Minimal Os To Do Folding On.

[Flagg7771234]

ok...

 

After losing the CNC farm my per day points have droped and my adict level is low. I'm thinking about putting thes older systems (that we part out and toss) to work for me.

 

If I have alot of these 333mhz up to 1ghz machines that hardly runs windows. What is the best way, fastes, that I can get them up and folding. Electricity is not an issue, I can just leave them in my office running 24/7.

 

Any way I can boot off a floppy and fold? or how about a unix solution.

 

We get in these PCs maybe 4 a week, by xmass I could have a small army folding.

 

anyone got any suggestions?

[Coolzero101]

possibly you could boot from the network? Or just use windows 98.

[tazwegion]

Win95 with 98SE drivers, would get you up & running plus they're not resource hogs like some O/S's I could mention

 

Ummmm... you can't boot off a floppy for [email protected] it needs an O/S environment ... however I've heard of people running it on USB mem-sticks

 

That idea about booting of a network... I can't help you with that, though such an option would have to be available in the BIOS of the system, an option which wasn't present in many 300Mhz era computers

[bigred]

and to boot to a windows "thin client" you'd need a terminal server version of either NT 4.0, 2000 or 20003... none of which are popular or cheap

[markiemrboo]

300MHz barely runs Windows? Huh? I have a couple of 500MHz that runs 2000 just fine....... could you not install a base install of linux or something and just have the console version running?

[road-runner]

win 98SE and win2000/pro and few of the hogs windows xp home and pro is what I use. I guess it will run on 95 I have never tried it

 

[Flagg7771234]

the boot from floppy sounds like my best route.

 

I boot dos 6.22 and just run the fahcor_65.exe and the dos version of the network card. Anyone know if this EXE needs windows or is dos ok? I'll give it a shot today.

 

 

Thin client and term service would probably work but since both uses the processor of the server. So the processor of the workstation would not be in play.

 

wow, dos... stacks, here I come again!

[CheeseMan42]

i know that someone was trying to get a folding farm that would boot of the network on here. i think it was nemo. i don't think he had any success yet but you may want to talk to him for some info.

[adrenalinepcs]

if they boot off cds then you could run knoppix or barts win pe on them.

[Nemo]

i know that someone was trying to get a folding farm that would boot of the network on here. i think it was nemo. i don't think he had any success yet but you may want to talk to him for some info.

Yep - it was/is me.

 

You can do a network boot if you have a Linux server to serve up a OS to the client. Your clients have to support either PXE or Etherboot.

 

I have been struggling to learn how to do this same thing under Windows- I've got everything figured out except how to build a minmal Linux piece to give to the clients. I guess my next step is to start learning some Linux.

 

Flagg- can you see if your clients support boot from LAN in the BIOS?

[Flagg7771234]

Hay nemo let me know if you want to work together on this. I'm an old dos guy... and I have setup alot of network boot stations (boot off the eprom on the nic) 10 or 12 years back.

 

Not sure it these 300mhz + machines will do much, but I would like to get the cooking.

[Dr_Frankenstein]

Windows CE i have seen these running on like 16mb installs