 800 just for folding to go along with my Tbird 800. The number of machines here at home started to grow. We started doing genone at home as the original folding at home was on it's way out and we have reached #1 very quickly. Between the wife, the kids and I, we had somewhere close to 30 systems.....at home. At one time, I had computers in my crawl space. I used to do a big stats update on the forum every night. After the big switch to F@H v2, I almost made it to #1 on the team. I was just about to pass jkstang for the top spot and we both got blown away by ID01. Remeber how excited we were when Stanford listened to our complaints about Protein A and raised it to 5 points? They took about 17 hours on a fast machine. It was retroactive too...I had a 130 point spike. Ah yes, the good old days.



 
Yeah yeah relic. Next thing you know you're going to be telling us about running around changing the punchcards. :p

And yes, I do remember the good ol' days of dealing with multiple systems on dial up. It wasn't the biggest deal with G@H but it was a pain and a half for F@H.

I am one of the lucky ones who had a little home network setup. Then again, I had to share a few computers with just one internet connection whether it be dialup or broadband.

I also remember running around to the different machines with F@H2 swapping around different WUs to make sure the systems with SSE CPUs were crunching on Gromacs and the non-SSE systems were crunching on Tinkers so that I had each system running to their max potential. Hell, if it hadn't been for the loss of the timeless tinkers I would probably still be running my old dually PII 266 machine.

It's a damn good thing I have broadband now. Do some of you realize how long it would take to upload a completed SMP WU? It usually takes me at least a couple of minutes to do one now with a 512kb upstream connection. Hopefully I will have my connection upgraded to 1mbit upstream soon. I think I might need it when adding a quad core or two.

Listen to me now. Quad core systems with rock solid stable OSes on a broadband connection that I don't really have to worry about at all except for updating an expired beta client and maybe the power going off. Hell, in most cases I don't even have to worry about the power as the systems turn themselves back on as soon as they have power and start crunching again.

It is definitely a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than it used to be. I know I've been folding for the [H]orde for at least 7 years now. Started folding even before I joined the forums actually. I've been DCing since the beginning of SETI and things have changed a lot. I'm just glad to have found this place and this team. Every last cent of electricity, every bleeding gash from a cheap case, every extra hour spent finding the highest stable overclock, every can I picked up along the highway to get more boxen money (okay I didn't do this exactly but you get the idea), every spare part I could scrounge up and every borg I've ever been allowed to get my hands on has been worth it. It's been worth it for the team and it's been worth it for the cause.

You will have to pry my DCing boxen out of my rather warm due to the overclock on the box, dead hands.

 
Yeah, I remember the days of Genome@Home. Lots of fun putting together a massive dump from 10-20 machines that had been cranking for a week straight :)

Now, just buy or borg a few quads, run the SMP client and you're good to go. Not that there's anything wrong with that... I'm doing both!

It appears that Stanford is able to do some real science now with the compute power they have available. Most of G@H and early F@H work was mostly proof of concept and refining technique. I'm glad to see things evolving!

 
Man you guys are hardcore, I bitch when I have to remote desktop into a machine to restart it =)

Good to get a little history lesson on all this every once in a while, fairly interesting

did anybody run "shotgun" or dual modems to maximize connection speed back in the day, upload those WUs faster?

or better yet have any machines from the days when work units were read from and written to stone tablets :p still folding?
 
Patman said:
Man you guys are hardcore, I bitch when I have to remote desktop into a machine to restart it =)

Good to get a little history lesson on all this every once in a while, fairly interesting

did anybody run "shotgun" or dual modems to maximize connection speed back in the day, upload those WUs faster?
Click to expand...
I had one of the few dual modems with Shotgun technology made by Diamond, but I purchased it for increased speed while browsing. I think I had already switched to cable broadband by the time I started folding though. I don't recall ever having used an analog modem while I was involved in a DC project, even as far back as the beginning of the decade.

