Folding farm sponsored by my school

Alright well I am the president and founder of my high school's Computer Science Club. I've decided that a great project for us would be to collect old computers (like the surplus of decommissioned P4 Dell's swarming eBay) and run F@H on them in a designated room at my school. This has already been approved and we already have a few machines signed up for donation.

I honestly know very little about F@H or any of the "folding" DC projects. I've read articles here and there about them and I love the idea of helping out using otherwise unused PC's. So I have a number of questions and I'll try and keep them all here. Here's a starter list:

1.) I am willing to dedicate any amount of PC's to any DC project but I am probably going to be running strictly CPU folding and using Ubuntu 10.04, what projects would work well with this?

2.) Many of these PC's might be really old (think 1990's), would I have any success getting something to fold on these given the old hardware?

3.) Will I have to replace blown caps on some of the motherboards? (I am pretty sure folding would kill the computer if I don't replace them.)

4.) It is likely some of these machines wont have HDD's, is there an alternative way to boot (maybe USB drive? or LAN boot?)

5.) Feel free to throw other comments and tips my way.

The project will hopefully begin on Feb. 10th when the first PCs are going to be setup. I should have pics up by then!

The current version of the Linux Unified Client (v6.29 folds SMP or Classic Work Units) requires 64 bit Linux, which is going to limit the computers you can use to those with 64 bit capability.

It may be possible to run an older client, v5.x, and run on 32 bit Linux, but it is something I haven't tried in several years.

If so, any machine as fast or faster than a p3 800 Mhz will work.

I've never had to replace a blown cap in 6 years of folding, but admit, if they quit folding, I threw them away. That's probably what you should do as well.

You can fold without a HD.

I think it would be more worthwhile to get an I7 and some good graphics cards so it can run some good CAAD software to get kids introduced into computer drafting. Buying a bunch of old computers to run folding at your school isn't worth the points and there isn't any real payoff in terms of having a function to the students. The cost in electricity in the long run will be worth it to just get one really good computer and use it for CAAD and computer graphic design.

Steveo989 said:

I think it would be more worthwhile to get an I7 and some good graphics cards so it can run some good CAAD software to get kids introduced into computer drafting. Buying a bunch of old computers to run folding at your school isn't worth the points and there isn't any real payoff in terms of having a function to the students. The cost in electricity in the long run will be worth it to just get one really good computer and use it for CAAD and computer graphic design.

Click to expand...

The point isn't to get tons of points at all. An i7 with good CAD GPU's (I am assuming you mean workstation) would cost thousands of dollars. A single computer for CAD and drafting would be pointless as no one would ever use it considering my school does not have any class like that. The whole point is to do a project where my club members can 'refurbish' old computers and get them to run software that might be difficult to get working. Donated computers are pretty much free and will probably only need some minor repairs, otherwise they can be salvaged. As far as power is concerned, my school has probably close to a 1000 computers turned on for at least 9 hours a day each, I doubt they would even notice a few more. I don't understand how this wouldn't be beneficial to students in the long run; this is exactly what colleges look for on a resume from a HS student. Plus they will get to mess with all the hardware of many different computers while I explain to them the different functionalities; most of these students have probably never seen a PCB before. So if you have any more half-baked thoughts, please keep them to yourself.

Anyways... I had the idea of maybe building a rack for these guys and having them all LAN boot Ubuntu/Linux. I don't know anything about LAN boot, someone mind explaing to me how it would work? The goal is to have just a mobo + cpu + ram + psu for each computer running with hopefully no other hardware.

If your planning to run 32 bit Linux you can use this older folding client:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/release/FAH6.02-Linux.tgz

Just for fun, I threw the fah6.02 on my a7n8xe/AMDxp2000 rig running Debian GNU/Linux. It is: Project: 11269 (Run 14, Clone 166, Gen 18), which looks like it will complete in 14 hours, for 69 points.

I've not done a PXE set up, but it your club might enjoy doing such; some info here:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2009051801935OSNT

Booting (and folding) from a live CD or USB drive is a simple process, but if you go the USB drive route, you can create a persistent directory.

Good stuff here:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

ihrsetrdr said:

If your planning to run 32 bit Linux you can use this older folding client:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/release/FAH6.02-Linux.tgz

Just for fun, I threw the fah6.02 on my a7n8xe/AMDxp2000 rig running Debian GNU/Linux. It is: Project: 11269 (Run 14, Clone 166, Gen 18), which looks like it will complete in 14 hours, for 69 points.

