[Billy]

Many of our newer members have awesome machines, but they are using the stock Seti application. They could get a significant increase in performance with the optimized client. Should we e-mail them or post the instructions in a more accessible area with simple instructions?

[zombie67]

A "welcome" PM or email from the mod, or a monthly newsletter would help.

[Billy]

That's a great idea.

I also noticed that the new Boinc for Mac 5.10.34 is posted as an editor's pick on Version Tracker for Mac OSX. Could someone post A. Khan's optimized Seti applications over there with instructions?

[adream]

hi folks

i have just done some instructions on a small page here

MacCafe Optimised Seti Install Instructions Mac OS X

i know it doesn't mention team macnn but your more than welcome to use it as the basis for some instructions or link direct to the page

if theres any constructive criticism you can add i would appreciate it (only been up for a few days)

hope it helps more mac crunchers get the most out of their machines regardless of team :-)

regards

adrian (adream)

[Tesselator]

Who would do that to their system? Every Mac model I've ever heard of will
overheat and have an unnaturally short life by running apps like this either
in the background or while not in use. Apple just cannot understand how (or
refuses) to cool their systems well enough to participate in something like this.

Sure there's smcFanControl and at it's highest setting (BLASTING!) you can keep it
cool enough for this but now with the fans on or very near full and with the proc
and ram stress you've just tripled or quadrupled the power consumption over
typical operation (surfing, movies, music, a bit of painting, etc.). This also means
your power bill will be considerably higher. I guess if you run this only while
sleeping you're adding at least $50 to your power bill in the case of iMac and
more for MacPro models.

So now we're talking about not only spending money but just ruining the health
and life span of your machine. For what? To crunch space noise? Who would do
such a thing?

[adream]

he heh.... thats pretty to the point tesselator... a few notes on my part

as for heat issues , i have run macs and pcs flat out in a variety of situations and have never had an issue with overheating macs... the fact that fans run at higher rpm doesnt mean the thing is overheating... its quite obvious when macs overheat for real because the operating system reports it as a thermal protection issue in the syslog.. amongst other things i repair macs for a living and have no evidence of macs overheating apart from when heatsinks are poorly seated, air flow is restricted or in some unfortunate G5 owners case when the liquid cooling system leaks

what do you mean by overheating ? and what do you mean by unnaturally short life? all the macs i have ever bought are pretty much still running or where still capable of running when i took them to the tip :-)

having hot components doesnt mean they are going to fail... pretty much the only case of this is some evidence of running hard drives in hot environments shortens their life, have a look at the very good google report on hard drive life that was published in 2006 regarding wear and tear on ata drives

as for the power bill, yes you are correct, a modern mac with intel speedstep processors will consume far less power just web browsing and ituning than they would crunching any distributed computing project

now we get to your point on why bother at all ? just to crunch space noise, well i'm not going to argue this point, its a matter of personal interest for most contributors. i would say that as your are posting this in team macnn forum, a place solely set up to help people do "useless" distributed computing, your not really gonna get a balanced view :-)

please let me know details of macs overheating

regards

adrian

[Billy]

Originally Posted by adream 

hi folks

i have just done some instructions on a small page here

MacCafe Optimised Seti Install Instructions Mac OS X

i know it doesn't mention team macnn but your more than welcome to use it as the basis for some instructions or link direct to the page

Maybe Reader 50 could copy this to our home page, team.macnn.com, where it is clearly visible and we perhaps could delete the "Resources" page as it seems to be outdated.

[macdude22]

If my mac overheated then it can go back to apple for replacement. I haven't had a problem, I run my imac on folding, a mini on folding, and a macbook pro on folding (on an ielevator). They all run hot but within temp specs on the hardware.

I ran seti for many years but it's been folding for the past few, it seems to me more useful for society and bonic is more work than I care to put into setting these things up.

[Billy]

Originally Posted by Tesselator 

Who would do that to their system?

So now we're talking about not only spending money but just ruining the health
and life span of your machine. For what? To crunch space noise? Who would do
such a thing?

Okay. What's your real name? What Galaxy are you from?

[QSilver]

Some day I should post my log of downtime for my G4 iMac. It's almost 5 years old, has been running Seti@Home 24/7 since day one, and is rarely off. The spreadsheet I use to record downtime couldn't be more than 1/2 a page long, and it includes planned and unplanned power outages and required re-boots for new software or OS upgrades.

S@H's impact on the iLamp's health approaches zero.

