Heh heh heh; I just realized that's a pun.

There were some issues a while back crunching Rosetta WU's on my PIII-1400S - a non-SSE2+ CPU - and I put the project on suspension, i.e., no new work.

I've been dealing with delayed write errors / drive not ready, adpu160m error codes for the last two years. Since mid-summer this year the problem became excruciating in severity; multiple occurrences of HDD with multiple logical partitions suddenly becoming 'unallocated'.

NOTHING was never EVER consistent, albeit things seemed associated, e.g., heat, humidity, arbitrary HDD, arbitrary SCA2 SCSI connector, SCSI terminator, SCSI cable/SCA2/terminator LVD compatibility, etc..

After one of the HDD 'un-delete' - of all associated partitions and $MFT - using a utility I'm not going to spam-about recovery procedures, BOINC suddenly began to download AND PROCESS - successfully - Rosetta WU's.

BTW, I discovered what the gremlin in my system was: a sagging +5v rail in my 500w PSU. I NEVER thought to examine that aspect since I ran for 8 years on a 300w Tiger PSU, and replaced it with a unit having 5/3 capacity. Never in my wildest imagination would I have dreamed that in less than TWO YEARS such PSU couldn't meet the wattage of 3x 15k SCSI HDD @ 12v1A / 5v@1.2A...

It wasn't until I stuck a multi-meter's probe's into the various molex-connector connections and observed what voltages I had while the system was running and to the point of failure, i.e., no snse, drive not ready, et ali.

Whenever the +5v went to +4.59v, whichever drive was being accessed suddenly disconnected from the buss. The mobo HW-monitor I was using never suggested such deep sag at the peripheral.

Spend $100 real-value for a PSU and replace your existing OEM / VAR PSU if its more than two years old, or unless you KNOW you paid x-tra big-time for upgrade.

The foregoing notwithstanding: I'm quite happy to be happy to be back crunching Rosetta on my ancient machine. I'm happy to be doing so for as long as you'll have me.

If the powers that be decide to throw me under the bus in favor of GPU or SSE2+ ONLY machines, I'll throw the project under the bus - as I did Einstein today.

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Heh heh heh; I just realized that's a pun.

There were some issues a while back crunching Rosetta WU's on my PIII-1400S - a non-SSE2+ CPU - and I put the project on suspension, i.e., no new work.

I've been dealing with delayed write errors / drive not ready, adpu160m error codes for the last two years. Since mid-summer this year the problem became excruciating in severity; multiple occurrences of HDD with multiple logical partitions suddenly becoming 'unallocated'.

NOTHING was never EVER consistent, albeit things seemed associated, e.g., heat, humidity, arbitrary HDD, arbitrary SCA2 SCSI connector, SCSI terminator, SCSI cable/SCA2/terminator LVD compatibility, etc..

After one of the HDD 'un-delete' - of all associated partitions and $MFT - using a utility I'm not going to spam-about recovery procedures, BOINC suddenly began to download AND PROCESS - successfully - Rosetta WU's.

BTW, I discovered what the gremlin in my system was: a sagging +5v rail in my 500w PSU. I NEVER thought to examine that aspect since I ran for 8 years on a 300w Tiger PSU, and replaced it with a unit having 5/3 capacity. Never in my wildest imagination would I have dreamed that in less than TWO YEARS such PSU couldn't meet the wattage of 3x 15k SCSI HDD @ 12v1A / 5v@1.2A...

It wasn't until I stuck a multi-meter's probe's into the various molex-connector connections and observed what voltages I had while the system was running and to the point of failure, i.e., no snse, drive not ready, et ali.

Whenever the +5v went to +4.59v, whichever drive was being accessed suddenly disconnected from the buss. The mobo HW-monitor I was using never suggested such deep sag at the peripheral.

Spend $100 real-value for a PSU and replace your existing OEM / VAR PSU if its more than two years old, or unless you KNOW you paid x-tra big-time for upgrade.

