ARGH! I started a response and accidentally closed it. I’ll try again.
[quote name='arbiter']Yeah, I could use help getting both cores running.
Anyone have a simple walkthru for setting it up?[/QUOTE]
Someone else will probably have a better written version of this, and there are multiple ways to do this, but here’s one that’ll get you started. I’ll try to be fairly basic since I’m not sure your familiarity with DOS commands.
-You want to download the text-only/Console version from
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html The correct version is 5.04.
-Next you need to create two folders, and put a separate copy of the program in each folder. The folders can be called anything, and stored anywhere on your hard drive, but I called them “folding1” and “folding2” and put them in “Program Files”. You need two separate copies because you’re literally running two copies at once since you have two CPUs, so you’re doing literally twice as much work at the same time.
-Open a command prompt and navigate to the first folder. To open a command prompt, you can click Start, then Run, then type cmd.exe (or navigate to the “command prompt” in your start menu-might be under system tools or something like that). Once it’s open, you can get to the folder by typing (without the quotes) “cd \program files\folding1” and hitting enter (that’s assuming you named the folder what I did and put it in the same location).
-Next launch the program by typing “fah504-console.exe -configonly”. (the -configonly tells the program to exit after configuring it).
-It first prompts you for a username, defaulting to anonymous. You don’t actually need one, but filling in a username lets you track your score and how much work you’ve done on the Folding @ Home site.
-Next it asks for a team number. Again, you don’t need one, but filling in one lets a team also get credit for the work you do. In this case, enter “53337” as the team number to join the CAG team, hit enter.
-Next it asks you if you want to launch it automatically as a service. Type “yes” and hit enter (there are other ways to launch it automatically, but this is what I use on most machines).
-Next it asks if you want it to ask before sending and receiving work units. Just hit enter to accept the default (no).
-Hit enter to accept the default not to use internet explorer’s settings, and again for proxy settings (unless you have to use proxy settings to connect to the internet, but you’d have to find out those from your ISP, and probably set them up the same as you did for your web browser).
-Next it asks if you want to allow receipt of work units larger than 5MB in size. This basically depends both on your internet connection and the amount of RAM you have in your system. Most work units are really small, but if you type “yes” here occasionally you’ll get larger ones.
If you use dial up internet, you might want to type “no”. You might also want to say no if you don’t have much RAM. I say “yes” for systems that have 512MB or more.
So basically, here’s what I’d say for you. Say “yes” if you’ve got 1GB or more of RAM, and a broadband connection. No if you’ve got 512MB or less, and possibly no if you have dial-up internet.
-Next it asks if you want to change advanced options, type yes.
-hit enter to accept the defaults for “Core Priority”, then “CPU usage requested”, then “Disable optimized…”
-Next it asks if you want to pause when battery power is being used. If you have a laptop, you’ll probably want to type “yes” here, otherwise just hit enter to accept the default “no”. This option makes the program quit running whenever you unplug a laptop (and vice versa I assume).
-accept the default for “Interval…” and “Memory…”
-Accept the default for “Request work units without deadlines” (this is for slow systems or systems that aren’t on enough to finish a work unit before it expires-but if you use your system every day or so, and since you’ve presumably got a pretty fast CPU since it’s dual core, you can just accept the default “no” on this).
-The next one about advanced scientific cores I’m really not sure if I should be using or not-I just go with the default “no”.
-Go with the default on “Ignore any deadline…”
-Next up is the real reason we’re configuring the advanced options-the Machine ID. This is what lets you run multiple copies of the program without them getting mixed up.
For the first copy of the program you’re configuring, go with the default “1”. But when you configure the second copy of Folding (ie the copy in the folder “folding2”) type “2” here.
And that’s it! It’ll exit, and you just need to configure the second copy. You’d just go through the process again, except type “cd \program files\folding2” to get to the second copy, and type “2” when it asks for a machine ID.
Now every time you start your computer, both copies are automatically started in the background. If you’re familiar with the “services” control you can launch them right now from there (and can pause or stop them at any time from there). But if you’re not, it’s probably simplest to just restart your computer.
Now, here’s how to check on the status of each copy of Folding…
After it’s started running the first time, the program will create a file called “MyFolding” in it’s folder (ie folding1 and folding2). Just double click that to open it in your web browser.
It tells you your user name and team number, and gives links for other info.
The “current/lastest unit” link tells you the name of the protein you’re working on (I keep getting ones named “supervillin” lately-must something nasty
) It also shows when it was downloaded, when it’s due, and the % that’s been completed.
The other two main links are for your statistics-personal and for the team you’ve joined. Those go to the Stanford web site. It can be kind of fun to see how you’re doing against other people on the team.
The reason they have a score besides just the number of work units completed is that the number completed doesn’t mean much. They actually have a lot of separate programs (ie cores) for different types of work units, and it tends to send different types of work units to different CPUs-ie simpler/easier ones to older CPUs or CPUs without as many advanced features, stuff like that.
There’s also a version of Folidng @ Home for GPUS! It’s in beta, and unfortunately I don’t have any hardware that will run it (yet). Right now it only runs on Radeon x1600, 1800, or 1900 series cards, though presumably eventually it’ll run on any DX 10 card as well. Hopefully I’ll have a laptop soonish that’ll be able to run three copies at once (one on the GPU, one on each CPU
) Better still would be a quad core system with like two or four GPUs...or how about two quad core chips
)
