Latest posts of: nelisky

Quote from: broken on March 06, 2012, 12:08:39 PM

Lets assume a diff=650 is worth something like ~0.002 BTC

Person A has default settings (diff~650) and starts hashing.
Person A finds 10 shares with diff > 650 (eg. 9x ~650 and one share ~13000) in 24h
There is one block found just now.
Person A get a payout of 0.02 BTC.

9*650 + 1x130000 = 18850
18850 / 650 = 29
29 * 0.002 = 0.058

Why does Person A get 0.02?

Quote from: broken on March 06, 2012, 08:54:11 AM

Can someone explain, how the new "miners can volunteer to raise their share difficulty"-protocol change works? I don't understand how cheating is prevented.

Can't you just mine in secret and for example find a difficulty 1000 share, and then connect to the p2pool network and send: "hey, my address is 1abcsomething and I'm mining difficulty 1000 and here is a share"? And then afterwards mine in secret a difficulty 650 share and connect to the p2pool network and send: "My address is 1xyzsomethingdifferent and I'm mining difficulty 650 and here is a share"?

How can you define a difficulty in advance, if you can simply reconnect with a new identity?

I'm sure I'm missing something here. Please enlighten me

How would that be different from connecting as 1abcsomething, saying "I'm mining at difficulty 1" and then submitting the diff=650 and diff=1000 shares? Doesn't p2pool take the actual share difficulty into account when calculating payouts?

Quote from: TheSeven on March 06, 2012, 09:39:29 AM

They do, however, offload the polling work to the USB host controller hardware. Currently there's a major CPU hit from that.

While that is true, and I guess it would be simple enough to add an interrupt transfer to signal the existence of a golden nonce to process, you would stop fetching the error rate data which, I believe, isn't something you could easily handle on the uC. And since we ztex boards allow for user controlled frequency scaling, this data is VERY important.

Is there a way to stop the FPGA from mining without forcing a reconfigure to get it going again? The use case being many boards loosing network connectivity which will make them go round and round on the same data while waiting for new work, which is wasted electricity.

I have updated https://github.com/nelisky/Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner/tree/ztex with high speed FPGA configuration (which appears to be just as slow from my tests) and multi device hotplug support, though I only tested with my single board. Anyone having multiple ztex boards and wanting to experiment with MPBM, please give this a try and let me know.

Quote from: kano on March 04, 2012, 12:53:18 AM

Weeks?
It's not a days work.
OK I'll do it tomorrow.

Edit: obviously since I have no ztex someone is gonna have to try the code I write.
It will be in my git when I do it. So you'll have to trust cloning and compiling from me Tongue

Preferably someone who can visit #cgminer Freenode IRC
I'll post here when I've done it - so if you or anyone else has a ztex then respond here if you will IRC and want to test it.
(Not doing it today, finally properly testing the Icarus API code and fixing a few error message mistakes)

I didn't mean finish in weeks... C'mon, a little credit here, I code for a living.

Can not tell if you are serious, but I can help both in testing and in developing if you are.

Quote from: ckolivas on March 03, 2012, 11:03:30 PM

Quote from: nelisky on March 03, 2012, 12:41:53 PM

Is anyone already doing ztex boards support for cgminer? I'm not sure about timeframes but I'm considering taking a stab at it seeing as I have the protocol "fresh" in my mind from the initial implementation for MPBM, but I'd hate to start it just to find out someone else is almost done with it

No one has started, but see here: http://bountychest.com/bountychest/ztex-support-for-cgminer/

I see there are already some donations done towards that bounty and I really don't want to step in anybody's toes. If I do.decide to jump into this I'll try to be as public about it as possible and I hope anybody else tackling the same problem does the same.

Ztex already proposed sending a board for free for this purpose, which I will not be requesting so I ask again: anyone thinking of taking the challenge in the next couple of weeks?

https://github.com/nelisky/Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner/tree/ztex

This is a very crude first attempt, many things are still missing, the devices need to be preflashed and the bitstreams must match the firmware. Only one device is supported (it does filter by serial, but then uses only the first device found) and the freq change algorithm from the error rate is much, much simpler than ztex's, and I only implemented the low speed FPGA config so far.

Next step would be multiple device suport but as I only have one currently I'm not going to blindly implement that. I might add to the code base to support more of ztex's original java source goodies ported to python, like the high speed config, but I'll be happy to pass that anyone else wanting to lend a hand.

Have fun (I'm mining on p2pool with my single ztex using this code right now).

Quote from: antirack on March 03, 2012, 03:40:04 AM

Job well done to get this kick started! I have downloaded your tree and tried to get it to work to no avail. It seems the fact that I am using Python 3.2.2 _may_ be the problem, since "invisible syntax" is no longer allowed with version 3. Or possibly it's because I am on Windows.

