Folding Farm

tragus · Post by **tragus** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 6:42 pm

You go, Zhentar! Just don't buy the farm too early.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 10:25 pm

ha ha.

I've got about half of the wires soldered to the ATA cable; my original plan was to solder wires to the pins and stick the wires into the cable, but that didn't seem to be working so I cut open a cable and I'm soldering the cable to the wires to the pins..... Unfortunatly, I have to use an 80-pin cable.

I'm out of solder, but tomorrow I just have to fix one of the pin jobs and the the rest of the wires; shouldn't take more than two hours, and then I'll test my luck, praying that I don't burn out my ATA controller (man, that would really add a whole new dimension to this project) and can finally set this thin up.

I don't think my cable job will completely fit withing ATA spec, unfortunatly

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 5:25 pm

I finished it this afternoon. The good news is it seems to work. the bad news is it seems to be too far out of ATA spec to work completly right.

It'll take some more testing, but it doesn't seem to be succesful....

follow-up:

I've booted linux, X doesn't work.... who knows what will happen from here....

follow-up follow-up:

somehow the network has decided to work (I had so much trouble with this thing before too)

Also, I need to get a second keyboard. Switching 1 keyboard between two comps is a real pain in the butt.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 5:54 pm

one machine has begun folding! assuming it all works properly for a day or two, I'll set up the second one two! this is a great moment...

I also got my RAM back and its working much better than the old stuff was.

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 6:11 pm

Zhentar wrote:one machine has begun folding! assuming it all works properly for a day or two, I'll set up the second one two! this is a great moment...

I also got my RAM back and its working much better than the old stuff was.

FOLD Zhentar FOLD !!!

wussboy · Post by **wussboy** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 8:46 pm

We've all got our fingers crossed for you, Zhentar! You've certainly put enough effort into this!

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 9:31 pm

and it only lasted 20 minutes before file system errors.

I'm actually pretty impressed with how well my ghetto adapter works, but its not nearly good enough. I'll have to go buy a real one tomorrow.

And another note- That 80mm fan in the 180 watt fortron gets going pretty fast, though the air comes out of it pretty cool... I'll have to look at it more, but it may well not be a mod free PSU.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 12:58 pm

I was so excited to get the adapter for $7 at CompUSA (the store I went to earlier said I wouldn't find an adapter anywhere else...) that I ran a stop sign and nearly hit someone... oops!

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 1:11 pm

its amazing... all those hours I spent building the cable and it takes me less than 10 minutes to take it all apart.....

I bought some desoldering braid this week along with more solder on a whim; It would have been much harder to dissasemble without it. It never occured to me the cable might not work yet not destroy the drive!

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 3:16 pm

okay, its looking like the adapter works better than mine! its seems I have another folder- with one noisy PSU though.

wussboy · Post by **wussboy** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 6:43 pm

How many nodes is your farm, Zhentar? 2? Your stats .sig says you got zero active now.

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:01 pm

All the stats sig will probably say zero until Stanford fixes their server. I hope they recover their data, especially productions during this period.

Although, come to think of it, if we all start from 0 I think I'll jump from 34 to 15 or so

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:03 pm

Well, my laptop accidentally got turned off in the power outage the other day. So, currently running I have 3- 2600+, P4M 1.8, and a Pally 1800+. But two of those were turned off for all day, so they won't show up. And once I finish the farm, there will be a second t-bred b 2100+, and hopefully I can O/C it farther than this one

On a side note, the PSU makes an awful racket under load! It is definatly not suitable unmodded for this task. My 300 watt model is silent under very heavy load. granted, this one has smaller heatsinks, and just a 80mm fan, but that's no excuse to try to catch up with Delta noise! (It doesn't quite do it, thank goodness!). I'll definatly have to mod this one quite a bit. Since there's no heat from a case or airflow restriction from it, I'll probably just take out the current fan and put in one of the NMB fans, though mounting it on the outside to reduce restriction....

The air coming out is very cool, as is the case, its basically blowing a ton of air for kicks.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:32 am

Its just one big, stupid loop! I'm back to not being able to get DHCP to work!!!

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:42 am

wtf? I delete a line about the IP range and the unexpected end of file error goes away! oh well, I"ll just accept that it works and be happy

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:51 am

todays lesson: theres a VERY big difference between DHCP starting and DCHP working. I'll figure out how to change that tomorrow morning......

Wrah · Post by **Wrah** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:45 am

Tomorrow morning?
Sleep is for the weak.

riffst3r · Post by **riffst3r** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:30 am

especially when you let others fold on.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 11:23 am

Yeah, I know sleep is a waste of time and what not, but there was a greater problem- this PSU is gonna drive me crazy. I needed a break. I'm gonna have to get to modding it real soon....

the good news is DHCP works now. The bad news is TFTP doesn't.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:33 pm

Dammit! I just can't seem to get around this TFTP: File not found error. The stupid files are all there, I swear!

Wrah · Post by **Wrah** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:37 pm

We still don't believe you.

But the real question here is.. what is TFTP and why do you think you need it?

riffst3r · Post by **riffst3r** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:30 pm

i probably missed this, but why aren't they?

riffst3r · Post by **riffst3r** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:04 pm

ayayay.. now who would want to so such a thing?

Wrah, he said something about "TFTP: File not found error". probably means his passive flat panel monitor drivers are missing

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:45 pm

no, I just like hearing myself type!

TFTP is trivial FTP, which does really minor things like send the kernel and FAH to the node.

I actually have a theory on its failure though! wow! It won't work though.

riffst3r · Post by **riffst3r** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:52 pm

y'know... while i admire your limitless patience, a couple of usb thumb drives and the 7mb file over at http://home.comcast.net/~wxdude1/emsite/index.html would solve all your problems...

its okay, no one will ever know.

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:31 pm

umm... I don't even need the thumb drives, another trip to compusa for another adapter and I can forget about this whole diskless thing; I've got the hard drive.

but I'm not gonna just give up like that! I'll make this work!

I give me three days at best before I come home with the adapter

Wrah · Post by **Wrah** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:36 pm

And after 3 days, will you *finally* just install windows then?

Zhentar · Post by **Zhentar** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 3:33 pm

don't be crazy! with a huge 128 mb of RAM, performance will suck. I'll use a Linux console with WINE and the windows console version for best performance.