Bitcoin Forum

I propose we merge custom hardware into mining hardware: All viable bitcoin mining hardware today is "custom" to some extent. I also propose we create a "mining hardware development" subforum to host the small amount of actual development discussion.

Thoughts?

Seems logical.

Agreed.

Pfft ya think. Mentioned that back what? 4 months ago.

Seems reasonable.

Agreed


Hmm, from a maintenance perspective...how can you easily establish 'development' from the 'established' products? What I tend to see atm is lots of initial discussions (dev) possibly resulting in a real product. Obviously the market will mature more and more, having more established manufacturers posting on their new and directly deliverable products. However I feel that maintaining that is operating in the grey zone (?).

no, all is fine as it is!

I think its fine as it is. If there was no need for non custom hardware talk, why are there still 100s of posts in there? We don't want non-custom in custom so why force them into here.

I think back then the non-custom hardware had much more GPU related discussions which are now obsolete.  There doesn't seem to be a reason to split off ASICs into "custom hardware" anymore.

Agreed

I think that the ASIC related discussions could be moved to the Hardware section and discussion of things like K16 boards could stay in the Custom hardware section.

Go look in the regular hardware forum... most of what gets put there gets moved by mods into custom hardware, and most of what remains is arguably misplaced anyways.

Seeing as the distinction used to be gpu vs other. Why not split it like that, make a gpu mining sub forum and make custom the main forum for hardware

Fine by me since just about every GPU mining thread posted is slated for the altcoin area. I don't even have GPU mining code in cgminer any more, and there is no such thing as commodity hardware relevant for mining bitcoin.

shouldn't everything just go into the KNC thread?     ::)

ugh this is bad idea because we would need to make a separate sub-forum for "scrypt" mining and "SHA256" mining.  Right now custom hardware is de facto SHA256 mining and mining is scrypt mining.

No it's not. The custom hardware topic is for bitcoin mining. Post something about anything else and you'll get your arse removed immediately to the altcoin topic.

Well, the mining rig photos thread has lot of litecoin in there too.

Why not just create 4 subfolders: CPU, GPU, FPGA and ASIC, that should cover it?

*secretly hoping for a FPGA coin with dynamic hashing, would QuarkCoin work?*

We need to take advantage of all those SPARTAN-6 y'know!

great and idea and perfect sense

I was thinking this the other day.  The split made sense when ASICs were theoretical and GPU were mainstream.  Today nobody mines Bitcoins with anything other than ASICs and it seems there is some cross posting and "incorrect" posting which means people end up reading both forums anyways.

This is bitcointalk forum and last time I checked Bitcoin only uses a single hashing algorithm.  The moderators created an altcoin subform for off topic threads.

I think we should split it into 55nm or greater miners and 55 nm and below.

And maybe have a GPU/CPU forum too for computer stuff.

 ;D

+1

Yes, merge them!

Why screw-up a good thing?  Isn't the Custom Hardware subforum one of the most popular?  The other Hardware subforum is full of boring garbage most of the time.

I think just a General Hardware section and a Hardware Development section would be good.

Also, something should be done with Group Buys to separate "shares in something" offers vs straight hardware sales. I'm tired of pawing through 100 "KNCMINER Shares xxxx" threads looking for straight hardware vendors with products to sell.

Maybe there should be a Mining Securities section for shared mining buys, and Mining Market for hardware sellers? Otherwise all of the shared mining stuff ends up in the normal Securities area.

Also, add an Altcoin mining section, or remove all of the Altcoin areas on Bitcointalk and be done with it. Unless this is done altcoin mining stuff will simply end up in the mining areas, which adds to the clutter when it should be pure Bitcoin mining.

Just thoughts, but it seems like things could be organized better. Currently all of this information is difficult to find and sift through to find what you are looking for.

I agree this would remove some of the clutter.

Could we also get a "mining hardware development" subforum for the Alternate cryptocurrencies section to make it easier to navigate? I realize this site is really only intended for Bitcoin but right now its a mad-house in the Altcoins section :P

I agree, I think it's time we cleaned up and made some new sub forums to accommodate for the shift in hardware, GPU mining is pretty much dead now.
I think we should discuss on the best type of new boards to add/remove and go from there. We should archive the old posts, maybe have a few sub forums made in the current archive for this to preserve information.

