What's your SETI rig?

2.0gig p4
512mbDDR RAM
128mb radion 9600pro
asus mobo
windows xp pro
80gig hd

nothing too spectacular, but it gets the job done

1 Dell Dimension 8250 Desktop
2.4 GHz Pentium 4 Processor
180 GB hard drive
512 MB RAM
Windows XP

1 Packard Bell
150 MHz Pentium Processor
1.96 GB hard drive
16 MB RAM
Windows 95

1 Packard Bell
100 MHz Processor
1 GB hard drive
8 MB RAM
Windows 3.1

Those last 2 old computers, I am not sure if I will be able to get them to work. I am considering it though so I figured I might as well add them.

I'm on a 384k Wireless Broadband Connection (details about it here)

I thought I was the only one still using 100MHz PCs for something! If you need parts, like 540MB hard drives or 30 pin SIMMs, I have a garage full.

[Edited on 25-5-2004 by Spectre]

I am sorry to come in a beat up on folks. I have been a member here a few weeks and debated joining the SETI Team. I figured that my numbers would be of help more than I hurt, I knew feelings might be hurt. When in the political mud pit I don't mind running rough shod on someone's toes but not in the normal forums. I want to make 50,000 by the time they shut it down and may just make it.

I started SETI way back in 1999, but I left the company that I had the e-mail address attached to my 200+ WU's and lost all of them. Duh! I was bumbed and didn't mess with it for quite some time. I came back in Sept 2001 as a new profile, but didn't really get serious about it. I would go in fits and starts and when I had T1 problems I shut it down. Got 3 T1's bundled as one and went from 10 Mbs hubs to 100 Mbs Switches. Woohooo way faster. This was around Christmas. Did some load testing during the off time and jumped back in full force. That was at 16,000 WU so I have nearly doubled that since January 1st.

How did I get here so fast. Well two secrets really. One that is obvious is I have more than one machine doing this. Duh, right Publius, but how many? About 70 give or take a few. Depends what I am using them for. I take them offline and set them up for other things. The are all P3 and above. I have 15 P4's 2.2 with a Gig of RAM doing some of it. The P3's range from 550 Mhz to 1 Ghz and have between 256 Meg of RAM to 512 Meg of RAM. They are not all on one rack or in one room, so taking a picture of them is well difficult. I guess I could take a picture of the groupings.

Second secret is they are all command line clients. I have set up a service and created an install package with Wise Install with the user_info.sah already in the package. This will allow the client to run in the background automatically. This will run without anyone being logged in. I also run XP Pro, which seems a bit better than NT 4 WS. I can rebuild a machine in 30 minutes and have a clean OS install ready to go. Install SAH and reboot it's done.

Hi Publius!!

Thanx for your detailed reply and the description of your "SETI monster"!!

First, I really don't think anyone in the team will "complain" about you "knocking us down" a place each: the fact that you've contributed all those WU's - and elevated the team through the ranks exceeds any personal ambitition!!

As you'll gather, I'm sure, the team has grown incredibly over the past few months - a statistic I like to repeat (!!) is that I started a thread here - on 12th Dec 2003 - when a "chance" look at the ATS SETI@home stats board showed we had reached 46 000WU's exactly, which I thought was a "nice" round figure to report. And, of course, since then, the team has grown and grown - from "first-timers" - to people like yourself and Spectre and Sinchron - who joined with 1000's of WU's already.

At one stage, I'd managed to secure 2nd place behind Bob, as TCAB and djastram both "stopped" crunching (neither has - knowingly - come onto the Discussion boards to say "hi" to us, so have no idea why, for example, they stopped). And then Sinchron came and set a new target (!!), then Spectre (who *really* rocks! - and recently overtook Bob!! ) and then, of course, your good self Publius!!

What we need now is someone with 100 000WU's to arrive and donate their WU's to us... Who knows, it *might* happen!!

Looking forward to see how our results grow over the next few weeks/ months Publius - we're really trying to achieve a place on the teams board!!

And, we'll be watching as you get yourself onto the American board too!! Good luck - and thanx again!!

Wow, some of these set(i) ups are just mad crazy! As for my "humble" set up:

Dual P3 1.0Ghz
2GB RAM
240GB HDD

Currently using Comcast Cable as my I-net provider, at 3MB/256kb. I have been a registered SETI user since November 2001 and have accumulated 1230 WUs, not bad for a single computer.

Super stuff Oswald - as you say, the equipment "we've" got committed to SETI@home is truly awesome!!

Wel done on the 1230WU's - that's a lot of computer time!!

My setup at the house is as follows:

1 Intel Aspen Series Quad 550 Xeon with 2 gig ram,12 73gig hd.

1 Intel 3.0 HT 800FSB on a Giga-Byte 8IPE1000Pro, 2 gig crucial ddr400 ram, matrox 750 Mil video card, 2 SATA 200 gig maxtor, Sony dru510 DVD burner, 52x cdrom, 3 IDE drives (80gig, 40gig, 40gig) 3 SCSI 73gig drives on and Adaptec SCSI controller.

www.nwscc.com...

at the shop I have one 1 gig Athlon running (it throws some WU's in) and a 750 Athlon as well.

all conntected to Calbleone.net internet T1 connection.

