I'm new to linux. I loaded Ubuntu 11.04, and then set up the mining rig using these instructions:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.0

I did choose to install the SSH option just in case I use it later... figured it would not hurt to have the option installed for some later time I might experiment with it.

Symptoms:
I start up Ubuntu. Open a terminal and run one of the four miner instances (two for each 6990 card). I open another terminal window and set the fan speed to 60%.
I would open another terminal window and start another miner.. etc.. All would be cooking along fine. However, after a bit of time [and this is true even if I was ruinning only a single miner instance] the screen goes black, the fans slow down... apparently the miners stop mining. A couple times it seemed to happen when I moved or touched the keyboard or mouse. But that could be coincidental..but does seem suspiciously connected somehow. My keyboard and mouse are fine. So, the whole screen goes black, but there is a cursor at the left top and I can type stuff...but it doesn't do anything expect show what I typed. It's not the terminal...it's some other kind of mode. CNTRL+ALT+DEL reboots it. What is that black screen anyway?

I end up having to reboot each time... start miners...and [soon thereafter] it all shuts down again to the black screen of...frustration.

System:
Anthlon II X...
Two 6990's....

Anyone have any idea's on what is wrong?

If the guesstimate I posted was even close to correct, I'd think it would have to be profitable. Unless, of course, they spend more than $150 million per second on power.  

Though I suppose it is unrealistic somehow, I'm just basing this on my understanding of the speed of an AMD 6990 [per AMD's specs below]. No other factors were considered. It seems to be between about 1 to 5 terraflops/second:

■Default (BIOS1)
◦Up to 830MHz Engine Clock
◦5.10 TFLOPs Single Precision compute power
◦1.27 TFLOPs Double Precision Compute Power
■Overclocked (BIOS2)
◦Up to 880MHz Engine Clock
◦5.40 TFLOPs Single Precision compute power o 1.37 TFLOPs Double Precision Compute Power

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6990/Pages/amd-radeon-hd-6990-overview.aspx#3

"Japanese 'K' Computer Is Ranked Most Powerful"

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11171/1155010-96-0.stm

I think that's about 10^12 times faster than an AMD 6990  

Disregarding power costs, Profitability would be somewhere around:

Revenue per day: 13,759,214,349,570.81 USD
Revenue per time frame[1 month]: 418,796,086,765,061.50 USD

Anyone want to pitch in to buy a mere one second of usage?... Revenue would be about $150,000,000

My math might need double checking.

Thanks. I have another system I am trying to set up as a miner too... been playing wiht ways to load linux for now.. I'm new to linux as well as bitcoin. I'm pretty exccited about learning what I can about linux however... seems to be a good skill to have either way you look at it. That's one reason I haven't just started using linuxcoin just yet..want to learn to load it myself. Howeve,r I may use the scripts I saw one guy make that does it all in two bash files. in the forum.

It is not as intuitive as using windows... For all the mess people say about Microsoft, I do think they do a good job making things easy & intuitive (mostly) for the user with Windows. As for linux (using ubuntu), maybe I just need more face-time with linux.

I see it... Thanks.. came in after the block update...my first transaction.. yay...   0.75 BTC 

Thanks for the block explorer link.

I guess it hasn't. When I started it up earlier, it didn't show the block chain increasing...so, I figured it might have updated. To try to "stimulate" something, I clicked "generate coins" in the menu, and it started to increase the block chain count... I turned it off, and the count was still increasing..so, I guess it didn't have it all yet.

Where can I find the latest block chain count? or how to explore it?

Thanks.

Still new with bitcoin.

How long does it take for bitcoins to be received? I asked to be paid out about a day ago... And the wallet account on my PC still reads 0.00... that is, the amount was not received from BTCGuild - though the acocunt says it DID pay it out. I clicked to be payed from BTCGuild for "0.75" bitcoins. Also, I did not like the fact that BTCGuild left in the smaller fractions of what was mined..only it would send .75...not the entire .75XXXXXX .. Seems the only way it can all be sent out is if it was an exactly zero after the third decimal place.

I was just tyring to observe the process occur for now...but this isn't promising...Can bitocoins really be lost that easily?

A summary of what happened:

1. spent a couple days mining... on and off.. amount went up to 0.75xxxxxxx bitcoins... I clicked payout and it(BTCGuild) only sent .75....so, it reads.
2. when I had it sent, I deliberately left bitcoin.exe program on my PC off to see if the bitcoin would be received sometime after it was sent to my wallet account.

