[buggsuperstar]

Hi Team,

I've been presented with an opportunity to get a Tangerine iMac 266 at practically nothing.

I was wondering if it can crunch any BOINC project at all?

It says it comes with Panther loaded. No details on RAM or anything else. I'm holding off contacting the seller in case it's too weak to crunch any projects. I just won't waste my time with it.

Any opinions?

[beadman]

I've got a blueberry tray-loader iMac (G3 333MHz, 256M RAM) hat works just fine with OS X 10.3.9 on it. It takes roughly 20 hours to complete a SETI BOINC Work Unit. Unfortunately, it can't make much use of the optimized clients, although I did see a slight improvement when I put Javalizard's clinet on it for SETI. I did one Einstein unit on it, but it took roughly 160 hours to run. With a deadline time of one week for Einstein (168 hours), I figured I was better off just running SETI BOINC exclusively. Since the computing seems to be relatively linear, it should take you just over 25 hours to complete a SETI BOINC unit.

beadman

[buggsuperstar]

Hi beadman,

Thanks for the reply.

I was intending to have it crunch Predictor.

I've contacted the seller requesting info on RAM and the like.

At least I now know it DOES run the BOINC client.

[Shaktai]

I've had my iBook 600 running predictor with no problem. The shorter work units are ideal for the slower G3 processors. Just don't set too large a cache, maybe 1 or 2 days, so that you can complete the work in the 7 day deadlines.

[buggsuperstar]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've gotten some details from the seller. It's a iMac 266 with 256mb RAM, 6gig HD.

I'm now just sorting out with him if I can get the Panther install disc thrown in, in case i need to do a system reinstall.

If everything goes well, I'll have a new (but slow) cruncher for my farm.

[buggsuperstar]

Well, seems like the Tangerine iMac 266 deal is a bust. Seller didn't have the OS disc.

But I have managed to find an Indigo iMac 450 DV+ instead. At least this guy's a little beefier than the 266.

Going to look at the little fella tomorrow afternoon.

Small hardware question:

The seller told me the Indigo comes with 192mb of PC100 RAM. I happen to have 2 x 256mb PC133 sticks lying around. 1 stick scrounged off an old IBM, and another is an Infineon stick i found lying around. Will these work in the Indigo? at least with 512mb, it'll probably perform better crunching.

[reader50]

Here is Apple's specs page for an iMac DV 450.

It takes PC100, so PC133 *should* work. But this is around the time Apple did some firmware updates that caused RAM to be rejected if it were even a little off-spec.

Please note that one of the RAM slots is easily accessible, while the other is on the opposite side of the CPU card. That one has the factory-installed stick (the 64 MB stick no doubt) and it requires dissassembly to reach.

[buggsuperstar]

Originally Posted by reader50

Here is Apple's specs page for an iMac DV 450.

It takes PC100, so PC133 *should* work. But this is around the time Apple did some firmware updates that caused RAM to be rejected if it were even a little off-spec.

Please note that one of the RAM slots is easily accessible, while the other is on the opposite side of the CPU card. That one has the factory-installed stick (the 64 MB stick no doubt) and it requires dissassembly to reach.

Thanks for the heads up reader50.

The fellow told me he'll have to update the firmware before I purchase it because it's currently running OS9 and I'll need it on Panther for the BOINC client.

I hope this does not scupper the RAM I'm planning to put in. He's offered to put them in for me, so I'll probably have him do it and see if it works.

Any idea what I should watch out for if the RAM doesn't work? Will it just refuse to boot? Or will it cause kernel panics? or will it cause the system to be finicky? I suppose incompatible RAM can be hard to diagnose....

[reader50]

DIMM First Aid is the standard utility for fixing RAM that got disabled. It's an OS 9 utility, so don't let him wipe OS9 from the hard drive.

If any RAM does get disabled, that means the system will ignore that stick instead of using it. Technically, that's what happened anyway, nothing was done to the RAM. The firmware update caused Macs to get more picky about RAM.

The system will boot if at least one stick is accepted. Run DIMM First Aid before the update, it can tell if any sticks will be affected. And it can fix them in advance.

