Survey - Please Read and Answer

[Moogie]

I'm trying to compile a history of sorts, for Free-DC. You don't really need to be a member of Free-DC to answer though...all input is welcome.

Here are a couple of questions:

1) How did you get started out with computers?
2) How did you get started with DC?
3) How long have you been crunching?
4) What projects have you contributed to?
5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
7) Why do you crunch?

These are just a few questions, but you can add anything else you might feel might be interesting. I'll take the inputs and put them together in a summary.

Thanks for your time!

[IronBits]

Originally posted by Moogie
Here are a couple of questions:
1) How did you get started out with computers?
2) How did you get started with DC?
3) How long have you been crunching?
4) What projects have you contributed to?
5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
7) Why do you crunch?

/me runs off screaming to the word 'question' and this one has an S on the end of it
1) way back in 1982 - Commodore pet/64/128/IBM PC (in that order)
2) It's Colin's fault (and some JTrinkle's)
3) Since Colin made me a couple/few years ago, don't remember
4) All of them I think, is that possible?
5) Each has good points and bad points, no favorites (health related I suppose)
6) Anything JAVA based
7) Cause Moogie said she would break my fingers and take away my computers if I didn't

/me trys to think of answers to questions she hasn't thought of yet
8) Cause I'm a geek
9) STATS
10) Cause it's alot of fun with all my friends here at Free-DC

[Paratima]

1) This question's the most fun! I was fresh out of the USMC in 1965, a radio announcer, struggling through college, without any idea of what to do. I was broadcasting one weekend from a show of new homes, one of which was the "GE All-Electric Home of the Future", which included a teletype terminal (yeah, really!) online to GE timeshare. I got to talking with the GE dude, who gave me a slim volume on "How to Program in BASIC" and let me use his demo account to write programs. I played with that system for months! Got my first job programming for Burroughs Corp. in 1968. It's been a wild ride!

2. Read an article somewhere about SETI.

3. Started with SETI in May, 1999.

4. SETI, FAH, GAH, UD/Think, and Distributed Folding.

5. Favorite undoubtedly Distributed Folding on account of great communications w/designers.

6. Most frustrating was undoubtedly FAH on account of poor communications w/designers.

7. To make a contribution, camaraderie with my teammates, stats, in that order.

[rshepard]

1. I grew up around them- Dad was a programmer and I used to go out to the "machine rooms" (back when they had those )-- Bought a TRS-80 when they came out; and I was hooked

2. Ran across a reference to GIMPS, looked it up, and thought it was a great concept.

3. Was crunching GIMPS before SETI came out-- I recall filling out the form SETI had; where they would notify me when the project launched....

4. I'm with IronBits on this one... I have probably run most of them- certainly most of the big projects, and even a beta or two that never got off the ground.

5. I really liked running the TSC program, but they had so many problems with the client I finally quit.

6. The Neo project

7. More than anything, I crunch because I love what DC'ing does. It allows research to get done that would probably never be done otherwise. I've always loved the fact that so much good is potentially being done with what would otherwise be "wasted time"

[Dyyryath]

Hmmm...OK, let's see here:

1) I was interested in electronics as a kid. I got an Apple 1 (the original one with no case or anything) sometime around 1977 or so. I was about 8 or so. Spent time learning programming before I eventually got an Apple IIe. I also started using IBMs at the local college around 1980 or so. Guess I was about 11 or 12 then. Since then, I've worked with everything imaginable. Minicomputers, mainframes, virtually every 'personal' computer made. I got my first real computer job when I was in junior high working for a company writing custom business solutions for IBM PCs & their clones. I also did some hardware repair work there in my spare time.

2) I was an avid reader of HardOCP (back when it first started). Kyle linked to a story at Ars Technica and got me started reading that site. Shortly thereafter, I wandered into the forums and found Team Lamb Chop. That was the fall of 1999. I had already tinkered with dnet some. I started crunching SETI@Home for TLC shortly thereafter.

3) Since 1999. I guess that's about 4 years now I guess.

4) I've done dnet, SETI@Home, Genome@Home, Folding@Home (all the versions), D2OL, UD, and Ubero. I've also tried most of the others in order to test their clients.

