Folding Forum

I'm running an iMac OS X 10.5.3 using the 6.10.2 beta SMP client, and also have InCrease.

I'm constantly getting proteins with short deadlines, such as p2604. These take my computer about 34 hours to compute, but I often don't have my computer on for that long in a 4-day stretch. I've had a number of proteins gets to 80% and then dump because the deadline was up. I don't like to leave my computer running 24/7 during the summer, as the power grid here is taxed enough as is, from all the air conditioners running.

Seems like I'm probably out of luck here, but is there any way I can force the client to take on proteins with longer deadlines? My office computer, a G5 with OSX 10.4 and the FAH5 client, consistantly gets p3046 and the like.

No one wins when deadlines are missed.

Thanks in advance
Dusty

schpazboy wrote:No one wins when deadlines are missed.

That's true.

I'm not sure I have a good answer for you. First, though, a history lesson.

FAH developed a client for the older PPC Macs.
Apple decided to switch from PPC hardware to Intel hardware.
About the same time, a new high-performance client was being developed. It was released for Intel only.
Nothing has really changed since then.

The older client is designed for single core PPC hardware. The deadlines are long.
The newer client is designed for multi-core Intel hardware. The deadlines are short.

If your machine runs 24x7 I expect that you'd be able to meet the shorter deadlines but you don't want to do that. The only option I can think of is to run the PPC client through rosetta. Because of the emulation, it won't contribute as much, but a small contribution is still better than none and you should be able to meet all of the deadlines if you fold a reasonable number of hours per day.

Bruce, thanks for the history, and the detailed answer. I've been folding for 4 or 5 years now, and am a big fan of the project.

I think I've come up with a work-around of sorts:

Went into my System Preferences and set up a shut-down schedule in the Energy Saver, to shut down around 10:30 am every day. That should give me a good 12 hours a day or so of folding time on a typical day.

Thanks again for the help.
Dusty