DC Farms

[The Borg]

Hi all,

I am throwing this open to all to comment. As a part of DC, I have been facinated with putting together anything I can get my hands on to run SETI and now BOINC. It started with SETI Classic after I saw a picture of a 'Redneck Supercomputer'. It was a tower of about 10-12 P1 machines running Linux off floppy connected to a server machine. I put together machines ranging from P1-133 through Perntium-Pro (NT4 and VERY stable) to PII and my current setup it a box of 6 P4-3GHz machines dedicated to BOINC (called The Borg), plus a Linux box and a 'working' machines.

This P1 supercomputer was not the only one at the time, but I have not seen pictures or the like mentioned for a while now.

What oher setups are there? I have read another member call his setup the Crack Rack (nice name).

 

[networkman]

Click HERE for a whole mess of setups and pics!

My favorite from that site is the "Crunchy Hog" Several member of TA have built "crackracks" over time, myself included. Though a word of caution - it can get to be an expensive and addictive habit.

 

[Fardringle]

I would love to put together a crack rack, but I simply can't afford it and don't have the space. I'm fortunate to have access to all of the computers in a small business office so I use them as my personal "semi-super" computer. I hope eventually to be able to experience Nerdvana and make a rack of machines dedicated to crunching, but for now I'll be satisfied with burning someone else's electricity.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

My crack rack, Chocobo Farm. Currently consisting of a P3-533, a P3-667, and a dual P3-667. I have several more parts to put into there, as soon as I can get more time and a few more hds. I have 6 PSUs on their way right now for adding to the rack. So that will help a lot. Next is to find hds.

 

[RaySun2Be]

I had plans to create a small rackmount farm, but alas, I've had a lot of hardware failures lately, especially MBs, and no $$ to replace them, so the farm is on hold for now.

 

[The Borg]

Hi. Thanks for the response. Anyone else???

Thanks Networkman, that was the site I was talking about. Yes, it was hillbilly and not redneck. No insult intended.

It was looking at this site that I got many of my ideas for my machines. I had at one stage 7 boards literally hanging from under tables - boards hanging from boards and doubled up PSU's. Even one PSU powering an AT and ATX board together. Just a problem when the ATX board shut down, it took the other one with it.

I got sick and tired of trying to get all the scrap pieces to try to play nice with each other. Yes HDD are a problem because all you need is about 100meg to get win 95 running and then run everything off a server. 20gig as a minimum is such a waste, but I use it now as distributed storage too. A whole 500gig+.

The only problem is the stuff gets hot.

So now I have a box for my P4's - bare bones - and ver 2 of the box will give me something like Crunchy Hog (yes, VERY COOL setup that one is - almost a work of art).

I was able to use a lot of machines at work, now I cannot, so it is up to me, and damn right it can be addictive and expensive. I cannot wait for the Conroe machines to come out. Plan to get me a few of those. My box can handle another 6 boards!!!

I fell, money better spent than on a box to play games! We're doing science and chasing credits all at the same time.

 

[RaySun2Be]

One thing I liked about SETI Classic was the SETI on Floppy distro setup. It was a chopped down linux version with a ram disk, so you didn't need a HD at all, just a floppy.

I had a dual PII450 running that for a long time.

I'll try to find some pics of my once "crack rack". No fancy boxes or anything as far as any crack racks, just a few barebones sitting on the workbench.

Look what I did find though: TA LAN Party - Columbus, Oh

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
One thing I liked about SETI Classic was the SETI on Floppy distro setup. It was a chopped down linux version with a ram disk, so you didn't need a HD at all, just a floppy.

I had a dual PII450 running that for a long time.

I'll try to find some pics of my once "crack rack". No fancy boxes or anything as far as any crack racks, just a few barebones sitting on the workbench.

Look what I did find though: TA LAN Party - Columbus, Oh

Awww. Link no worky. Holy hell I would love to do a TA LAN party. I've been trying to do one with my friends for a long time. Now we are split to the four winds in the US (literally: Florida, Texas, California, and Oregon).

 

[RaySun2Be]

FC, try it now, it should work.

sorry, forgot it was set to private. :roll:

I've changed it to public access.

 

[skooma]

As an old DC'er, I thought this might be of interest to some of you.

I can only imagine some of the deals Dell will have getting rid of these. :Q

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
FC, try it now, it should work.

sorry, forgot it was set to private. :roll:

I've changed it to public access.