So, either I have to leave my wallet the moment funds are sent or something....not sure if that is true....but if I did not receive the .75 coins by now and should have, then bitcoins can apparently be easily lost...so, this would be a major flaw...but I'm probably missing something....or am I?

Yes, I did verify my bitcoin address on BTCGuild was the sme as the one on the bitcoin.exe on my computer.

What will you name the kitten?  Little Bit?

Mh/s  glitch?

I just started mining about 12 hours ago using BTCGuild. Let me say first, it was a lot easier to set up than I thought
The GUIminer I'm using did seem to have several times where it could not communicate with the RPC whatever.

Here's what's odd, unless it can be explained as a glitch on BTCGuild. By the hardware comparisons chart on the bitcoin wiki, we can see that the 6970 had a range of about [323 Mh/s - 423 Mh/s]. I am using one 6970 with a desktop and churning about 358 Mh/s. [tried tweaking a little, but it didn't go up and is fine while I take in the big picture of the process.] On BTCGuild it shows one's hash rate at the bottom and I assume it's close estimate of recent activity... it showed closer to 300 Mh/s. Maybe lower becasue of some averaging function that factored in time when the miner was offline for rebooting etc - e.g. discovering websites with video ads can crash it.  

After being away from the system for a while and the monitors went to sleep, I came back and logged in to inspect the activity, and  saw that there was 443 Mh/s on the account. If it's true, then it is a value greater than the range of 6970's setups in the bitcoin wiki.

Is this a glitch with BTCGuild or did the miner suddenly become more efficient?

The system is simple:
Windows 7
CPU: Intel i7 2600
GPU: 1 x 6970
Miner: Guiminer
ADD SDK: v. 2.4

At the this time, the pool account is showing a lower hash rate (257 Mh/s) than the Guiminer is showing 351 Mh/s (almost the same all day). The system had no down time for several hours. That also seems odd, but perhaps, it is due to BTCGuild being down or something, and then diluting it with averaging over time, maybe?  But I can't see how the higher hash rate could be calculated.

Any ideas on why BTCGuild read such a higher hashrate that time?

I'd think international banking cartels would be more of a threat. But regardless, let's assume there is some threat entity [hereafter: "TE"] that would try to shut it down. The question is: Is there even a viable possible catastrophic threat to bitcoin(?)  Even if TE could swamp the network down and suck up all the remaining coins, there would still be 30% of all coins ever to be released already in circulation. TE would be holding, let's assume for argument, 70% of all bitcoins. So, what does TE do with them? Dump them on the market? Ok, then what did TE gain? What if TE hordes them and destroys them? Ok, bitcoins value go up due to lower supply... but bitcoins are divisible up to 8 decimal places. So, instead of there being a possible 2.1E10^15 coin fractions, there are then 0.7E10^15 or 7.0E10^14. Let's see, that's 700 Trillion coin division units. Assume a worldwide population of 10billion, and that leaves 70,000 units per person to spend. Of course, this is an extreme scenario and discounts that babies & very young children might not need to be counted, but it shows that there are sufficient increments remaining to perform as a mechanism of exchange fairly easily for all people - I think.

However, perhaps the threat possible is not related to hording or dumping...What is that threat? Hacking the bitcoin process? Maybe, it's just demotivation to any potentially new bitcoin miners or holders. How is bitcoin compromised? And more importantly, what are potential counters to that? Afterall, it is suppose to be designed to be extremely secure.

Thank you MeWantsBitCoins.
I had to run around the net looking for how to sovle this earleir today, and eventually found out that unetbootin could help. I downloaded it and it was very easy along with the instructions. Success on booting the rig.

However, the link you provided is good since it seems to get more invovled in the setup. I am new to Linux, and am interested in learning...hands on is probably the way to go to accomodate that.

Thanks again!

BTW: Is that your cat?

Regarding being behind the curve. If the design was compact, efficient, and modular for scalability, then it seems it wouldn't be a major concern about subsequent designs or technology (except maybe quantum computers  ).  As I understand it, the FPGA circuits would all be executing the same process in many parallel paths within the circuitry anyway. Scaling it simply by some modular means seems most attainable from a layman's viewpoint.

I'm not an FPGA person, but have a few questions that might help get a trajectory on all this...
Are logic cells and LUT's equivalent in quanity? That is, do they come one for one within an FPGA board?
What number of logic cells do you think is need to acquire 100MH/s?

Finally...

