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Author Topic:   Command line client tips under Win98
Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 14, 2000 22:09     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
I've compiled instructions on how to speed up your SETI processing using the text-client in Windows 98. I posted .txt and .doc versions of what I've come up with on my briefcase on Yahoo: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/jerrya_sj?c&.flabel=fld12&.src=bc

Let me know what you think of my tips, and if you have any I haven't included, please let me know about them.

Cruncher

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 14, 2000 22:18     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Here are a couple of screen caps I did of SetiSpy on the text-client. These show processing efficency rates ("CpF" as Roelof calls it).

There is one is with SetiSpy 2.5.2 and using MS-ramdisk driver, and one with SetiSpy 2.4.4 and RamDisk98. Check them out here:http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/jerrya_sj?d&.flabel=fld11&.src=bc

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 14, 2000 22:19     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
The hyperlink crashed on the last post. The link is this:
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/jerrya_sj?d&.flabel=fld11&.src=bc

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fredro
Priest of Athlon
posted August 15, 2000 09:55     Click Here to See the Profile for fredro     Edit/Delete Message
just got done checking out those links you posted. awesome! thank you for taking the time to help out the newbies mr. cruncher.

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 15, 2000 17:49     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
You're welcome

It took me a while to get this all sorted out, and it's rare info that takes work to find (along with computer knowledge and experience).

I figured one-source documents would be helpful to newcomers to computing and www.3DNOW.ORG SETI members.

I saw on some of the other forums some back-and-forth on these very tips that I posted.

It's hard to tell people how to do these tricks and tweaks over a chat forum.

I was thinking how long the text would be if I posted the pages here on this forum. The text version of what I came up with is 6 pages long in Word..

It's too long, took too many words to summarize the steps. The page on this forum would go for 6 pages by the time I posted it all.

www.3DNOW.ORG members who want a quick tutorial can now just click on the link above and go right to it on the web, print it out, etc.

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 15, 2000 17:51     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
I also updated the DOC version of the tips and included hyperlinks to screen snapshots I posted on Yahoo to illustrate some of the steps in the tweaks.

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 18, 2000 20:50     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Files were updated 8/18/2K

Added a trick for automating the process priority change to the SETI client in Windows 98 (no more manually using TaskInfo 2000 in Windows 98 to set the process priority!)

Also some changes to how the SETI client loads at startup.

Changes to the config.sys file to make the ramdisk run a little smoother in Windows 98.

It's all good! It's, it's, it's a jiggy-baby!

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Trickster
Wish I had an Athlon
posted August 20, 2000 13:28     Click Here to See the Profile for Trickster     Edit/Delete Message
Cruncher, thanks for the tips. I have started using a ramdisk and think I see a small increase in speed. One question on backing up the ramdisk: How do you avoid a sharing violation when copying files that are in use, such as lock.sah? Works fine when the SETI client is not running, but if it is, I can't copy the files in use.

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 16:19     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Yeah, you get a sharing violation when the backup batch runs while the text-client is running. That's why I included the one-step backup/shutdown batch instructions.

In Windows 98 you have to manually kill the text-client window anyways before Windows will shut down. Windows 98 doesn't control programs as completely as Windows NT and Windows 2000 do (especially programs written for Windows NT), and Windows 98 gives error messages about being unable to close the program automatically. That's why Windows 98 will hang up if you don't kill the text-client before you shut down Windows.

The one-step backup/shutdown batch instructions I posted need to be run *after* manually killing the text-client in Windows.

If you want to do complete ramdisk backups of the SETI folder occasionally thoughout the time you have Windows running, you have to manually kill the client, then run the backup batch file, then restart the client. It's a pain, but this is the only way I know of to get around the "lock.sah" sharing violation error message in Windows 98.

If anybody knows of a way using programming to get around this process, I'd love to hear it.

Did you catch the trick about upping the process priority to Normal automatically on Windows 98 boot up? Pretty neat, huh.

Hope this helped

Crunchmeister

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 16:35     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
I screwed up. I didn't read your post carefully enough.

Check your batch file command for the ramdisk backup batch file. Make sure the line is exactly this: copy g:\seti\*.* c:\seti /Y

Don't leave out the /Y

That switch tells DOS Copy command to "Suppress prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing destination file". In other words, DOS Copy will auotmatically overwrite the existing files in your backup folder on your hard drive.

