For a while now I had feared that Kraken going down would also take down BCB.

Yep, once you are out of LTC you are out for good.

The T2000 is mid-2000's server technology. It's been replaced by Intel Xeons in the Sun Fire line a long time ago. Not quite sure if it is weaker than an Atom though - the guy who said it was probably was exaggerating (a little).

So what happens to the rest? I don't believe that hashes can be considered as "work" under the First Law of Thermodynamics.

If you have a poorly running single it probably pays to reseat the heatsink and reapply thermal paste. IMO they applied 10 times more thermal paste than was necessary.

Two of mine had badly seated heatsinks caused by the top fan applying pressure on the copper piece. These would not even run on the 768 Mhs firmware without throttling. It looks like some lazy person intentionally bent the copper piece of the heatsing upwards in order to get to the fan connector that it partially shrouds. They then tried to make up for this by applying a ton of thermal paste. Anyway after bending back the heatsink and properly re-seating it with the right amount of paste, I was able to run the singles with faster firmware.

On the other hand I also received a few singles running at 832 MHs or higher out of the box. They seem to be well assembled and I left them alone.

A large, low-cost tinfoil supplier must have just entered the market.

I think I will become outraged and demand a change in protocol so that the original reward may be restored. Then when nobody listens I will quit mining in disgust.

Seriously though, this has been expected for a while. Personally I already have a bunch of coins so I am willing to waste a few hundred $ worth of electricity a month to continue mining with ASICs (even at a loss) just to protect the network and the coins I already have.

The data tape has been put into a Fedex/DHL overnight envelope and already out the door in the hands of the courier and on the way to the fab?

I guess nowadays people just SFTP the files to the fab.

If there were a period where a block was solved once every 5 seconds (just making this number up) until difficulty caught up I am guessing that there could be a temporary network congestion problem. Mining might only be 1kB/s but block propagation could take up a large chunk of network bandwidth. You could see p2pool-like problems manfesting on the main Bitcoin network, the major one being collisions of solved blocks that will result in many orphans. This wouldn't be a pool issue, though.

Still, you'd hope that someone wanting to spend $10-$15K on a mining solution wouldn't need to deal with an out of the box solutions involving 10 separate units, 10 power bricks, and a rat's nest of power and USB cables. I already have a 4U case ready (with PS, nettop and USB hub embedded inside) waiting for my SC singles. IMO having a bunch of loose singles mining away in a shared datacenter attracts too much unwanted attention.

So do people think some day we can buy SHA-256 IP cores from anybody, kind of like the 8051?

Both systems rely on trust trust to move money almost instantly based on information alone. Hawala is based on the trust between the hawaladars. Bitcoin reliens on the integrity of the blockchain and protocol. They are very similar in the sense that the trust does not depend on banks and government.

It sounds like the OP is suggesting to remove the most efficient price discovery mechanism from the market. That can't be a good thing, can it? Two people will end up paying different amounts of BTC for the same item or service.

In addition to the consistent weekly payments that I've been getting, I just noticed that a largish payment arrived in my wallet on 10/3.

I just had a Sapphire 5830 seize up on me and took some pictures while fixing it. The fans look similar to those used on the 5870 except that the mounting holes are different.

These fans are made by "firstd" and you should be able to pop them right out.


Use a pair of screwdrivers or something similar.


Do not apply any force on the fan blades as they will break easily.


Once the fan pops out the spindle and hole are exposed. You can apply lube to both the spindle and the hole.


I like Bel-Ray chain lube, a high-performance lube designed for motorcycle racing applications. This the lube is thick and sticky and the fan does not spin as freely as thin lube. However is stays on longer and I won't be surprised if it lasts longer than the original lube. I've never had to reapply this.


If the fan has developed a rattle, thick lube would help elminate this. However, most people seem to prefer light machine oil so you might feel safer using that instead.

cablepair,

Minor nitpick on the website. I've submitted 3 orders over the past several weeks and each time I still have to click a checkbox to agree to a blank Terms and Conditions page. I actually read these things so it is a little unnerving for me.

Doesn't XFX have a "double lifetime" warranty for AMD 5xxx and 6xxx series cards? Even if you bought them used if you still have the registration code you could try to register for warranty as the second owner.

I've never had a problem getting XFX to send me a replacement fans (actually they send the entire heatsink/fan assembly).

Watts per GHash/sec = Joules per GHash

Ditto.

Been nice doing business with Victor.

Are BFL FPGA Singles the only type mining hardware that is currently not compatible with p2pool?

When I upgrade mine to "SC" Singles (hopefully in 2 months) I am expecting these to work with p2pool. Is that a reasonable expectation?