repost - which team needs older slow comps?

[bootoo]

OK, I know this is a repost but I searched and couldn't find the old info. I'm dumb like that.

I have a high school computer network my students and I pieced together for our computer club. It consists of 2 1-gig celerons, 3 pII 200-300 type computers (soon to be upgraded to 950 and 1 gig durons), and 3 ibm pII 400's.

I would like the kids to be able to join a team but don't know which team can use these; I know some programs can only run effectively on faster computers as there's a time limit for their work to be completed, etc.

A link to biology or health in anyway would be a plus but not an absolute as I also teach life science.

We are pending approval by the admins after a LONG delay which is why we didn't start last year; so who wants these old beasts?

 

[ProviaFan]

F@H would be wonderful for the faster machines, but the time limits would not work well with the older stuff (especially if it is to be turned off during the night and/or used heavily through the day). I think the DF client might be better for the slower machines, if you're interested specifically in medical/science type stuff (though it uses a lot of RAM, like F@H). SoB, ECC2, and DPAD are more mathematically oriented, but they would be better for slow (or not-always-on) computers with limited amounts of RAM. Only the first (SoB) does not work well with dialup, AFAIK.

Edit: and before anyone thinks otherwise, I have nothing against SETI. I simply refrained from including it here, because he seemed to prefer medical projects; I also listed some non-medical alternatives that work well on slow computers with limited RAM (where a 16MB or larger DC client would be a problem). Nevertheless, you could offer them that option if the computers would support it (and I'm sure the SETI TeAm would appreciate the help).

Edit again: my tired mind is having trouble thinking. Of course SETI is life science related! What was I thinking?
Anyway, be sure to consider that if the computers have enough RAM to run it well along with your other applications (128MB would probably be fine).

 

[bootoo]

Thanks. A couple of my individual students run SETI at home on their own comps but I can get this OK'd more easily if I tie it in w/ my class. A few teachers think I'm not from around here anyway, why add to their fun?

My comps mostly have 196 mgs of pc133 ram if that helps although the newer ones will hopefully be slowly upgraded to 256 mgs of pc2100 by early october.

 

[ProviaFan]

196MB of RAM is plenty, unless you're running an untweaked XP Pro installation or something. You should be able to pick pretty much any project(s) that fit your specifications, and run them well.

 

[bootoo]

Thanks - that's really great especially after reading the post below w/ the pentium 200.

So who could use the help? I thought I'd give the kids 3 choices. My students who run SETI chose that first at school but we got shot down last year; they then went on their own to SETI at home.

Again, thanks so much; I have a new administration and my talk with them today was... semi-positive. No one has heard of this before so they think it's a back door way into their grades or something (seriously). Oh and they're all 98 se machines so it's not a problem w/ slowing them down.

 

[SlangNRox]

I would like to suggest lifemapper. The client has nice maps and it shows what exactly it is processing. You can view the stats page of your 500 most current work units. From here you can bring up google images of what the species is that you were working on etc. I think this is a project that you can see results with immediately after finishing a unit. Predicting where animals do/can live seems like it would be a great thing for a high school to get involved in.

 

[Confused]

While I would normally promote Seventeen or Bust here, for what you are going to be doing it for, i think that Lifemapper will probably be the best project for your needs, for the reasons that SlangNRox mentioned above me.

Having a computer program work out where an animal could live, seeing maps, and then seeing the animal would be brilliant for kids, something that I would have loved when I was at school!


Garry

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: jliechty
Edit: and before anyone thinks otherwise, I have nothing against SETI. I simply refrained from including it here, because he seemed to prefer medical projects; I also listed some non-medical alternatives that work well on slow computers with limited RAM (where a 16MB or larger DC client would be a problem). Nevertheless, you could offer them that option if the computers would support it (and I'm sure the SETI TeAm would appreciate the help).

No offense taken Josh - I completely agree with you - our poster did ask for a medical application, and even though it is somewhat a stretch to think we're going to find the aliens tomorrow, I think it's even more a stretch that they're going to have a cure for human cancer in their medical kit. :Q

Admittedly, I don't know alot about the "LifeMapper" project, but it does sound good for kids in a learning environment.

 

[GeorgeCredland]

Originally posted by: SlangNRox
I would like to suggest lifemapper. The client has nice maps and it shows what exactly it is processing. You can view the stats page of your 500 most current work units. From here you can bring up google images of what the species is that you were working on etc. I think this is a project that you can see results with immediately after finishing a unit. Predicting where animals do/can live seems like it would be a great thing for a high school to get involved in.

Lifemapper is a great choice for low spec machines.

I'd say it turns around a workunit every hour per GHz of CPU, so each machine would
be adding several results per day. You also get to see the CPU usage per
workunit which can be handy for tweaking hardware.

We're also light handed on the TA team at the moment (13 members with 5 active)
so any help would be appreciated.

George

 

[PeterN]

Am going to give it a try with one machine. Let's see how this client behave on a AMD 1.7Ghz machine.

 

[bootoo]

Thanks so much. Have Lifemapper info printed out and in the principal's "inbox" for approval.