[1050 TH] BitMinter.com [1% PPLNS,Pays TxFees +MergedMining,Stratum,GBT,vardiff]

[FalconFour]

I'm in love with this pool as well. I've switched over 100% of my resources (and even trying to find new ones!) to this pool - previously was putting the smaller miners on BTC Guild PPS, but BTC Guild really makes me a little queasy with the total lack of community or explanation as to how their main pool maintains ~1.3 THASH/SEC (yeah, 1,300 Ghash/sec) and has NO COMMUNITY WHATSOEVER... no news page, no "FAQ", no information whatsoever, just a well-designed Account info page (which is what got me there), and a very stable rate of pay. Seeing as though I'm making unheard-of amounts of BTC off BitMinter - almost making mining *profitable* - I'm all in! My small handful of decent-powered CPUs almost makes up 2/3 the power of my single 6770 at home

I just have to put in a HUGE request for some features. BitMinter is just... ech. I dunno, unstable? Unusable? I really can't use it at home or anywhere I can think of... it doesn't save ANY information (a huge, huge, HUGE issue I have - my #1 request!), like the number of completed proofs, BTC/day calculation, or even "hiding" undesired devices! If I click "X" on a device, it re-appears the next time the client is opened. I can't just tell my roommate to "hit the big Start button" when the CPU miner is shown on the screen as well. He'd have to pick through and start the two GPUs manually. He rarely does. As a result, his computer still runs 24/7 and doesn't get any mining done. I KNEW he'd forget to start them. I can run Phoenix in a background Remote Desktop session, but that conflicts with his gaming when he does want to use it. I also can't edit clock speed from RDP, thanks to Catalyst (which brands itself Vision Engine due to a conflict of the APU/chipset and the Radeon GPU installed). Can't even get the goddamn PC to run CrossFireX like it was advertised to. What a headache on his PC... even on my server, it's easier to just double-click Phoenix.

So, feature requests, in order of priority...
- Save settings and information between sessions. Completed blocks and hidden devices among the top priority.
- Automatically run when idle. There's a little tool out there on the boards, WhileIdle, that has full source code provided, which does a decent job of detecting idle periods and starting/stopping a program during idle. Downside is, it has absolutely no interface and needs to be killed via Task Manager. Maybe use the source code as a basis for implementing it into BitMinter in Java? That would provide me with an excellent incentive to actually *use* the BitMinter client.
- Pie in the sky, but it'd be nice if BitMinter could set the GPU clock speed automatically as well. When the PC is in use for gaming, the default clock speeds (850MHz core/1200MHz memory) are most efficient. When it's mining, 950MHz core/300MHz memory clock dramatically reduces its power consumption and increases hash speed. I'd be giddy to see just a "set this clock speed" option, not even the auto-management that CGMiner provides (which usually just runs full blast anyway).
- Detect if OpenCL runtime is installed. When I first installed BitMinter on the server, it didn't produce an error, but didn't even detect the 6770 that its GUI was being displayed on - it only showed the CPU! I did some digging and found that the Catalyst installer didn't install OpenCL due to the Server 2008 R2 OS not matching its specification. I manually installed OpenCL via the MSI installer, and it worked fine. That could affect people using older drivers or incomplete installations that simply think their card isn't capable of running BitMinter.

And that would make it Awesome.

[teflone]

I agree with the above as well..

And, another block.. 15 hrs aint bad...

[Turbor]

  ha ha we're taking up speed. Faster and faster...

[DeathAndTaxes]

Go Bitminter Go.  Competition for top 10 is getting tougher, lots of impressive setups.

[jago25_98]

Thought I'd test it. But now I'm running it and the client says ~50kps, shouldn't that be reflected on the webpage, especially if there's no complaints on getting the user, pass and machine name right?

Unless it's possible that I've named the machine the same as someone elses and that could mess it up

[DrHaribo]

Thought I'd test it. But now I'm running it and the client says ~50kps, shouldn't that be reflected on the webpage, especially if there's no complaints on getting the user, pass and machine name right?

It's trying to guess your speed based on how many accepted proofs of work you have in the last minutes. With low speed this doesn't really work well. The rate you see on your computer is the correct one. When you see on your computer that you get an accepted proof of work, you should be able to see it in your account on the website as well.

If you are running the BitMinter client on a CPU, that's currently not a good idea, since the CPU-implementation in the client today is very bad. Until this is rectified it's probably better to use a miner with good CPU-capabilities like cgminer, ufasoft, cpu-miner, etc.

I should put in a warning about this to make it more visible.

If you have a graphics card that should be capable of doing this work, but it's not showing up, it's possible you don't have proper drivers, including OpenCL, installed. If so, let us know the brand and model, and we'll help you out.

And that would make it Awesome.

And awesome is what we want. Many good suggestions there. Thank you! Everything noted. Remembering settings and automation is already high up on the priority list.

[P4man]

With a nice increase in hash rate and a lowering of difficulty, it stands to reason we'd find more blocks, but this is an incredible lucky streak nonetheless! 12 blocks and only one (barely) above 60% CDF

[DeathAndTaxes]

Wait ...  I solved a second block (#29).  2 in 3 blocks.  WOOT.  I never have luck like that.

[Turbor]

Join the dark side; where everything is possible 

[P4man]

Clearly bitminter is producing fake blocks. 14 lucky blocks in a row now. DrHaribo, will you marry me ?

[teflone]

Boo yaaa... finally found a block

[DrHaribo]

Haha 

Who says you can't win the lottery every day? 

