That's another 6.1 GH/s guaranteed to come online in the next week or so...

Just got my order -- excellent service.

I can't seem to get it to work on my particular machine, but I doubt it's the fault of the cable. Don't know whose fault it is!

I have a XFX 6870 that needs to connect to a 1x slot. I bought a 1x to 16x adapter (among other things).

My machine is currently using 239W, running a 5850 on the first (and only) 16x slot on the mobo.
The power supply is 650W Corsair  -- so I should have plenty of headroom for a 220W card.

My 650W PSU only has 2 6-pin PCI-E connectors (which are being used) so I used the Molex-to-PCI-E adapters that came with the card.
This card requires (2) PCI-E connectors.

Anyhow, I connected everything up securely, turned on the PC, and it stayed on for about 15 seconds before shutting itself off. I never got the "all clear" post beep.

Advice?

Matthew

Is there going to be an i386 (32-bit) version of LinuxCoin?

I have a few old motherboards with Celeron 2.6 GHz -- the BIOS clearly reminds me that they are not 64-bit

I won't be able to run this on those machines, I guess.

What a bunch of n00bs.

Seriously, though...

You have to ignore those figures for at least 24 hours after a reset. It's an easy mistake to make, I'll admit. I wondered what the heck was going on the first time I saw it -- but I assumed something was messed up.

I was mixing it up with the end of the world. Sorry 

...and then take the battery out of it. And then bring a charcoal grill with live coals into the house overnight.

Here's a little tidbit --

670 MH/s is a little less than you'd get from (2) 5870's (decently, but not super-aggressively "I don't care if the card only lasts 3 weeks", overclocked)

670 mh/s =    1.39 BTC (6/6/11 12:30 AM)
      1.07 BTC (6/7/11 9:00 AM)
      0.691 BTC (6/15/11 9:00 AM)

The latest line (0.691) equals $13.82 at today's exchange rate (roughly $20/BTC)

The estimated BTC income is/was taken from Deepbit's website. A good, apples-to-apples comparison.

You're right -- not just IN a mental institution, but ON one.

Go take your medicine.

One thing wrong with your calculations --

You assume the difficulty resets every 14 days. WRONG!

The difficulty reset this morning, 6/15.  The last difficulty reset was 8 days ago, on 6/7.

If the difficulty goes up by 50%, it also means we (the entire mining community) mined the next 2012 blocks too early.

If it took 14 days to mine 2012 blocks, the difficulty would be unchanged! If it took more than 14 days, it would go down.

Matthew

Do you really think people are going to ever pay $200 for a Bitcoin?  WHY?  

What can you do with a Bitcoin anyhow? They're mostly just valued by miners (for what they can sell them for) and speculators (who hope the price goes up so they can cash out and make a quick buck)

Oh, and drug dealers.

Assuming you're not into Alpaca socks, there's not much you can actually BUY with them.

Seriously, it's hard to believe the BTC is even worth $20. Have you noticed it stabilized quite a bit in price in the last few days?

Matthew

Also, I think the answer to the question, "Should I start mining" is different based on your situation.

Do you have lots of spare PC parts sitting around?
Do you have more than one PC in your house with PCI-E slots?
Are you a long time PC tech?
Are you a Linux guru?
Do you work from home (or are you home all day)?
Do you have a few hours a day to devote to it?
and, most importantly....
Do you have some spare money sitting around, that you wouldn't mind losing?

Just like house flipping makes sense for some people (jack-of-all trades handymen, for example -- they buy a fixer-upper and sell it after it's been fixed up), while it's true that when EVERYONE is doing it, it's just an unsustainable bubble.

When bus boys are talking about how they're flipping houses, you knew the bubble was about to burst.

But a handyman who can do *much of the work himself* could (and still can) make money by intelligently buying a house here or there. The same applies to mining.

I don't think very many people understand the RACE aspect of Bitcoin mining.

Those who started out sooner are at an advantage, since they have more rigs, experience, knowledge, and have paid off more of their hardware.

Another thing people don't understand -- enough mining power can come online to make mining unprofitable for new entrants EVEN WITHOUT a revolution/paradigm shift like ASICs or FPGAs.  No, just with regular ATI video cards, existing miners can keep buying them (because they're "free" for them) and bring the difficulty up, up, up until a 5830 makes you 50 cents USD a day.

