I appreciate it! Let me know if you figure anything out. I'd be happy to help in any way I can and/or send you a small tip for your time as I'm basically sitting dead in the water until I can get this sorted.

Karin, read the README 

Let me start off by saying that I'm quite new to mining and am definitely not experienced with git or using the Terminal. I'm on a mac and used the tutorial on nwoolls.com to get started. I am using 4 USB Asic Block Eruptors and until this evening was having no problems at all.

I came home tonight and noticed I wasn't generating any shares and started trying to figure out what was wrong. I ended up trying to update CGminer but given my lack of experience, managed to muck that (as well as Homebrew) up, and had to start over. Unfortunately, the tutorial at nwoolls.com no longer seems to work for me.

I stumbled across this thread and downloaded Karin's miner files and that will get CGminer 3.3.4 running but I am getting a TON of the following two messages:

AMU1: TIMEOUT GetResults took 1711ms but was 100ms
USB: AMU1 read1 buffering 4 extra bytes

It also seems to only be recognizing 3 of my 4 miners.

Did I screw something up? Did one of my miners go bad? Or...? Again, I am sorry if this is too noob of a question but I'd be happy to send a small tip to anyone that can help me figure this out.

Thanks!

I will admit I was initially attracted to BTC by the idea of mining and making some extra money.

With more and more ASIC miners coming on board, the barrier of entry will likely increase for a short period of time when big miners still cost a lot, but there are enough of them out there to greatly increase the difficulty levels.

However, as ASIC rigs continue to drop in price, they will also be devaluing their predecessors to some degree. At some point we'll be back to a lot of people having access to similarly powered setups just like what I've read about the pre-ASIC mining days.

If all of those suppositions are correct, I wouldn't expect ASICs to kill BTC, I would expect them to usher in the transition away from video card mining to ASIC mining which will be a period of great flux during which some large entities may be able to make significant sums of money.

So I will admit that I am completely new to the world of BitCoins and this might be a dumb question, but I figure the newb section is the best place for those right?

Anyway, I am attempting to find my Mt. Gox account and one of the ways I read to do so is BitInstant.

I signed up for an account there, but the entire thing struck me as a little bit sketchy and at the very least not very user friendly. Has anyone used them before? Are they reliable? And if so, is there an easy walk-through or guide out there?

I obviously don't want to get ripped off or pay way too much to fund my account.

Thanks in advance and sorry if the question has already been asked somewhere I wasn't aware of.