More of a Queen's Race, where you have to run faster and faster just to stay in place.

For details on why people would continue to do this, see "sunk cost fallacy" and "Dollar auction".

C

It's looking like Jan/Feb is when the break even point will pass. I will probably then run the miner outside on the solar panels, but even that is a bit of a lose as I could grid-tie the power back for more money than bitcoin mined.

Never dull.

Depends. My house is heated with radiant heat and a nice fireplace insert on the lower level. Top top level can get cool, so instead of running the radiant up there it's more economical to use an electric heater in the room I am in. Erupters do that well :-)

Just need to get them for free. Soon enough it will happen; I'm impressed with the number of BFL FPGAs popping up on Ebay.

The correct way to look at one's 8gh jally or block erupters is as heating elements. It costs the same amount to run them as a 100 watt heater, and the heat output is pretty much the same.

So logically you're running a heater that can also make a tiny amount of money. As long as the equipment requires zero maintenance and it's cool outside there should be no problem. Now in the spring when the AC units come online it's stupid. Then you use them to heat water for your house.

As for being surprised, no trick there. Bitcoin is a perfect market, and as such it is impossible to make a long term profit on mining. I broke even on my device only because I paid for it in Jan, got it in end of August, and jacked it from 5gh to 7.5. Anyone who bought after me lost, and those slobs who didn't get their miners yet totally lost.

C

Kind of funny to watch the difficulty scream up; I started mining at the end of August with a 5gh Jally, boosted it to 8gh in early Sept, and at this point it's making 2 cents a day. The next difficulty level will probably sink it; oh well.

C

Glad to see it's going to auction. Did you try anything else on it before giving it up for a new home?

C

Interesting. My 5gh model was well under 1% errors stock, when I went up to 1.2.5 with tweaks it went to 4% errors and 7.6gh, when I reflashed with CK's it went down to below .5% errors and has been running well for weeks now and 7.6gh. In all cases heat went from 36-38c to a solid 42c.

I think activating marginal cores might be the issue, the extra heat and power might not be worth it. Let us know what you get after the flash.

And as a status update my JP is running perfectly well, however even with a pair of erupters I am only mining 3 cents a day or so. Ah for the days of yore when I was making 9c a day.....

C

Odd. All the House has to do is send over a simple bill saying "fund the govt". Why is that a problem? Why is Obamacare even in this discussion?

Why not put "Every American gets $10,000 in bitcoins" for that matter?

I personally am looking forward to complete anarchy. Might drive up the price of Bitcoin and increase the value of my Jally.

More to the point, the complete failure of electricity and infrastructure nationwide will shut down most of the weak miners, thus preventing difficulty from going up. Likewise deterioration of roads, lack of air traffic control, and the shutdown of all postal systems will prevent more ASICs from getting to people, thus boosting my little Jally's output. Heck, difficulty might even go down, which means more bitcoin for me.

C
(Why yes, I can run my JP and internet link on solar power :-)

So a followup: Did any of them come? Did they get sold? Enquiring minds want to know :-)

Actually I wonder if I could build a toaster out of block erupters. Mount them so the plates face the toast on both sides, plug in, and mine.

Ties into my new line of bitcoin space heaters, ovens, and hot water tanks. :-)

It wasn't BFL's fault, if they had shipped earlier then the difficulty would have gone up earlier.

This is simply a perfect example of a perfect queen's race. There is no advantage you can buy in mining that won't go away in a few months. It's simple math.

I bought a jally for $170 back in Jan because I thought it would be fun. Chipping it up to 8gh/s for essentially nothing is the only thing that is going to make it pay back it's cost.

That's the numbers. Want an erupter? They went for $100 or $200 list price, they're barely going to break even at $10 each. Today....

C

Cool ones. It's a later model, and I think it has one chip that is good, one that is eh. Seems that the later ones will top off at 7.5 or so, but run cool and don't chew up much power.

That said, it is probably a losing game at this point to add chips. Given that BFL hasn't been shipping the things, and that a 10gh erupter blade can be gotten for 500 or so, prices dropping daily. :-) Unless the chips were $40 each it would probably not be worth the risk of shutdown+reflow right now.