This should work to automatically back up all the files in the ramdisk SETI folder *except* "lock.sah", which is the text-client memory lock file that Windows can't overwrite while the text-client is active.

All the other SETI data files will be able to be backed up with that batch command while SETI runs except that one.

To back that one up you have to kill the text-client and then run the ramdisk backup batch.

That's what I thought you were talking about before when I first read your post (I read it too fast and misunderstood what you were saying )

Let me know if it still gives you trouble

Crunchy the Clown

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 16:40     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
man I'm screwing up all over the place today.. tgif.. what a week its been

be careful *not* to use this line *exactly*: copy g:\seti\*.* c:\seti /Y

the drive letter in it (g is *my* drive letter, not yours!

be sure to change that drive letter to correspond to *your* hard dive letter!

I hope the weekend is better than this week has been

Crunchy

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 16:43     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
it figures, now I'm having problems with happy faces..

copy g:\seti\*.* c:\seti /Y

g: is my drive letter, replace g: with your drive letter

I'm going to bed now

g'night

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 17:10     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
I updated the text and doc instructions today to fix an error about the backup batch file instructions that was brought to my attention

Disregard the previous instructions for creating the backup batch and one-step shutdown/backup batch file. The instructions from this day forward are the best to use. Sorry about the bugs that popped up in the previous instructs

update is here:
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/jerrya_sj?c&.flabel=fld12&.src=bc

keep on crunching

cruncher

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Masoch
Follower of Athlon
posted August 25, 2000 22:36     Click Here to See the Profile for Masoch     Edit/Delete Message
Hi Cruncher,

You might also want to add something about SetiDriver, a very good gui caching client for cl Seti. You can check it out at http://home.sprintmail.com/~obermd/SETIDriver / On my k6-iii, Task Manager reports that it's only using 640k and has used zero seconds of processing time in the last hour. Very slick.

SetiDriver also has some other features. It runs in the tray and hides the client from the taskbar (more desktop real estate!) ... and, for the multi-processor hogs, it allows you to run multiple instances of Seti ... again w/o taking up taskbar space.

Caching WU's is a very good thing. A few hours w/o anything to process defeats many tweaks to shave a few minutes off processing time ...

Masoch

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 28, 2000 20:09     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Hey that's neat! Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna try it out and see how it works.

Hey we passed Team Poland up, huh. Anandtech is next on the list!

Keep on crunching

Cruncher

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted August 28, 2000 21:19     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Anybody know what is the difference between the i386 and i486 command line clients?

I'm seeing on some sites that they recommend using the i486 client for anything AMD.

I was running the i386 client on my Athlon box and it ran fine. I downloaded the i486 client and tried it out and guess what, it works fine as well.

What gives

I'm going to take them apart and see if I can see the difference..

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Cruncher
Follower of Athlon
posted September 08, 2000 05:09     Click Here to See the Profile for Cruncher     Edit/Delete Message
Alright, alright. I finally got around to doing it last night. I redid the tips into html. Click here:
http://id.yimg.com/d/68d665af/h/ad9082c5/seti_command_client_tweaking_und.htm

It came out pretty good, and now I'm sorry I didn't just do them in html to begin with, 'cause it was a lot easier to do in .html than it was using M$ Word and Office 2K to do it in .DOC format, let me tell you!

I found a bunch of mistakes (er, erratumnotbugs) in the .txt and .docs I had posted before today.

Some of the steps you have to follow to get this to work under Windows 98 make Chinese trigonometry seem like child's play. I'm not a technical writer by profession, and that's what I've been doing to post these instructions, and after doing it a few times, all I can say is I wouldn't want to do it for a living!

If that link above didn't bring the .html file up for you, here's the directory on Yahoo where the file is:
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/jerrya_sj?c&.flabel=fld12&.src=bc

It looks like I fixed all the erratumnotbugs, but if anybody finds mistakes I missed, or finds something that didn't work for them, give me a holler.

Cruncher

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SubZero
Follower of Athlon
posted September 08, 2000 23:32     Click Here to See the Profile for SubZero     Edit/Delete Message
I have run the i386 and i486 versions on a K6-2 and a Cyrix. The times were pretty much the same.

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