Do you have any idea's on the actual costs of these below items? To include the super cluster?
I can not find any pricing information:

http://www.picocomputing.com/ex_series.html

http://www.linera.com.tr/temsilcilikler/pico-computing

BTW: I think you made a very valid point earlier about the fact that even though the boards would cost more, that you could run them with less hardware. Many USB ports can be run from one computer (even with a GPU or two on the MoBo  ). The extra cost may be saved, in part at least, by the non need to purchase extra fans, larger power supplies, mother boards....etc... not to mention the power savings with FPGA. A comprehensive cost analysis would be beneficial. Knowing what hidden costs might exist in scaling would be interesting. For example, any costs to modify electrical or coolings systems for expanding to more GPU rigs.

Seeing that it has no inherent value, is called a coin and facilitates [acts as a medium] for an exchange of valued goods.... it might as well be called a currency. It might be best to call it that in order to show confidence in it as an effective means for carrying value.

I think the general fear of calling it a "currency" is a subtle skepticism that there is something illegal wiht it. That perhaps, the government(s) might not like it. I think the truth is that international banking systems (the central banks) are it's real haters. It could threaten their profits. As for governments, as long as you report any profits, I think that is what they want to know so they can tax you for your labor (another topic).

So, answer this, can you or anyone in this forum say from what country bitcoins are denominated or generated? Which nation regulates it? I doubt that the origin of the idea matters considering it's current condition. And if you consider that it is international, then how would it be much different than trading in Euro's by Americans...or trading with the Yen by Brits... sending money to a bank in Kuiwait and converting it into Dinars?? An example with my brokerage account, I can convert my dollars to euros...and spend them on European goods(stocks)...which become my property. Did I commit a crime? Even more, I've read of American businesses that take Euro's... What punishment shall be given to them? Assuming they convert them to dollars after a purchase and report any profits to the government.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/06/us-newyork-euros-idUSN0655798320080206

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=2760227

Call it an asset for bartering is fine...like bsaeball cards... But I think to garner more widespread acceptance or credibility, it needs to be treated more like a currency. It has a long ways to go, but going by the trading levels and increasing hashing... seems like the sails are opening up and catching some wind. I'm not going to throw all the eggs in the basket. It's probably best to stay cautiously optimistic, as seems like something that's good that can come out of the Internet.

It wasn't a real problem to type out. It's just some of my thoughts. However, I wouldn't want to type it again 

Newbies need to make 50 comments and/or original posts in order to interact with the more meaty parts of the forum. I'd like to do that, and figured it would be best to at least contribute some comment or a new post that I felt was relevant and thought provoking.

Also, I really am passionate that we need a kind of escape from the internationalist banking cartels stealing the people's money by manipulating the worlds credit. Why not bypass that whole shceme with the option of something free and transparent? Afterall, why do we pay interest to these banking systems that make money out of thin air? http://www.themoneymasters.com/

The Federal Reserve, may be the most powerful, but it isn't the only central banking scheme or cartel to maliciously infect a government & society.
Banking schemes of the world:  http://centralbank.monnaie.me/

Seeing that the social agreement system and issuance process of what is accepted as money has varied & endured centuries or millennia. How is bitcoin worse than any other form of money?
How is it better? Just some thoughts....

The idea of fiat (inherently worthless) money isn't terrible (e.g. bitcoin is just digital information and dollars/pounds/euros/yen are just pieces of worthless paper with numbers)... IF.... the agreement of it's usage can be widely accepted, well secured and made easy to exchange. Fiat money isn't bad because it's just a way of measuring & proving labour performed that can be exchanged for some item or service that is also fairly quantifiable in terms of labor. A kind of proof of work. One might say gold or precious metals are considered worth money but show no labor value, but that is not correct because of the time it takes a person to search [read: labor] for such things.
If any of you have not seen the documentary "Money Masters: How International Bankers Took Control of America", then find time to watch it. It's three and half hours, and is FAR more interesting than the title leads. It describes the history of money and the problems with our current system since the central banks (i.e. Federal Reserve) have taken control of the issuance of our money supply. It also provides a practical solution to the problems with it to include ending 'fractional reserve' lending. BTW: Few presidential candidates understand these problems with our monetary policies. However, there are those like Ron Paul that carry hope that we can perhaps unshackle the people from these banking cartels.

