Folding@Home Weekly Team News - 15th June 2006

[Mikey1280]

I've just got the dreaded 56 pointer

 

[Parsley]

I've had 3 in a row .

 

[Parsley]

Make that 4 .

 

[Putty]

Got a couple here as well

 

[Matblack]

I'm a little concerned by our output.

Despite almost 25 new users we aren't really getting any better.

Is this sudden drop due to rubbish WUs... lots of 56 pointers around?

Looks to me like the server was down right at the end of yesterday and a lot of the WUs have been carried over to today, I would expect a peak today to balance out yesterdays dip. (See 3am figure to back this up)

06.19, 6am 5,226 45
06.19, 3am 18,981 144
06.19, 12am 0 0
06.18, 9pm 0 0
06.18, 6pm 3,160 22
06.18, 3pm 0 0
06.18, 12pm 4,338 32
06.18, 9am 4,310 26




But if it makes people feel better I've had a couple of 56s so I think they are throwing out a lot of them at the moment

MB

 

[Joe42]

Ahh thats a good point. I did hear that one of the servers was down. Haven't had any problems myself just yet.

 

[Whitestar]

Just had a look at the stanford forums, and the stats server was down yesterday, which explains that hugh drop in production. But these 56 pointer all over the place can't be helping.

 

[Indy500]

I have a WU thats still being refused by the collection server...

 

[SiriusB]

I'm a little concerned by our output.

Despite almost 25 new users we aren't really getting any better.

Is this sudden drop due to rubbish WUs... lots of 56 pointers around?

I'm on summat like my third or fourth 56 pointer. I have a 266 pointer almost finished but I am concerned that I'm just gonna get yet another crap one to take its place

SiriusB

 

[lay-z-boy]

8th 56 point wu now ,

although my pd and p4 have a 'tinker' on core 0 worth a whooping 241 points, will take a day to do it though.

edit - http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fahproject?p=1163

i dont understand any of that

 

[Indy500]

8th 56 point wu now ,

although my pd and p4 have a 'tinker' on core 0 worth a whooping 241 points, will take a day to do it though.

edit - http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/fahproject?p=1163

i dont understand any of that

Ribosomes are pretty important, they synthesize RNA which then gets joined together into DNA. (Biology students can correct me if I'm wrong here )

 

[Joe42]

Just got a note through our door to say there is going to be an electricity outage on thursday, so my production will be down.

Whats more worrying however is the reason for it. Apparently houses in our area have been experiencing dangerous current surges for some time, the sort of thing that kills pc's and shortens the life of just about everything else.

I've been aware of this for several years, our lights are always flickering and such. I'm just beginning to wonder now that the electricity board are dealing with it (they descovered it purely by chance) how many pc failures it may have been responsible for.

 

[Indy500]

I seem to get that too...well, the light flickering thing, and it happens when high-power appliances are turned on. I'll have a word with the landlord about this...

 

[Joe42]

Here it happens randomly, even if nothing is switched on at all, and apparently its because the power entering the house is full of surges.

They have had to replace cables twice here in the last couple of months.

Only 1 light flickers when the fridge switches on because the fridge is connected to the lighting circuit. It shouldn't be, but it is.

I'm thinking ups time. Its something i've been meaning to do for a while.

 

[Whitestar]

I used to get power surges all the time. Fried two computers a couple of years back. I though about going down the UPS route, but at the time couldn't afford it. Instead I got some of those surge protectors, havn't had a pc die from a surge since.

I know there not as good as a UPS, but they are well worth there money if you buy the right ones.

 

[Indy500]

Here it happens randomly, even if nothing is switched on at all, and apparently its because the power entering the house is full of surges.

They have had to replace cables twice here in the last couple of months.

Only 1 light flickers when the fridge switches on because the fridge is connected to the lighting circuit. It shouldn't be, but it is.

I'm thinking ups time. Its something i've been meaning to do for a while.

Theres only one socket in this room that all my electrical stuff is hooked up to...the landlord refuses to install another claiming its too much work.

 

[Joe42]

We have the same problem. Two rooms with the two main computers in have 1 reachable socket each and they share the same cable so its practically one plug between both rooms.

I have a 2 4 way multiplugs plus two further double sockets on a fused spur all connected to the one socket, and everything is connected to it. The other room has a 6 way multiplug connected to an 8 way, so i make it a total of 24 sockets from one.

In my room:
pc
monitors
laptop
speakers
battery chargers
fan
mouse
dab radio
two lamps.

Then theres all the stuff in the other room which is practically on the same socket, they are on opposite sides of the same wall.
2 pcs
1 monitor
router
harddisk
camera charger
speakers
fan
phone
printer.

What really gets me is the number of wall warts there are with bits of paper lying around on top of them getting hot. I've got one which gets to 55 degrees surface temperature, luckily i've moved it out the way of the paper.

 

[oceaness]

Heh

Gotta love a good computer room

I have a total of 8 surge protected wall sockets. I also have a small UPS for one of the PC's so far. I need 4 more small UPS's for the other PC's and a big one for my next main rig (Dual Opteron 270's).

Also considering getting another big one for the 950watt A/C unit else if the power goes off this rooms gonna be a little toasty in seconds

Is there anyway to make one UPS turn off two PC's when it can only connect to one machine?

Edit: Oh and yes I'm only pickng up 56's atm.

 

[Joe42]

Is there anyway to make one UPS turn off two PC's when it can only connect to one machine?

There must be a way because servers with ups's never have one for every machine...

There are a couple of diy ways. If you can, split the usb/serial cable so it connects to both pc's, although theres no guarantee that would work.

Another way is to set both pc's to shutdown when the power button is pressed (in ctrl panel/power settings) and then somehow find a way of detecting a loss of power and shorting the power on cable to the board to simulate pressing the power button.
One way would be to connect a low power wall wart (240v - 12v + some resistors) to the led in an opto-isolator chip. It will switch a light dependant transistor in the chip off when the led goes out. If you could just find a way to invert that so its switching another transistor on connected to the power on signal into the board (the power button).
That would be a neat way of switching the pc off when power goes off.

I've just thought of an interesting solutuion for the aircon. You can buy thermostatic plug adaptors to plug into portable heaters without a thermostat, get a couple of these and set them to switch off at 35 or something and connect them to your ups's. Then when it gets too hot they will switch off and the ups's will trigger the pc's to shut down.

 

[oceaness]

The UPS will last like 20 - 30 mins after the powers gone off. So that's 4 (8 soon) cores all generating a lot of heat in a confined space. The room heats up incredibly quickly. I'd rather the PC's didn't shut off immediately the power goes off, because normally it only goes off for like 10 mins however they can't stay on for 10 mins without A/C.

Hmm, I could setup a little circuit so that when some small part of the main PC stops drawing power (like perhaps the power LED ) because it's shut down, it will trip the power button circuit on the other PC Exactly like you say Joe