Awww, I'm so jealous. Liz is too. And we want a t-shirt. Liz siad that we have to go if there is another one that we can possibly attend. *looks at 160 pound computer sitting next to me and groans*.

Originally posted by: skooma
As an old DC'er, I thought this might be of interest to some of you.

I can only imagine some of the deals Dell will have getting rid of these. :Q

Sadly, I still don't think there will be any deals for me to upgrade my Xeons.

 

[panhead49]

oh god ,this is an understatement...

Though a word of caution - it can get to be an expensive and addictive habit.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: panhead49
oh god ,this is an understatement...

Though a word of caution - it can get to be an expensive and addictive habit.

ROFL. No kidding. I have yet to get my electric bill with the crack rack running. LOL.
I'll have a few :beer:'s before opening it up, to lessen the shock.
*WOW! Look at all the pretty numbers!!!*

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: panhead49
oh god ,this is an understatement...

Though a word of caution - it can get to be an expensive and addictive habit.

ROFL. No kidding. I have yet to get my electric bill with the crack rack running. LOL.
I'll have a few :beer:'s before opening it up, to lessen the shock.
*WOW! Look at all the pretty numbers!!!*

Careful.. with the alcohol in your system the electric bill might be enough to push you over the edge into unconsiousness. Speaking from experience, mind you.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: networkman

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: panhead49
oh god ,this is an understatement...

Though a word of caution - it can get to be an expensive and addictive habit.

ROFL. No kidding. I have yet to get my electric bill with the crack rack running. LOL.
I'll have a few :beer:'s before opening it up, to lessen the shock.
*WOW! Look at all the pretty numbers!!!*

Careful.. with the alcohol in your system the electric bill might be enough to push you over the edge into unconsiousness. Speaking from experience, mind you.

Oh dear, I hope my electric bill doesn't categorize as a reason to drink. LOL

 

[BofRA]

My farm is pretty much gone now. I used to have 6 motherboards mounted on a 3 level shelf in my shed, But I slowly sold them off and now
I am down to the 7 I have running in the house. I have one, my wife has two(one is a laptop), each of my three kids have one and one is a HTPC. I will say that when I had all 13 running my electric bill avaeraged 350-450 a month. Some of that was probalby due to the window AC unit I had running in the she though.

I got most of my ideas from the Hillbilly website too.

Oh yeah what ever happened to "The Enterprise" our TeAm Cluster?

 

[The Borg]

Luckily I live in South Africa - Very cheap electricity, but it is still costly. That is another major reason I went to fast machines instead of trying to get old slow ones up and running (although the challenge is great). The WU/kWh is just too low.

 

[bphantom]

Way back in Spring of 1999, a number of TA members chipped in and helped purchase the components for "WarpCore". This cluster consisted of 12 Dual Celeron 300's (OC'd to 450 & 463MHz). Unfortunately power costs got way too great, and the whole assembly was sold off (I still have one of those "adopted" nodes sitting in my office, still working great).

I can't find any pictures of it, but I do have the "Engage" video clip of when the cluster was officially turned on. Engage Video. That brings back some great memories.

Brad

 

[RaySun2Be]

It's a bphantom sighting!

/me waves. Do you know how Lord Demios is doing these days?

 

[networkman]

/me waves to bphantom

/chef Beers all around!

Yes, yes - do tell how LD is doing!

 

[danzigrules]

I don't think LD can remember his password here

 

[Lord Demios]

Nah, couldn't remember my user name.

gawd, when was the last time I used Lord Demios/TMR on something.

Yeah, the old clusters were great. I was able to dig up some pictures of TMR. (The Mad Rifter), my DC rack.

The Mad Rifter

Oh and here is a fun one. Look at how young BPhantom and I were. What happened to us?

Bphantom and Myself

Building TMR was a lot of fun, and one of the things that got me hired at my current job.

LD

 

[RaySun2Be]

/me waves at Lord Demios!

Good to see ya & Bphantom!

Gah, I can still remember that old UT game when you fragged me so much with the rocket launcher. :Q

Good times, good times!

 

[Clueless]

Whoa! I haven't been back in over a year and fancy seeing you old timers here. I just started a new job in Jan of this year and my company has a data center with 150+ servers - drools. I don't have much hope of being to harness all that power for TA though But we may turn it into a video transcoding farm.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Lord Demios/TMR
Nah, couldn't remember my user name.

gawd, when was the last time I used Lord Demios/TMR on something.

The Mad Rifter

LD

Wow. The Mad Rifter is sexy... Mounted on top and bottom of each shelf. That's awesome...