6th of June

Its been a fortnight since the last update, so here's the news since last time...

GPUgrid errors fixed
The 2 machines that have GTX295's were getting errors when GPUgrid released their new 6.05 app. I tracked it down to having issues with SLI being enabled. If you disable SLI in the nVidia control panel they work fine, not to mention being a bit quicker.


Adventure 2500
I was keen to get hold of the LucidLogix Adventure 2500. Its basically an extension of the PCIe bus to an external box which provides an additional 4 PCIe slots. Emails to their sales department have gone unanswered.

We were discussing it and a similar product by Cubix over on the GPUgrid forums. The Cubix guys provided some additional information, but we can't get any information from LucidLogix.


BOINC versions
6.10.56 became the official version. Since then there is a 6.10.57 with a minor change to do with elapsed time calculations. I've put 57 on four of the machines and its working fine.


Mauls woes
He's paying the price for being bad. Well not really. It came back a fortnight ago. Since then its done its random reboots for no apparent reason. I've replaced the power cable and extension lead that he's plugged into but that doesn't seem to have made any difference. I even removed the 3rd GT240 from it in case that was causing problems.

I'm beginning to think it might have something to do with the case wiring as since the last time it was off at the shop the light in the power switch hasn't worked and the USB ports on the front panel have stopped working. Its a CM Stacker 830 case which is mostly aluminum and can be prone to short circuits. They are now discontinued unless I want the nVidia version (has an nVidia logo on the front and the grills are green instead of the usual black colour).


Weather
Getting cold (good for computers) and wet (not so good for computers). However managed to have 4 machines up and running for the last few weeks. This has improved the output from the farm quite nicely, with GPUgrid being the majority of it.


Milestones
I passed 500,000 for CPDN (Climate Prediction Network). It seems they've recently added a certificate shown below. I have also started running their Famous climate models. The HADAM3P models I have run up until now take around 60 hours. The Famous models take 165 hours. The good news is they don't have such huge files to transfer to get one going.