Hi everyone,

I have been running BOINC for several years now on my PC. I also have three PS3 consoles that were dedicated to the Folding@Home project until Sony dropped it. Now these consoles are just collecting dust.

This is an appeal to the BOINC community to find a volunteer local to Toronto, Canada who has both the tools and knowledge to make these PS3 run BOINC instead.

Likely need firmware flashing and to install some Linux distro. I read quite a bit about how it's done but it's way over my head. All consoles are currently on official Sony firmware 4.31.

Thank you!

All consoles are currently on official Sony firmware 4.31.

And are therefore unable to be used.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS:
OtherOS was a feature available in early versions of the PlayStation 3 video game console that allowed other operating systems, such as Linux or FreeBSD, to be installed on the system. This feature was made unavailable in newer models and removed from the oldest ones through a firmware update by Sony.

The "Other OS" feature is disabled by firmware version 3.21 but still runs on older consoles that have firmware 3.15 or lower.

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5 seconds Google... how to downgrade to 3.15

https://www.google.it/search?q=ps3+firmware+3.15+downgrade

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

Well great.

So having done that then, the Linux needs kernel version 2.6.21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS#Distributions shows which Linux distros are compatible.

Next go to http://www.dotsch.de/boinc/BOINC%20Clients.html and search on the page for Linux Playstation 3.
make sure to check the GLIBC version in the Linux you installed, before making your BOINC client choice.

Well, and then you want a project.
Seti is out, as they've changed their science application a couple of months ago, meaning that the v5.27 that Dotsch has will only produce erroneous work. (The deeper link provided to the science app doesn't work anymore anyway).

So doing a quick search, that leaves Yoyo@Home, whose application list shows Sony Playstation 3 running Linux. Best ask on their forums first, though, if the thing is still used.

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