Coincidence? I doubt it. I've got BOINC manager 7.2.22, just installed (so presumably a current client and computation 'wares), and I got this:

Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:33:37 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Starting task ps_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_618429_0 using milkyway_nbody version 138 in slot 0
Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:33:38 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Computation for task ps_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_618429_0 finished

Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:34:54 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Scheduler request completed: got 2 new tasks
Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:34:56 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Starting task ps_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_618455_0 using milkyway_nbody version 138 in slot 0
Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:34:57 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Computation for task ps_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_618455_0 finished
Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:34:57 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Starting task de_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_609418_1 using milkyway_nbody version 138 in slot 0
Sun 10 Nov 2013 04:34:58 PM EST | Milkyway@Home | Computation for task de_nbody_10_18_dark_1382698503_609418_1 finished

The one of these that I looked at in detail had a notation about an illegal instruction; I'd have gotten an installation fail if I lacked a dependency (I used Synaptic to install the manager and client, then let the client download the MilkyWay engine when I attached), so I'm not sure what's up. Could there be a requirement for a more modern CPU instruction set in these tasks? This machine is an old one that (for instance) can't run the last version of Flash for Linux or the current Google Chrome because it lacks SSE2 extensions. Other things I should check?

Well, can't say what fixed it, or if it was just a problem with those three specific tasks (seems unlikely) but I went back and resumed MilkyWay on this machine and it grabbed three tasks, started crunching on one, and is still at it. I might have restarted in between (fairly likely, I was installing packages on the newly upgraded system and hadn't yet found the new "update menus" function), but I generally haven't seen BOINC or MilkyWay require a restart after the client automatically downloads the crunching software.

Regardless, it's working again. This machine doesn't contribute much (less than a tenth what my main desktop machine does on CPU alone -- single core at less than 2/3 the clock rate of the 4-core primary system), but you never know. Reminds me, I need to get MilkyWay installed on the other three Linux systems in the house. Should be really amusing to see the ca. 1998 laptop crunching away... :)

This machine doesn't contribute much (less than a tenth what my main desktop machine does on CPU alone -- single core at less than 2/3 the clock rate of the 4-core primary system), but you never know. Reminds me, I need to get MilkyWay installed on the other three Linux systems in the house. Should be really amusing to see the ca. 1998 laptop crunching away... :)

I am glad it is working!!!

I had MW, the cpu version, on one of my pc's and it was taking more then 8 hours to finish one unit so I switched to another project that had shorter units. Most of my pc's take in the 3 to 4 hour range. This is on an old desktop with 3gb of ram, so you might want to look at those crunch times. It may not be worth the electricity if the units take too long. I am NOT saying you can't, I am just saying it may cost you alot to do it. I personally use the analogy the NSA long ago forgot--'just because you can does NOT mean you should'! But that is me and you are you, have fun and keep on crunching.

I had MW, the cpu version, on one of my pc's and it was taking more then 8 hours to finish one unit so I switched to another project that had shorter units. Most of my pc's take in the 3 to 4 hour range. This is on an old desktop with 3gb of ram, so you might want to look at those crunch times. It may not be worth the electricity if the units take too long. I am NOT saying you can't, I am just saying it may cost you alot to do it. I personally use the analogy the NSA long ago forgot--'just because you can does NOT mean you should'! But that is me and you are you, have fun and keep on crunching.

I have no expectations of the laptop (Pentium II Mobile, 300 MHz) producing a detectable amount of work, it'll probably run 30-60 hours for a common unit that takes around 11 on this Athlon XP 2000+ and under an hour on the Core Quad 8400. It's just the thought that a machine that old actually can run the tasks. Besides, I leave it on 24/7 anyway, it plays a repeating sound file of surf as a noise blanket for the bedroom. Even on that old processor, that won't be enough demand to slow down crunching. :)

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I had MW, the cpu version, on one of my pc's and it was taking more then 8 hours to finish one unit so I switched to another project that had shorter units. Most of my pc's take in the 3 to 4 hour range. This is on an old desktop with 3gb of ram, so you might want to look at those crunch times. It may not be worth the electricity if the units take too long. I am NOT saying you can't, I am just saying it may cost you alot to do it. I personally use the analogy the NSA long ago forgot--'just because you can does NOT mean you should'! But that is me and you are you, have fun and keep on crunching.

I have no expectations of the laptop (Pentium II Mobile, 300 MHz) producing a detectable amount of work, it'll probably run 30-60 hours for a common unit that takes around 11 on this Athlon XP 2000+ and under an hour on the Core Quad 8400. It's just the thought that a machine that old actually can run the tasks. Besides, I leave it on 24/7 anyway, it plays a repeating sound file of surf as a noise blanket for the bedroom. Even on that old processor, that won't be enough demand to slow down crunching. :)

Now THAT IMO is a very good use of the available resources!! Multitasking, one can't ask for more then that!!

