PeerBet ID : "PiscesMike"
Bit777 ID: "PiscesMike"

Looking good so far!

Greetings everyone once again!
    So Ive been mining now for almost 2 months. I ran into some issues with P2Pool seeming to lose shares. From what I understand, it actually never lost the shares, but when I have to restart my machine, the p2pool.exe will only show shares that have accumulated since it's start. I'm still confused as to why the payout amount changes though. Sometimes it will show a payout amount of, for example, 0.01, then drop to something like 0.008. If anyone knows why that is, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Anyways, after a couple weeks on P2Pool the apparent share loss thing was bugging me so I went to BTCGuild for a while, and they seemed to provide a lit more stability, albeit at a lot slower mining rate. I stayed there for a bit, but wanted to go back to P2Pool and give it a shot since they payout seems to be larger. I've been back on P2Pool for about a week, and things seem the same, that is the value will climb, then drop. Also, when I was in that first couple of trial weeks, I got a payment of 0.13 BTC which is the best I have gotten so far, but I am confused as to where that came from. (None of the payout amounts reported were anywhere near that). Is there something going on where I get a payment as later blocks are found? Is there something like a bonus as the work progresses, or a separate weekly payout, that is somehow purging those shares and rate drops I see into a payment at a later time? I'm pretty confused by this so any advice is greatly appreciated.
   Also, since I've been back, the block time has increased dramatically. I've been going 7 days now, and the first block took over 5 days. We're already into 2d 12h on this new block. Is something going on to cause such a huge jump in time that I don't know about, or is P2Pool just experiencing a run of bad luck? Thank you all~!

Don't know if it matters, but I'm using p2pool.exe windows binary, cgminer, and an HD7770.

Wow, Awesome! Don't rush though, I won't get paid for about another 3 weeks, and unfortunately, we are a little behind from last months bills. This month is going to be a little tricky, I just recently found someone capable of doing 3d modelling for my game, and between bills and the modelling work, things are going to be tight. Fortunately, I have my wife slaving away at her job and I confiscate her earnings accordingly, so somewhere around the 20th or 07.04.2013 we should be in good shape. Or, well better shape anyways. I also have a little bit of a balance in my wallet so maybe we can work out some BTC/some cash if that is amicable. Big spending list, little spending ability, LMAO. Also found out, I have to purchase an XBOX 360 to beta test my games before release, but that can wait a couple months. I'm going to send you a whisper or PM with my email address.... . I actually thought this particular post was dead, I just happened to come back across it because it was the only bookmark I have for this website. Thanks again!

Yeah, that's exactly what I've been hearing, and not just from Ebay, but from the company itself. I was surprised they responded, and am actually very curious as to what will happen. Being as these cards aren't even produced anymore I'm wondering where they could possible get parts to 'fix' it. I was thinking once they look at it and declare it dead, they might send me something comparable or an offer for a good percentage off a newer model. Sorry to hear of the Ebay troubles, I used to do quite a lot of estate sales there since my dad passed and left us a bunch of ham radio equipment. As sad of a state as things are for buyers, you can't imagine how much more selling actually sucks. I almost got took for $700 on a piece of hardware because the guy wanted a refund but basically refused to go through ebay to get it. In other words, he wanted me to send him money, then he could have went through ebay and got more money. Either way, they will (and did) go into your bank account and take assets to send to the buyer.

Depending on the price, I would. Like I said, I can't remember if he signed the book or not, it seems like he did, but I would still love an actual photo - it would go great between my Geena Davis and Elizabeth Hurley!

Hello again everyone!

I've got a question about p2pool. Someone gave me an answer in another topic, but I think maybe I phrased the question wrong.

So, I've got my mining setup running, and things seem to be working (or kind of, this is where the question comes in)

Just for reference, because it seems the first thing I'm always asked: I'm using the P2Pool binary for Windows (Win7), Bitcoin-QT for a wallet, and CGMiner for my mining.

The first question I had asked was:

"Greetings all, and thanks in advance for any help you can give me. I'm new to bitcoin mining, have just got my system set up, things are running and I'm generating some BTC here and there. Things look ok, but I have a few questions that I still haven't been able to resolve.

It seems the longer I leave the mining running, the more share I get. I understand that, but my question is what happens if I have to shut down or restart my machine? Seems like last time I did that I lost my shares. I've got a couple now and need to restart after installing some software but I don't want to chance losing my payout. Are these shares saved once they have been mined? If I have those now, and turn off my machine and not mine for a couple days, will I still get the payout? Does my system have to be running when the block is found to get the payout?

Like I said, thanks for any help/advice/information you can send my way. "

The answer provided was:

"Each pool has their own rules for how they handle such things, so to a certain extent the answer will depend on which pool you are mining in (you didn't mention any pool in your question).

In general, I wouldn't expect any pool that is operated well to "lose" the shares you've already contributed, but some pools reward you based on the age of the shares you've submitted to prevent people from pool hopping."

That kind of answered what I was asking (thank you again DannyHamilton), that is - No, the shares are not lost, but saved in the blockchain for payment when a block is discovered.

So I happily went about mining, thinking that everything was fine and I would eventually get the BTC.

