Finally version 1.1.0 is out. Faster, more stable and with new automation and audio features.

Full changelog:

• Performance improved, especially for AMD 5000-series and 68xx and down
• Reduce stales through better handling of stale data and block changes.
• New option (Settings -> Use port 80) for firewall-friendly mining
    Try it if you are having problems connecting to the server
• Added sound effects and automation features, accessible from the new
    options window under "Settings -> Options..." in the menu
• New automation features: cron-like scheduling, log in automatically,
    start working on startup, start with window minimized, start devices upon
    program startup depending on schedule
• Log and play sound (if enabled) when submitting a block-generating
    proof of work. Display number of generated blocks on status bar.
• Use larger log buffer - fit more log messages before old ones disappear
• Base "BTC/day" display on up-to-date difficulty. Log changes in difficulty.
• Bugfix: no longer automatically tries wrong password multiple times
• Adjusted power meters for many GPUs and CPUs. If your GPU is not recognized
    or the meter is not in the middle of the green area at stock clocks, please
    report in the model and how many Mhps at stock clocks.
• Lowered minimum work interval (formerly break interval) from 10 to 1.
    Lowered default setting from 50 to 20.
• Fixed bug that could say your GPU "prefers the work size to be a multiple of
    3539913157759729696 for this work process."
• Index the settings by MAC address of first network interface. This allows
    different settings on individual networked computers with the same files
    (homedir). Note: this means your settings will be reset to defaults when
    upgrading to this version, and also any time you switch network cards
    or change MAC address.
• Bugfix: ignored new passwords from user after server responded with
    other HTTP response code than 200 or 401
• Remember more settings across restarts: device settings (Tune & Tweak),
    hidden devices (individual close buttons), hide/show log
• Make OpenCL buffer type selectable for user (Tune & Tweak)
    Normally "CPU-accessible memory" is fastest, but not on all computers
• Default to manual vectors off and BFI_INT off on non-AMD devices
• Added workaround to avoid "mixed signed and unsigned code" errors
    caused by a bug in Oracle's Java Runtime Environment
• Tell user to download OpenCL if starting without OpenCL.
• Show warning in log when starting to mine with slow CPU implementation.

[/list]

v1.1.0-beta6 is up

• New option (Settings -> Use port 80) for firewall-friendly mining
    Try it if your firewall won't let you through to the server
• Tell user to download OpenCL if starting without OpenCL.
• Show warning in log when mining with slow CPU implementation.
• Added cron-like scheduled actions (Settings->Options in the menus)
• Added automation option to start devices upon program startup
    depending on the scheduled actions. Done by going backwards in time to
    determine which devices should be running.

That's all I wanted to do in v1.1.0. If this beta seems stable it will soon become the regular non-beta version.

Please let me know what you think. The schedule, is it easy enough to understand how to use it? It's very similar to the cron system on Unix/Linux if you have used that before. Other ideas for automation?

Hmm, bad performance on Catalyst 11.12. Seems to be the same with other miners.

I'll see what I can do about this. Until then, beware that upgrading to Catalyst 11.12 probably means a drop in performance if you have an AMD GPU.

Finally some good luck. Some work (shifts) now getting paid 4 times! 

Yeah, the cheat is a bit flaky. Kinda like this car (il tempo gigante) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ShwTIhGyw

We are back up again

The datacenter hosting the BitMinter server is having an outage right now. Let's hope it will be short.

Den er dessverre kun i betal-utgaven av avisen.

Haha, yes. Bottom line so far is a loss of just over 200 bitcoins. Maybe it's time to implement that donation feature soon.

Block 213 is orphaned (aka "invalid"). Another pool created the block a few seconds before us, and our block was orphaned upon creation. As if the bad luck lately wasn't enough.

When I was reading bitcoind and namecoind source code to decipher how to implement merged mining it seems I made a mistake which lead to a bug with detection of invalid blocks. These things can happen when you hurry to implement merged mining based on undocumented features. Still, doing so was my own decision, so I can't complain.

Please note that the server always tells bitcoind to create a block when it gets a proof of work that is good enough. The long blocks lately are just plain bad luck. This bug only affects the detection of invalid blocks. It cannot lead to loss of money for miners, only for the pool op.

There never was any 50 BTC from block 213, and I didn't actually intend to pay for invalid blocks. But the 50 BTC is already paid out, and it's my fault for not properly detecting failed blocks. I'll pay it out of my own pocket.