QS

[Tesselator]

Originally Posted by adream 

he heh.... thats pretty to the point tesselator... a few notes on my part

as for heat issues , i have run macs and pcs flat out in a variety of situations and have never had an issue with overheating macs... the fact that fans run at higher rpm doesnt mean the thing is overheating... its quite obvious when macs overheat for real because the operating system reports it as a thermal protection issue in the syslog.. amongst other things i repair macs for a living and have no evidence of macs overheating apart from when heatsinks are poorly seated, air flow is restricted or in some unfortunate G5 owners case when the liquid cooling system leaks

what do you mean by overheating ? and what do you mean by unnaturally short life? all the macs i have ever bought are pretty much still running or where still capable of running when i took them to the tip :-)

having hot components doesnt mean they are going to fail... pretty much the only case of this is some evidence of running hard drives in hot environments shortens their life, have a look at the very good google report on hard drive life that was published in 2006 regarding wear and tear on ata drives

as for the power bill, yes you are correct, a modern mac with intel speedstep processors will consume far less power just web browsing and ituning than they would crunching any distributed computing project

[all CPUs cost more to run under load conditions! Ram too! Fans too! Display Cards too!]

now we get to your point on why bother at all ? just to crunch space noise, well i'm not going to argue this point, its a matter of personal interest for most contributors. i would say that as your are posting this in team macnn forum, a place solely set up to help people do "useless" distributed computing, your not really gonna get a balanced view :-)

please let me know details of macs overheating

regards

adrian

Yeah, you covered it yourself. Modern CPUs almost can't "break" from overheating but
HDD life is shortened at anything over 32c and extremely shortened at over 40c. They
usually die instantly (or become permanently damaged) at much over 50c. For Mac Pro
or other Apple workstations this may not be a big deal - just a hundred or less for the
replacement unit and the hassle of reinstalling. Still not something I would want to do.

For iMacs & iBooks most people can't or don't want to do the replacements themselves
so you usually have to pay Apple ~ $50 or more for labor and buy the HDD at inflated
prices plus the down days it [usually] takes them to fix it. Again, not the most desirable
situation to be in but not life threatening or anything like that.

Also I trust me more than any wiki article when it comes to understanding RAID and drive
performance in various environments. As a side bit (for a friend) I manage and maintain
VOD systems on-site for a hotel chain. There's lots and lots of drives at each one of these
locations and the environments are logged - so I get to see what breaks and when and
get to test why in some cases.

Also when stressed sometimes fans can crap out over time too. If that happens in a system
depending on only one or two fans for it's airflow you could potentially also lose other
components. In the older iMacs we're talking about flyback transformers and RAM in
all newer systems. The chances are slim but SETI and others like it increase the chances
somewhat. The flyback will be a potential problem in a hot system (running SETI) even
if the fans don't crap out.

I dunno, typical case scenario, $600 a year and potentially another $200 or $300 in
repairs every 2 or 3 years. Well, if it's worth it to you then that's kewl. I just thought
this info should be spoken of so that newbies considering SETI or others can make
an informed choice.

I was going to hop on too till I saw what the system was like with it running.

[Billy]

Can Reader 50 send an e-mail to the team members who are not using A. Kan's Optimized application? The instructions are found here.
MacCafe Optimised Seti Install Instructions Mac OS X

Crazy Horse
pkrug
Tam Saxton
Feral Boy
Cubeistan
Jamsoft
iSeti
Swimboy
JoeG3
Tiber River
Pascal
Splateagle
Scott Johnson
Petri Makelo
wf myers
nounours
Peter Parker
Chris Schmelzer
mac Phoenix
Glenn
Dr. Boar
DJ Blumer
Jeffrey Loaf
Richard Walker
Tom Davis
Patrick 2000
rwhiffen
jjj
Terry
Brett
Kaisa
Bad Bry
Nigel
Robby
acting keith
Bankston
Joely
Fozzy
DennisM
jhasborne
Sahttr
Luxon
Philwags
Nick79
Alteo
blade runner
alex ray
K.S-SC
Kmalf
SteveL
Macophile
Mike Peel
Jonathon Wallis
Penguirl
MarkG
Marcus Handofsky
John moe
Terbokl
Tone
Kneff
Brandon Jasper
Eric 5410s
Peter Groeneveld
Jason O
Bob Palmer

A couple of people are running 7.2 or 7.2 instead of 8. I don't know if that makes much difference with MB work units.

James Macak
taffy
BBbent

A few people have computers that are hidden. Maybe they should be sent the instructions as well.

[reader50]

reader50 is a bit busy in the real world again.

Also, there is another technical problem. I can't access the SETI admin functions, even though I'm the founder now. It looks like a code glitch in the BOINC webside code.

I'll have to sort that out when time allows. Or let a bogus founder transfer request expire, from me to myself. That might be what's confusing the website.

[osiris]

This thread is a good FYI, I've all but forgotten about the optimized versions.

I've updated 2 Xeon quads and a couple of Core2Duos, I'll do more tomorrow (another Xeon and a few more C2Ds).
The benchmark differences are astounding! Great work.

[Billy]

Originally Posted by reader50 

reader50 is a bit busy in the real world again.

Also, there is another technical problem. I can't access the SETI admin functions, even though I'm the founder now. It looks like a code glitch in the BOINC webside code.

I'll have to sort that out when time allows. Or let a bogus founder transfer request expire, from me to myself. That might be what's confusing the website.

If you have time, perhaps you could post the instructions or a link on Team MacNN's home page.

[reader50]

If you write up something decent, I'll tidy it up and post it.

In other news, I've asked the SETI people about our SETI Foundership issue. It's a conflict with my old Classic account - the transfer always goes to the old account, which is unreachable. We'll see what they do about it.

[arkayn]

No possible way to resurrect that email account for a day huh.

[reader50]

Not impossible, I suppose. I'd have to sign back up for a month of valuable dialup service.

We'll see what the Berkeley people say before doing anything crazy.