Read only : Folding@Home - Info to Know!

[Kov-Ice]

I spent some time combing the massive F@H thread to assemble the high points that everyone should know. Hopefully, this will make it simpler for Current Folders to find resources and easier for Prospective Folders to get the details they need to convince them to join this worthy cause.

WHAT IS FOLDING AND WHY JOIN?
Originally posted by David14259: “Hey Everybody! Come Join the Folding@Home PCMech Team! Our Team Number is: 13761 Basically you run tests on how Proteins 'Fold,' and the results are transmitted to Stanford University. They use the information to help cure diseases like Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's disease. The program runs in the background and doesn't interfere with other programs. It uses the spare CPU cycles that other programs don't use.”

Originally posted by lil Jimmie: “Our ranking helps boost moral within the team and keeps some users folding when they may lose sight of the ultimate goal. We all know the main goal is to help mankind with our efforts, although the higher our rank and the more units we complete, the more data we supply the scientists and expose PCMech to those other teams we pass or pass us.”

MAIN PAGES
Folding@Home Main Page (Download the Software Here)

PCMech F@H Team Page

OTHER F@H INFO
Excellent Tips and Tricks Article

F@H Forums (for questions that can't be answered here)

Listing of Current Projects (higher credit value takes longer to complete)

THE FUN OF FOLLOWING STATISTICS
F@H - PCMech Team Stats Page

Extreme Overclocking Stats

F@H - EOC PCMech Team Stats Page

Check Out the Top 1000 Folding Teams at Extreme Overclocking HERE!

Kakao Stats for Team PCMech

ARTICLES OF INTEREST
"Folding@Home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success"

How Folding@Home Affects Your System's Performance

Computer Screensavers Solve Protein Puzzle

Public Computing

DOWNLOADS
Running the Folding@Home Client as a Service in Win98

Electron Microscope

Use Hide-It to keep your taskbar uncluttered

IMPORTANCE OF HYPERTHREADING
Are your P4s HyperThreading? You really ought to look into running two instances on those computers. It's really pretty simple to set up, as shown in the Tips and Tricks article above. It doesn't slow down your work rate noticeably; it'll double the output of each cpu it's on.

The 800MHz bus P4 chips are capable of doing HT. HyperThreading is making one processor act as two processors of equal speed (i.e. – One P4 2.4C processor would act as dual P4 2.4 GHz processor when utilizing HyperThreading. You can also find more info about this topic HERE.

PCMech Newsletter
Not signed up for the PCMech newsletter? Get it HERE.


Maybe PCMech's F@H veterans could add to this thread with some FAQs or other important info that I might have missed. Hope this is of benefit to everyone.

[james8547]

Excellent work! Now I don't have to muck thru pages to see a particular info. I just bookmarked this thread

[Kov-Ice]

You have a choice between two different clients when downloading the F@H program.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) runs in the background, but has a graphics window available that allows you to see the protein being simulated. The graphic is just a spooled set of pics and doesn't really illustrate the actual progress. This does have a window that shows all pertinent info and a pie graph that shows progress made. It can also be set up to run as your screensaver while also running calculations in the background.

The Console also runs in the background, but it is launched as a terminal or DOS box. All you will see here are text messages about the simulation's progress. It's a little tidier, and it seems to fold a bit more quickly. If you run 98, you have to manually close out the text box before logging out or you'll lose info. If you have HT and run two instances, one must be the console and it's recommended that both are this text version.

[mr_spider3]

how do u tell what type of protein your working on and how many pooints u get for it?

[lil Jimmie]

The protein will be shown in the graphical client and listed at the beginning of the log in the text client then match the protein up here to find more info on it.

[penguincube]

I already am part of the Folding@home distributed computing thingy (through the Google Computer at labs.google.com). Should I join the PCMech team? How would I do this if I already have the software?

[Kov-Ice]

We'd love to have you. Your contributions are meaningful either way, but you'd be better able to track stats as part of a small team like PCMech's rather than with the Google conglomeration.

