Hi, Ian:
>Frankly I can't see any point updating to V19 when I am already testing a
>factor of 9Meg+...especially with a Cyrix 333
Now you have some idea how the (non-Intel) Unix folks have felt for much
of the past 3-4 years...and those are often US$5000-20000 machines.
As with all distributed efforts, we all contribute what we can. It's not
a contest, except perhaps amongst us programmers, in terms of pushing each
other to continually improve our codes.
>Sorry, I am bitter and can't afford a 550 Pentium.....
Hopefully soon - here prices have dropped below 1000 $US for 500MHz systems-
you can get a 300-400MHz PII virtually for free if you're willing to pay
$20/month for 36 months of unlimited Internet access. You should try buying
online, e.g. at www.valueamerica.com or some such store.
>I update regularly but no time is credited...
You usually don't get credit until an exponent or several factoring
assignments
have completed, and at the moment the forner is taking months even on decent
hardware. Also, manual tests (like I do on my Unix boxes) don't get cerdited
on the Entropia top producers pages, but do on George's master list.
On the other hand, if you have been doing stuff for many months and are
connected to PrimeNet yet see no credit, contact Scott
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
>How do I know that the exponent I am testing has not already run to
>conclusion.?
PrimeNet (so far as I know - I didn't write the networking software) doesn't
hand out duplicate assignments unless it doesn't "hear" from machine X for a
long time - George is interested in the large-scale progress of the search
(which would be impeded by unnecessary work duplication) more than finishing
off all exponents below so-and-so-many millions by Y2K.
Chin up - the cheap Pentia are out there, you just to have find them - perhaps
prices are higher in the UK, but the Internet makes that a non-issue, I think.
Cheers,
Ernst
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