ADVANCED MENU
You should not need to use the Advanced menu. This menu choice is provided only for those
who are curious to play with. To avoid
confusion for novice users, all the choices in the Advanced menu have been grayed.
Please read this section if you want to know what the Advanced menu choices
do. To turn on the Advanced menu, use
the Advanced Password dialog box and enter a value of 9876. Also note that many of the menu choices are
grayed while testing is in progress.
Choose Test/Stop to activate these menu choices.
The Test choice can be used to run a Lucas-Lehmer test on one Mersenne
number. Enter the Mersenne number's
exponent - this must be a prime number between 5 and 79300000.
The Time choice can be used to see how
long each iteration of a Lucas-Lehmer
test will take on your computer and how long it will take to test a given
exponent. For example, if you want to
know how long a Lucas-Lehmer test will
take to test the exponent 876543, choose Advanced/Time and enter 876543 for 100
iterations.
The ECM choice lets you factor
Mersenne numbers using the Elliptic Curve Method of factoring. Select a few exponents and bounds to factor
from the http://www.mersenne.org/ecm.htm
web pages.
Note: You do
not reserve exponents to work on, several people can do ECM factoring on the
same exponent. The program uses a
random number generator to select elliptic curves to test. You must email results to me at woltman@alum.mit.edu - PrimeNet
does not support ECM factoring.
WARNING: ECM does not adhere to
the memory limits specified in the Options/CPU dialog box. ECM requires a minimum of 192 times the FFT
size. Thus, ECM factoring of F20 which
uses a 64K FFT will use a minimum of 192 * 64K or 12MB of memory. You can also edit the worktodo.ini
file directly. For example:
ECM=751,3000000,0,100,0,0,0,0
The first value is the exponent. The second value is bound #1. The third value is bound #2 - leave it as
zero. The fourth value is the number of
curves to test. The fifth value is no
longer used. The sixth value is the
specific curve to test - it is only used in debugging. The seventh value is 0 for 2^N-1 factoring,
1 for 2^N+1 factoring. The eighth value
is no longer used.
The P-1 choice lets you factor
Mersenne numbers using the P-1 method of factoring. There is presently no web site which tells you how much P-1
factoring has already been done on exponents.
You can also edit the worktodo.ini file directly. For example:
Pminus1=751001,1000000,0,0,0
The first value is the exponent. The second value is bound #1. The third value is bound #2. The fourth value is 0 for 2^N-1 factoring, 1
for 2^N+1 factoring. The fifth value is
no longer used.
Round off checking. This option will slow the program down by
about 15%. This option displays the smallest and largest "convolution
error". The convolution error must
be less than 0.49 or the results will be incorrect. There really is no good reason to turn this option on.
The Priority menu is used to
adjust the priority prime95 runs at. You should not need to change this. You might raise the priority if you (or your
coworker) just cannot live without a screen saver (bad idea), or if you are
running some ill-behaved program that is using CPU cycles for no good reason.
The Manual Communication menu choice should only be used if the automatic detection of an
Internet connection is not working for you.
Using this option means you have to remember to communicate with the
server every week or two (by using this same menu choice).
The Unreserve Exponent choice lets you tell the server to unreserved an exponent you
have been assigned. You might do this
if a second computer you had been running GIMPS on died or if you had been
assigned an exponent of one work type (such as a first-time-test) and now you
have switched to another work type (such as 10,000,000 digit numbers). Any work you have done on the unreserved
exponent will be lost.
The Quit GIMPS menu choice is used when you no longer want this computer to work
on the GIMPS project. You may rejoin at a later date. If you are a Prime Net user your
unfinished work will be returned to the server. If you are a manual user, you need to send me email containing
your results.txt file and a note saying you are quitting.