On the topic of altcoins, this is bitcointalk, you guys are lucky enough we accommodate you already. I don't want to see altcoin discussion anywhere but the currently designated section.

Good idea. Move groupbuys to marketplace as well.

I concur, merge them.

Until the resistance to discussing alt-coin mining on BTCTalk subsides, I prefer having "mining hardware" and "custom hardware" separate.

We can still discuss covertly there, although Im pretty sure a lot of the alt coin mining talk is moving over to the Litecoin Forums.

The problem is, we have a SINGLE altcoin sub-forum and its a cesspool most posters wont touch with a 10-ft pole.

Im a big Litecoin guy and I havent been in that sub-forum for months, its beyond worthless now, was good up through Spring 2013.

No offense intended, you seem like a decent chap and all.  But is it just my perception or are most alt-coin miners a bunch of immature tools?  Maybe I've just spent too much time reading the troll box on BTC-e, lol.  I haven't seen that much stupid except in YouTube comments.

I propose we ban preorders from startup companies!

Definitely. The Regular mining board just seems to be discussions on GPU mining. Like, who does that nowadays?

Good idea, let's go.

Keep thinking that GPU mining is dead... my 4 year old GPU makes more BTC daily than a jally, go figure...

http://middlecoin.com/reports/12VAmD4rwXWMdMgPEYBNPU7RiP5yYmnuvL.html
:P


QFT

And the custom hardware forum is just as much of a mess most of the time, I like having the hardware forum separate, helps keep things manageable to read and keep track of.

Do it already!

Anyone have suggestions for new sub forums in here?

Wonderful idea - makes total sense in the reality of bitcoin mining today

How about rename the forums to:

"Mining Hardware" (Mining Hardware)
and
"Hardware Development" (Custom Hardware)

Then, accordingly, based on a set date start filtering messages.

Nope, but people invested a lot in infrastructure and LTC is the next stop if you don't feel like selling off old hardware.  Turns a decent penny now these days with the x-fold price increase as well.  That said, agree, the alt subforum is indeed a cesspool and could be handled slightly better.

Back on hardware, I agree with whoever up there that it would be great to separate group buys from regular sales and "share" sales.  You take one look at the Group Buys section and it's literally like someone threw up ascii in table rows with some of the same names holding a majority of the posts (and mainly shares).

sounds like a great idea to me... it's all pretty much the same thing anyways.... might as well have all the relevant info in one thread... this forum is already a chore to parse over for info... so much here... the more organized it can be ... the better :)

But what else could you expect from a forum as large as this one is.

Agreed. My big post here on Jallies is really about hardware. No reason it should be in a subforum.

So what are we waiting for?

No clue. How do I move my thread?

How about designating the four forms of hardware...

Mining: GPU
Mining: FPGA
Mining: ASIC
Mining: Experimental/Future-tech

Until another form of "Experimantal/Future-tech", becomes "Something Named".

GPU's are not dead, thanks to scrypt and up-coming GPU's.
FPGA's are a specific form, solid in development, no longer experimental.
ASIC's are the current form, no-longer the future or experimental/custom.
While the last group would be designated for any of those, being used for "development" or "modification", to be something more, or something new, or just experimental. (Watches, phones, tablets, non-standard hardware toys, unreleased/DIY ASIC's.)

Seems logical to me. Merge and then create four new specific groups for us to fill with new posts. Or archive and move, what you can.

GPUs are dead for Bitcoin mining, they may be dead for scrypt in the not so distant future, but they're certainly dead for Bitcoin. Non-bitcoin threads are moved into the altcoin subforum already. I believe this is non-negotiable.

There is relatively little FPGA discussion these days. I'm not aware of any projects doing interesting miners on the latest generation (28nm) FPGAs. Regardless, I don't believe there is enough traffic for it.

I do think there is perhaps a point in having a subforum for experimentation, hardware design, etc. But we can create one later.

I've asked theymos to manually update the database to move all the threads here to hardware, and close the custom hardware form. I haven't heard back yet.

