Hey guys, Would like to talk to someone about SETI

[itizme]

I was talking with my daughter about doing this and we both think it is nothing more than a great idea but here is where we stand.

Her pc, AMD 1900xp, 256 megs, 40 gig hd, fx5200, shared high speed on a router

Mine as in sig.

We live in different cities but it would be nice to do this as a joint effort as she is 13 and I am well lets just say alot older but still a kid.

What should we really know before getting started?
Can we run one account, or is their an account?
Is there any performance issue with the ability to run SETI and other applications on the same pc?
What is the bandwidth required for this?

Is there anyone involved in this forum from southern Ontario? I would love to see this in action before setting everything up.

[texasfit]

I'll start you off with read this sticky at the top of this forum. (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=221599)

And yes you will need to set up an account. You and your daughter can just use the same account. Both of your rigs are very nice for running seti.

Hope to see you soon on the team. :D

[Cy]

Welcome to the SETI@Home forums here at overclockers.com. :)

This project has many merits beyond its primary goal of searching for extraterrestrial inteligence. First, it is the first distributed client project to really get that form of cooperative computing into the mainstream in popularity and in the press. Also, there is a lot of science that is being performed with the data collected that is of great help in the astronomy and astrophysics fields.

The client you run is a small program. There is a graphical screen saver version and a command line text version. The screen saver is colorful and pretty to watch but runs much slower than then text version. Which you run is up to you. Most people here run the text version to generate their stats the fastest. They both do the same scientific work.

Yes, you can both run on one account. :)

The bandwidth is very low. It only connects when it is done with a work unit and the transfer is only a few hundred K of data. Many people with modems are happy to run SETI.

With most modern machines you really don't "feel" SETI running in the background. SETI is setup to use "wasted" work cycles of the CPU. If you are doing something very intensive on your system you could always shut SETI down and start it up again after.

If you and your daughter decide to participate in the S@H project I hope you will consider joining our team. We would be glad to have you. :)

Good luck.

Cy