I thought I was the only one still using 100MHz PCs for something! If you need parts, like 540MB hard drives or 30 pin SIMMs, I have a garage full.

As promised, here are a couple of shots of the computers that run SETI in my office. Please forgive my poor housekeeping.

On a side note, last night I had one of those life-affirming experiences that reminds me that, although I may face some adversity, my life is pretty good. I was telling my wife how great the ATS SETI@Home team was doing when she asked, "Can I run SETI on my computer, too?" She likes Kung Fu movies and wants to run SETI. I knew there was a reason I married her.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.


^^^The SETI servers (non-production) are the towers along the bottom and the three separated rackmounted servers


^^^Not shown in this frame is the 26inch box fan I have to keep pointed at the stacks of laptops to keep the massive amount of heat they generate circulated with the cooler air from the AC vent.

[Edited on 28-2-2004 by Spectre]

[Edited on 25-5-2004 by Spectre]

well I don't really know anything much worth knowing about computers, but damn! that looks like a serious piece of kit.

There is nothing really exotic in the photos. I do wish I could swing running SETI on some of the production servers which have multiple CPUs, tons of RAM, and would most likely put in a good showing. Once, as a test to "burn-in" a quad- Xeon server I ran 10 units at a time and it still completed them all in under fours hours.
I am really impressed with the computing power and internet bandwidth that our team members have at their disposal. Home PCs have come a long way fast. I appreciate the insight and hope the responses keep coming in. Thanks everyone.

Let me take a second to congratulate our pal Genya on his first round victory in the Debate contest. It was a great thread. Way to go! Glad I don't have to argue with either of them...

[Edited on 29-2-2004 by Spectre]

I run it on:

1.8 GHZ P4 | Win2k | 512MB
800MHZ P3 | WinMe | 128MB

NEW SERVER (GOING TO HAVE IT IN A FEW DAYS)

2.4 GHZ P4 | Win2k Adv. Server | 1GB + 128MB

My server is coming with two 512MB chips in it, and I'm going to put in an extra 128MB that I have laying around.

And they will all be running SETI@home for ATS!

Verizon DSL...1.5 MBPS (Eqaul to T1)

[Edited on 6-3-2004 by Milton]

I'm back home from univesity for the summer so I no longer have university computers to run SETI on. I also don't have DSL anymore but I have a Cable connection that is twice as fast as my DSL was.

-I have my 2.4 GHz main machine as described in the quote.

-I have an old P1 166MHz with win98, I send and recieve data with my main machine.

I recently aquired an old 486DX 66MHz that I planned on using for SETI but it doesn't have a hard disk. I found a web page that explains how you can use a verry small linux distribution that boots from a single floppy and run Seti@home on computers without hard disks but the machine doesn't have enough RAM, linux uses the whole 8mb of RAM!!! The only way this machine can help is if I get my hands on some RAM or a hard disk.

Humble....

Guess what I have....

P2 & "upgraded" 256 RAM
XP Home
Cable

Kill me now please....

They say that the only constant in life is change. Since my rig has changed so much I thought I'd update the thread. I am only using personal machines these days, no more salvaged or otherwise idle work computers. They are all connect to my home LAN and use my cable internet connect (which has inexplicably slowed to a crawling 50-100kbps. My ISP assures me that they have "top men" working on it)

The significantly reduced "SETI suite" I run now consists of:
1 Intel 1.8GHz Pentium4M w/512 MB
1 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ w/512MB
2 AMD Athlon XP 1900+ w/512MB
1 AMD Duron 750 w/384MB
...all running command-line SETI. It is good for just under 30wu a day. I just added the 1.8GHz P4M so I am anxious to see exactly how well it performs.

Also, I have a single AMD Athlon XP 2600+ w/512MB running the BOINC Beta.

Running:

1 Intel Pentium 4 Processor at 2.0 GHz
With 256 MB of RAM
WINXP Home

1 Intel Pentium 4 Processor at 2.6 GHz
With 256 MB of RAM
WINXP Pro

So now you know.

im running it on my own everyday comp:

Alienware Area-51

Pentium 4 2.8
512MB RAM (soon to be 1024MB)
80g HD
Nvidia GEForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB
windows xp pro

[edit on 11-6-2004 by DarkDragon]

Even though I am not part of the ATS SETI group, joined my companies instead, here is what I am running, just cus I like to share.

AMD 1900+ 512MB Ram WinXP
Intel Celeron 700 256MB Ram Win98 (Laptop)
PentiumM 1.4Ghz 512MB Ram WinXP (Laptop)
SunBlade 100, SunOS 5.8 (can't seem to find the cpu speed)
4 Processor Origin 2000, 250Mhz 512MB Ram Irix6.5

a 300m dedicated radiotelescope
2 IF chains
32 Linux boxes (16 1GHz AMDs, 16 2.66GHz Xeons)
3 Sun Blade 2000s
2 LTO jukeboxes
a few other Suns, HPs, and Linux boxen
a bit over 100 scientists and staff

...but it's being moved to the ATA, so right now I've only got 9 Linux boxes, one Blade 2000, and 3 radiotelescopes in a single beam.