Also, all the vendors with lifetime warranty were accepting exchanges or fixing their RAM sticks.

note, this was a PowerMac G4 firmware update issue. I don't recall it ever hitting the iMacs, but that iMac uses the same RAM types, so it's final firmware is probably much the same as the PowerMacs' firmware.

[buggsuperstar]

Ok, long story short.

The seller of the Sage 450 DV+ wasn't contactable, so I ended up getting a good deal on a iMac (Summer 2001) 500Mhz Snow.

My ram sticks worked flawlessly and now it's sitting pretty at 512MB, running 10.3.9.

I had some trouble getting it connected to the Net, but I sorted that out and I excitedly installed the BOINC 4.43 client for OSX.

Attached to Predictor and *BAM*... no work units available. They seem to be fiddling with their work generator, so I guess I'll just have to wait.

Anyone have any idea how long a Predictor unit takes to crunch on a 500Mhz maching?

My AMD 1700+ box takes 50 minutes per Predictor unit.

[mikkyo]

Attach to Einstein@home (http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu) while you wait for Predictor to come back up. At least you can help the team in the mean time

[buggsuperstar]

Originally Posted by mikkyo

Attach to Einstein@home (http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu) while you wait for Predictor to come back up. At least you can help the team in the mean time

I'll do that when I get home from work.

Seems like such a pity to have the little tyke just sitting there with absolutely nothing to do!

[Shaktai]

Originally Posted by buggsuperstar

Anyone have any idea how long a Predictor unit takes to crunch on a 500Mhz maching?

That's not much off from my ibook 600. If I read the specs right for that model, you have 256k L2 cache at processor speed and 512k L3 cache at 200mhz. The difference is from my iBook is probably minimal because my iBook doesn't have any L3 cache.

Predictor website is down right now, they have been having some off and on connectivity problems, so I couldn't check times per work unit. However, my average "granted credit" is 80 per day on Predictor and 60+ per day on Einstein with mikkyo's optimized clients. Einstein units will probably take around 29-31 hours per work unit, but that is still several per week. Like mikkyo mentioned, we can use the help on Einstein. My iBook ran out of predictor work, so it is happily crunching Einstein in the meantime.

[buggsuperstar]

Originally Posted by Shaktai

Like mikkyo mentioned, we can use the help on Einstein.

Righto. Both my boxes are on Einstein now.

I'm no big time cruncher, but I should be adding a Mini to my small farm soon. Can't wait!

[buggsuperstar]

Crunch update:

My iMac Snow 500 returned it's first Einstein work unit today. It took 35 hours. Granted credit was 67.

It's small and slow, but every little bit helps.

Looks like the team is starting to make a push in Einstein?

[beadman]

According to BOINCStats info, if no one changes anything, we'll eventually end up in 9th place in Einstein Team Ranks, based on average daily and weekly production rates. If we concentrated on it, and convinced most of the team members to use Bruce Allen's newest optimized clients, we could probably make a serious run at much higher in the team listings...

For what it's worth, I was just doing a little messing around with the results on my new PowerBook (1.67 GHz G4, 1 GB RAM, OS 10.3.9) and found my daily production rate to be as follows:

100% SETI (BOINC 4.44, SETI alexkan v.1) - 173 credit/day
100% CPDN (BOINC 4.44, CPDN standard) - 155 credit/day
100% Einstein (BOINC 4.44, Einstein 4.82) - 287 credit/day

Those are percents, not the preferences share ratios (i.e. 100% SETI means only SETI runs). So, in spite of the significant decrease in SETI calcs, using the alexkan v.1 optimization, I get 104 more theoretical credits per day if I go 100% Einstein. These are based on the average SETI WU having 25 credits granted, and the average Einstein WU having 75 credits granted. Also, the number of SETI WU returned so far is very small, and varies significantly. When I get a few more units returned, I'll be able to update this with more accurate SETI info.

beadman

[buggsuperstar]

holy shamoley.... I'm on a roll.

I picked up a used G4 Cube over the weekend. I couldn't resist it.

It's now added to my Einstein farm. 18 hours for 1 work unit.

Now awaiting my Mac Mini!

Somebody stop me!!