Sum of what folding@home is please

Zip

Zip

Zip

Soldato
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Ive only got this computer so am unsure if i can do folding or not but im sure you lot can tell me.
I want you to give me a brief summery of what folding@home is and whats involved and what you need to do.

I know there is a sticky that will tell me what i need to know but its huge and if i try to read it by the time im halfway through i will have lost interest and wont get around to doing anything :o

Thanks in advance :)
 
Ahoy thar, Mr. Zip.

You can most ceartainly help.

Folding@Home is a project run by researchers at Stanford University that essentially takes our computers when we're not using them and makes them part of a worldwide grid supercomputer capable of a sustained output greater than 200 Gigaflops. It's used to perform molecular dynamics studies on human protiens. The science behand it is pretty slick and participoating is wildly addictive. Check it out if you like. For a slightly more detailed overview that's still limited to three tiny paragraphs, check out wee bits after the giant "What is Folding anyway" heading of the FAH sticky. ;)

Alternatively, check out the wikipedia entry for the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
 
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SETI@home is a different project,it is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), whereas folding is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and something else (which I cant remember).

Forget SETI and join Folding :p , heres the guide clicky

Oh and OcUK is team 10
 
Not necessarily. SETI is a project by which researchers at UC Berkeley analyze radio waves recieved at the huge Arecibo radio observatory (it was that cool one in the Goldeneye Bond flick) looking for signs of extraterrestrial life. If participants were to actually find extraterrestrial life it would be absolutely banannas and would most definitely beneficial to humanity. in fact, it would be mind-bogglingly cool. However, it's an eggs-in-on e-basket kind of hunt where it's all or nothing. SETI Classic used about 21 billion hours CPU time for essentially nothing as they did not find any aliens as far as we know.

If you like the sound of SETI, crunch it. Our SETI team definitely needs some love becasue we've lost some big participants. If you like the sound of Folding, crunch it. Our Folding team definiitely needs some help as we've lost some big participants. :p

Zip said:
And whats all these certain team ive read about?
Click to expand...
Care to be more specific? :confused:
 
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Ah yes. This, of course, has to do with our Folding efforts. We are each individual users and as such we put our WUs to a user account and the site keeps statistics for each user. However, users can get together and joun teams. OcUK is team No. 10 so when setting up an instance of Folding it is important to specify team 10 so that your points are counted toward OcUK. Teams have statistics too as they are just the aggregate of all the individual users.

The official statistics are kept at Stanford's web page an d they put out a feed that other people can use. Extreme Overclocking, oft abbreviated as EOC, is a secondary stats site that uses the raw stats from Stanford and makes trend lines from it. It's really for us performance junkies so we know who's moving up the ranks the quickest.

The best way to learn about this is just to dive in and set it up. Then you can ask questions as they become relevant to your situation. :)
 
BillytheImpaler said:
The best way to learn about this is just to dive in and set it up. Then you can ask questions as they become relevant to your situation. :)
Click to expand...

Precisely what i did 2 weeks ago :p And i've asked a handful of questions so far.. but it's going fine now :)
 
Ok i just started it then :)

Its not going to affect the computer performance or internet usage much is it?

Edit: I just closed down the folding thing from, my process lists so i could move all the stuff to there own folder and now i cant get the bloody thing to start folding again :confused:

Ok it works again now but it only works if this screan is open.
bloodything7ks.png


Hpw do i get that screan to go away but keep it working?
 
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Zip said:
Ok i just started it then :)

Its not going to affect the computer performance or internet usage much is it?

Edit: I just closed down the folding thing from, my process lists so i could move all the stuff to there own folder and now i cant get the bloody thing to start folding again :confused:

Ok it works again now but it only works if this screan is open.
bloodything7ks.png


Hpw do i get that screan to go away but keep it working?
Click to expand...

That looks normal really. To get it working without the window, did you set it to run as a process when the computer boots? If so, just restart and it should be running in task manager.

Also, download a program called "FahMon" if you havnt already, i think thats covered in the guide aswell :)
 
benjo said:
That looks normal really. To get it working without the window, did you set it to run as a process when the computer boots? If so, just restart and it should be running in task manager.

Also, download a program called "FahMon" if you havnt already, i think thats covered in the guide aswell :)
Click to expand...

Yeah i did them both, my cpu usage is basically at idol though :confused:

Is that normal?
 
Zip said:
so i could move all the stuff to there own folder and now i cant get the bloody thing to start folding again :confused:
Click to expand...
The screenshot looks really good. However, if you installed it in one location and then moved it, as it sounds like you did, Windows will be unable to find it becasue the path it remembers is no longer correct. Windows is trying to start it in its old location but it is not there to start. All the config files, work, etc. are intact and doing fine but since you moved it Windows doesn't know about the new location. The best way to fix without going in the registry this is:
  1. Move everything back to where it was originally, where it was when you set it up.
  2. Run the console with -configonly as detailed in the sticky. The easiest way to do this involves making a shortcut which you probably already made.
  3. The console will start up in configuration mode. When it comes to the 3rd question, the one about uninstalling the service, tell it yes. This will remove the service and will stop confusing Windows.
  4. Press enter enough times to get out of configuration mode. The console will close.
  5. Move everything to the directory where you want it to be.
  6. Run with -configonly again. Your shortcut is probably invalid now becasue it's moved. Make a new one and enter in the -configonly flag.
  7. It will go back to the now-familiar configuration mode. When it gets to the service bit tell it "yes" so it installs the service.
  8. When you're done close everything out and restart Windows. When it boots back up it should be running project 773 at 100%.
;)

If you feel like going in the registry, you can just go to the entry in services for FAH and change the path. However, I think you'll probably like the aforementioned way better.
 
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Zip said:
Thats from the quick guide Whats the OCUK team :confused:

And there is this
Click to expand...
Sounds like you read my guide a got a little confused about the idea of folding teams competing on points. I think i might revise that section a little to explain it better, as thats one of the most fun parts of folding and the main reason i do it really.

Any feedback on how i could improve the quick guide from the point of view of someone new to folding would be very much apprecated.

Hope its all working for you now.

Edit: I've tweaked the quick and easy guide a bit, to put much more emphasis on the competing and points aspect, as this is the fun reason why many people do it. It occurs to me that the reason many people don't participate in folding at home is many don't realise about the competing and points aspects of it, and how much fun that is. Hopefully the improved quick and easy guide will go some way to resolving this.
 
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BillytheImpaler said:
Huzzah! Perhaps with some luck you'll get her finished in time for Rich's news post tomorrow.

(See, I can be up in the middle of the night as well) ;)
Click to expand...

Its only 3:15pm here :p
Edit: is there anything else i should know?
 
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