LHC@home

The SETI users have donated money and SETI@home has ordered two new servers from HP which should be installed and tested within the year. Now SETI@home is not giving out any work while waiting. People are anxious for the new servers to start their service.
Tullio

Time for another update.

Well my last Opteron 285 has finally been put down.
First it would run but not do a restart, had to manually start it all the time if it lost power or an update required a restart.
Then it would not start at all if 2 graphic cards were installed, worked out that one of the PCIe slots had died.

So it has been very good to me and run for over 4 years I believe.

Updated it to an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T @ 3.3 GHz with 4 GB RAM.

Out of bed at 0700 on the morning of Thursday the 12th of May, started backing up programmes and getting components ready.
This took awhile so I started the rebuild around Midday.

I replaced the motherboard, CPU, CPU Cooler and RAM, also plugged back in both my ATI 5870 graphic cards.
Found I can no longer put the side cover on the box as the CPU cooler is too large but that\'s OK, I will just rest the side cover against the Box.

Then started loading the backup.

Bugger, the backup did not work.

So I had to reinstall Windows from scratch, as it would not upgrade correctly (many hours trying to do this as I did not want to lose my data).

After 31 hours, many restarts, lots of updates, many reloaded and installed programmes later, I finally had it working to the point that I could run BOINC on it, surf the net and do e-mail.
I stayed awake the whole time trying to get it working, the wife was not amused with me and I had gotten very annoyed with Windows.

Isn\'t working with computers lots of fun ???
Well most of the time it can be.

So now my little garden plot consists of

2x AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2x 250 GB HD
1x AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2x 80 GB HD, 2x ATI 5870 x 1 GB graphic cards.
1x AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.2GHz, 8 GB RAM, 2x 250 GB HD
1x AMD Phenom II X6 1100T @ 3.3GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2x 250 GB HD, and 2x ATI 5870 x 1 GB graphic cards.

This now equals

5 CPUs
24 CPU Processing Cores
77.4 GHz combined frequency
24 GB RAM on computers with 4 GB RAM on Graphic cards
2,160 GB Hard Drive Storage

Maybe it will be a while before I need to upgrade again ?. Although I do have a new CPU Cooler for my Windows X4 955 machine, to quieten it down.

It just does not end, let the fun continue.

Conan

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Time for another update.

Well my last Opteron 285 has finally been put down.
First it would run but not do a restart, had to manually start it all the time if it lost power or an update required a restart.
Then it would not start at all if 2 graphic cards were installed, worked out that one of the PCIe slots had died.

(snip)

It just does not end, let the fun continue.

Conan

Did you put a wooden stake through their hearts so they wouldn\'t return from the grave to bite the rest of your computers on the neck?

Time for another update.

Well my last Opteron 285 has finally been put down.
First it would run but not do a restart, had to manually start it all the time if it lost power or an update required a restart.
Then it would not start at all if 2 graphic cards were installed, worked out that one of the PCIe slots had died.

(snip)

It just does not end, let the fun continue.

Conan

Did you put a wooden stake through their hearts so they wouldn\\\'t return from the grave to bite the rest of your computers on the neck?

G\'Day Tom95134,

No I didn\'t but I still have them lying around to scare the current ones, showing them what will happen if they fail me.

HA HA HA, The power, It is getting to me. I can bring them to life and I can take it away, don\'t get me mad now my little computer friends, or ELSE!

Oh, ah, don\'t know what came over me, wooden stakes, biting on the neck ? They wouldn\'t dare, would they ? I fed them gave them shelter and cleaned them, they love me, I hope.

Conan

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LOLOL the money you spend on setting up and powering a farm..if you use it to buy ONE really good computer and ship it to the project you\'d be doing so much more good. LOLOL

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Yeah Conan I retire mine a bit faster than you do but they are in my parts stash.

These days you can buy 2.9 amd quad-cores for less than $500 and I even make a couple of them share the same flat screen monitor so I didnt pay for a new one and I even turn them off unless I want to check my different Boinc projects.

But the way it rains here all the time I may be tempted to take all my parts and see if I can get my old 3.2 dual-core running again.

Ok give me some more LHCs server!

(I see I have a couple nice credits do from over a year ago)

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/workunit.php?wuid=3736467

I cant believe I actually got 117 tasks this week!

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life