I agree although I think there should be a section somewhere for GPU's (Even if they are for alts) as they are/where a vital piece of bitcoin and it's history.

Agreed - Merge!

ASIC or otherwise - it can also be argued that most tech existent or forthcoming is custom - least in terms of PCB, components used, connectivity / chaining,  number of chips & eg - subsequent over-power / over-clocking capabilities (if any).

You'd be better off moving everything in the "Hardware" section now into a subforum called "Scrypt Mining Hardware" or "GPU Mining Hardware" and moving all the content from "Custom hardware" into the main "Hardware" section.

That was no one is losing any threads but this forum remains Bitcoin-focused.

Mining hardware
Mining development/adventure

You left out
New hardware preorder and scam announcements

I think this is a great idea. Would make it a lot easier than having to check both forums to try and find mining gear

Possible subforums could be
- ASIC
- FPGA
- GPU/computer hardware: so not just vid cards, but also the risers, usb hubs etc...

I don't know if a "other" sub-category would make sense. Or maybe "combine computer" with "other"...

 ;D

So?

I agree, these days most mining is done with FPGA/ASIC's

yepyepyepyep tired of checking 3 forums every day

Agreed. I saw this coming back when we were debating making a new forum for custom hardware, I mentioned that hardware should be the child board since GPUs would soon be defunct, and asics would be the new hotness, but they moved ahead with it.

I like to stay on top of whats being developed in the mining world and think merging is a great idea.
Its a bit scattered at the moment and this would be an improvement.
I also agree with keeping it sha-256 relevant, this is bitcointalk.com after all.

Keep up the good work !

ya merge it.

yes

Yes, please.

Ditto as it is. While trying to figure out where I should be posting a thread I'm tweaking, I have not seen any particular distinction between the two subforums as they are now.  Both have posts about hardware, both have posts with people having problem getting it set up, both have posts about people finding a new store that sells existing solutions and debating whether or not the store is a scam, etc.

However, I think there's some room for 'custom hardware' when we're actually talking about custom hardware.  E.g. discussions of new chips (whatever the underlying tech), new reference boards, people DIY'ing a miner using chips on a breadboard (why not.).  If somebody makes a new EverythingIsAwesomeFury miner, this would be a fine place to present it.  But any discussions about problems with them, people selling, people buying, etc. that is not strictly discussing the hardware could be moved to whatever subforum is appropriate for those (For example, Beastlymac set up a separate support thread for the Ice Fury in /mining/mining support), even if that does end up being the main /mining/hardware subforum.

Actually what we need is a subforum for announcements for hardware preorder scams. Save them the trouble and make it easy for them to know where to post their announcements given the large volume of them appearing.

The problem with this is I work with several pre release companies who are legitimate, but are scared of putting anything on here for fear of being wrongly branded a scam. We need to step back and be reasonable about how we treat a new company. Obviously if its registered to XYZ Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigeria, we can probably guess which way it is.

I would propose custom hardware turns to hardware, and then GPUs are considered a subforum.

Well, without wishing to derail this into a subject on pre-order hardware, those companies do have the option of sending out a unit for review to a trusted member of this board; there's several that have proven that they are trustworthy (to both vendors and potential buyers), fair, and know what they're doing.  Any time a company says they can't send anything out for review - or worse, can't even show pictures/videos - they're really applying the broad-brush-of-scampainting to themselves.

Back on-topic, a new hardware announcement sub-forum would make sense, even if just so there's some official threads for the things that can easily be found without having to navigate the waters of group buys, technical issues, general inquiries, etc.

Agreed

Because as you all seem to keep ignoring, GPU mining has nothing to do with bitcoin mining any more - that's precisely the point of this forum thread. Altcoins for GPUs, sure, but that belongs in its own forum subsection and not bitcoin mining.

This has now been enacted.

/me adjusts bookmarks accordingly

Thanks for biting the bullet :)

By the way if you have had your forum thread moved to archival -> cpu/gpu mining and think it's still relevant in this hardware section and want to keep the thread alive, the opening poster is free to move the thread themselves. If you are not the opening poster and wish it moved back here, you can report the thread to a moderator for it to be moved here.

good call. the two had been getting more and more alike in the last few months