Eventually the chips will be pretty much free and I'll give it a shot.

C

Might not get a lot of boost out of that. I think the trick was that Jallys were underclocked/built with rotten-er chips, so tweaking them was a good way to get more cores online at a higher speed.

Speaking of which, my JP is still cruising along at 7.5-7.6gh, reasonable temps, and well under 1% error rate. Actually better than the two block erupters I have in there as well.

Not playing with it anymore, waiting for chips to come availible so I can float on another two processors. Anyone need a Dragon?

C

Really? Check out the upgrade thread, it's actually a efficient little bump. With two erupters and the JP I'm hauling 8+. Which giv3en difficulty might do it.

C

Check next week. I'm enjoying watching the little erupters drop from $30 to $25 to $22 to.... I'll wager they will be <$20 by end of week.

Which doesn't matter as they are not profitable at anything. For comparison my Jally that has already mined about .7btc will probably break even but only because I got it for $169, and upped the speed to 7.6gh/s with a $50 dragon. And I'll be moving it out to my solar powered shed come october to provide some warmth and run off the batteries.

The people waiting for the bigger BFL miners must be... complicated in their emotions.


C

Partially because this thing was never meant to make money. I'm smart enough to look at the concept of BC, see the logic behind difficuty, and understand the issues surrounding a classic queen's race game. If I wanted to make a profit I would sell it on Ebay for $500 or so which is more than it will probably mine in a year.

The reason I tweak it is because it's fun. It's a nice looking bit of equipment, it's well built, reading the code is kind of relaxng, and I'm curious to see what it can do. The time I'm wasting on it at $150 an hour billable rates means I will never get my money's worth out of it, but as I said, it's fun.

The erupters are also kind of cute. I picked up two of them in the last 2 weeks, one for $28 and one for $24. They're at $22 or so, will be at 19.95 by the end of the week.

But they will never make their investement costs, maybe at $5.00 given a year. But they're fun, so try not to get too upset about the stats. Try taping them to your water tank to heat household water. That is why I would pay $150 for a broken one even though I bought mine for $169 or whatever. It would be fun to float off the chips with the air tools and build a 4 processor JP.

Haven't decided on picking up a FPGA BFL yet on Ebay, maybe for $100. Which is totally stupid since it can hash at 800mh using 40-50 watts while a trio of erupters can do 900+mh using 7.5 watts for 60% of the cost and still never break even :-)

It's the fun that counts. The fun of going to eclipse and seeing another nickel be created from thin air.
C

You too? Interesting, now I'm really wondering what that does. Might be time to crack out the threading disassembler :-)

Mm. How tight was tight? I've been snugging the bolts down using a t8 torx bit by hand without handle or anything, pressing down on the sink and plate and snugging it down just enough to take out the slack. Finger tight, counting on the artic pad to do the work of transferring the heat. When I first took off the plate it was easy to remove with fingers on the torx bit, so I used that as the measurement of torque to snug it down.

Maybe one of the chips broke a bga connection or something. Do you have air tools to try and refloat it?

C

Crud. Want to sell it? I'd offer $150 for playing with it.

Alternately I flashed my JP with CK's code and I think I'm going to stick with it. Same speed as my code tweaks, but with < 1% errors (I was getting 2.5% or so) and several degrees less heat. I think his code turns off cores that are shot (I have several) and clocks up the remaining ones (to compensate).

As a side note, if anyone in the Baltimore/Laurel MD area wants to bring their jally over for a flash I'll do it for free/tips/whatever with my Dragon and atmel. I think ck's code is good, will drop him/her a tip if I can find her btc wallet.

C

Interesting note: I reflashed my Jally this evening to CK's elf from my 1.25 with some tweaks and a speed 7. Speed went up a bit from 7.4 to 7.5gh or so, but errors went from 2.2% down to 0.5% and temps went from 44 to 46C.

Bit different, lot less errors. Wonder where the difference is.

C