Code:

  File "C:\Users\master\Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner\worker\fpgamining\ztexdev.py", line 187
    self.checkCapability("CAPABILITY_FPGA");
                                           ^
TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation

As mentioned above, I am new to many things here, including Java and Python development. At first I copy and pasted your changes and files manually into my miner files, then I installed github to clone the complete tree. Same result. I also ran into some problems finding the modules, but adding the import statement (for ztexdev with path) into ztexworker.py fixed that.

I suggest to post this on the Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner thread as well, makes more sens to continue this over there without creating unnecessary clutter over here.

On a more positive sidenote, I have two more ZTEX 1.15x in the mail Wink

Thanks for spotting these, I have been lazy and copied much of the code from Ztex Java and then adapted in place, leaving some cruft behind. My branch has been updated with those removed.

But I'm confused, did you get it working at all? I don't yet do python 3 (too much critical code that breaks so it will not be an easy migration) but I might start using it for this

Quote from: antirack on March 02, 2012, 06:00:37 AM

It currently works with Icarus, X6500 and GPUs. It would be great if somebody could create a worker (or modify an existing worker) for the ZTEX board, do you have any pointers how to get started on this?

Quote from: ztex on March 02, 2012, 10:56:00 AM

There is an Open Source discount program: http://www.ztex.de/os_discount_program.e.html

For the implementation of ZTEX FPGA Board support for other Open Source bitcoin mining software I'm willing to give up to 100% OS discount for a single board.

But this is a lot of work because the ZTEX FPGA boards are more complex then competitor boards. Not just BTCMiner needs to be ported (host software is about 1800 lines) also a part of the SDK (host API is about 4700 lines) needs to be rewritten if another language than Java is used.

That is why I considered using MPBM. I already control my single ztex board using python, but lack firmware config atm. There are a lot of safety checks and code handling libusb oddities in ztex's sources that I'm completely ignoring, but need to go in to make this feature complete.

Quote from: antirack on March 02, 2012, 06:00:37 AM

I've been testing the Modular Python Bitcoin Miner for a few days and it seems to work very well for a first version. It also has a few nice design features, such as backup pools and it supports different devices at the same time. While I haven't ever worked with Python before, I see it's very simple to modify and add support for new devices. It has a few clear advantages over Java (ie. Xiangfu is running MPBM on his home router).

It currently works with Icarus, X6500 and GPUs. It would be great if somebody could create a worker (or modify an existing worker) for the ZTEX board, do you have any pointers how to get started on this?

I am going to port ztex board support to python for my own egocentric needs but I will give supporting the MPBM a stab. This is, of course, something I do with my spare time, and that mythical creature "parco tempus" has been making itself almost extinct as of late... So if someone else has started on this I'll be glad to help with what I already have, but I'm not yet making my code public as it would probably take me more time explaining than fixing and cleaning.

I anyone is doing this too let me know and I'll help in any way I can.

Quote from: Littleshop on February 29, 2012, 09:44:41 PM

Quote from: nelisky on February 29, 2012, 04:43:03 PM

I'm willing to bet it's the fact you are trying to sell an iphone. About, I don't know, 100% of the iphone deals proposed here ended up being scams...

I sold one and it was not a scam, but you are right. MOST, maybe even 80% of the attempted sales have been scams.

Heh, even knowing exactly 74% of the statistics are made up on the spot, I still apologize for not making up a more accurate one

Quote from: prophexy on February 29, 2012, 04:41:35 PM

Hehehe
Hohoho
Hahaha
Kekeke
--

Anyhow, may I ask out of curiosity, what is so funny? Wink

I'm willing to bet it's the fact you are trying to sell an iphone. About, I don't know, 100% of the iphone deals proposed here ended up being scams...

I would be willing to try and buy it just so we could get a single iphone / ipad actually traded on the forum!

But I'm abroad and that's verizon locked, right? I guess I'll let someone else be the guinea pig. Still, a word of advice if you seriously want to sell this here; escrow! Will you accept escrow? I can do that for no fee, and I'm sure many others will volunteer too.

Quote from: imsaguy on February 28, 2012, 08:19:33 PM

Quote from: nelisky on February 28, 2012, 06:44:42 PM

shakaru informed me that it will be $17+ to ship, and 10 btc is currently under $50. While it doesn't make sense to outbid myself it is still a bargain and for a good cause, so 14 btc is my bid.

If you need a justification to bid 14btc, then I bid 13 btc.

Thank you! now I feel much better about it.

shakaru informed me that it will be $17+ to ship, and 10 btc is currently under $50. While it doesn't make sense to outbid myself it is still a bargain and for a good cause, so 14 btc is my bid.

I also don't *need* a switch but one cannot have too many of those, right? 10 coins shipped to Europe, to open up the bidding.