First, though the word 'rust' is commonly used to indicate the phrase 'iron rust', it actually refers to any film or coating on the surface of a metal caused by oxidation, and copper oxide certainly counts.

Second, modern pennies are made of zinc, not tin.

And now, back to your thread.  In this week's episode: random people accuse the op of blatantly impossible scheming, and in a dramatic turn of events, it turns out that the op has actually just continued running the pool to the best of their abilities.  Please stay tuned for this riveting episode of: BITCOIN TALK.

Will accept bitcoins and offers.  Please contact through ebay as I am not on the forums much these days.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Sapphire-ATI-Radeon-HD-5850-1G-GDDR5-PCI-E-/220872066145?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item336d004461

Thank you.
- Thor

I refuse to do this:

http://xkcd.com/386/

Believe what you will.

I am really sick of people referring to pool hopping as "cheating" or "hurting the pool" or "stealing other miners' money".  It's not. 

The only purposes I can think of for mining in a pool is to reduce your personal variance, and/or features the pool offers to help monitor your workers (allowing you to reduce your variance further).  The larger the pool is (higher hash rate) the lower your variance should be.

A higher hashrate for any portion of a block reduces your variance further and keeps your expected payout per minute of mining exactly the same.  In trying to refute this, please run some numbers on length of round, hashrate for different portions of it, and number of shares submitted.  If they hop out after some amount of time, that round is still statistically more likely to be over sooner, because more hashes were introduced earlier.  As Eleuthria said a few posts up, this is not to say that people who are skillfully pool hopping aren't making more than they would just sitting in one pool (because they should be, or they're doing it wrong).  It is just to say that in doing so they are helping you to reduce your variance as well.  You can be jealous of their coding skill if you like, but call it that rather than an "attack" or "ripping you off".

Also, hopping with smaller pools is just as effective as hopping with larger ones, it just increases your variance in exactly the same way as mining in said pool full time would.

For all the people about to say or who have already said: "I havn't read this whole thread but..."

First: if you go to #btcguild on freenode, typically the topic line will answer what you're about to ask/suggest

Second:  here is the current topic line: The official channel of BTC Guild (www.btcguild.com). We have been/are being DDoS'd.  There is no ETA yet for the pools coming back, but they will.  No, CloudFlare would not solve this.  No, we're not using EC2 unless you feel like paying for it.  Round Robin DNS is a sin against humanity.  No, your IPtables script will not help.  A VPS cannot host a pool.  I need a hug =(

Third:  The DDoS  started within an hour of a botnet being banned from the pool, it is overwhelmingly likely that it is out of spite, rather than profit motive from [insert the person you think might profit here].  Especially seeing as how [Tycho, Slush, dbitcoin, etc]  All have much more to gain by having a good reputation in the community than by DDoSing another pool.

Fourth:  Why do I even still read this thread?

PM sent.

I am being cautious until some third party escrow or reputation can be established, and suggest others do the same, but am interested in the purchase IF this is legit.

It is possible, though a lot of cards aren't stable.

I have 3 of my 5850s running at ~405 Mh/s, most of them are closer to 360 - 375.  1000Mhz core clock and up gives you very close to 400Mh/s.

Not saying this particular card will or not, just that some can.

This seems like a good deal, and a solid business plan, my main question is:  How do you define or determine when the rig has "paid for itself" what price/bitcoin are you using to calculate that?

Also, would it be possible, once the rig has paid for itself, to have it shipped to the purchaser?

Thank you for your anticipated responses.

I have found confirmations that with BIOS version F13J 58xx and 69xx series cards definitely work.  You could try that.

Also, I would try re-flashing your video card's bios as well, in case your other test computer is just a little more forgiving of some minor problem in it.

I'm not quite sure what causes the issue, but on 2 of my rigs booting from, and writing to the USB stick works, but on one of them it mounts the USB as read-only, so I needed a FAT32 partition on the harddrive.