In the above named documentary, the speaker claims that perhaps the most successful form of money was called the "tally stick" system in England. Lasting, I believe, about four hundred years. The basic way it worked was like so: The king of the land had sticks from tree's that were like rods & cut with notches in the stick to denominate it's value. The sticks were then split down the center. One half of the stick was stored in a vault, and the other was spent into the economy. It was acceptable because the king deemed it so, secure because forgery was impossible (i.e. no two sticks have the same growth patterns when you split them..and the notches could not be changed..unless there was an insider) and it was easy to exchange between people (perhaps in some cases lighter than carrying it's value in gold around). Sadly, if I am not mistaken, it was a new central banking system in England that did away with that most successful tally stick system - go figure.

After looking over the bitcoin system, and as far as I can see..so far.. the bitcoin concept seems very similar to tally sticks. This is interesting to me since the tally stick system was considered the most successful form of currency in history. There is the distinction that there is no king or leader that deems it as good for exchanges. However, the collective of people can perhaps deem it so for themselves.
Despite that nuance.... the similarities are striking.....

Secure. As far as I can see, the security of the system is practically the same. The impossibility of forging a sticks ring patterns is replaced with it seems something as strong as a 32 character strings. Like I said, that is far as I can see. I'm a newbie here after all

With a 32 character string, you have a 42^32 number of combinatorial possibilities. The 42 coming from all characters {a...z} + {A...Z} + the digits {0...9}. These are the kinds of numbers that it seems are used to determine the unique accounts when you are assigned on by bitcoin.exe, but I suspect at least as much is required for securing the coins (preventing a type of forgery). So, not knowing the details yet, it seems to be at least as improbable of forging a coin as 1 out of 42^32...or 1 chance in 8.79 x 10^51. Which does not include any other securing layers that may exist to secure coin transactions. How big is that? Well, one estimate regarding the observable part of the universe suggest that on the order of 10^40 nuclei of an atoms would be needed to fill it. The number 8.79E10^51 is a 100 Billion times larger in magnitude. I think it's fair to say the bitcoins are secure...unless one thinks it likely to pick a single point in the observable universe within the radius of one atoms nucleus.

As for ease of exchange. I think that is quite obvious in this day with the internet. Though, a solution may eventually be needed to make bitcoin transactions in the physical world. And this seems quite possible as people carry around mobile devices like iPods or mobile phones capable connecting into the the Internet.

So, I think bitocins are perhaps the closest we can find to the tally stick system. In fact, it is far better in ways, such as ease of exchange. After all, carrying around a bunch of sticks isn't nearly as easy as point and click.
I don't know all the intricacies of how bitcoin works..so, I will leave it with that caveat. Some skepticism, but also very exicted about the possibilities of eliminating a central  banking system that can profit enormously from maipulating the value of money through the cycles of easy and hard money or inflation and deflation.

The international banking cartels will probably vehemently oppose this currency. That is my main concern. Perhpas, moreso than governments. Since they have immense financial resources to influence politics & media, and are apparently driven by an evil love of money - a greed that destroys and cares nothing about the well being of mankind.

Ah! Thanks Future Man. I'm partly on track now....but... How is that done?

I don't know how to open it or extract an "MBR". All I can see is that when I click it, a program (Nero or Windows Disk Image Burner) want to burn an image to a CD or DVD...no options found to open it and extract data (MBR?). Also, no option to write to anything other than a CD.

Building a new system and wanted to boot from a thumbdrive using LinuxCoin.
Only other storage device connected is a blank SSD drive (which will ultimately be configured as the main boot device).

I read the OP from this thread about LinuxCoin:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7374.msg108351#msg108351

1....downloaded the LinuxCoin.iso file and moved/saved it to a thumbe drive.
2.... Inserted thumbdrive into any USB port and attempted boot. I get the error:

"No bootable device, press any key to reset."

What step am I missing?

Observations:
When installed, the USB flash drive is found/listed under Advanced BIOS features, and selectable under the boot sequence.
When not installed, the USB flash is not found when looking in the same.
I treid two USB ports. Trying one of the USB ports (whihc read "SATA") the SSD drive was not longer found on attempted bootup. It was found after USB flash drive was removed.
Using MSI ...GD70 MoBo & Anthlon II cpu.

Any help educating me on this [new to me] process would be appreciated.  

Thanks OldMiner!
I checked it and it worked exactly as you described... and the SSD was recognized. Thanks for the link to the manual. I should have thought about looking in the maual.

Now to figure out how to get Linux on there. I saw there was a link for LinuxCoin, so, I mightl try that...but was hoping to load up Ubuntu since it has a GUI. I think I saw a link somewhere (not on bitcoin) on how to put Ubuntu on a USB stick... then to the SSD somehow... Then maybe do some mining with you guys.

Thanks again!

||bit