More questions...

[Sinner]

I've gotten most of my herd operational. All the NT and Win2k boxes are pointing to the TA proxy, the Win9x boxes have to wait till I get around to them all.

Next on my hit list are old Pentium and 486 class machines. I've got plenty of hard drives but not enough floppies for them all. Can I use the Klinux image on a hard disk? I'm talking about 100-500 meg hard disks that I probably should have tossed out years ago and am now glad I didn't!

Another question, are there any good sources out there for cheap AT power supplies? I've found 145 watt ATX power supplies at $15 but nothing good for my old AT boards.

What advice do you have for memory on Pentium and 486 machines? 8 megs 16 megs? I haven't collected all the pieces in one place yet but I think I'll have 4 pentiums with at least 16 megs each and 4 486s with 8 megs each.

So far I've done over 1600 blocks at a rate of 13Mk/sec or so as per the TA site. That's only about half the herd though. The others haven't yet been converted to the TA proxy so I have no idea of the throughput.

More good news..I just ordered 3 new dual P3-700 servers for the office. How many keys/sec you think I can crank out of those?

Resistance is futile. We will add your distinctive CPU cycles to our own. Your CPUs will adapt to service us.

 

[BGod]

You may want to check out Caseoutlet for power supplies.

If I were you I'd pick up some cheap floppy drives and use Klinux that way. You'll also need some network cards and a hub.

Running Klinux you should be able to get by with 8MB of RAM. 16 would be better. Just don't buffer up a bunch of blocks in memory. If it crashes you won't be out a bunch of lost blocks.

The dual P3 servers should kick out about 1,261 blocks/day each!!!

Welcome to the team!

 

[wrickard]

Like Sinner I've got an old 486 with 8MB... should I bother using it?
Is it worth it in power consumption/price of network card versus blocks per day?

 

[Kilowatt]

<< Can I use the Klinux image on a hard disk? >>

Yes &amp; No
Klinux is only written to a floppy to boot off of.
The floppy is not used after the Klinux.img is booted into memory.
So using a HDD, you would be using it just to boot into a ramdisk.

Most all my Klinux nodes are dual celerons, running off a 145w ATX PS, so I wouldn't want to tax the PS anymore than I had too, by running a HDD also.

The floppy will just power during boot and go off (idle, not spin), A HDD will suck juice the whole time it's running.

8MB of system memory should be fine.
Like BGod said, don't buffer more that one 32wu block per CPU at a time, and you should be OK.

How many AT Power Supplies do you need?

If you'll need at least a case (20) of floppies, I'll sell you a case for cost. (NOTE: Must be used for TA Klinux nodes )
Need floppy cables too?

 

[Kilowatt]

wrickard,
That's a matter of preference.
I personally wouldn't bother with a 486, when I can just as well run a dual celeron.

Some people don't have that option, and still want to contribute all they can, and do it with all they have.

 

[TOOCOOL]

Sinner i have power supplies (at) wanna go for a little drive and they are yours (free) may have some floppys will check if interested PM me

 

[JHutch]

Sinner,

This link http://www.teamanandtech.com/speed.asp is a great spot for figuring out the output of a particular machine.

For instance, a dual P3-700 would do ... 3.9 Mk/sec, 1261 WU/day.

3 of those babies would equal ... 11.7 Mk/sec, 3785 WU/day.

Of course, this assumes they do no other work than crunching RC5, so this is a best case scenario.

Sounds like you have a helluva nice herd shaping up! Have fun!

JHutch

 

[Athlex]

Another good source I've used for powersupplies and other crackrack parts is www.darncomputers.com. Most of this guy's business is done over e&szlig;ay, but he's always got powersupplies for sale on his site for $5 (AT) to $7 (ATX).