Has anyone tried installing Boinc on that slow of a machine? I just did, and it will be interesting to see if I get ANY credits from it...

Matthew

It takes about 3 weeks to complete a model on an Intel P4 3.2GHz running 24/7 with no other projects.

Which is why the recommended minimum speed is 800MHz.
However, there is a list on BOINCstats that shows that 2 people have tried to run CP on a 266Mhz machine. And there are lots of other very slow systems at the end of the list.
Most machines this slow will probably fail due to hardware that is not up to the severe demands of hadsm, the CP program running at this project.

But the reason YOU won't get anywhere, is that you are using Win98SE, which no longer works. And is unlikely to be fixed.

The future parts of this project are going to be more complex, and take longer to run, so the developement work will most likely be directed to the new machines, such as 64bits, and multi-chip.

Les

How can you tell that machine is running Win98 SE? The machine I am posting from right now is an AMD64 3500+ WinXP box. Is there a listing of computers I've signed up or something?

Matthew

If you go to your account page you can view a list of your computers that have attached to the project. You can do the same for other people. You could hide this information (under preferences) but if you do that people will find it difficult to answer your queries. Les is right, and you would not have known that unless he had been able to look at the list.

There are no security risks associated with this.

With Win 98 you may be more likely to have success with the classic (non-BOINC) client which is available from the OU pages:
<a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/download/index_ou.php">OU pages</a>

Minimun is an 800 mhz



<a href="http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/tech_faq_boinc.php">requirements here</a>
<a href="http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page">Link to Unoffical Wiki for BOINC, by Paul and Friends</a>

&gt; Minimun is an 800 mhz
&gt;...


BOINC Works fine on a P3/600 Slot1 CPU (WinNT4) and I have seen results from K6/2 CPUs too

If it has enough RAM, it would sure run on a P1/60 as well - well, maybe not actually "run" ;-)



It's recommended vs. required - more is better of course but less isn't necessarily a problem.

I installed the classic client on a Pentium III 600 Mhz box a while back. It of course did trickle. I calculated that it would take over 1/2 a year for it complete one full model. So I assume a similar or longer amount of time for a Celeron of similar speed.

I believe CPDN gives a full year to return a result.

&gt; I believe CPDN gives a full year to return a result.

I have also one very slow approx 10 years old Pentium I 200Mhz box. Its to slow to work for cp.net. But I had running it for Seti and now for Einstein. Crunching one workunit for Einstein needs approx 160 hours or nearly 7 days which lies a bit under the report deadline of 7 days. But as this box is serving also as an internet gateway and as HTTP server and is serving many other tasks it happens that the report deadline of some Einstein result is exeeded. But as so long there have at most two other boxes finisheded their result for the corresponding workunit nevertheless I got the credit for my work and the result is recorded as normal. But if there have already 3 boxes reported their results my result is seen as over and no credit is given.

But as cp.net in the normal case alocates each workunit only to one host there will be no other hosts that activate the report deadline. So I asume that also after report deadline the reported and finished result will be recognized as finished and credit will be given. But cp behaves in many things not as normal as one might think. So perhaps it will react in a completely different way. So one has to try out to say more reliable.

Ciao

The Win98 box first mentioned (at the bottom of this thread) is currently not being used - I wiped it with Mandriva 2005 LE Linux. The problem is that box has a bad video card that any Linux doesn't like - so the graphical interface looks all messed up.

BTW, my 500 MHz Celeron does have 128 RAM, so maybe that's why it's running BOINC ok.

Matthew

I have run Boinc on a P1-166MMX. It will run on slower machines, but CPDN needs a minimum of 800MHz is what I think people mean. I have run it on a 1.8G and it took nearly 5 months with other projects. On my 2.4G HT I get one done in about 2.5 months.


<img src="http://seti.mundayweb.com/stats.php?userID=344&amp;trans=off">
<img src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats.php?userID=584&amp;trans=off">

How can they say there is a minimum CPU speed? They can require a certain amount of RAM (or it will complain "not enough memory") or a Pentium-class CPU (if it uses Pentium instructions), other programs can require a 3-D card to run, but how do you require a certain MHz of CPU?

It's an arbitrary figure, I say. All they can do is say, "under 800 MHz will give poor performance" but since Intel CPUs make only incremental improvements over the different generations, there is little differnce between a Pentium 75 and a 3.0 GHz P4 except clock speed (And the 3.0 GHz is hyperthreaded, and so appears as 2 CPUs)

But you get what I'm saying...

This is a good point, and the reason why the minimum is a recommendation only, and CPDN does not bar lower powered PCs from downloading a unit. But experience with Classic showed that a wholly disproportionate number of machines failed if they had processors running under this speed. It's a case of 'try it if you like, but don't blame us if it doesn't work'.

It would be nice if the database could be interrogated to enable a new analysis correlating success rates by processor, OS, etc. This may become possible - see <a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=3000">this news update</a>.