How I got my PowerPC Macs crunching again
17 Dec 2024 5:53:22 UTC
Topic 231838
(moderation:
I don't remember when my Power PC based Macs quit receiving tasks to crunch. It was at least 2017, maybe earlier. I think it was something to do with SSL changes in more recent versions of BOINC and the lack of their availability on said platform that was the cause. None of the suggestions I could find online at the time (or since) provided a solution. Updating certificates didn't work.. Installing a newer version of OpenSSL didn't work... Given that the latest version of BOINC available for Leopard and G4s/G5s was 6.12.35 it was understandable. Nothing lasts forever.
Or does it?
In one of my more recent searches (today in fact) on a tangentially related subject, I ran across a proxy server called WebOne. The purpose of this proxy server is to allow old computers with old browsers to access the web by taking http requests and converting them to https. It works pretty well for that purpose but guess what else this works for?
To get this working with BOINC:
1. Download and install WebOne (https://github.com/atauenis/webone/releases/tag/v0.17.3) on a machine on your network or otherwise have network access to. It is available for several platforms and for this experiment I used the Windows version.
2. Change the WebOne config to add einstein@home related URLs to the "ForceHttps" section. These include einsteinathome.org, einstein.phys.uwm.edu, and scheduler.einsteinathome.org
3. Add the address and port of your proxy to the HTTP proxy config in BOINC.
4. When attaching to einstein@home, use the http version of the URL (not https as it will be converted automatically).
That's it! While I hesitate to claim complete victory until a task has completed and validated, I do have two 1.07 GHz iBook G4s happily crunching away. The application name shows up as "Binary Radio Pulsar Search (Arecibo,GBT) 1.58 (ALTIVEC)"
FWIW, this also works for moowrapper (I didn't even have to add any URLs to the config). Not sure if there are any other projects that still have PPC apps.
I know I'm not going to break any speed records with machines like this but for some reason coaxing an old PPC Mac into to crunching some BOINC tasks again after at least seven years gave me a real sense of victory, lol. Yes, this was my idea of fun today :)
Very cool!!!
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Very cool!!! Congratulations!!!
Looks like tasks still
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Looks like tasks still validate with this app too so, yay!
takes over 12 hrs for that
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takes over 12 hrs for that app? yikes. how much power is that thing using?
for comparison, a raspberry Pi 5 is about 2.5x faster than that in task runtime, and can do 4 at a time since it has 4 cores. roughly 10x more production overall. and uses like 10 watts.
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Lol, I mean it's a 20+ year
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Lol, I mean it's a 20+ year old laptop, what do you expect? It's still faster than my cell phone (though still not as power efficient). I'm just impressed it can still complete work under the deadline. Not sure exactly how much power it is consuming but the power supply is rated at 45 watts so less than that.
Tinkering with older computers is a hobby and getting BOINC to run on them is one of the things I do just to see what they can still do. I won't be putting together a massive cluster of old PowerPC macs for the purposes of crunching Einstein@home tasks or anything.
Darth_Azrael wrote:Lol, I
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Sure? My Sony Xperia Ray is crunching nearly at that speed, but that's a phone from 2011.
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My Note 9 seems to be
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My Note 9 seems to be slightly slower.
Link wrote: Darth_Azrael
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I also used an old Sony Xperia for crunching but one day noticed that the battery had swelled up, so had to shut it down.
AndreyOR wrote:I also used an
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Yes, I have that issue too, I'm working on removing it and running directly on 3.7V PSU, unfortunately it won't run on the standard charger without the battery like any laptop would do.
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