- Jul 17, 2003
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OK, we know you've been getting barraged with threads aimed at recruiting members for other DC projects, and we didn't want it to come to this, but we now need to annoy you for a while, so please bear with us 
. TeAm Anandtech Folding@Home was ranked 24th in the world about a month ago, but was passed by TWO teams on the same day, and we're now in danger of being passed yet again.
For the science behind Folding@Home, jliechty's thread here explains that and many other things nicely. If you don't care about stats, at least run F@H to support the project, you never know, the cure for a debilitating disease you get later in life may be helped along by you.
You can download the Folding@Home client from here (I'd recommend the GUI version, it's easier to set up)
First and foremost turn off any screen savers and power management features, then get rid of spyware (Ad Aware and Spybot S&D are good tools) and any viruses (You can get a full scan at Trend Micro, and a free AV program here.
For the Graphical version, it?s a point and click operation. Install the program and open it up. Then right click on the program's icon in the system tray, and expand the window. Right click inside of the window, hit Configure and input your info (Team 198, your username) There should be a shortcut in your Start menu's startup folder, if not go into the Folding@Home directory in C:\Program Files and create a shortsut to winfah.exe in the startup folder. Right click the shortcut and in the shortcut tab, edit the target box to look like this (for an AthlonXP or Duron 1.4 or higher, substitute -forceSSE for -forceasm)
For the text-only version:
1) Copy the file you just downloaded (FAH4Console.exe) into the folder you want it to run from (I use C:\Program Files\Folding@Home, but you can use whatever you want to)
2) Run FAH4Console.exe, it'll give you a DOS-like prompt and ask a few questions
>>User name- Whatever you like, just make sure it isn't in use (go back to the download link and there's a search for this)
>>Team Number- 198 (That's for us)
>>Ask before fetching\sending work- set it to no unless you want it to nag you every time it wants to send or download work
>>Use Internet Explorer settings- set this to the default of no
>>Use proxy- If you need to use a proxy server to get to the 'net, it'll ask, otherwise, just say no
>>Change advanced options- If you don't want to specify things like the type of work you get, etc say no (go to step 3 if you say no), otherwise say yes and it'll ask:
#Client Type (no-pref/fah/gah)- Default is no preference. FAH is Folding@Home, GAH is Genome@Home
#Core priority (idle/low)- Idle lets F@H run at a very low priority, but if you find that it won't "turn on," set it to low (slightly higher priority, may interfere with some applications)
#CPU usage requested (5-100)- Lets you allocate a percentage of your CPU to F@H, useful if you want to run two DC projects at the same time
#Disable highly optimized assembly code (no/yes)- I highly suggest that you leave this on NO. If there are any stablity problems, the client will automatically disable SSE\3DNow!
#Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) Just what it says, default should be fine, less time between checkpoints if you're paranoid about losing work
#Ignore deadline information- If your system clock is very erratic change this to yes, otherwise leave it alone. There's a deadline for each WU to be submitted, and this will tell your PC to stop crunching an old WU that won't gain any points (rarely happens).
#Machine ID (1-8)- If you want to keep tabs on multiple machines, give each a unique number
3)Now it should download a core and WU and start a little crunching. If you don't mind the window minimized in your task bar, you're almost done. Just create a shortcut to FAH4Console.exe and put it in your startup folder (in the Start menu) so F@H starts every time you start your PC.
4)If you have multiple people using the same PC, hate the button on your taskbar, or want the computer to crunch while nobody is logged in, then you need a nifty program called FireDaemon It'll let you install F@H as an invisible Windows service. Download FireDaemon (the 1.6 Lite version is fine) and install it.
5)Start up FireDaemon and click Service>New
6)For each field input the following-
#Short name- FaH
#Display name- FaH
#Description- Folding@Home
#Check Console Application
#Working directory (folder you ran FAH4Console.exe from)
#Executable (direct location of FAH4Console.exe)
#Parameters- This is where things can get a bit sticky, if you have an Athlon XP or higher (or Duron 1.4 or higher), I'd recommend [-forceSSE -local -advmethods -service] (sans brackets). If you have system instability when forcing SSE on, just change it to -forceasm. If you have an Athlon (Thunderbird core), Duron 1.3 or lower or Pentium III, Pentium4, or an older, just change -forceSSE to -forceasm and it'll force whatever special instructions it sees fit (3DNow! for AMD, SSE for Intel).
Now you're done. Just click install, close the window, confirm that the service is running (it should show up in FireDaemon's main window), and then close FireDaemon.
If this guide confused you, or you have some more questions, look at this page or this page. Just remember we?re Team 198.
For stats, there?s Statsman, EOC, and the official Stanford stats.
Sometimes the Stanford guys will update the crunching "engine" for F@H (aka cores). There's two main cores FahCore_78 (Gromacs) and FahCore_68 (Tinker), and the new FahCore_79 (Double Gromacs, uses SSE2). You'll get mostly Tinker and Gromacs WUs, but the Gromacs core is more optimized, making it faster. Bugs in the cores themselves may surface, or an optimization may be added (or your copy may be corrupted), so the client will automatically download a new core for you. At times they'll release a whole new client, which may enable a few new console commands (like the -forceSSE flag was just added in version 4). You'll have to manually download a new client as you see fit. You could compare the client to an operating system, and the cores to an application. Sometimes you need a Windows Update, sometimes you just need a patch for your application(s).
