Starting up folding, I've got questions

[antirush]

Well, I got motivated to start folding, so I've got a couple of comps folding for the [H]orde. 2~1.8 systems and a 2.08 so far. One of these is running on dialup so I've got 4 instances of F@H running, as per instructions in separate folders with different ID#'s. It's an Athlon XP running at 2.08 ghz. Is this the best way to set it up? Should I run more instances? Less?

I'm working on setting up a couple of other boxen [new vocab ;-)] to fold as well, but they will have to be on dialup, without modems. I can set up a network, but what's the best way to get that to work? Thanks for your replies.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I don't have a solution for your "problem" at this time, but I do know that it's a pain to keep systems on dial up fed. The automatic dialer in Windows just doesn't work very well from my experience although I haven't tried it since probably the Win2k or Win98 days. Sometimes when something wanted to access the internet it would dial and sometimes it wouldn't. Also, no matter what, it would break after a time. Even if there were no changes to the systems.

To do it easier with systems without modems, you would need a network. About the only other way would be to cut and paste the folders from each computer to something like a pen drive and put them on one system and manually send the results back. That is not something very many people want to mess with with even one system, much less multiple.

What I would suggest, with multiple systems running off one dialup connection, would be to run timeless work units which allows up to 10 work units to be cached to process, and every day or two manually send the results back from each system while the main one is connected to the internet. That is the easiest and least painful way I can think of to work it. As you can tell, it's really annoying and time consuming. I've dealt with the dial up problem before and it's not one that has many solutions.

 

[unhappy_mage]

<self-pimpage>this is the best way.</self-pimpage>

what to say. One machine as a dial-on-demand box and server, then cat5 LAN to all the other ones.

When I ran FAH on dialup I ran only one instance at a time, but it was connected all the time, so it wasn't such a problem... haven't heard that suggested. The newer WUs (Amber) take about 8 hours to fold (I think... could be counting wrong) so 4 instances will be about right for those WUs. For some of the longer ones, tho, that's a bit much. I'd personally drop to 3 if this were my setup.

and buy DSL, but that's another story.

 

[antirush]

Yes, wouldn't dsl be nice? Where I live I'm lucky to have a phone line and running water. Oh wait, I don't have running water right now, the pipes are frozen. Hurray!

Thanks a lot for your replies, and I'm definitely going to look into that linux network booting. Looks like the way to go for sure.