5) Right now, I'd say Distributed Folding is my favorite. I like the client, I like the project management, and the science behind it makes sense to me. I probably had the most fun doing Genome@Home when TPS was battling with [H]ardOCP.

6) Probably UD.

7) The people, mostly. The stats are cool, and the science certainly weighs on my selection of projects, but in the end, it's mostly because I enjoy the community.

[PY 222]

My turn, my turn

1) Reading the other post sure make me feel really tiny. My first computer was an Intel Pentium 233Mhz with MMX Technology.

2) Started DCing around Spring of 2000. I just got to US of A to do my BSc. Started reading HardOCP, AnandTech and of course ArsTechnica. I think I found out about SETI@home from the Ars Forums. Did not join Ars because they were HUGE! I was a small timer then.

3) Well since Spring of 2000. So that makes it 3 + years.

4) SETI@home, Folding@home, Find-A-Drug, d.net (OGR-24/25 and RC5-72) and DF.

5) Favourite project would still be SETI@home, cause its my first love.

6) Least favourite would be Find-A-Drug. I don't like their stats.

7) I AM A PURE STATS WHORE. Will crunch any project that have good stats.

[wirthi]

Hi,

1) My father bought himself a 386, I used it (to play Civilication)
2) A friend introduced me to d.net rc5-64
3) Since May 5, 1999 according to d.net stats
4) dnet (ogr, rc5), DPAD, DF, sob, gimps, seti, various others
5) Hard to say. Everything that contributes to science
6) Seti. Just useless (won't produce results)
7) Stats; to contribute to science.

[ulv]

OK, here I go:

1. Got me an Osborne 1 with CP/M in 1983, been hooked since then.
2. Same as Dyy, HOCP- Ars- forums- Genome@Home- TPS.
3. For 3 years.
4. Genome@Home, Distributed Folding, + a lot of others- testing them.
5. DF, good client, good management, can relate to the science. But again I go with Dyy, most fun was with Genome when TPS fought with the [H]orde.
6. Doesn't matter, I don't run it.
7. Like the idea of DC, the cause/ science, the people, stats, the reason I get to build new boxes, test new hardware, and I love being broke 'cause I use all the money on hardware.

[Richard Clyne]

Okay, here is my story....

1) Way back in 1981, when I came across the latest in home computing, a Sinclair ZX81 (no doubt won't mean much to anyone outside the UK )

2) After watching a TV show about this new "great" project called SETI@Home.

3) Since 16th May 1999.

4) SETI, DF, F@H & G@H.

5) SETI because I find it so fire and forget, and G@H for the great TPS V [H] battle. Many still gather round the camp fire to drink lots of beer and sing songs about this epic encounter. )

6) Any DC projects that take more than five minutes of my time to set up and maintain (If it takes more than five minutes then its just not worth it ).

7) So I can justify spending money upgrading my computers.

[cygnussphere]

1) How did you get started out with computers?
Early 80's Home puter 8088 640k ram 20meg hard drive oooohhh ahhhhh. Internet CompuServe original aol.... Sierra game hint message boards... Hero's Quest sigh.....

2) How did you get started with DC?
Chinasaurus open seti door 3-4 years ago? Kept crashing my lap top so I stopped. Then last Sept I get the save us from the evil Ars Technica horde battle for #1 in DF now infamous e-mail.(from Chinasaur)

3) How long have you been crunching?
For real almost 1 year

4) What projects have you contributed to?
DF, OGR, and CB... errr my minions TKC...

5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
DF

6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
I have not found it.

7) Why do you crunch?
DF because I truly believe finding a folding prediction engine will have a broad impact on all medical research. CB because I'm a closet chess geek. Ogr err because I wanted to get in on one of those gauntlet things. TKC errrr... Because LA Chica and Rushlvr crack them keys

Oh and yous guys are kinda fun to hang out wit....

[Angus]

Originally posted by Moogie
Here are a couple of questions:

1) How did you get started out with computers?
2) How did you get started with DC?
3) How long have you been crunching?
4) What projects have you contributed to?
5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
7) Why do you crunch?

