So I have been messing with this for weeks now and can't seem to make any sense of why this isn't working.  It should be very straightforward... Can someone look over this for me?

Ultimately:
I want to run a small 330MH/s ASIC to solo mine BTC "lottery style" on one machine (win7) while bitcoind is running elsewhere on my network (linux) using port 4444.  I would prefer to set my arguments via .conf files rather than .bat

I understand I have a VERY small chance of finding a block, that is the point.
I understand I am not using the traditional RPCport - it shouldn't matter as long as it is specified on both ends (besides, 8332 isn't working either).
I have tried calling the miner using a .bat with my arguments but that doesn't help.
I am running v0.10.0, I even re-downloaded the entire block-chain but to no avail.


1) I can connect to and mine on external pool using the exact same miner config file on the local machine. So i know the miner settings are generally good.

2) I can connect to my bitcoind server using bitcoin-cli and all my RPC arguments (user/pass/port/etc) on the local machine:
./bitcoin-cli -rpcconnect=127.0.0.1 -rpcport=4444 -rpcuser=xxxx -rpcpassword=xxxx getinfo
so it's not a problem with RPC.

3) I can even solo mine other coins (LTC using a sgminer, ZET using the ASIC/bfgminer) both locally and on the remote machine using 145.xxx.xxx.xxx:4444 on the windows machine using [almost] the exact same settings but not BTC for some reason.

When I try to point either miner at bitcoind though, I get "Pool 0 slow/down or URL or credentials invalid"

my .conf files are pretty standard:

bitcoin.conf:

server=1
rpcuser=xxxx
rpcpassword=xxxx
rpcallowip=145.xxx.xxx.0/24
rpcport=4444
daemon=1
listen=1

bfgminer.conf:
{
"url" : "145.xxx.xxx.xxx:4444",     <also fails with 127.0.0.1:4444 on the local
"user" : "xxxx",
"pass" : "xxxx",
"generate-to" : "16z.......Bx8",

"scan-serial" : "all",

#miner settings
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"expiry-lp" : "3600",
"failover-switch-delay" : "300",
"log" : "20",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"no-client-reconnect" : true,
"no-show-processors" : true,
"no-show-procs" : true,
"no-unicode" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"quiet-work-updates" : true,
"quiet-work-update" : true,
"scan-time" : "60",
"skip-security-checks" : "0",
"submit-stale" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : 0
}