[SgtMoth]

too bad its not worth anything

[jasond1979]

Help me add another 200MHash to your system  heck I'll even do 5% donation

My system:

Windows XP 32 bit
Asus Motherboard 4GB memort  Board M4A88T-V Evo Series,  Amd Phenom 3.4 GHz processor
Two slot PCI-Express one 16x the other 4x

I have two graphic boards in the system:

PCI Express slot one Gigabyte 5850  capable of doing about 300Mhs

in slot two I have a Gigabyte 5770 capable of doing about 200 Mhs

Drivers that I'm running 6.14.10.7218  Catalyst 11.9

The problem is that when I start your program it comes up with two boards but it shows it as Cypress which is the 5850 board,  so I have to delete one board to run.   The 5770 board isn't even showing up.  For some reason Catalyst isnt seeing the Pci express slot two card.   Whats weird is that afterburner sees both boards.

If I swap locations and put the 5770 board in slot one and the 5850 in slot two.  The 5770 board comes up as two GPU miners.   This phenomena also happens in bitminer software so I know its not just your software.

I'm open to all suggestions I've gone back several versions of catalyst to see if that makes a difference.   I've also put a dummy plug on the slot two card to see if that makes a difference it doesn't.

I'm doing Bitmining for fun, not so much profit, I would like to get the other 200Mh/s on your pool if I could.   I"m doing the mining at my wifes studio where the electricity is included with the rent so its not costing extra.    Right now with the 5850 running its about 300 watts want to get it up to 400 with the 5770 running.

Thanks in advance for any help and hopefully I'll be able to throw another 500 Mh/s on the pool as soon as I get this problem fixed.   Right now the miner is at home and I'm under orders no mining.     

Jason

[DeathAndTaxes]

If nothing else works reinstall windows.

I had a hell of a time getting 3rd 5970 to work (it was Win7 though).  Tried resintalling drivers, uninstalling drivers, using driver cleaners, changing video card slots, etc.  Nothing.  1 video card or 2 video cards fine.  3 videocards shows up in device manager but Catalyst wouldn't see all the GPU.

Finally gave up after day of messing with it.  Did a clean install, installed catalyst drivers (which have OpenCL), downloaded cgminer and it worked instantly.

I think AMD drivers get confused if you change or add a lot of video cards.

[P4man]

I dont think it will ever work in XP. I could be wrong, but I think in XP you can only use 2 videocards if they are identical. In Windows 7 (and linux) you can use several entirely different cards, you can even mix nvidia and ati cards, something I know doesnt work in XP.

If this is a dedicated mining rig, Id suggest installing ubuntu (and specifically, ubuntu 11.04 and not the latest  11.10, as 11.10 installs newer ATI drivers that suffer from the 100% cpu usage bug). If you need any help setting it up  with ubuntu, just ask, its not as difficult as one thinks but if you are new to linux you will likely need some guidance setting up the amd app sdk if nothing else.

[jasond1979]

Well,  I"m not willing to buy windows seven to mine right now.  So I guess its Ubuntu it is.   Do I have to wipe my hard disk clean?  What about my wallet.dat file do I lose that or do I store it on my zip drive?

I don't want to lose my 200Mhash and since I'm not doing anything else with the computer here I go.  Is there a step by step process i follow and where is it?   

Again thanks in advance for your help hopefully within the week I'll be running a new O/S   


Jason

[P4man]

You dont have to wipe the hdd, you can install ubuntu alongside windows. Not sure if there is a step by step how to, but start by download it here:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/

(get the AMD64 desktop ISO, direct link: http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso)

Then burn it to a CD, or make a USB stick bootable. Easiest is unetbootin:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Point it to the ISO, select the USB stick and let it make the stick bootable.

Then boot the PC from the stick (may need to go in to the bios to change boot order). Select "try ubuntu" and see if it works. No reason it shouldnt (though mining wont work, you need drivers for that). Then install it by clicking the install icon. It should propose a side by side install, giving you a dual boot between XP and ubuntu.

Once thats done, install the restricted drivers (start button, hardware drivers).

After that, you will need to install OpenCL as it doesnt come with the AMD drivers 11.04 uses by default. Ill dig up the link and explain once you get this far.

oh, do make a backup of the wallet.dat file before you start, but you should make one anyway.

[FalconFour]

XP can't do GPU computations by its very nature, it's a 10-year-old platform designed to work on old Pentium IIIs with 3D "accelerator" cards. It's utter shit for anything high performance these days. It wasn't even designed for multiple CPUs (that was patched together with later service packs, really). Windows 7 comes with nearly everything these days... shouldn't be too hard to find?

Anyway, I was just stopping by to whinebitchcomplain and smoke a bowl about the current nearly-2-day-long block we're dealing with right now, blugh. With how low Bitcoin's value dropped over the weekend... just... WOW! Nobody to blame kinda makes for moot conversation though

[conspirosphere.tk]

Shut up and mine. :-D
At this price I am already mining at a loss, but I am doing it anyway to keep the house warm (and fuzzy), and because I am a believer, due to the potential (still largely unrecognized) of keeping and moving a convenient asset under the evil gov't radar screen, and because I expect an euro and dollar crash in the medium term that will make the bitcoin price crash seem like an hiccup.

I was just stopping by to whinebitchcomplain and smoke a bowl about the current nearly-2-day-long block we're dealing with right now, blugh. With how low Bitcoin's value dropped over the weekend... just... WOW! Nobody to blame kinda makes for moot conversation though