I've not done a PXE set up, but it your club might enjoy doing such; some info here:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2009051801935OSNT

Booting (and folding) from a live CD or USB drive is a simple process, but if you go the USB drive route, you can create a persistent directory.

Good stuff here:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Click to expand...

Thanks! This is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for! If I can get USB drives cheap (which I am sure I can as I'd probably only need 2GB drives) then I'll probably go that route. I will probably play mix'n'match depending on the computer.

Here's an old favorite of mine, for folding via 'live' session from cd or pendrive:

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

I hope I've made my point. Let's concentrate on the OP, helping him do what he wants to do.

I think I mis-posted or something. Too many

As an alternative to folding, how about refurbishing computers to be donated to low-income families? This would accomplish the refurbishing part of your computer club, but is also a huge community service thing. Colleges like community service.

ihrsetrdr said:

Here's an old favorite of mine, for folding via 'live' session from cd or pendrive:

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

Click to expand...

Thanks! I wasn't expecting help to come so easy. This is exactly what I was looking for (again).

And neon, my club is actually going to donate some of the units to families in need I guess my teacher knows a site where donation requests are put up, so we're going to try and fulfill some of them. We will most likely use a lot of them for folding for a while and towards the end of the school year we'll put together the good ones and donate them. Of course if someone comes to us during the school year we'll pull one aside for them.

Speaking of donations... anyone have old parts to donate? PM me if you do! (sorry if I am not allowed to post that request here, I'll take it down if it's a bother.)

Also, I have an old Dell P4 here almost ready to go (just needs some 164pin DDR133...) but it had 7 out of 9 nichicon 2200uF 6.3v caps go bad, all on the CPU power traces. So after reading a little about the capacitor plague (this machine is from 2003 so it fits the profile) I am gonna guess that I'll be replacing a lot of capacitors. Will any old nichicon 2200uF 6.3v cap of proper size work as a replacement? And what soldering gun and desoldering pump would you guys recommend for $50 together?

Now the question arises, what team will you fold for?

Well obviously I'll put team 32
I've already started folding on my rig at home for team 32. I was wondering how I check my stats? Or do I have to wait a while for it to update? And how do i get me one of them fancy "F@H TEAM 32" banners?

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/
for stats, enter your user name and this site updates every three hours. 9am 12pm 3pm, etc.

Steveo989 said:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/
for stats, enter your user name and this site updates every three hours. 9am 12pm 3pm, etc.

Click to expand...

Speaking of which, you should update your sig as well to reflect your stats. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=647022

Dooms101 said:

Well obviously I'll put team 32
I've already started folding on my rig at home for team 32. I was wondering how I check my stats? Or do I have to wait a while for it to update? And how do i get me one of them fancy "F@H TEAM 32" banners?

Click to expand...

Excellent Now another question, what folding client are you using on your rig at home? Looking at the points you got so far it looks like you're getting some very old work units. on 24 hour folding you should be getting at least 5500 points per day. Check out this sticky on getting the latest CPU client installed and running (Link)

And finally, to the team.

Well I only just started reading about folding so I got the latest SMP client from stanford, I think it's a beta.

Okay well I followed the guide, hopefully I'll get more work done

Merry Christmas Dooms101!!!

Yet another new Folder that missed getting on Santa's gift list.

to Team 32. You're on my Christmas list now.

That's okay, my computer has been rebuild and built too many times this break to even keep a consistent OS installation let alone fold =( Hopefully I'll be able to start folding soon again.

Here's some updates for my project. We currently have 5 or 6 PC's coming in on the 10th so far to be setup for showing members how to setup clients as well as testing some diskless LAN (hopefully vga-free as well) booting with F@H clients running. We're also going to start some mobo repairs with soldering/desoldering etc. Should be tons of fun! Hopefully we can start sending out donation requests to local businesses. I'll post updates as they come.

ihrsetrdr said:

Just for fun, I threw the fah6.02 on my a7n8xe/AMDxp2000 rig running Debian GNU/Linux. It is: Project: 11269 (Run 14, Clone 166, Gen 18), which looks like it will complete in 14 hours, for 69 points.

Click to expand...

I did the just for fun bit as a result of this thread. Installed v6.29 on a P4 720 (3.2 GHz) running Ubuntu 10.04 x64. I had to install nscd to get it to fold. I find I'm rewarded with 152 ppd on p6886 (69 pts), 6:32/frame. I also found that by changing the ram from 2.5-4-4-8 to 2-2-2-5 I was able to gain 4 seconds per frame and a whopping 2 ppd. THis machine was one of my top producers for at least 2 years before the real dual cores (Core Duos) made it seem slow.