FORCED TO ABANDON EINSTEIN@HOME
25 Sep 2023 18:31:58 UTC
Topic 230122
(moderation:
The project took away 100% all Macos/AMD GPU compatible WU. Getting 100% failure with new 03 WU. No workable workaround.
Will either sell all gear (invested $6000+ now useless) , mothball everything of leave for Primegrid, I'll decide later...
After having been dropped by SETi and now Einstein, I'm very disapointed.
P.S. Turns out Primegrid DOES
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P.S. Turns out Primegrid DOES NOT, contrary to advertised on Boinc, use AMD GPU in MacOS.
So mothballing everything until I figure out if I sell everything.
Pierre Poulin wrote: P.S.
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Unless you NEED MacOS for something in particulr take out the harddrive and drop in a cheap SSD drive and put Linux on the pc and get back to crunching! I did it on my cheesegrator Mac and it was a piece of cake, tons more options for crunching too, no more expensive Mac ONLY gpu's or anything like that. Now memory will limit how many of some of the different kinds of cpu tasks you can run, Mac's just handle memory better than Linux and Windows pc's do so can get away with less and do more, but it's easily workable.
Great idea Mickey, the
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Great idea Mickey, the problem is that I'd have to sell 4 iMacs and buy 4 PCs. (Can't run linux in Mac).
I just don't want to "invest" more of my money in projects that let me down after investing so much.
Can you believe I now have 4 useless Radeon Vega 56 and 2 RX580.
I think the project will take a massive hit in total GPU crunching, they should have kept a use for those who were succesfully running Gamma-ray pulsar binary search #1 on GPUs (FGRPB1G)
Unless they come back on that decision, I guess I'll sell everything.
Thanks
Pierre Poulin wrote:Great
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I'm not sure that is true. What Mikey is saying: "Replace" your HDD/SSD with a standard (non-MacOS) and load up Linux, get BOINC, and you're off and running. Your current HDD/SSD in the iMacOS have the proprietary info within them, so if you were to just try to reformat them (instead of REPLACE) they wouldn't work. They should work with a different HDD/SSD being replaced.
.....[EDIT].....
You should at least try to replace one of your current drives in your iMac's, and see if it works.
Proud member of the Old Farts Association
Thank you George. I'll look
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Thank you George. I'll look into that. I know nothing about Linux but I have a friend who's a Linux programer so I'll look into it. (I'm just a retired prosecutor with no special computer knowledge...)
It would be great to keep all my gear and keep crunching...
Pierre Poulin wrote: Thank
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I download a few dozen versions of Linux to try and some were very hard and others were alot easier, I settled on Linux Mint a subversion of Ubuntu which is based on Debian. It's not exactly Windows or Mac like but you do double click on things to make them run and they are sorted into folders and groups. I suggest you do some downloading and try different ones without putting too much effort into any one before moving to the next one, keep the ones that are maybe and delete the ones that are waaaay too hard. for instance one version I found, I've forgotten the name, insisted on an 8 character/digit password which is just too much for me and my home pc's. You will use the password alot when you install software, do Admin stuff etc and 8 somethings was just too much for me. I even tried the numbers 1-8 and it said 'password is too easy make it harder'. Linux Mint says mine is 'too short' but otherwise doesn't care. Ubuntu itself is similar with regard to passwords but most things are single clicks at least from the desktop itself. Libre Office works very well for an Office product no matter which version you choose. Most versions seem to come with Firefox for the web browser but you can add any other one you prefer, even Safari I think though I've never tried it.
Thank you very muck Mickey,
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Thank you very muck Mickey, I'll try that.
Pierre Poulin wrote: Thank
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You are very welcome, and it's 'mikey' not mickey like the mouse. I started working in the 70's and a cereal commercial was on tv everywhere saying "mikey likes it" so me being a Mike the nickname stuck.
I too have had problems with
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I too have had problems with the O3 WU on my intel Macs with AMD GPUs. If you are willing to consider other projects, Amicable Numbers supports intel Macs with AMD GPUs (both internal GPUs and external GPUs). I crunched for Amicable during a previous Einstein@Home issue, and I have begun transitioning back to that project.
"I was born in a small town, and I live in a small town." - John Mellencamp
A bit late to stumble upon
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A bit late to stumble upon this, see my parallel discussion here:
https://einsteinathome.org/content/any-tasks-left-old-mac-amd-rx580
The O3 Workunits use up a lot of GPU Memory, and are not efficient either with old CPUs or with MacOS I don't know, they run absolutely fine on Windows.
In general that is one of the risks you take when using macOS, Apple is constantly changing so much so fast that developers can't keep up and are forced to drop support for old machines and systems quite fast. Also when Apple promised that their new MacPro was future proof in reality meant you got the chance to buy upgrades for 2 years and then they dropped support. One of the reason why I switched to Windows. So don't be too hard on the Einstein developers about it.