I appreciate it's not viable for many of you (due to the distance) but if anyone in the UK (East Midlands) wants a couple of Win98 machines to run basic stuff on, then let me know. I repair PC's and sometimes customers just want an upgrade (Win XP typically), so I end up with the old hardware. It seems a shame to dump them and there's only so many machines one can run in one small room.
... if anyone in the UK (East Midlands) wants a couple of Win98 machines to run basic stuff on, then let me know. ...
I'm in Manchester, and will take them if nobody closer wants them. Might be a while till I can pick them up tho... I will take anything over ~400MHz. I can put Linux on if you come across boxes without an OS.
Alright then, I'll keep the old PCs connected to BOINC, at least until my electric bill starts getting out of hand.
I found a couple more motherboards in my basement (a 600MHz P3 and a ~350MHz P2). If and when I dig up a hard drive for the P3 I think I'll connect it as well. The P2 might be pushing it though. I have a 450MHz AMD-K6 currently running Einstein and it takes almost 4 days to finish a WU.
I'd try the P2 if it was a complete system, but I am inclined to agree it is not worth putting effort into getting a lone motherboard going again.
The slowest machine I have run on BOINC was a 200MHz Celeron laptop - that could run the old Einstein WU in just under a week, but in those days the deadline was a week, and there was only a few hours slack, any network problems and it went overdue
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Re the P3 board - if the BIOS can boot over a network then another option is to set it up to boot from a disk on one of your other machines. This does mean you will have even more traffic on the hard drive of the host box but I don't think that would degrade the performance noticeably.
Booting over a network is on my personal 'to do' list of things to figure out, but I haven't got there yet so I can't offer any detailed advce on how to do it.
I am going to be setting up a LTSP server and diskless client system. For those that want to know more , once I start doing it I will note everything and start a thread on it.
LTSP server will allow machines with no drives, and just a bootable network card to boot from it, use drive space from it and run apps local. SO can set up basically super cheap crunching machines.
Best thing is no cost other than hardware, uses linux on the server and clients.
If this works out well I believe my whole farm may head that way.
I appreciate it's not viable
)
I appreciate it's not viable for many of you (due to the distance) but if anyone in the UK (East Midlands) wants a couple of Win98 machines to run basic stuff on, then let me know. I repair PC's and sometimes customers just want an upgrade (Win XP typically), so I end up with the old hardware. It seems a shame to dump them and there's only so many machines one can run in one small room.
RE: ... if anyone in the UK
)
I'm in Manchester, and will take them if nobody closer wants them. Might be a while till I can pick them up tho... I will take anything over ~400MHz. I can put Linux on if you come across boxes without an OS.
gravy
~~gravywavy
RE: Alright then, I'll keep
)
I'd try the P2 if it was a complete system, but I am inclined to agree it is not worth putting effort into getting a lone motherboard going again.
The slowest machine I have run on BOINC was a 200MHz Celeron laptop - that could run the old Einstein WU in just under a week, but in those days the deadline was a week, and there was only a few hours slack, any network problems and it went overdue
---
Re the P3 board - if the BIOS can boot over a network then another option is to set it up to boot from a disk on one of your other machines. This does mean you will have even more traffic on the hard drive of the host box but I don't think that would degrade the performance noticeably.
Booting over a network is on my personal 'to do' list of things to figure out, but I haven't got there yet so I can't offer any detailed advce on how to do it.
~~gravywavy
I've got a couple AMD slot A
)
I've got a couple AMD slot A cartridges (500, 750) if someone wants to pay shipping. I live in midwest USA. Also a K6-500 with cooler in a Tyan board.
I am going to be setting up a
)
I am going to be setting up a LTSP server and diskless client system. For those that want to know more , once I start doing it I will note everything and start a thread on it.
LTSP server will allow machines with no drives, and just a bootable network card to boot from it, use drive space from it and run apps local. SO can set up basically super cheap crunching machines.
Best thing is no cost other than hardware, uses linux on the server and clients.
If this works out well I believe my whole farm may head that way.
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