Now, I've been mining pretty much constantly since then. And I've seen this happen again. I will get a share, the p2pool binary will show a payout, and then later on, it will, for lack of a better word, disappear. During the course of the last 3 days, I've gotten 2 shares, showing a total BTC payout of 0.0056. This last block was a MOFO, and took 285% of normal time to complete. I've been installing and uninstalling some software (trying to get XNA Game Studio running to institute a cross platform release of my video game), and as such I've had to restart my system a number of times. The first couple times I did it, the p2pool binary came back up, showed my balance (0.0056BTC), and things seemed fine. Last night before calling it an evening, it had dropped to 0.0027BTC. I wasn't complaining, heck I still had a little payout. But when I got up this morning, the payout had dropped to 0.00. I checked the block list for p2pool at: http://p2pool.info/, and sure enough, the last son-of-a-**** block had been found..... ... but I never received any payment.

I've read up on the p2pool website, and honestly, it isn't very helpful. So, my basic understanding is that when my miner produces a share, it becomes part of the current block, and it shouldn't matter if my rig is still running mining or if I'm surfing for alien cosplay midget porn- when the block is solved, I should still get my payment. I figured the response to the first question was something along the lines of: The share is not lost, but when you restart the p2pool binary, it is showing stats for the CURRENT round ONLY. In other words, it only keeps track of stuff since it was last started, which seems appropriate. But now, as of today, it had shares, showed a payment, then everything dropped to 0. Am I doing something wrong? At this point, it has become pretty annoying since basically the entire last 3 days was a waste.. ..

Thanks again for any input.

Currently I'm using an XFX Radeon HD4870. I was using 2 of these in crossfire, but after only 6 days, one of the cards went bad. Don't know exactly what caused it, I was keeping an eye on the temperature pretty darned closely and it seemed to have stabilized when I put a floor fan blowing on the computers case from the side.

The cards are a little old(by todays standards), I'm poor and had to build my computer by buying one part a month over the course of, well, it turned out 3 years (Father died, had to leave work to care for my mom who has Alzheimers so had to take a purchase break there for a little bit). Anyways, the cards had been sitting in the original box until I put everything together on 05.20.2013. Everthing seemed to be going fine until I woke up one day, and the second card was dead.

I've heard HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE things about the XFX company.... including that when this particular set of cards is used in crossfire, one will short against the other and fry it. The other major complaint against this company was that they had the absolute WORST customer service in history... ignoring support requests, not answering basic user questions, on and on.

When I was examining the contents of the cards box, I found a registration card (of course I never registered), which stated that XFX products have a lifetime warranty on parts and labor. I figured what the heck, can't hurt, right? So I went to the website and registered my 3 year old cards and submitted a support ticket. Low and behold, they actually not only responded to me, but autorized an RMA. I've sent it off to them and only time will tell what happens.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text in response to a simple question!

Read the big ol' wikipedia article about its different incarnations since the beginnings.. .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARDIS

I've worked a few film jobs, and just found the article pretty interesting. IMHO, Tom Baker is 'The Doctor'. I actually went to the trouble to get his book "The boy who kicked pigs" shipped from overseas, and I got to say it was rather dark and morbid, a great read. I can't say for sure, but I'm in the habit of collecting autographs, and I think I bought this particular book because Mr. Baker had himself signed it. I need to find the book and see, lol.

Wow, thanks MonkeyMonkey. Looking at Eligius, it looks promising also. With P2Pool, I had to download run_p2pool.exe, but Eligius says just to use CGMiner. Does it not require another executable to run in conjunction with the miner? Is that just a p2pool thing? Sorry, obviously I'm new trying to learn all I can! Thanks again!

Thank you very much Lucky! It makes sense now!

Greetings all, I have another noobish question.

I'm using CGMiner 3.1.1 and P2Pool 11.4.

The CGMiner shows a hashrate of around 160mh/s, and the P2Pool console window is showing around 143mh/s. When I go to http://127.0.0.1:9332/static/, and look at the stats, it is often showing a much lower rate, something around 100mh/s. Sometimes the numbers do match up, but most of the time there is a discrepancy. Is this a problem? That is to say, am I really running at only 100mh/s, is this somehow misreported on the stats report, or is this accurate, and the reflection of some type of lag between the miner, p2pool, and the stats page?

Thanks again for all your help.. this has been the only place I've been able to find with accurate info!

PS - Love the TARDIS. Actually spent a good hour reading about it just today, LOL.

Thank you Danny! I am actually using p2pool at the moment.

Figured it was something that was probably stored once it was generated but am still having a hard time finding good info. I guess I'm being a little over-paranoid but I seem to have had the worst luck getting things set up and running.

Greetings all, and thanks in advance for any help you can give me. I'm new to bitcoin mining, have just got my system set up, things are running and I'm generating some BTC here and there. Things look ok, but I have a few questions that I still haven't been able to resolve.

It seems the longer I leave the mining running, the more share I get. I understand that, but my question is what happens if I have to shut down or restart my machine? Seems like last time I did that I lost my shares. I've got a couple now and need to restart after installing some software but I don't want to chance losing my payout. Are these shares saved once they have been mined? If I have those now, and turn off my machine and not mine for a couple days, will I still get the payout? Does my system have to be running when the block is found to get the payout?

Like I said, thanks for any help/advice/information you can send my way.