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, we're here to help you out!
. TeAm Anandtech Folding@Home was ranked 24th in the world about a month ago, but was passed by TWO teams on the same day, and we're now in danger of being passed yet again. For the science behind Folding@Home, jliechty's thread here explains that and many other things nicely. If you don't care about stats, at least run F@H to support the project, you never know, the cure for a debilitating disease you get later in life may be helped along by you.
You can download the Folding@Home client from here (I'd recommend the GUI version, it's easier to set up)
First and foremost turn off any screen savers and power management features, then get rid of spyware (Ad Aware and Spybot S&D are good tools) and any viruses (You can get a full scan at Trend Micro, and a free AV program here.
For the Graphical version, it?s a point and click operation. Install the program and open it up. Then right click on the program's icon in the system tray, and expand the window. Right click inside of the window, hit Configure and input your info (Team 198, your username) There should be a shortcut in your Start menu's startup folder, if not go into the Folding@Home directory in C:\Program Files and create a shortsut to winfah.exe in the startup folder. Right click the shortcut and in the shortcut tab, edit the target box to look like this (for an AthlonXP or Duron 1.4 or higher, substitute -forceSSE for -forceasm)
For the text-only version:
1) Copy the file you just downloaded (FAH4Console.exe) into the folder you want it to run from (I use C:\Program Files\Folding@Home, but you can use whatever you want to)
2) Run FAH4Console.exe, it'll give you a DOS-like prompt and ask a few questions
>>User name- Whatever you like, just make sure it isn't in use (go back to the download link and there's a search for this)
>>Team Number- 198 (That's for us
)>>Ask before fetching\sending work- set it to no unless you want it to nag you every time it wants to send or download work
>>Use Internet Explorer settings- set this to the default of no
>>Use proxy- If you need to use a proxy server to get to the 'net, it'll ask, otherwise, just say no
>>Change advanced options- If you don't want to specify things like the type of work you get, etc say no (go to step 3 if you say no), otherwise say yes and it'll ask:
#Client Type (no-pref/fah/gah)- Default is no preference. FAH is Folding@Home, GAH is Genome@Home
#Core priority (idle/low)- Idle lets F@H run at a very low priority, but if you find that it won't "turn on," set it to low (slightly higher priority, may interfere with some applications)
#CPU usage requested (5-100)- Lets you allocate a percentage of your CPU to F@H, useful if you want to run two DC projects at the same time
#Disable highly optimized assembly code (no/yes)- I highly suggest that you leave this on NO. If there are any stablity problems, the client will automatically disable SSE\3DNow!
#Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) Just what it says, default should be fine, less time between checkpoints if you're paranoid about losing work
#Ignore deadline information- If your system clock is very erratic change this to yes, otherwise leave it alone. There's a deadline for each WU to be submitted, and this will tell your PC to stop crunching an old WU that won't gain any points (rarely happens).
#Machine ID (1-8)- If you want to keep tabs on multiple machines, give each a unique number
3)Now it should download a core and WU and start a little crunching. If you don't mind the window minimized in your task bar, you're almost done. Just create a shortcut to FAH4Console.exe and put it in your startup folder (in the Start menu) so F@H starts every time you start your PC.
4)If you have multiple people using the same PC, hate the button on your taskbar, or want the computer to crunch while nobody is logged in, then you need a nifty program called FireDaemon It'll let you install F@H as an invisible Windows service. Download FireDaemon (the 1.6 Lite version is fine) and install it.
5)Start up FireDaemon and click Service>New
6)For each field input the following-
#Short name- FaH
#Display name- FaH
#Description- Folding@Home
#Check Console Application
#Working directory (folder you ran FAH4Console.exe from)
#Executable (direct location of FAH4Console.exe)
#Parameters- This is where things can get a bit sticky, if you have an Athlon XP or higher (or Duron 1.4 or higher), I'd recommend [-forceSSE -local -advmethods -service] (sans brackets). If you have system instability when forcing SSE on, just change it to -forceasm. If you have an Athlon (Thunderbird core), Duron 1.3 or lower or Pentium III, Pentium4, or an older, just change -forceSSE to -forceasm and it'll force whatever special instructions it sees fit (3DNow! for AMD, SSE for Intel).
Now you're done. Just click install, close the window, confirm that the service is running (it should show up in FireDaemon's main window), and then close FireDaemon.
If this guide confused you, or you have some more questions, look at this page or this page. Just remember we?re Team 198
.For stats, there?s Statsman, EOC, and the official Stanford stats.
Sometimes the Stanford guys will update the crunching "engine" for F@H (aka cores). There's two main cores FahCore_78 (Gromacs) and FahCore_68 (Tinker), and the new FahCore_79 (Double Gromacs, uses SSE2). You'll get mostly Tinker and Gromacs WUs, but the Gromacs core is more optimized, making it faster. Bugs in the cores themselves may surface, or an optimization may be added (or your copy may be corrupted), so the client will automatically download a new core for you. At times they'll release a whole new client, which may enable a few new console commands (like the -forceSSE flag was just added in version 4). You'll have to manually download a new client as you see fit. You could compare the client to an operating system, and the cores to an application. Sometimes you need a Windows Update, sometimes you just need a patch for your application(s).
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, we're here to help you out!
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