Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

scaught · Apr 16, 2002, 09:51 AM

ive got a 733mhz G4 with 896mb of RAM which i try to leave running OS X all the time.

i dont really know anything about the whole DC thing but would like to get involved. SETI seems like a crock to me, but folding seems to be an honorable contribution as it could help save some lives.

which one should i join? which runs on OS X? do they have screensavers attached to them?

Osirisis · Apr 16, 2002, 10:20 AM

Originally posted by scaught:
<STRONG>ive got a 733mhz G4 with 896mb of RAM which i try to leave running OS X all the time.

i dont really know anything about the whole DC thing but would like to get involved. SETI seems like a crock to me, but folding seems to be an honorable contribution as it could help save some lives.

which one should i join? which runs on OS X? do they have screensavers attached to them?</STRONG>

Folding is a terminal client. I believe someone around here has an app that will automatically configure it for you. Make sure you join Team 16. That's us

We could sure use all the help we can get.

reader50 · Apr 16, 2002, 10:32 AM

All our current projects run under OS X. Only SETI and RC5 have OS 9 clients.

Distributed Folding has a CLI client only. Windoze does get a screen saver version too, but we don't (yet).

Folding@home has CLI, GUI, and a Screen Saver for Mac. The downloads page is here. I have not tested the screen saver version yet.

No apologies needed about a new topic, new members are always welcome. At one time, before we got the web site going again, we went 5 days without a post. I'll take new topics anyday.

jbcool · Apr 16, 2002, 10:33 AM

Originally posted by scaught:
<STRONG>ive got a 733mhz G4 with 896mb of RAM which i try to leave running OS X all the time.

i dont really know anything about the whole DC thing but would like to get involved. SETI seems like a crock to me, but folding seems to be an honorable contribution as it could help save some lives.

which one should i join? which runs on OS X? do they have screensavers attached to them?</STRONG>

Two to choose from:
The distributed folding project that has a text only client. http://www.distributedfolding.org/
Team MacNN

The folding@home project which has both a screensaver and text client. http://folding.stanford.edu/
Team #16
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/ulti...5&t=000658
You might want to look at this thread as this was a topic of discussion
yesterday.

Shaktai · Apr 16, 2002, 10:58 AM

Welcome scaught,

Their are two different protein folding projects that are currenttly active and both run on OS-X. Both are similar in concept, but take different approaches to the same problem.

dFold (Distributed Folding - http://www.distributedfolding.org/ ) is the newest of the two projects but its client software is currently CLI (command line) only. It must be ran in the OS-X terminal. However it is very friendly, and if you have sufficient RAM can be ran in the background without interfering with other programs. It will use only those CPU cycles not used by other programs. Team MacNNN has only been working this project officially since April 4th, but we are already #17 on the team list, and in the top 10 in production. From a competition viewpoint, it is a very fast paced project.

If you are looking for a project that specifically has a screensaver, then the choice would be Folding at Home ( http://folding.stanford.edu/ ). They just recently released an OS-X screensaver client. They also have non-screensaver GUI and CLI clients. Please note that the Screensaver client is probably much slower, but to date we don't have any benchmarks comparing it to the other clients. The Graphic application on this program is just as fast as the CLI, when it is ran "hidden", but is slower when visible due to the CPU cycles lost when it is drawing the graphics. -- The Folding@Home team has recently been passed by some other Teams, and so would be very glad to have your help. However it is a competitive team headed for the top 50, and consistently out crunches most of the teams around it.

Check out our team homepages for dFold - http://team.macnn.com/dfold/index.phtml and Folding@Home - http://team.macnn.com/fold/index.phtml for additional info.

Also, Ubero is a project, that is currently just "reprocessing" old data, but it looks good that they may have a protein folding project as well in the very near future, as well as possibly a "paying" project" Team MacNN is #1 in Ubero.

I hope this helps. I would recommend that you try both Folding@home and dFold (Distributed Folding) and see which one you enjoy the most. If a screensaver it important to you though, then your choice is Folding@Home. Perhaps you could try out their screensaver for a few days, and report back to us on your results (how fast, what does it look like, how do you like it, etc.)

Feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

wheeles · Apr 16, 2002, 12:54 PM

Hi scaught. Welcome aboard!