Super basic questions about your mining experience...

[matthew1820]

I'm learning how to run mining software just to gain some experience with it. Right now I'm CPU mining Dash at a very low hash rate, while working on bringing my GPU online next. I've never used any of this tech before... wallets, miners, anything. I've never even done a crypto transaction, so it's all new to me.

So, I'm connected to a p2pool node with my CPU miner churning out a scorching ~130 kH/s from 3 of 4 cores.  

I get a lot of these:

Code:

[2015-04-03 17:38:39] Stratum detected new block

I get a few of these per minute:

Code:

[2015-04-03 17:39:36] accepted: 168/169 (99.41%), 132.47 khash/s (yay!!!)

And I occasionally get one of these:

Code:

[2015-04-03 17:45:28] Stratum connection timed out
[2015-04-03 17:45:28] Stratum connection interrupted

It's been 4 days so far and, as expected, there've been no payouts. Looking at other miners in the pool with similar hash rates, it could easily be a couple of weeks before I score anything, if I do at all.

I'm curious, though, about a few things:  

How will I know if I am paid? Does the miner alert me to that fact? Will my wallet simply update as coin goes into the receiving address? Is there anything else I need to do to allow it to happen?

Is there anything I can do (besides waiting and hoping or adding more hash rate!) to make sure my configuration is working? How long do I give it (at this ridiculously low hash rate) before I decide it's broken?

Is there actually a minimum hash rate below which the pool will never pay anything?

I'm simply piecing together the minimum of mining rigs from odds and ends I've got laying around, with no expectation of profit. If I can "earn" a few millicoins in exchange for $20-30 worth of extra electricity, it'll be a fair exchange for the education I'm getting.

Those of you who jumped right in with decent hardware already know the answers to these questions, since you didn't have to wait very long to see results. If you could humor me by sharing your experience, I'd be grateful.  

M.

[djm34]

I'm learning how to run mining software just to gain some experience with it. Right now I'm CPU mining Dash at a very low hash rate, while working on bringing my GPU online next. I've never used any of this tech before... wallets, miners, anything. I've never even done a crypto transaction, so it's all new to me.

So, I'm connected to a p2pool node with my CPU miner churning out a scorching ~130 kH/s from 3 of 4 cores. 

the total hashrate for darkcoin (dash) is at the minimum  1000000times bigger than your hashrate.... so your payout over a few hours of running should be close to zero.

The better thing for the moment is to run on an onther algo

[matthew1820]

So, I'm connected to a p2pool node with my CPU miner churning out a scorching ~130 kH/s from 3 of 4 cores. 

the total hashrate for darkcoin (dash) is at the minimum  1000000times bigger than your hashrate.... so your payout over a few hours of running should be close to zero.

The better thing for the moment is to run on another algo

Thanks for the comment, djm!

Looking at blocks recently solved by p2pool I see payouts in the generation transactions as small as .00004 Dash, which, if I have the orders of magnitude right, correspond to the low 10's of kH/s, proportionately, though that's not how it actually works...

So, is it right to say that it's not a mathematical impossibility to get paid, it just becomes extremely unlikely that a share you solve that's accepted by the pool will be included in the part of the share-chain that gets counted when a block goes public?

In other words, you're phrasing, "over a few hours of running," is key. With the hashrate and difficulty as high as they are, the number of shares included in the payout window will shrink to a few hours-worth?

So, rather than waiting for lightning to strike, what do you suggest? Which coin, or how to select one? Or would a Dash pool with a different payout scheme work better? Any specifics?

Also, I've read about a test network. Would that let me demonstrate that my setup is functioning?

Thank you.

M.