1) A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away... a starving accounting student started working graveyard as an IBM 360, then 370, operator at a large NE bank operations center. That was rudely interrupted by the Selective Service in 1970. The Coast Guard was the winning bidder for my services, and proceeded to send me to all kinds of Navy high-tech schools to learn the latest in military electronics. I played accounting chump on a variety of proprietary systems through the rest of the 70s, then ended up with a large nationwide 3rd party computer maintenance company. Little did I know that their idea of computers used IBM cards. I became a whiz at repairing, operating, and programming those old electro-mechanical marvels, then migrated into real computers - the IBM mid-range product line - Sys 34, 36, 38, then AS400. I started programming for them, as well as getting way to intiment with their operating systems. After spending 20 yers in the service business, I bailed out, and took a job as a Unix (HP-UX) sysadmin and Informix DBA. What a different world! Still there and still having fun and constantly expanding my computing horizons.

2) Heard about SETI on some BBS somewhere

3) 1999?

4) Started with SETI, I think, at it's beginning, then DNET, F@H, G@H, GIMPS, DF, and some of the smaller projects.

5) I think DNET is my favorite - easy to install, runs hands off for years

6) The Stanford projects - F@H, G@H - they just can't get it together

7) The STATS! (Is there anything else?) Sorry, no 'save the world' ulterior motives here.

[Condor]

1) When I was growing up my Dad bought a Apple IIGS.
Always the teacher, he thought it would be good skills to have.
I did a little programming with it but never really considered doing much more until going off to college where
all my friends turned out to be comp sci or comp engineering majors, and I guess some rubbed off on me.

2) I first heard about DC in probably 98, a friend was crunching RC5-64.
I thought that the collaboration was really cool,
but stayed away not fully understanding the project at the time.
I first started running Folding at Home late in 2000, after hearing about the project on NPR.

3) Since fall/winter 2000.

4) Folding at Home, Genome, SETI, DF, UD, DNet OGR and GIMPS/Mersenne.
Just a little, Find-A-Drug, D2OL and Ubero.

5) Hard for me to say, most have their advantages. I guess I like the projects with different add-ons.
Like the SetiQueue or DNet's pproxy.

6) Find-A-Drug. I just could not make the project stable.

7) I cannot say for sure that crunching any projuect will certainly have a medical impact,
but not crunching certainly won't help.
That and the community, I think there are truly some good people doing some good work.

[the-mk]

1) Some computer-lessons in school, after that I wanted my own computer. My first was a Intel Pentium 133

2) Some friends told me not to waste my cpu-time, so I had to crunch for distributed.net

3) I started in the end of November 1999 distributed.net RC5-64

4) Crunching-projects: distributed.net OGR/RC5-64/RC5-72, distributed folding
Other projects: Project Dolphin, Project Orca, Tiny Keycounter
Nothing else

5) favourite: d.net and distributed folding

6) n/a (I didn't try any other project)

7) - "why not" would be a bad answer
- maybe stats-addicted
- not to waste any cpu-cycles

Just a question: why/when/... do you crunch Moogs?

[pointwood]

1) ZX Spectrum is teh best *evar*
That is actually what I started with, together with my brother. After that, quite a few years later, my brother bought a 386DX, which I played around with. We were both Fidonet users for a long time

2) Can't really remember, I started out when Distributed.net more or less was the only DC project that existed - before Seti started.

3) Good question

4) Most of the projects Ars is/has been involved in

5) That's prolly distributed folding

6) All projects sucks some just suck less :bs:

7) Same reason as IronBits

[JTrinkle]

1) How did you get started out with computers?
28 years ago with a Trash-80 that had a whopping 4K of ram and used a cassette recorder for a storage device.

2) How did you get started with DC?
I have always had a "thing" for alien stuff so when I saw the seti@home ad on the front page of ars I signed up

3) How long have you been crunching?
Since April 17th of 2000

4) What projects have you contributed to?
Seti, Dnet (RC5), Folding at Home 1 & 2, Genome, Distributed Folding, Ubero (ack!) & D2OL

5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
Seti

6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
Ubero

7) Why do you crunch?
a. Why do people eat?
b. I love paying high electric bills
c. great reason to buy new toys... everyone needs a dually to surf the web
d. can't let Colin catch me...EVER


-JT

[Dyyryath]

IT'S DAMN GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU, JIM!

We miss you around here, ya know.

Moogie gets extra points for bringing JTrinkle out of the woodwork!

