BitCoin newcomer with mining questions...

[TomTomBC]

Hey all,

I recently stumbled on bitcoin and found it to be really interesting. I tried mining with my cpu and well... 1kh/s would get me a block in an estimated 6 years, so that alone would be stupid. I then looked into using my GPU to mine, which i heard was really more efficient. I have been searching and i dont know how exactly to get my graphics card to do this work for me, so I was wondering if anybody could steer me in the right direction?

Just some info on the card/my comp: (Yeah i have a crappy laptop used mostly for school/diablo 2 =D)

Laptop w/ Win Vista
Mobile Intel
945 Express Chipset Family
GPU: i945GME
DirectX Support: 9.0

Yeah if you need any other info on my computer specs just say so, i dont really want to list EVERYthing lol.

Also, i would like to know how to use my GPU (CPU if it wont work) with a mining pool, most specifically deepbit.net . I already have an account there.

PS: If you help me out and I end up actually getting some BTC's, i will be sure to drop you a donation

Thanks!

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[Cryptoman]

In order to use your GPU for mining, it must be supported by OpenCL or CUDA, and I don't believe yours is supported by either.  Your only option would be using the CPU.  Give puddinpop's RPC miner a try (there's a thread in this section).  It should work fine with deepbit.net. 

[Cryptoman]

I just tested it out for you.  Here's the command line syntax for using puddinpop's miner with deepbit.net:

C:\puddinpop>rpcminer-cpu -url=deepbit.net:8332 -user=email@domain.com -password=xxxxxxxx

Of course, substitute your own email and password.

Now excuse me while I reboot back into Linux... 

[theGECK]

I strongly recommend trying out the GUI for the poclbm miner, http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0. Makes it simple for a newcomer to use a GPU to mine bitcoin without going into the command line. I haven't tested it with Tycho's pool, but since he recommends m0chmil's miner on the homepage, it should work fine.

[Neereus]

Assuming you meant 1000kh/s (1Mh/s), even in a pool I wouldn't expect to much. A full bit coin will probably take over a month (with fairly constant mining).

[TomTomBC]

Assuming you meant 1000kh/s (1Mh/s), even in a pool I wouldn't expect to much. A full bit coin will probably take over a month (with fairly constant mining).

Oh yeah hahaha I ment to say 1mh/s. And i guess my cpu was doing something else then because now its twice that, but im doing this mostly for the research aspect; the whole idea kinda blew my mind into millions of bits.

I strongly recommend trying out the GUI for the poclbm miner, http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0. Makes it simple for a newcomer to use a GPU to mine bitcoin without going into the command line. I haven't tested it with Tycho's pool, but since he recommends m0chmil's miner on the homepage, it should work fine.

Does that work with a CPU? or are you saying that my card will work with that?

Thanks again all

[theGECK]

I just realized that you would only be CPU mining. The GUI that I recommended may not work for you then, and it won't be as efficient as others. I'd go with ufasoft's if you're CPU mining, it seems to be the best for Intel CPU. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3486.0

However, CPU mining won't get you very much, but probably better than what Neerus is saying. I'm averaging about .025/BTC/day/MHash/s. So, if you take whatever MHash/s you get off of your miner and multiply it by .025, it will be a good estimation of your payout at the last difficulty. I don't know what I'll be averaging with the new difficulty, but it will probably be closer to .015 or .01.

With Ufasoft's miner, I get ~6.5MHash/s. If I take that *30*.025, that would mean that I had been mining about 4.875 BTC each month with the CPU. With the new difficulty, that will probably drop to just under 3 BTC/month. Just some food for thought.

[TomTomBC]

God I am bad at this... lol

So yeah I open the .exe and a command prompt pops up and dissapears instantly, and nothing else. What am I doing wrong?

Once again, thanks for the support.

[Neereus]

With your formula and his first mentioned rate of 1Mh/s that would be (1 * 30 * .025) = .75 BTC. So I wasn't far off saying Over a month.  

the whole idea kinda blew my mind into millions of bits.

Same here, cryptology is a hobby of mine, so when I first heard of "cryptocurrency", I was sold.

God I am bad at this... lol

So yeah I open the .exe and a command prompt pops up and dissapears instantly, and nothing else. What am I doing wrong?

Once again, thanks for the support.

You will need to pass it parameters. Easiest way I found was a batch file.

In a batch file (normal text file with extension .bat)
Add something like this:

cd "folder where program is"   [Example: "C:\BitCoinMiner\"]
minername.exe --url http://deepbit.net:8332 --username = "email" --password = "password"


Username and password will depend on the miner you use.

Edit: Actually all the parameters will depend on what miner you are using.