Absolutely valid criticism, not a mistake I would normally make in writing, but I had just finished a 40 hour day of work.  Thanks for the comments. edited original post for a small factual correction.

Hello all,

as of 2 minutes ago (from starting to write this), I have finally managed to backup, flash, and test an AMD/ATI card bios without access to a windows system.  This procedure uses only free software.  I am fairly positive this will work across most ATI/AMD cards, I will be doing more extensive testing tomorrow, but here is the procedure.  so far tested on one Sapphire 5850 with absolutely no problems.

EDIT: works on some machines without a FAT32 partition on the hard drive, in order to solve some problems on one of my machines, I did need a FAT32 partition though.

System:
AMD/ATI card(s)
Ubuntu 10.10
Small FAT32 partition on hard drive
USB stick (500mb+ partition)
internet connection

I have paraphrased some portions of this tutorial from: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11746.0 -- a very informative post on flashing in linux.

1)  DON'T BREAK YOUR VIDEO CARD.  THIS IS ALL INSANELY DANGEROUS TO YOUR HARDWARE.

2) add http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ as a repository
then
>sudo apt-get install unetbootin syslinux winetricks wine

3) use utility of your choice to make a bootable FAT32 partition on your USB stick and format it.... what I did was:
> sudo cfdisk /dev/sdc    --- of course, replace sdc with your usb stick's device
deleted all partitions and made one Win95 FAT32 ( 0C  -- that is the number 12 in hex) remember to make it bootable
then mount sdc1 wherever you like
> sudo mkdosfs -F32 /dev/sdc1

4) go to Applications>System Tools>UNetbootin

5) select FreeDOS for the distribution and make sure your usb stick is selected at the bottom then click "ok"

6) download
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1962/TechPowerUp_Radeon_Bios_Editor_v1.28.html
and
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1968/ATIFlash%203.86.html
and make a directory to do all of this flashy work in, and move those files there

7)
>winetricks vb6run

8 ) unzip atiflash

9) enter the atiflash directory and make the following files.  One line per GPU that you have, and increment the numbers by one for each GPU.  These are examples are for four GPUS:

BACKUP.BAT
atiflash -s 0 backup0.rom
atiflash -s 1 backup1.rom
atiflash -s 2 backup2.rom
atiflash -s 3 backup3.rom


RESTORE.BAT
atiflash -f -p 0 backup0.rom
atiflash -f -p 1 backup1.rom
atiflash -f -p 2 backup2.rom
atiflash -f -p 3 backup3.rom


FLASH0.BAT
atiflash -f -p 0 bios0.rom


FLASH1.BAT
atiflash -f -p 1 bios1.rom


FLASH2.BAT
atiflash -f -p 2 bios2.rom


FLASH3.BAT
atiflash -f -p 3 bios3.rom

10) copy atiflash.exe and all of the .bat files you have just created to your USB stick or a FAT32 partition on your harddrive.

11)
>sudo cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk YOUR_USB_MOUNTPOINT

12) boot from the USB stick.  Choose "FreeDOS LiveCD" from the boot loader -- NOTE: your USB stick may be detected as a hard drive, or a removable disk, mine switched between the two a few times.

13) check drive letters until you find the one the has the .bat files and atiflash.exe -- usually d:

14)
>backup

15)
>dir
-- look for backup0.rom -- it should be more the 0 bytes .. should be 128 kilobytesish  If it is you have been successful, if it is 0 bytes than you likely did not have write permission, which is a problem I struggled with for quite a while until I finally made a FAT32 partition on my actual harddrive and that solved my issue.

16) reboot into linux

17) copy BACKUP*.ROM into whatever folder you're using to store all of this flashy stuff.

18) in a terminal navigate to the directory that you downloaded RBE into and then execute
> wine RBE_128.exe

19) click "load bios", navigate to wherever your .ROM is now saved

20) edit the bios to your heart's content, the main option you'll be wanting to change is in the "additional features" tab, where you can edit the allowable maximum clock speeds that other programs (like aticonfig) can set.

