Some Arcane SETI Questions

[paulcs]

I recently rebuilt my second system, previously used almost exclusively for gaming, into a dual PIII 500 machine, dual booting into either Windows 2000 or Windows 98se.

Figuring the MURC/SETI effort was a good way to put those two processors to work and contribute a bit, I installed SETI@home a few minutes ago.

Unfortunately, and for reasons I can't go into now, I can't get online in Windows 2000 at the moment, so I installed the SETI software in Windows 98. (It doesn't seem to work until you connect to SETI.) I ran it for about 20 minutes, rebooted, and in order to take advantage of W2K's multiprocessing capabilities, opened it in Windows 2000.

Is it kosher to run a program installed in Windows 98 in NT without actually installing it in NT? (If I trash either OS, it really doesn't matter. There's nothing of importance on the machine. At this point, this is purely an experiment and learning process.)

It certainly appears to be a bit sluggish. It appears to be doing its job well enough, and both processors are fully engaged and counting up a storm, but it's slow to respond when I minimize it. By the way, I'm using FAT32 on all drives, so the filing systems are the same. However, there may be registry issues I'm not aware of.

Again, I'm an NT and dual boot newbie, so if I'm doing something really foolish, go easy on me.

Oh! SETI just emailed me MURC's password.

Thanks.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Maggi]

no problem with that ...

I use the cmd-line exe at work at at home and before I got online from home I sent/received my data at work from a dual P3 running WinNT and at home I had a shortcut in either W98 & NT in autostart.

Btw, the cmd-line exe is about twice as fast as that screensaver conversion

------------------
Cheerio,
Maggi

Home rig:
Celeron333A @ 500MHz
Asus P2B-S @ 100MHz FSB
2x 128MB CAS2 SDRAM
Matrox G400 @ 150/200MHz core/mem clock
... and some other goodies ...

[paulcs]

Thanks Maggi.

I haven't seen anything that resembles a screensaver. Graphs and stats in a window, and it doesn't stop running when I hit the mouse and keyboard, so I assume I'm optimized for speed and THE CAUSE.

So, how am I doing? Three hours and 21 minutes, 32.3% done. (About 25 minutes with a single PIII, the remainder with dual processors.) I assume "done" is when I upload across the Bay to Berkeley.

No aliens yet.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Rags]

Let's see if you can beat my times with that P3 right now, I have been doing right around 8 1/2 hours and plan on cutting that in half.

Rags

[Brian R.]

Paul, you ought to be able to run two sessions of seti at once with the dual processors. Also, download the text-only version for windows. It is about 20% faster than the graphical version on my computer.

Download i386-winnt-cmdline.exe at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/unix.html

Once you install the graphic version, you have the option of activating a screen-saver that also displays the graphic image of the calculation results. The screensaver active is the default, so maybe you are just playing with it too often to allow the screensaver to activate.


[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 10 November 1999).]

[paulcs]

Hmmmm. Maybe something is going wrong. I have it set in "screen saver" mode. (I just checked.) But it continues to work, in an application Window with a graphical interface, no matter what I do. I haven't seen a full-screen screen saver, although I didn't touch the computer for a couple of hours.

I don't really have any applications other than the SETI@home software installed. However, opening and closing Windows Explorer resulted in part of the Explorer window lingering in the SETI window for several seconds. The activity certainly didn't stop the SETI@home process. Also, doing anything to the SETI window (moving it, clicking on the command bar) involves a delay of a couple of seconds.

It's as if I'm having a resource issue, which I'm sure is the case. Windows 2000's resource meter reports 100% utilization of both processors almost all the time. Occasionally, one dips, sometimes to zero, and then moves back up. Memory usage is stable at about 60 Mb. Win2K uses about 45-48 Mb by itself, so about 15 Mb is SETI.

Maybe I had a funky install. I'll take Brian's suggestion after this session is done.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Mark F]

minimizeing the SETI client will speed it up by atleast 50%. I cut my times in half running it minimized from running it visible. It's the overhead of drawing the graphics on the screen.

Is there a text client that will work in Win98? Is it really that much faster than running the graphic version minimized? If I can cut my time per WU in half, then watch out!!! But I daught the differeance can be that great, please prove me wrong.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[paulcs]

If I minimize it, it stops. Something is wrong.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Ees]

Errr, nope, that's what it's supposed to do by default; check your Preferences to change.

Select 'data analysis always runs'. Default is '... only when the screen saver is active or application window is frontmost'.

WRT the sluggishness: see if lowering SETI's priority helps. It should be running on 'low' (?) priority by default, but perhaps something went wrong there (due to the install method, due to problems with/in W2K, due to whatever)? 'Normal' or 'high' priority (I'm not sure about the terms; I don't have an NT-machine at hand) will be sluggish, yes.

Ah well, I dunno... if you want speed, make it a triple-boot and install Linux; the Linux-client absolutely screams on a P3: 7h35m per WU on a P3-450. (Disclaimer: no holy OS-war flamefest intended :-)

Cheers,
Martin

[Buuri]

I don't know about that version with graphs, but I can tell you Paul that the commadline version works under Windows2000. I've had it running for weeks (on and off) and experienced zero problems.

_
B

[jsb]

I'm trying to use 2 instance of the character version and have one question, if I'm using a computer with a modem, is it possible to have it automatically dial and connect as In the GUI version? If so how?

Stefan

ooo im running NT

[This message has been edited by jsb (edited 10 November 1999).]

[paulcs]

Well, it runs as advertised in Windows 98.

I uploaded the results from yesterday's session this morning. It took 9 1/2 hours, which seems a bit long considering how resource intensive it was. I'll run it in Window 98 while at work, see how long that takes, and make the necessary hardware modifications so I can run it and upload in Windows 2000 exclusively sometime this week. Then I'll try the command line version.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Brian R.]

jsb - The character-based version automatically connects - just like the graphical interface version. If you are having trouble, it might just be the SETI server is not connecting. This is common.