Building a folding box

[WesMarden]

I was thinking of taking a old motherboard I have with a K6-2 266 and making a folding box. That would be its only purpose. I also have an old 2.5 gig hard drive I would throw in it for space for the os and the folding app. I would run some form of redhat or mandrake, maybe even just comand line to save processor overhead. Basically it would be just a folding box once I get it set up.

I know it is not very powerful, but I am planning on making it out of stuff I mostly have on hand. And each little bit helps. One question is how much memory should I put in? 64 or 128. Spare memory is one thing I do not have, so I would buy it. However if 128 won't really speed up matters, then there is no need to buy it even if it is not much more.

[Ploaf]

The amount of memory you will want depends on the amount of overhead you are planning to have with the OS. If you are running Linux in command line only I can't imagine that it would use all that much memory and 64MB would probably be plenty. 128 is definitely enough memory. Most of the memory use from what I can tell comes from x windows and the kde.

[belorsch]

This kind of skirts a question I've been having. For folding only purposes would one OS let wu's crank out faster then another given the same hardware. I know next to nothing about Linux. I have been a little curious about it and I do have a red hat ver 5.2 book and cd on hand. TIA

[SickBoy]

I would say, if it's a matter or cost, go with 64 MB of higher performance memory, say some that will do 2-2-2 at high FSB. In my opinion that would be preferable over 128 MB of CAS3 junk.

You'll find that Linux is probably a little slower at folding than, say, Win98 or 2K.

SB

[T. J.]

My sense is that Linux is marginally slower than Win98 or W2K. My Duron @825 is running Mandrake 8.1 and takes 8.75 minutes per frame. My Athlon @950 is running W2K and does 6.53 minute frames. By the way, my K6-2/500 on Win98 does 51.70 minute frames. :eek:

[Ploaf]

Linux is much closer to win98 than it was before. The new compiler seems to have made a pretty significant difference in the performance of the linux client. The other advantage to linux is that it's more stable and as long as there are no issues with the folding client then the stability could prove to be beneficial. No need to babysit the system.

[T. J.]

Right about that, Ploaf. My Linux box has been folding 24/7 for about 10 days, getting 99% of the resources, and no issues. Gotta love it! Now, if I only had time to learn a bit more about it, I could switch all my boxes over... :p

[WesMarden]

Which Linux should I run? Right now I have redhat and mandrake cds that I burned. And those are the two I have experience(however little)with, but if another distro would be more efficient for folding, then I can download and burn it. I have a big enough pipe.

[SickBoy]

Redhat is real popular in the general computing world, Mandrake seems to be more popular around here. One other might be Corel - but this is all coming from a dude with zero Linux experience. :)

SB