 
It's amazing to think back to the folding frenzy we had when this thing started. I've never seen as much excitement anywhere online as there was in this forum after Kyle posted the story about the Folding at Home project on the front page. We've had a lot of dominant folders and genomers come and go through the years, but there's been a core group that stuck with it since pretty much the beginning. I saw a reference to ID01, but I seem to remember two other names (OneNutt and LPerry) who also had their days in the sun as THE dominant forces in folding and genome. Good times!
 
hey man i remember sharing my external Hayes dial up modem with a speedy 486DX40 unix box to my blazing fast 10baseT ethernet using UTP! my 5 port hub cost me like $150 and each 10baseT nic was like $40

then i "upgraded" to dial return cable... had a giant ISA surfboard card, had to install 95 on said 486 so i could use the stupid software that came with it... it was pretty slow, think the fastest i got out of it was like 200kbps and obviously restricted to 33.6kbps upload with the dial-return... the software was horribly unstable (yay 98!) and i had to use some crazy proxy software since it was before...

then finally i got DSL and they sent me this garbage USB DSL modem which again required me to stick with 98 becuase speedstream didnt want to make 2000 drivers... after i got frustrated and set that dsl modem on fire (yay!) i bought a speed touch home for $100 from a friend of mine and have been using that ever since :)

i started doing DC when SETI@Home came out... i think i already had my dial-return cable around that time... but man uploading sucked... i had about 5 machines at home at the time... and my main desktop was a PowerMac 7200/120 lol
 
Man, if I had started folding when I started posting, you'd all be n00bs. :p Too bad I thought y'all were crazy for about 6.5 years or so.

 
The thing I can still remember from my early farm is the sound of the 60mm delta fans on the AK-6 heatsink.
~46 db per fan and running 10 of them.
You could hear then from 10 yards away outside the cottage ....... :eek:
Ended up putting 80mm fans on the heatsinks, set at 45 degrees so they fit, just to kill the noise a bit.

I still remember when I first passed Relic ........ :p
And I never thought I would pass Midnight.

Luck ................. :D
 
Tigerbiten said:
The thing I can still remember from my early farm is the sound of the 60mm delta fans on the AK-6 heatsink.
~46 db per fan and running 10 of them.
You could hear then from 10 yards away outside the cottage ....... :eek:
Ended up putting 80mm fans on the heatsinks, set at 45 degrees so they fit, just to kill the noise a bit.

I still remember when I first passed Relic ........ :p
And I never thought I would pass Midnight.

Luck ................. :D
Click to expand...

wow yes i can remember those black label fans... it was like having a fricken blow dryer in there 24/7... i think i lost bits of my sanity from those lol

and passing relic and midnight were both memborable moments


 
FLECOM said:
wow yes i can remember those black label fans... it was like having a fricken blow dryer in there 24/7... i think i lost bits of my sanity from those lol
Click to expand...

I had one on a Thermalright SK-6. Lovely sound.



 
Ah back in the days when I had a several machines including a 486-33 and Cryix 5x86-120 crunching away on RC5.
 
Back in 00-01 I had that sweet app by Weatherman and had network monitoring going. Those were the days..440BX boards, Orb heatsinks...sniff..
 
brycejones said:
Ah back in the days when I had a several machines including a 486-33 and Cryix 5x86-120 crunching away on RC5.
Click to expand...

Cool. were you running d.net?

I had a farm of PIIs and several alpha running the cow at the .com I worked at. Joined in early 1998 and have been burning spare cpu cycles on different projects ever since.
 
Hi Relic, good to see you're still kicking! :cool:
Back when we had to set the IRQ and I/O addresses with jumpers for all cards/devices...
with 640k and 20mb drives - Double Dos or DesqView for some serious multitasking. :D
Now it's all PnPray ;)

relic said:
<read with crotchety old man voice>

....uphill, both ways, barefoot in the snow.....but about this DC thing...

These days you kids got it easy.

Yeah, back in the day.....

<end crotchity old man voice>
Click to expand...
 
Ironbits....damn good to see ya.