Right now the famous 5830 brings in 0.26 BTC (or $5.13) a day, assuming a hashrate of 255, and a BTC price of $19.70.

Remember when it was $8, or $12 a day?  It's going to get worse.  And don't think that means a 5830 will be paid off in 22 days. During that time, difficulty will increase at least three times. And you can't mine with a $110 5830 alone (assuming you can get one for $110!)
You need at least *some* PC hardware as well. A lot of people have older PCs or current PCs -- but they unknowingly -- well before they found out about Bitcoin -- bought a "Micro ATX" board with only 1 PCI-E slot (like I did!) And graphics cards *do* require a good power supply. Most power supplies laying around or available for cheap/free are 250W, 300W, 350W, 430W, etc. and that won't do for mining. You need a 450W minimum for 1 card, 750W for 2 cards, or 1000W for 3 or 4 cards. Good PSUs aren't cheap!

And let's not forget that the 0.26 BTC/day figure for the 5830 is GROSS profit, not NET. It doesn't count expenses (electricity, time).

Matthew

Mining is competitive -- that means that everyone is trying to get a piece of the sliver of the pie that's being divided up.

The more miners, the more mouths to feed.

When the BTC/USD goes up, the pie gets bigger. ($/BTC)

When rigs are added, the pie TEMPORARILY gets bigger (BTC/hour created).

When difficulty resets, someone comes into the room and says, "the pie is HOW big? Hey, let's cut it down to size and put it back into a standard pie pan!" (6 blocks/hour).

Oh, but there's also that pesky "how much is the average Joe willing to pay for a Bitcoin" -- so the pie can only expand so much due to market valuation ($USD per BTC).

You see, earlier miners have their rigs paid off, so the $50, $100, or $150/day they're making is "free money" and can be spent on more hardware. That's why you see some guys snapping up 12 5830's when they become available for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, other miners are tempted to buy MORE hardware to keep their income up, only they'll never make any actual PROGRESS on paying off their rigs. Difficulty goes up, so income goes down. If you stop spending, you will get a smaller and smaller income.

It's not just "I have 1 rig, so I have one ticket. That guy has 10 rigs; he has 10 tickets". No, he has 10 tickets at this stage of the game, which means he has 10 rigs earning money for him. Even if you bought 9 rigs you'd be behind, since NONE of them would have paid for themselves yet. The guy with 10 rigs is still ahead of you.

Understand?

So if I use, say, Poclbm it won't tell me about the stale shares, even though I'm probably getting just as many?

Do you think Hashkill is more likely to get stales, the way it's designed?  It might need long polling more than this or that other miner.

I just noticed today that Hashkill doesn't work nearly as well with Slush's pool as it does with Deepbit.

I'm getting 10-11% stale shares now with Slush.

Doesn't Hashkill work with Slush's long polling?

13.06.2011 09:09   1Fk4DVGCGoXAiYCUMU7z...   1.02

I did an Instant Payout at 10:09 Central time -- STILL waiting for a confirmation! What's going on?

Here's the scary part -- after almost TWELVE HOURS without a confirmation, this is what BlockExplorer thinks of the transaction:


Is my 1.02 BTC just gone? 

I think many people would switch pools and/or stop mining if losing a whole BTC was that easy.

I'm still waiting on my first confirm on that 1.02 BTC transaction (from Deepbit).

The transaction started at 11:00 AM (central time) -- it's currently 8:16!

Something is definitely wrong.

And has anyone else noticed that BlockExplorer is down?

If that's true, I certainly hope he goes back to his old setting.
You'd think Tycho could afford .0005 per transfer at least... I mean, come on!

We need nodes so payments can get processed!

Mining isn't everything. The more people have the Bitcoin client open, the easier it is to send/receive payments -- and that benefits EVERYONE, including YOU. You send/receive payments, don't you? (to cash in your Bitcoins, if nothing else)

AND the quicker/easier it is to use Bitcoin, the more users it will get -- which benefits YOU because it drives up the value (and hence, the price) of Bitcoin. 

I requested an Instant Payment from Deepbit this morning at 11:00 AM, and it's STILL sitting in my client with "0 confirms". Anyone else experiencing this?

Also, BlockExplorer seems to be down. More DDoS?