How much do 486s help the RC5 cause

[spdsk8r]

Any system will help the team, the 486 is a pretty slow compared to the systems on the market today, but every block helps! Look at it this way, a few 486 33's would finish more blocks than someone with only one P100...

Set your block size to 28 so that you won't have to wait days before flushing your blocks. Plus, if the power goes out or the system crashes, you won't have to restart the block - you'll have a few saved already.

What do you mean by parallel processing?

Dual processors? Yes, this is supported by the linux client.

[Zacko10000]

Basically this, take all the computers, you network them, then calibrate all the processors so they are in sync with eachother, and thus they act as one super processor. The instructions sent to the computer are divided between processors, speeding up overall processing. Its a method used to build cheap super computers. I've heard of people running parallel machines in Linux, I believe there are a few different methods that one can do so. Unfortunatly, I also believe the application has to be built for parallel processing, as it needs to contain instructions so that the processors will divide up the information correctly. Since it supports multiple processors though it might be possible. Its an interesting idea, but would take some work...and since I'm going to leave on a vacation in a week I doubt it is an endevor I will be able to undertake this summer. For now I can just due with running them as seperate machines. I might not be able to set the machines up before my vacation (its annoying and I have much else to do) but when I get back all 5 of my 486s will start cracking

Also on another note, does RAM, Graphics Card, etc effect the performance of RC5 or is it only based on the processor.

[skippy]

Some of the components can make a difference. A couple days ago I loaded the client on two different P3 450 machines at work. One is a Compaq and one is an IBM. They both use 96MB of 100Mhz memory. I turned off all the programs running on each machine except systray and exporer, and I left a scrolling text screen saver. Both are password protected. The ccompaq will spit out keys at 1.23Mkeys/sec and the IBM spits them out at 1.06Mkeys/sec. The Compaq is running almost 20% faster with the same CPU.

[spdsk8r]

That doesn't mean it's because of your components, it's probably because you have some programs running hidden that you don't know about.

[Zacko10000]

I've got a old 486s (3 or 4, mostly 33Mhz DX) running Win95, are these things any good at cracking RC5? Would it benefit the team much if I set them up. Can you run RC5 with parallel processing? If so maybe I will load linux and try to set that up.
Thanks,
Zach