Okay, it's up -- the clock speed doesn't show in the machine specs, but Little-Luddite is my fifteen year old laptop, Pentium II Mobile 300 MHz, 288 MiB RAM, on antiX 13.2 (Debian based, Testing repositories); looks like 12-14 hours for a common n-body task unit -- that is, much better relative to the Athlon XP than I expected, possibly as much as about 20% of that machine's performance (or about 2% of what my Core 2 Quad 9400 is doing). Not bad, though, given that machine would be running 24/7 anyway.

Okay, it's up -- the clock speed doesn't show in the machine specs, but Little-Luddite is my fifteen year old laptop, Pentium II Mobile 300 MHz, 288 MiB RAM, on antiX 13.2 (Debian based, Testing repositories); looks like 12-14 hours for a common n-body task unit -- that is, much better relative to the Athlon XP than I expected, possibly as much as about 20% of that machine's performance (or about 2% of what my Core 2 Quad 9400 is doing). Not bad, though, given that machine would be running 24/7 anyway.

If you can keep it going every little bit helps!

Well, that worked out less well than it seemed at first -- it took about 162 hours of running time (yes, just a quarter day less than a week) to garner 160 credits (just over 5% average credit of my Athlon XP, which itself runs at below 5% of my Core 2 Quad, not counting that fastest machine's GPU contribution on another project); it would have been worse than that if I hadn't set the screen saver to "blank only". Seems that while the machine was playing a stream over wifi or even just playing a local MP3 file, MilkyWay was only getting about 60% of the 300 MHz processor after the sound player and OS load, and it would have likely gone down to 30-40% with a graphic screen saver running (no real GPU contribution to the screen saver with a 1998 graphics chipset).

I was actually concerned about getting the work unit done before its deadline; if I hadn't turned off new tasks and aborted the second work unit (it downloaded two to start) that second one would surely have failed to meet its December 28 deadline by several days; failing to return work units before deadline would actually be worse than useless, as it would delay validation for others and waste my crunching time. Based on this performance, I've taken BOINC off that laptop; it looks, to my eye, as if the minimum performance that's worth installing is going to be in the 800 MHz to 1 GHz range for systems running a GUI, though my laptop would likely be able to finish work units in time if it were running at a command line. I probably will, however, install BOINC on the other two Linux systems in the house (one is Linux part time, but I won't put BOINC on the Windows side) -- they're 1.6 GHz and 2.1 GHz single cores, so both as good or better than my Athlon XP system.

This is a staggering demonstration of how far hardware has come, given my Core 2 Quad is a five year old motherboard and a processor that wasn't state of the art (though still outside my budget -- I upgraded it just a few months ago) five years ago. The ten years between my laptop and my Core 2 system saw about a 400x increase in CPU performance and 16:1 increase in supported system RAM size, as well as more than 100:1 increase in supported hard disk capacity. A machine that was perfectly practical in 1998 just barely gets by even with an OS tailored for older hardware now...

Well, that worked out less well than it seemed at first -- it took about 162 hours of running time (yes, just a quarter day less than a week) to garner 160 credits (just over 5% average credit of my Athlon XP, which itself runs at below 5% of my Core 2 Quad, not counting that fastest machine's GPU contribution on another project); it would have been worse than that if I hadn't set the screen saver to "blank only". Seems that while the machine was playing a stream over wifi or even just playing a local MP3 file, MilkyWay was only getting about 60% of the 300 MHz processor after the sound player and OS load, and it would have likely gone down to 30-40% with a graphic screen saver running (no real GPU contribution to the screen saver with a 1998 graphics chipset).

I was actually concerned about getting the work unit done before its deadline; if I hadn't turned off new tasks and aborted the second work unit (it downloaded two to start) that second one would surely have failed to meet its December 28 deadline by several days; failing to return work units before deadline would actually be worse than useless, as it would delay validation for others and waste my crunching time. Based on this performance, I've taken BOINC off that laptop; it looks, to my eye, as if the minimum performance that's worth installing is going to be in the 800 MHz to 1 GHz range for systems running a GUI, though my laptop would likely be able to finish work units in time if it were running at a command line. I probably will, however, install BOINC on the other two Linux systems in the house (one is Linux part time, but I won't put BOINC on the Windows side) -- they're 1.6 GHz and 2.1 GHz single cores, so both as good or better than my Athlon XP system.

This is a staggering demonstration of how far hardware has come, given my Core 2 Quad is a five year old motherboard and a processor that wasn't state of the art (though still outside my budget -- I upgraded it just a few months ago) five years ago. The ten years between my laptop and my Core 2 system saw about a 400x increase in CPU performance and 16:1 increase in supported system RAM size, as well as more than 100:1 increase in supported hard disk capacity. A machine that was perfectly practical in 1998 just barely gets by even with an OS tailored for older hardware now...

One thing you might try is other projects with smaller units, MalariaControl.net is one that has 35 minute to 2.5 hours units for me on my admittedly much faster slowest pc. You can search around too at other projects I know some have shorter units that might fit into your pc's abilities. The key for you is will the benefit outweigh the costs to run the thing. Obviously for the MW units it is not, but there are plenty of other projects if you wish to try. Here is a link to lots of Distributed Computing Projects with the Boinc ones noted http://www.distributedcomputing.info/projects.html