[Supp]

1. I started with computers in 1990, when our friend, teacher on Polytechnics high school, told us he bought new super-modern machine as school server (it was i386SX, 16 MB ram, 120MB HDD) and I persuaded my father to buy me a computer - it was strange creature with solid iron case, weighting over 25 KGs and, it had no switch-on button, but key, just like a car. It was 8086, 4.7Mhz, 640KB RAM (as Bill said, who needs more...) and 20 MB HDD.

2. I read about S@H in Science magazine. Tried it, read all info, thought it's very silly, stopped running it. Then I found, there are other projects with more mundane targets and fun started.

3. 4+ years?? I can't remember.

4. S@H, FaD, G@H, F@H, UD, GRISK, GIMPS, 3x+1, NFSNET, NeoPrj, Ubero, Muon, ECCp109, d.net OGR&RC5-64, DF, D2OL, TSC, ...and many others.

5. I loved ECCp-109, when it ended, I switched projects like headless chicken. Now, I'm crunching for FaD and wonder, why all da people around show renewed interest in UD even though it's using 30 years old technology...

6. F@H2+1 was disaster. NeoProject is disaster.

7. To heat up my room in winter No, for stats and for mankind...

[tim]

Everybody seems to have been DC'ing for years. I'm a relative newbie, so for a change of pace:

1. High School accounting class. Apple IIe. That year we scheduled our classes by giving a punch card with our name in it to the teacher.

2. In college I had a DC project of my own. It analyzed statistical patterns of language in literature. It was cpu intensive. I used a lab of about 20 486's every night for about a week. So when I heard about S@H, I understood immediately and wanted to be a part of such a huge supercomputer.

3. Since October '01. Not long.

4. 5. Seti@Home.

6. S@H when their servers are down. When something's not right, I look at

http://cricket.berkeley.edu:8885/inr...nterfaces.html

and see if it's on their end.

7. At first it was to find ET. Then it was the excitement of rising in the stats. Then it was the excitement of learning new stuff about computers, networks, os's, telnet, scripting, all that cool stuff you have to know to have fun with your farm, if you're a do-it-yourself and learn-it-yourself kind of person. That, and it's great to watch my friends' brains get turned inside out by seeing my racks of motherboards running bare. It's still about ET for me, but I really enjoy the process.

[rus6]

1) ZX Spectrum 48K with the rubber Keys!

2) Found Seti whilst at University and thought it was a cool idea, used to a lot of 3d graphics work so I had a lot of spare CPU capacity sitting around.

3) Since Thu Dec 28 10:09:55 2000 !!

4) Most of them:

Seti, dnet, F@H, g@H, UD, TSC, EECp109, ECC2, Lifemapper, D2OL, DF, Neo

Just thought of a few more GIMPS, SOB

5) Depends on the time of day.

6) I've liked them all. Even Neo, had a good race with PY222 in that one...

7) Like to keep my computers busy,
Further mine and other people's knowledge,
Do a little bit of good in a bad world ,
Stats are fun

[dragongoddess]

Originally posted by Moogie

Here are a couple of questions:

1) How did you get started out with computers?
2) How did you get started with DC?
3) How long have you been crunching?
4) What projects have you contributed to?
5) What is your favorite project you have crunched?
6) What is your least favorite project you have crunched?
7) Why do you crunch?


Thanks for your time!

1. Remember the days of the Vic-20 and the TI-99. I owned a Vic-20 with a tape drive and an extra 16KB memory cartridge. A real screeming machine. That and 13 years in the military fixing Radars.

2. Started with Seti. After all, as a Sci-Fi fan what better project to run.

3. Several years.

4. Seti, Eccp-109, F@H when the Wu's were worth only a few points, todays version of F@H, gnome, GIMPS, SOB, Ecc2, and probably some others I cannot remember.

5. Eccp-109 was the project that really got me hooked on DC. I went from a lowly amd K6-2 to a AMD 1.33 then a AMD 1.4 at projects end. From there I've grown to 5 machines (xp2700,XP2400,XP2000,P42.4B and another XP2700 waiting for me to put it together)not counting the AMD1.4 and AMD1.33 which are sitting idel. No PS for them.

6. I guess its one of the projects I have yet to run.

7. Its a Geeks form of Drag Racing/Street Racing.

8. Anyone remember playing pong other then me?