BOINC? BAM!

Much like the individual projects, BAM! requires you to log in with a username and password. To create a username and password, visit the BAM! website and create an account. All the website needs is a username, email address and password. Make sure it’s a legitimate email address, because you will need to activate your account with a URL sent in the email.

Once you’ve logged into the website with your account credentials, use the website to add projects by clicking ‘Signup for projects’ and then clicking the paperclip icon to the right of the project name that you want to join. You can choose as many or few projects as you’d like. But just know that there’s a gotcha when it comes to adding projects: If you add a project manually through the BOINC manager, your progress and login details then won’t be available to your account manager.

Once you’re all done, you can log into BAM! from within BOINC. You can also use what BOINC calls a ‘weak authenticator’, which can be used in lieu of a username. If you use a weak authenticator, you just need to supply a short random string as a password. This allows other computers or people to compute on your account’s behalf without needing your password. Be careful if you change your BAM! password, though; the weak authenticator changes when the password does. Once you’ve got BOINC connected to your BAM! account, open up the BAM! web page again.

You need to attach a machine to a project BAM! to give it work. To do that, click ‘My projects’ in the left column on the BAM! website. Next, click the computer icon under the ‘Show hosts’ column. From there, select the PC you want to use for the project and check ‘attach’. You can also set the project to exclude use of the GPU if you like.

Once you’ve done that, go back to the BOINC manager again. Click the ‘Synchronise’ button and BOINC will start work according to your preferences, which you’ll set next.