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Farming for noobs???

A

amohedas

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 26, 2003
Messages
230
I thinking of setting up a farm this summer to fold with. I think that I can get my hands on a bunch of pentium 3 computers from the highschool in my town. They are getting rid of them so they should be really cheap.

I was wondering what all I would need to farm them, and how exactly to do it. I have no experience in farming, and I cant seem to find any websites with info.

Any help is appreciated.

Thx
 
Just get yourself a switch/router and plug them all in and go. The biggest expense will be the switch which will depend on how many machines you are going to be using. Thats the easy way at least. You can also get into some things like some people have on here with blades and whatnot, but that takes alot more setup time.
 
Remember - it's team #33
(user gemniii)
"Farming for noobs"
Or
"The idiots guide to a folding farm"
is a work in progress.
A pIII 1Ghz should be able to donate 25 to 35 WU points per day.
Key factors -
Power
Heat
Space
Networking

Do you want a blade system (a bunch of "stacked" boards) with 2 boards per PSU ?
Are you going to have every CPU in a separate case ?
Can you (or whoever pays the power bill) afford $6 to $12/CPU per month ?
What's your HONEST skill level in electronics ?
Can this be seen as a "learning tool" ?
Are you going to be running Linux or windoze ?
How many systems do you envision running ?
Hang around, answer questions and we will help, we need new members before the Aussies show us their rear end.
I tend to get 5 and 8 port Belkin switches for free after rebate, so the cost there may be nothing.
Also I just rec'd and AMD XP2600+ with Soyo m/b for $91 with a possible $50 rebate, which will probably wipe the butt on any PIII.
 
Well this is still speculation, but If I am able to get ahold of the computers they will come fully equipted (ie each with their own powersupply, harddrive , etc...)

I was really wondering If I could set these things up like I have seen others do.... I believe you called it blade stacking. I realize that this is the harder route to take because like you said I could hook them all up to the internet via a router and switch and let them churn away.

Are there any advantages to using the blade system as opposed to individual comps.

I think having a blade system would be kinda cool, but like I said earlier I have no experience with them thats why I was wondering if there is some literature online that I could read.

Right now I'm thinking of starting of small and running five machines, and then possibly adding more. I know this may not sound like much of a farm, but then again I am a newbie at this.

For right now I just want to familiarize myself with everything before I dive in.

Thanks for the help.
 
Originally posted by amohedas
<snip>Are there any advantages to using the blade system as opposed to individual comps.

I think having a blade system would be kinda cool, but like I said earlier I have no experience with them thats why I was wondering if there is some literature online that I could read.

Right now I'm thinking of starting of small and running five machines, and then possibly adding more. I know this may not sound like much of a farm, but then again I am a newbie at this.
<snip>
Click to expand...
The only advantages to a "blade" system are:space and it's "cool", as in "Oh yeah, I built a 12 blade system when I was a freshman in high school".
You have not answered the question about who pays for power & this includes cooling the space during the summer. However 5 pIII's should not add much (just remember to turn the lights off!) to the bill.
Other factors are do you want to run headless ? Why do you want to do this (save the world ? like the noise ?) What would it take for you to approximate the CPU power in a present day box ?. (a 3Ghz AMD for $200 versus 5 pIII 600's)
This project, like most DC home projects were originally designed to use SPARE cycles. I only keep my 6 home CPU's running 24/7 because, uh, umm, you never know when somebody would want to get on one to, uh, umm, do a calculation. Plus I pay the bills.
If your not folding now, start. Don't wait till you get your farm to sprout the seed.
 
I have already started folding and I have it running on my comp (the one in my sig), my parents Athlon 1900, and two 2.4 Ghz Dells.

I was wondering about the whole farming thing because I thought that it would be a cool project to do and for a good cause. I will be running the farm in my apartment and the bill is split four ways between my roomates and I. If it gets too expensive I might have to find somewhere else to put it, I hadnt really thought about that aspect.

Hopefully the comps that I can get will be really cheap ( ie <$20) so thats not bad.

BTW what does "headless" mean.....sorry for the stupid question?
 
I'm in the process of setting up something like that. I took all the drives out of the machines and sold them to cover the cost of buying the network equiment, ups, cabling ect...

I'm setting a nix server for them to run off, if your buliding a decent size node you'll need a half decent server, mines a Dual P3 1ghz, 1gb pc-133, 3 x 18gb 10K SCSI Raid-5 all on a Tyan Thunder LE-T in a 1RU rack case. It only cost me about $450 AU (think $290-$310US) and doesn't fold half bad itself and most of it was paid for selling bits out of the farm boxes that i didn't need :)
 
So the only components that I will need are the mobo's and procs from each machince, and then set up a server for them to run off of??

Does the server run all the clients, but uses the separate machines to do the calculations??? You use a hub to connect all the PC's together and CAT5 correct???

I dont necessarily need to run headless since I can get monitors for $20, albiet old.

Any more info on farming is very much appreciated!
 
One layer should have- CPU with HSF, PSU, mobo, hdd, Linux with LTSP, 2 NIC's, ram, video card. UPS optional

That one will be a file server, DHCP server, and terminal server.

The rest of the layers can be- 1 PSU split per two layers, mobo, ram, video card, CPU and HSF, NIC. These motherboards will need to be able to be PXE booted by linux, or else you'll need a floppy or cd-rom drive to boot them.


You can use SSH or VNC from anywhere on your LAN to keep track of your farm. ANd if you setup a samba share on the LTSP server, you can have EM3 monitor the progress of all your layers.
 
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