Basic computer for Bitcoin networking (no mining)?

[alez]

Hi,

I'm new to both bitcoin and these forums, so hi everyone and I hope to enjoy it here

I like the idea of contributing to the network by running Bitcoin-Qt or similar software on whatever computer I keep on and online. I haven't got any computer that I'm willing to leave on all the time, and so I'm thinking maybe I could get some minimal thing to run bitcoind or whatever alternatives I may not be aware of, with enough power to "check and relay transactions" (as per http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet ) but little enough that fan cooling isn't needed thus avoiding undesirable noise, also enough storage space to hold the database for a few years to come, but in solid state form (say USB flash disk or similar) since hard disks generate undesirable noise and use more power.

I'm new enough to all this that I don't have a clue about others' efforts on the topic of dedicated hardware to do this, but first thing that comes to mind is there are all sorts of these ARM mini computers running Linux or Android. There's this Raspberry Pi thing, and then there's these Android USB stick mini computers that you take with you and connect to a TV set to watch multimedia content. From a hardware perspective, ideally I'd like an enclosure, so the multimedia mini computer would be more appealing, but then I'd also like a LAN port, which I'm not sure if these have. From a software perspective, I'm not sure if bitcoind has been compiled for either platform.

Any thoughts or pointers would be appreciated

Cheers,

Alex

[SolidSnke]

just out of curiousness... why would you want to do this? There is no real benefit to it and your only burning power ... 

[alez]

just out of curiousness... why would you want to do this? There is no real benefit to it and your only burning power ... 

I'm a complete newbie, so it's likely that I got the whole thing wrong and this dedicated hardware idea is rubbish. That said, my understanding is that simply running the Bitcoin software contributes to Bitcoin. In fact I thought that, by definition, the bitcoin network as such can consist of many of us doing that (that's to achieve a live network for existing coins, i.e. leaving mining aside, which is of course is needed to create new coins). I got this idea from:

"Do you have a computer that you keep switched on all the time, that's connected to the Internet? You can help the community by simply running the original Bitcoin client on it. The original client is more resource intensive and will take a complete day to synchronize. After that your computer will contribute to the network by checking and relaying transactions." --Source

"Be the network
You can join the Bitcoin network by keeping the original software running on your computer. You can also do some Bitcoin mining to make the network more secure by helping to process transactions." --Source

I'm Spanish. My country is going through very difficult times (I'm talking about real stories by real people with real families). I partly blame the financial lobbies for what people here are going through. I believe that technology configures society (I first read about this very idea on a book by E. F. Schumacher, whose ideas I dig). I think Bitcoin has the potential to stop this wrongdoing. From moral grounds, I have a personal interest to see Bitcoin succeed.

Any of this makes sense?

Cheers,

Alex

[Rex_Heston]

A noble cause, but since Bitcoin has such a huge network already started, I say just run the client when you use the computer and don't go the dedicated hardware route. That's just wasting your money on the power to run the system. I could only advise it if the Bitcoin network were in critical need of confirmation nodes.

[John (John K.)]

Thank you for the noble efforts of helping the Bitcoin network. You can help by simply running the original Bitcoin-QT client - even running it in a cheap (or free) EC2 instance would help. I've whitelisted you to post elsewhere. (hint: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0)

Welcome! 

[singula]

If you run the client after not running it for a day or so, it'll synchronize pretty quickly, usually within few minutes.

So if this is good enough for you, just set up bitcoin client to start when your computer starts and it should be "close enough" - depending on your computer uage patterns it will run probably most of th day anyway

[alez]

A noble cause, but since Bitcoin has such a huge network already started, I say just run the client when you use the computer and don't go the dedicated hardware route. That's just wasting your money on the power to run the system. I could only advise it if the Bitcoin network were in critical need of confirmation nodes.

OK, point taken, thanks

Yet, "huge" can prove tiny sometimes. To give a recent example, one would think that the current rate of transactions ("rate" as in "pace") and the total amount of bitcoins in presently existence are "huge" enough to provide good stability to the system, yet we've seen deep fluctuations recently... It's all relative I suppose.

But yeah, I'd agree that the profile for which it makes the most sense running a node would be that of whatever business (say a shop) which actually uses bitcoins for transactions all the time, not some guy doing it just because

[alez]

Thank you for the noble efforts of helping the Bitcoin network. You can help by simply running the original Bitcoin-QT client - even running it in a cheap (or free) EC2 instance would help. I've whitelisted you to post elsewhere. (hint: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0)

Welcome! 

Thanks for the welcome and encouragement. I suppose this very thread could be moved to a more relevant subforum (please feel free to do it), then again, being so new to this all, I'm not quite sure the ideas here can be of general interest at all, or (more likely) they are just newbie random noise

If you run the client after not running it for a day or so, it'll synchronize pretty quickly, usually within few minutes.

So if this is good enough for you, just set up bitcoin client to start when your computer starts and it should be "close enough" - depending on your computer uage patterns it will run probably most of th day anyway

Cheers, actually that's what I'm doing at present, but my usage is around 2-4 hours a day...