I have a great IBM PC XT. Has a full height 5.25" 5MB hdd and 512MB ram with 512 expanded memory. (remember expanded and extended RAM?)
That and my Compaq lunchbox (orange plasma screen) remind me of how lucky we are these days. :)
 
SeaMonkey said:
Cool. were you running d.net?

I had a farm of PIIs and several alpha running the cow at the .com I worked at. Joined in early 1998 and have been burning spare cpu cycles on different projects ever since.
Click to expand...

Yep d.net and then some seti, and finally I landed here.
 
A nice bit of history for those of us who weren't around way back when, and a good dose of reality when we think our little petty issues we have today are bad. ;)

When I first started, MidnightFreak was still top dog on the team and in the top 20 overall despite being shut down for quite some time. No SMP, GPU or PS3 so I thought my 350PPD was great, although I was jealous as hell of those high producing QMD machines.

 
Didn't know this thread was running. I now have a justification for scratching the Folding itch just now, when I updated the wife's antivirus, noticed the 4400+ was only running one instance of an old FAH console and "corrected" the problem.

5 instances at home to join the five at the office. What the hell am I doing? Scratching! :D

I can't recall clearly, and I doubt an archive dive will reveal, but the best GAH dump I managed was a Brainless Emu over our first two-way cable modem. 512k smokin' download, 128k up "Business Class". Today, our residential starter looks like Star Wars compared to that. :p

 
Oh Boy, going way back to RC-5, good times. Let's see 10,000 dollar prize
or something like that if I remember. Gave me a incentive, heheeh.
I got reprimanded for borging to many computers at work.
Now I just keep them at home, they help heat the house.


 
I joined the FAH program kinda late, april of 2004 but i did SETI for couple years before that. then i came to my senses and used my cpu cycles towards something that would actually benefit humanity.





 
Connundrum1 said:
I joined the FAH program kinda late, april of 2004 but i did SETI for couple years before that. then i came to my senses and used my cpu cycles towards something that would actually benefit humanity.





Click to expand...


:D Glad you're here....I don't think 900k folding points is "starting late".
 
Holy cow, I forgot about RC5-64 as well, my own stats : http://stats.distributed.net/participant/psummary.php?project_id=5&id=315321. This is what started myself in the DC scene. I also participated in Seti@Home : http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=426706 but not for long.

I was borging so hard for RC5-64 that our net admin at work bitched about our network consumption. Now, even with double the borgs I had before with SMP clients, I'm outpaced 10-1 by those secretaries who look at dance websites and listen to radio.

 
my first DC project was RC5-64. It had cows. It moo'd at me. It made me so happy I could shit a brick.

Then I found this forum, and ever since It's been all relic's fault.
 
Old, my God how sad.

Old is when you look forward to the dump you take in the morning. Old is when you are grateful you could actually make the walk to the bathroom. Old is suffering the hearing loss from 26 of those evil black delta fans that you are now convinced have given you permanent hearing loss.

Old is looking through a huge lit magnifying glass through trifocals making sure you blow the right circuits on that AMD chip so you can lay down silver paint on others to change the speed and voltage or make them SMP capable.

Old is when you have 4 boxen that put out more work then those 26 original boxen. Old is when you know what “D” means. Old is when you remember what boxen means.

Old is when you have seen the rose tattoo on your good friends wife’s butt but can’t talk your wife into getting one.

Finally old is when some of your best folding friends are young enough to be your son and some of the really older members have sons getting ready to become fathers.

Old is when you lose your father to the beast and a sense of mortality sets in when you realize that at 83 you are only 23 younger then he was.:)


 
I think I have been around almost as long as Relic, but back then, I was running the UD project, with a little G@H on the side.

Always good to see your name on a new post Relic!



 
I still have some boxes running d.net. Until F@H gets a solaris client, all my sparc boxes are running the cow. Right now it's only about 12 cpus worth of output. Had about 3 or 4 million points for our UD team. Not as much as Andreu, but I was on the front page of the stats without scrolling.
 
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