Working from home? Have some spare hardware? How about using that spare hardware to find a cure to COVID-19?

Old i7-4790K

So, I’m working from home in my office and realized that I had my son’s old PC sitting in the corner. Later that night, I was watching Linus Tech Tips and watched a video on using Folding@Home to help find a cure for the COVID-19 (Corona) virus.

My son’s old PC is an Intel i7-4790K with 16 GB RAM and an EVGA GTX 1070 Superclocked graphics card with a Corsair RM750i power supply and H75 AIO cooler. That seems like a bit of a waste just sitting there.

I loaded up Linux Mint 19.3 on the Samsung Evo 850 500 GB SATA drive and joined LTT’s F@H team. (He’s also a Canadian so – Go Team Canada!)

Good thing it’s still cold outside. The CPU and GPU running at 100% could make it a little toasty…

Quick Edit: A close-up view for the fellow geeks out there 🙂

About Mike Pelley

Let’s see… A little about me… I’ve been around information technology since 1983 with computers such as DEC Rainbows (weird machine – the standard DOS couldn’t format its own floppy disks – remember them? – and I had to format them on a friend’s IBM PC) to Radio Shack TRS-80 to Apple ][e and Apple //c in the beginning. I have programmed in 8-bit assembly language on 6502, FORTRAN and COBOL on IBM System/370 (and I still hate JCL), VAX BASIC and COBOL (and a weird and massive WordPerfect 4.0 macro) on DEC VMS (Alpha), C/C++ on Digital Unix (ALPHA), and C/C++, Perl (it may be powerful but I still hate it), PHP on Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, etc.). I have work with databases such as Digital RDB (later to become Oracle RDB), Oracle DBMS, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL on VAX, Alpha, Sun and Intel. Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn. See http://lnkd.in/nhTRZe I still think that Digital created some of the best ideas in the world: VAX clustering, DSSI disks (forerunner to SCSI) and the Alpha processor (first commercial 64-bit processor – Red Hat screamed on an Alpha!). DEC just could not seem to be able to give air conditioners away to someone lost in the Sahara Desert! VMware is one of the best ways to get the most out of an x64 server. And I have tried Oracle VM, Virtual Box and Microsoft Virtual Server. Outside of that I am a huge military history buff starting in the early 20th century. I love Ford Mustangs (my ’87 Mustang GT was awesome) and if I had the money I would have a Porsche 928S4. If I had a lot of money I would have a Porsche 911 Turbo. I also play too much AmrA 3 Exile mod. Over 5,000+ hours... I have a wonderful son, Cameron. I have a long suffering (Do you really need all that computer junk?) wife, Paula. I live in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.
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