Edit 2:

Assuming you are using the one theGECK linked use:
bitcoin-miner.exe -o http://deepbit.net:8332 -u email -p password -t 1

Recommend the -t 1 so you don't over heat. lol

[theGECK]

With your formula and his first mentioned rate of 1Mh/s that would be (1 * 30 * .025) = .75 BTC. So I wasn't far off saying Over a month.  

Yup. I should stop posting when tired-I miss simple things like that. And when I'm at work solving network issues, that's not a good time to be checking the boards either.

[TomTomBC]

Hey theGECK, since you mentioned using ufasoft's miner, could you explain to me how to edit the  .bat file for that specific program?

A good rule is to try and explain like you are talking to a 4 year old. I probably have the same knowledge of running programs as a 4 year old.

also, nice name (lol not sure why i didnt realize this till now).  Fallout FTW!

EDIT: Do you need to have the original bitcoin client running at the same time?

[Neereus]

For the one theGECK posted:

In the folder where your miner is make a new text file by right clicking in the folder, going to new, text document.
Open the text document and type:
bitcoin-miner.exe -o http://deepbit.net:8332 -u email -p password -t 1
where email and password is your email and password you used for deepbit.
In the text file, go to file, save as, and name it bitminer.bat.
Make sure you select "all files" instead of "text document" on the drop down menu.
Close the text editor.
Double click on the .bat file.

That should work.

Do you need to have the original bitcoin client running at the same time?

And no, as long as you are not doing your own mining, you don't need to have it open.

[TomTomBC]

I could... actually understand that one
off to do this now!!!

Thanks neereus, if this goes as planned, i will be contributing to your robot fund!


EDIT: I think it did work!! The cmd prompt window is now displaying my mh/s which is about 3/2 faster than what it was on the normal client.  I'm not sure if it has any effect on my account at deepbit though... after about 5 min nothing has changed, no shares, no BTC, no mh/s, not even a percentage, is this normal? does this usually take longer to update?

[Ricochet]

On DeepBit you'll only notice an immediate change if you're in PayPerShare mode, and that'll happen when you see the CPU client submit a valid share.  If you're in Proportional mode, you won't see any real change on the DeepBit site until the pool finds the next block, and then your balance will be updated (possibly delayed by an hour).

At your speeds I'd come back in an hour or two to see if you've generated any shares.  Five minutes isn't usually enough time.

[Neereus]

Glad it worked! (It does indeed seems to have)

It will take a while, how pool mining works is by shares.
With the miner you are using it will every so often pop up with

Date Time Accepted (where date and time is the date and time it popped up)

When you get an accepted message, then you have successfully added a share to your account.

If you are running a proportional worker (settings in your deepbit account) then you wont see anything until a block is found by the group. Which it seems to be between 5-20 hours or so.

If you use PPS (Pay Per Share) When ever you get a share accepted, your deepbit account will add some small amount.

At the end of the day (server time) your deepbit account will transfer to your wallet you used.

Edit: ^Yeah that, lol

Edit 2: At your speed, it can take some time for you to see anything. It's very random, so you might get it 5 times in 10 minutes, or 1 in a couple hours. Just depends on your luck really.

Edit 3: If you haven't yet, hit up https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ to get 0.05 BTC to start off with!

[TomTomBC]

I got my first share!!!! yeeeeahhh!!!!! now only about 12 more until I have 0.01 to donate as an actual amount! hahahahahaaaa.

Hey I have another question... (Jeez i have a lot of these lol) are there any methods to increase mh/s? would a number of applications impact this number in any major way? and what part exactly of my computer is being used to actually do the hashes?

[Neereus]

Congrats!
Apart from a new computer, not much can be done.
You can try changing the "-t 1" in the .bat file to "-t 2".
Your CPU is being used to do the hashes, and changing the above will make your CPU work harder (if it's not 100% already, depending on your CPU).

Edit: And yes, high processing programs can effect it. How much depends on your CPU. Just browsing the web and word processing though really shouldn't.

[TomTomBC]

...

3.2MH/S !!!!

That's... magical!!

But yeah that makes sense because my cpu was running at around fifty three % and I have a dual core, so I assume that it is now using both.

So im guessing that changing it to -t 3 wont do anything spectacular right?

[Neereus]

...

3.2MH/S !!!!

That's... magical!!

But yeah that makes sense because my cpu was running at around fifty three % and I have a dual core, so I assume that it is now using both.

So im guessing that changing it to -t 3 wont do anything spectacular right?

On a dual core no, might actually make it worse. lol
Don't recommend running 100% for extended periods without proper cooling.

[theGECK]

Neereus, what do you mean by "proper cooling"? I'm assuming you don't mean just the stock fan on the CPU, but you shouldn't have to go overboard with a liquid cooling system to cool it down, correct?