Building Cheaper Folding Rigs

[road-runner]

While i havent tested with the newest batch of motherboards/CPUs most if not all older desktop 24 pin pwr boards will work fine with good 20 pin PSUs WITHOUT adapters. (only tried on one core 2 based system (E6400 on P5B-E) and yes it worked just fine) As for IDE/SATA adpaters...why? Last I checked all boards still have an ATA 100 connector...even if some of them are slower and you're limited to two devices, who cares? If these are folding only PCs then you'll just take a little boot up/install time performance hit and take all this saved $$$ to add one more extra PC

 

Also ATI video cards work just fine under Ubuntu...heck i can even link you to a nice app created to help you install their drivers if you need to, or you can do what I do for F@H only PCs and just run the default vesa driver and not put up with the extra VGA driver hastles. (Granted not a wonderful solution for the day to day desktop system, but jsut fine for the use here) Heck why even run them in runlevel 5, runlevel 3 would be much better anyway to take away the xserver overhead and add that power back to the folding at hand

Yea I guess I really do not need adapters for drives, I just found one laying around and thought it was a good idea. I can save some money that way also. As far as ATI cards it always tells me its running with restricted drivers and I am not a linux guru. I know the rigs with nvidia cards seem to have a better color and do not say anything about the restricted drivers. I know I have not installed any drivers on none of the rigs, and have not took time to try or look to see what I have to do to install them either. I think I may need that app your talking about. My rig with the 2900 has messed up graphics when I switch back to the GUI mode from the Command line. I have to restart the machine so I can see the screen.

[oblivescence]

nvidia used to play allot nicer with linux than ati did. I don't know if its still that same way (I have a hunch it still is, but to a much lesser degree). My graphics card has been since abandoned by ati so I really stopped paying attention to all that anymore.

[cchalogamer]

The ATI restricted drivers thign is just Ubuntu telling you that it's using files that are not open source ot make thigns work and that whiel they may work, if they dont there's nothing they can do to fix it. The primary reason for this is ATI didnt want to potentially give nvidia secrets by releasing the source code for their linux drivers to the community.

 

schwag, as for the nvidia > ATI in Linux thing, yes that still holds true 90% of the time, but ATI has gotten a LOT better in recent years and unlike a few years ago your operating system choice doesnt practically make your video card brand choice for you.

 

And rr just PM me if you want me to try my luck with helping out on the 2900 drivers. I'm no Linux expert but I do have a little more experence than folding with ubuntu.

[oblivescence]

schwag, as for the nvidia > ATI in Linux thing, yes that still holds true 90% of the time, but ATI has gotten a LOT better in recent years and unlike a few years ago your operating system choice doesnt practically make your video card brand choice for you.

Good, I thought ATI had improved some for linux users. I wasn't sure though. I'm not surprised that nvidia still holds the crown in linux, but its nice to see ati atleast making an attempt.

[Judy_Dunbar]

I have 1 PC here that has a 20 pin PS plugged into a 24 pin mobo ( I ran out of adapters ) and it does work, not sure just what isnt getting juice but it does work fine with one vid card for folding. I now have the adapter for it and have had for a few months just havent remebered to put it in when I do a reboot or power goes out.

[Verran]

You should really look into the Overclockix LTSP project. I'll have to see if I still have the guide for it. I ran it for a while with some older 500mhz P3's, but those are no longer worth the power they draw, so it's all disconnected.

 

Anyways, the LTSP config is very easy. It uses the single core client, but you should be able to switch it out without much trouble. LTSP just has one base directory that it copies to all the diskless clients. So you should just have to change it once and the rest is automatic. Going diskless would save a lot of money and power, plus be easier to monitor.

 

EDIT###

I'm pretty sure this was the guide I used, and it worked just fine. You should try installing it and see if you can swap the regular client out for the SMP client. Shouldn't be too tough.

[NCC10281982B]

Thats the one. But, I found that I could not get it to install properly on newer hardware or using vmware. I tried emailing the projects developer. Without success. I'd love a new version.