Folding on Win9x

E

el bob

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2001
Messages
1,178
A lot of computers that have potential to be borg'ed with permission run on Win 9x. With Win2K/XP, I can make folding a service with idle cpu priority and not have to worry about the machine crashing etc.

With Win9x and P2-P3 level computers, I'm worried that installing folding will increase the likelihood of crashing and I'm hesistant to borg such computers.

Any ideas?

(I'm thinking of about 10x P2-450MHz machines that I possibly get permission to borg, but I'm not going to bother if I think it'll make the computers less usable - read: office environment)

-el bob
 
My experience with P2's (~300 MHz) has not been good, as far as borging and being stable, etc. I've got a P3-600 that's rock solid, though, so your 450's might be good. The P3-600 doesn't seem to have any problem at all in it's "office environment".
 
Try folding on just one of the computers. If it doesn't work you'll only have to remove it off of one comp and not all of them, and you'll have less frustrated people. Please post your results, if you try.
 
My small garden has
(#, MHz, OS):
[color=sky blue]5, 2666, XP Pro
1, 2153, XP Pro
1, 650, 2K
1, 600, 2K
3, 400, 2K
7, 333, 2K
4, 266 ,W98
1, 200, NT4[/color] all running the graphical client at present.

With the exception of those 18-point Gromacs proteins, all boxen manage to complete their WUs within the time limits. The 18-pointers will not complete on those < 400MHz.

I've had no additional complaints from office staff about performance since I installed F@H. The slow machines are slow with folding running or not. As you might guess, we're in the middle of the much needed upgrade (witness new 2.66ers).:)

However, some borged machines outside my office did produce performance complaints, especially where the user liked to have multiple applications on the go. A couple users ended up removing F@H.:(

80000.gif
 
A flaky system with another app installed is still a flaky system. Unless you hide the presence of F@H very well, it will probably take the blame for any other problems caused by the Win9x instability. The 450 MHz processor should be able to turn in WU's no problem. The question is will the OS be robust enough to allow full system functionality. I think you already know the answer to that question... ;)

I have a couple of systems at home that run Win98se and they are the worst with respect to system lockups. Granted I'm running folding with SSE on AMD Duron processors, but I don't think that is the root cause of the frequent problems I see. I don't like to discourage anyone from installing F@H, but if your co-workers need these systems to get work done you really should consider a trial install first.

Since your workplace is running a creaky OS on old systems, I'm betting that they are pretty low on RAM as well. Try it out on whichever box has the most RAM and see how things go. It wouldn't take much in the way of user applications to bog down a system to the point of virtual memory disk thrash, so keep that in mind.

Edit: I do know the diff between your and you're...really.
 
Heh. I was going to need this shortly as well! I've got a possible borg in the works, that could improve my output drastically (although I'm not really producing much at the moment).

.:Ttocs
 
With the version 4 client, in the advanced option's you can change how much cpu the fah client uses. One boxen i have, i run 2 client's, one at 75% the other at 25%, so the boxen doesn't go sending data to the internet quite as oftern. It's a xp2000+.

What i'm saying is, maybe you could setup the client's to use say 90% of the cpu, leaving 10% free at all times. The 450's should just return the wu's in before the deadline. May also make it a little more stable! ;)

I shouldn't be telling the enimy how to borg, but it's for a good cause, and we are getting our cpu's fried by you guys so what's it matter, lol? We will fold on!

Cheers

ToranaGuy
 
Originally posted by el bob
Cool! Thanks for the link.

Has HideIt been rewritten to work with FAH version 4 software? (or does it not need to be?)
Click to expand...
To make HideIt easy to use, I just downloaded HideIt2 and renamed the client to FAH2Console.exe. It starts the client and hides it all in one. I used this up until the 3.26 client on several machines, but I don't run Win98 any longer so I can't vouch it with 4.0.

Edit: I don't see HideIt2 anymore on Larry's site. HideItX pretty much works the same way, it's just more flexible and more complicated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top