The foregoing notwithstanding: I'm quite happy to be happy to be back crunching Rosetta on my ancient machine. I'm happy to be doing so for as long as you'll have me.

If the powers that be decide to throw me under the bus in favor of GPU or SSE2+ ONLY machines, I'll throw the project under the bus - as I did Einstein today.

If you are going to spend $100, then you might consider a different system and not worry about being thrown under the bus.

Your single CPU system has a PASSMARK of 293. For ~$100, you can buy a refurbished system with several times more compute power at a number of locations. Ebay is probably the easiest to find an example. There are probably far better machines at a similar price if you do some do some detective work. You can transplant your monitor, keyboard, ...

Just one example:
Dell Optiplex Desktop Computer PC Windows 7 Pro~ Core 2 Duo~4GB~160GB HDD
MICROSOFT AUTHORIZED REFURBISHER - WARRANTY - CD's INCL
More than 10 available / 339 sold
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-Tower-Desktop-Computer-PC-Windows-7-Pro-Core-2-Duo-4GB-160GB-HDD-/371366164663

If you are going to spend $100, then you might consider a different system and not worry about being thrown under the bus.

Your single CPU system has a PASSMARK of 293. For ~$100, you can buy a refurbished system with several times more compute power at a number of locations. Ebay is probably the easiest to find an example. There are probably far better machines at a similar price if you do some do some detective work. You can transplant your monitor, keyboard, ...

Just one example:
Dell Optiplex Desktop Computer PC Windows 7 Pro~ Core 2 Duo~4GB~160GB HDD
MICROSOFT AUTHORIZED REFURBISHER - WARRANTY - CD's INCL
More than 10 available / 339 sold
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-Tower-Desktop-Computer-PC-Windows-7-Pro-Core-2-Duo-4GB-160GB-HDD-/371366164663

Sound advice.

I'm imagining a really efficient PSU powering a very inefficient CPU and RAM (low FLOPS/Watt).

Edit: That's very nice and cheap setup you found there... I might consider buying a few of these to heat my room during the winter.

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If you are going to spend $100, then you might consider a different system and not worry about being thrown under the bus.

Your single CPU system has a PASSMARK of 293. For ~$100, you can buy a refurbished system with several times more compute power at a number of locations. Ebay is probably the easiest to find an example. There are probably far better machines at a similar price if you do some do some detective work. You can transplant your monitor, keyboard, ...

Just one example $88.00 :
Dell Optiplex Desktop Computer PC Windows 7 Pro~ Core 2 Duo~4GB~160GB HDD
MICROSOFT AUTHORIZED REFURBISHER - WARRANTY - CD's INCL
More than 10 available / 339 sold
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-Tower-Desktop-Computer-PC-Windows-7-Pro-Core-2-Duo-4GB-160GB-HDD-/371366164663

Sound advice.

I'm imagining a really efficient PSU powering a very inefficient CPU and RAM (low FLOPS/Watt).

Edit: That's very nice and cheap setup you found there... I might consider buying a few of these to heat my room during the winter.

There are also some interesting systems in the SERVER category too. $90.00 for a dual socket Xeon Woodcrest 2-core system: 2 3GHz Xeon with 8BG memory each, disk drives 2 146GB drives, OS ???? ... you would probably have to supply an OS.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-2950-Server-Dual-Xeon-5160-DC-3-0GHz-16GB-2x-146GB-PERC5i-DVD-1PS/181192952198?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D34493%26meid%3D3586c92f583c46859fc82613414a7ee5%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D231726773585

There is probably better equipment for the similar $100 price range.

If you are going to spend $100, then you might consider a different system and not worry about being thrown under the bus.

Yes. Spending $100 just to keep running a system worth $1 doesn't seem like the best thing one can do. Better spend $100 and have a system worth that $100.

Same thing with my current 10 years old Pentium M laptop: the HDD is slowly failing and once it does (or some error on it will prevent the machine to work), I for sure won't buy a new HDD, I'll just buy a new laptop. It's just not worth it, even if this laptop is still more worth than a couple of years older P3 desktop machine.

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