Started on Eclipse, but have been adding miners to Eligius (its larger, so smoother, and apparent Luke-jr of bfgminer fame is associated with it), but have been seriously wondering about going to the other end of the spectrum and joining something like multipool.  Not sure I really want to be dealing with dozens of wallets though.  Thoughts?

Just a little status update:

Per the pools I use, my (6) Antminers are continuing to contribute at or near 2Gh each setup in a very substandard (e.g. not recommended) configuration:  They are all hanging out of various USB ports, mostly on the back of my motherboards.  I'm not happy about this, but am awaiting a new hub and couldn't bring myself to let them sit unused.

Also out-of-town, so can't see the displays.  Most frustrating!

I did put a little USB fan behind the machines so that there would at least be a bit of air flow.

Guess the good news is that they can run at 2 Gh, at least for days, without ideal cooling.  Don't recommend this though.  I'll be rigging a old PC power supply to the USB strip when I get home this evening and put it back into use.  

Longer term, I'm looking to find an old heatsink (like off the back of a some ancient electrical device) and rig something with it.  I threw away several cubic feet of them about 5 years ago after they sat unused in my basement for 10 years - naturally regretting that right now...

Quick electrical question... Looking at radial capacitors to use for filtering/stabilization and noticed the minimum working voltage on both 16V and 25V is 6.3V.  Since this is a 5V system I'm a bit concerned.  Should I be?  I was under the impression that the Voltage rating was just the limit... e.g. how good of an insulator they used.

I'm guessing that since the standard rule is to double the expected voltage on a capacitors rating, a 10V cap should be designed to work at 5V?

Don't buy a cheap one.  My first was a Inland for $17.95 from Microcenter.  Came with a 2000ma power supply.

A few things I didn't realize:

1)  If plugged into external power, the USB port power is disabled - makes sense or you could fry your motherboard port if the external power supply went zonkers.

2)  Basic math:  2W/5V = 0.4 amps, 400ma, so running 5 in the above hub would max it out - and that happens when running at stock speed

3)  Nobody wants to run at stock speed.  Not sure of the power draw running at 2Gh vs. 1.6Gh, but it is at least linear, so 400ma would become 500ma, and its probably not linear.  Thus (5) running on a 2000ma power supply would overload it.  Also 500ma is the spec limit for USB 2.0.  Doing this fried the cheap power supply that came with my Inland after an hour or so.  Have to give it credit that it lasted that long!

This unit, at $59.99 from Amazon, is recommended by many:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005NGQWL2/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My current thinking (pun intended) is to just use the USB hub for communication, and to rig external power to the ports, probably with a nice little capacitor soldered in near the connector for filtering and stabilization.  In fact, I just found some 9" USB extension cables on e-bay that look perfect - clear plastic jacket that should be removable exposing the wiring right at the connector...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150660228896?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

BTW - I'm told the red wire is the +5V power one.  That said, its definitely the outer two pins, so just check it with a voltmeter before cutting!

Thanks!  That makes sense!  I'll check as soon as I get home tomorrow evening.

Still, can't be too far behind.  That system was only built about 2 weeks ago.  But at least its something to check. 

For those wanting to play, but not in a rush...

I just ordered 250 each of the (4) R1 resistors and 1000 of the 10kohm R2 resistors.  All 1% Panasonic.

Also should have 1000 of the 10kohm R2's coming in at 5% tolerance (got a bit trigger happy on ebay).

Some of the resistors are back-ordered, but expected "soon".

PM me if you would like a few.  They are all dirt cheap in quantities, I think my total order for all 3000 came in under $50, even with shipping, but I figured somebody might like a few to play with.  I have no idea what to charge for a "set", given that postage will likely be 10X the cost of the resistors (never thought I'd offer something where I would have to figure in the cost of an envelope!).  

Keeping in the spirit of things, I guess payment in small fractions of bitcoins or litecoins would be appropriate.

Your on your own for soldering them in.  Suggestions are most welcome!

I like the idea of adding a capacitor to help stabilize the voltage.  Off to see what I can find in those next...

Cassey

Hi - sorry for cross-posting this from another thread, but got zero responses there. 

---

Received (4) more Antminer U1s in today's mail.  Had a machine all ready and tested, running 2, with free slots and a nicely cooled powered USB hub just waiting for them.

Unpacked, allowed them to warm to room temp, shutdown bfgminer on the machine and plugged them in.  Restarted bfgminer and got a segmentation fault (and a hung ssh window).

Backed down to 2 and it works fine.  Added one more and it seg faulted.

Grabbed the hub, loaded it with 5 Antminers, and plugged it into machine #2, cranked up bfgminer there, and all was well (until the hub power supply gave up)

Tried 3 on machine #3 and it had no problem.

So...

#1 Any suggestion on what might be wrong on machine #1?

#2 USB power hub (solved after reading threads for a few hours)

BTW - all three machines were freshly reinstalled with Gentoo Linux within the past couple of weeks.  All are using bfgminer 3.10.0 pulled from Github.

Thanks all! 

Cassey
Hi ho, hi ho... its off to mine we go!

Wouldn't it be nice if things just worked the way you expected them to?  Alas, that is not the world we live in!

Today's example:

Received (4) more Antminer U1s in today's mail.  Had a machine all ready and tested, running 2, with free slots and a nicely cooled powered USB hub just waiting for them.

Unpacked, allowed them to warm to room temp, shutdown bfgminer on the machine and plugged them in.  Restarted bfgminer and got a segmentation fault (and a hung ssh window).

Backed down to 2 and it works fine.  Added one more and it seg faulted.

Grabbed the hub, loaded it with 5 Antminers, and plugged it into machine #2, cranked up bfgminer there, and all was well (until the hub power supply gave up)

Tried 3 on machine #3 and it had no problem.

So...

#1 Any suggestion on what might be wrong on machine #1?

#2 (rather far down on my list) Any suggestion for a better USB hub?  This was in InlandPro 7 port.  I've confirmed it was the 2000mamp power supply that died.  Maybe just a suggestion for decent 5V power supply?

BTW - all three machines were freshly reinstalled with Gentoo Linux within the past couple of weeks.  All are using bfgminer 3.10.0 pulled from Github.

Thanks all!  Hi ho, hi ho... its off to mine we go!

Cassey

I have this wonderful code running on several machines now - just soaking up what cycles are free (sorry BOINC!).

However, on ONE of my Linux systems I'm missing something.  I'm guessing I need to install some library or another, but I'm getting:

[2014-01-22 19:39:07] workio thread create failed

Immediately upon launching mined:  ./minerd  --url=stratum+tcp://lite.wemineltc.com:3334 --userpass=Cassey_Jean_Claude.farm2cpu:pass

Any chance for a quick save here?  I know its got to be something trivial... in fact, I think I've seen it before and figured it out, but can't recall what I did.

Thanks,

Cassey

Remember -

In this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187888.0) you mentioned to Alex figuring out how to do this for Scrypt based hashes.  Did you ever post that code?

Like Alex, I'm just fooling around, but would like to make a "CPU Only" coin, perhaps modifying the litecoin fork to require even more memory per thread (512mb per thread???).

Anyhow, would love to grab your Scrypted based code if you have it available.  Did get your SHA256 one running.

Thanks,

Cassey