If you have the Graphical client, right click on the icon in the tray and just go to 'Configure' to change your team number to 13761. If you are using the text only client, you need to go to Properties on your Shortcut, then add the flag -config to the end of your Target line. The next time you load, it will take you to setup. Thanks!

[survyor1]

If I have FAH installed at home and i want to run it at my office. Do I have to name my computer at work under a new name or can I use the same name on two seperate computers to add to my total of proteins folded.?

[enhanced08]

you can use the same name. you can have as many computers running the same name as you want. i have about 5 computers running my name right now.

[survyor1]

Thanks

[Edave]

Hey All,
I just downloaded the program to give this thing a try, and im getting some sort of error when I right click on my little icon in the corner and click display. It shuts me down every time.
Here is a pic of the error im getting.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[enhanced08]

post your system specs and OS. it will be easier to help with that info.

[Edave]

System specs are my sig.
Thanks
Dave

[enhanced08]

yeah, i realized that after i hit send, sorry. my bad!

[Edave]

hehehe,
not a problem

[Kov-Ice]

Go HERE to download the OpenGL Tester from the F@H forums.

Then post your results HERE in the folding forums to see what they have to say.

It's likely you'll be better off with the Console version rather than the Graphic version you're trying to use. HTH.

[Edave]

Thanks Kov-Ice,
When I get a little extra time, ill go do those suggestions.
Thanks again.
Dave

[Kov-Ice]

Uninstalling the Graphic version and just using the text-only Console would be a quick fix. That way you won't get those OpenGL conflicts.

[Byte 2.0]

I have a question about Folding at Home. I was going to do a few work units, kinda testing my New PC. Anyways It just ask me for a name, no password setup?? I guess it is just on the Honor system?

[lil Jimmie]

Nope there is no password. If you have a real unique nick with your selected team then you will not share points with any other users. I believe the nick and team numbers now identify the user, it used to be nick only and you would see some users that had the same nick and the stats would show one user folding for many teams. You can search to see if a nick is being used at the Stanford Stat web page.

I wish it was name & password so I and other users could carry our personal stats with us if we move to other teams. The points would stay with the team but the stats would still reflect the users status in the overall picture.

[rcx21000]

Blah @ MD5CRK. It doesn't have good ranking systems

Both comps (Athlon XP 2500 & PIII-866MhZ) are folding 24/7

[Vigo]

Just added a Willamette core. Probably wont be adding anything else until I start building new boxes again late this year/early next year.

[lil Jimmie]

Cool on the willie! I prolly won't be adding anything new till fall it sux as it is cause not all of mine are running 24/7

[Kov-Ice]

I posted a short thread for our team at the Folding Forums HERE in case anyone wants to add anything to it.

[mjkovis]

Just started foldin' thanks to Kov-Ice's persistent pressure! :-D This is for a great cause and I am very pleased to be able to do so on PCMech's F@H team!

[enhanced08]

welcome to the team and thanks for help. we are glad to have you!!!

[bigandy]

Great to hear Acid Klutch. Thank you for joining the team .

[netnamakan]

dl'd f@H. will be folding 24/7 also i will set up several of my freinds pc's on the team to.

[bigandy]

Great news Netnamakan . Glad to see you have joined the team.

[bigandy]

I'm going to be talking to my dad about him starting to fold for PCMech (if he wants to). Thing is he runs ME, yeah I know, I know. But I am wondering if it is possible to run F@H as a service in 98/ME? All the stuff I've found so far is only for NT based OSes like NT, 2k, and XP. But looking through the console info for the 98/ME text console, it says as a Windows specific command:

-service Run in service mode (for programs such as firedaemon). This prevents the client from exiting when it detects the current user is logging out. If this option is used when the client is not run as a service then it will run normally, but will not shut down automatically if the user logs out, and a "Wait for program to close." dialog box will be displayed.

Would this mean you can run F@H as a service on an ME box?