21) save the bios as bios0.rom and repeat for each GPU you backed up, and also copy them to your FAT32 partition.

22) reboot to your USB stick in FreeDOS Live CD again. and navigate to the drive where all your updated bioses are stored.

23) execute each flash#.bat that you want to update.

24) DO NOT let the computer get interupted while updating the bioses.  bad things can happen.

25) reboot.  If anything doesn't work properly boot from the USB stick and run restore to hopefully fix it.

I accept no responsibility for anything that goes terribly wrong when you try to follow these directions, but I hope people find it useful.

I will come back and edit this for readability as I get more experience with the process and time to do so.  I will also do my best to answer any questions that anyone might have, though I make no guarantees.

Anyone who wants to pay and/or donate for the work I did developing this, will be very appreciated.
1FR7JEkZah3yYffvUFcivZaN8zZnfwXs4E

Thank you, and I hope this has been helpful.

Couldn't you almost instantly have a "non-trivial" amount of the network converted by just getting [Tycho] and Slush (and maybe a couple other 500GH/s + pools) to have committed to being updated? And perhaps check with Vladimir or a couple of the other big solo players?

With how centralized people have chosen to have mining be, I think it should make this sort of update quite simple.

Also, on a side note, I would personally like to see the ability to include smaller transactions in general included in a release very soon (at least 3 decimal places, preferably 4 especially if that is the transaction fee limit.  I think one should be able to see and work with those fractions of coins in other ways as well if they can be used for fees.)

That's my .0005 BTC.

pm sent.

FIRST: backup your wallet.dat before anything goes wrong.

2 things I would try:

1) downgrade to whatever version of bitcoin you had before, and see if that corrects any problems.

2) If overclocked, reduce the core clock speed of your GPU(s) and see if that corrects the problem.  Also make sure you're still connecting to the correct host.

Those are my immediate first two thoughts.




167vtW32VZ6WedqnFYVftYaSfcKibBeVHp

I have just received several of these cables and seem to be running into a problem not described anywhere else here.

If I have a card plugged into an adapted x1 ->x16 cable (plugging the extender into an x16 slot) the computer refuses to boot at all.  Using a combination of sapphire 5850s and 5870s on a Crosshair IV Formula motherboard.  This happens even if I am only plugging in one of the cards that works when plugged straight into the motherboard, so I am confident it isn't any sort of ATX power issue.  I have tried with, and without, the pins shorted as shown in many of the diagrams here.

I appreciate any help or insight anyone here may be able to offer.

Thank you.

I feel like an idiot responding to this at all as this has been addressed at least dozens, if not hundreds of times before on these forums but...

There is NO duplication of work.  None at all. Every single worker is already working on it's own unique little piece of the puzzle.

Also:  why is everyone always trying to find some way that centralizing everything would make it "better"?  All of bitcoin's strengths are in it being decentralized and peer-to-peer.

I am a blacksmith and take great issue with any railroad spikes being referred to as "high carbon".  They simply are not.

What the railroads refer to as "high carbon steel" spikes are simply slightly higher carbon than the standard spikes. The vast majority of railroad spike manufacturers mean 1020 steel when they say "high carbon".  A very few go up to 1030 which is still very mild steel, and they usually don't use makers marks any more, so knowing whether you have a 1020 or a 1030 requires very expensive carbon content testing.

A decent all purpose knife is at least XX50, and fine blades are XX75 - XX90 or special tool steels.

I make railroad spike knives as well, but would never sell them for ~$80, and would never claim they were high carbon, though I always use HC spikes to make the blades with, and use a superquench or brine solution in order to make them as decent a blade as possible.  These are mostly art pieces, and if you're expecting a top notch hand forged blade, you will be disappointed.

I do not intend to derail this thread, and am glad that people are selling more things for bitcoins, but I do not like people being misled or lied to within the context of one of my passions.

I would like to confirm that after these past few days, Vitsum did replace the 2btc that seem to have vanished into mybitcoin's deep pockets.

There have been many problems with this game.  I recommend people not send their money.