The bad luck has to end some time, right?

Looking into it..

The regular (non-beta) version hasn't changed in a long time. And I haven't changed anything in the beta that should affect this. 4 days ago I made an NMC block and I'm always running the beta.

We're just having a long streak of bad luck, just like we had a long streak of good luck earlier. It would be preferable with more stable payouts of course, and I'm looking into what I can do to reduce the variance.

Det er et intervju med meg i dag (fredag 2011.12.09) i Dagens Næringsliv, på side 24, om BitMinter og bitcoins generelt. Det er også en artikkel om Meze Grill. Digital utgave av papiravisen kan kjøpes på http://www.dn.no/avis/bestilling/dagens/eavis?execution=e1s1 (obs: linken gjelder det som til enhver tid er dagens avis).

There's an interview with me today (friday 2011.12.09) in the Norwegian business paper Dagens Næringsliv ("Business Today"), on page 24, about BitMinter.com and bitcoins in general. There's also a side article about Meze Grill. If you understand Norwegian you can buy a copy of today's paper at http://www.dn.no/avis/bestilling/dagens/eavis?execution=e1s1

There's an interview with me today (friday 2011.12.09) in the Norwegian business paper Dagens Næringsliv ("Business Today"), on page 24, about BitMinter.com and bitcoins in general. There's also a side article about Meze Grill. If you understand Norwegian you can buy a copy of today's paper at http://www.dn.no/avis/bestilling/dagens/eavis?execution=e1s1

A couple weeks back we had 70+ Ghps with 90 users. Right now we have 44 Ghps with 101 users. It's not so much people leaving, but rather old miners spreading our their hashrate among multiple pools to reduce variance.

I'm pretty certain it's not a bug causing this. When the server sees a proof of work that beats the current difficulty it logs that fact before doing anything else. I'm not seeing any such messages without the next message stating that a block was created.

Variance is really annoying in small pools. What you are talking about, conspirosphere, is definitely the way to go. I've already been making some plans along those lines. Let's see what I can come up with..

Welcome, new guys


Finally someone mining on a C64! Although the hardware sounds a little different from what I can remember. 


The program doesn't know this GPU or CPU, so the gauges may look strange. Normally the green zone is where you can expect your device to be without overclocking. I'll add those devices into a future version.


The BitMinter miner is very slow on CPUs and only decent on Nvidia GPUs. You could get much higher CPU-speed with a good CPU miner and at least some extra speed on the GPU with a CUDA-based miner. Most miners are OpenCL-based, but there's one or two using CUDA and I believe they are faster on Nvidia GPUs. Still, and this is the reason I have only optimized for AMD GPUs so far, CPU-mining is always very slow and AMD is much faster than Nvidia GPUs. Also, this is one of the slowest Nvidia GPUs to boot. That computer does not sound like a good computer for making bitcoins.

You can see a useful comparison of different hardware here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

You may want to turn off the CPU and go in the "tune & tweak" for the Ion GPU and make sure "manual vectors" is turned off. That's usually best for Nvidia GPUs with this program. But I think a more powerful GPU is the way to go.

The hashrate is a bit reduced right now, with two of the biggest miners off for the moment. But please keep at it. We can push the hashrate up to a steady 100 Ghps before the end of the year. Thanks for supporting the pool.

Try out the new beta release of the miner, over in the miner thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg640162#msg640162

If the variance in two pools is the same, then switching between them or staying in the same one makes no difference luck-wise. They both offer the same chances for future payouts. The exception is when you can know something about future payouts, as is the case with proportional pools.

I can understand some users switching to pools with higher hashrate (and therefore lower variance), or PPS pools. Variance is a pain in a small pool when it's having bad luck. It is also very difficult to grow a pool up to a decent size. People leave because there aren't enough people. It's a catch-22.

Copying Wikipedia A personal appeal from the operator of the BitMinter pool: If you like this pool then please keep mining here so it can grow.

In other news, a new beta release over in the miner thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg640162#msg640162

I just uploaded 1.1.0-beta5:

• Performance improved, about 1.6% for AMD 5000-series and 68xx and down
• Added automation features: log in automatically, start working on startup, start with window minimized (see Settings->Options in the menus)

Before finalizing 1.1.0 I will probably add a way to make it automatically start and stop at certain days or time of day, for instance if you want to mine only during the day or only during the night. Also some more (slight) performance improvements coming up.