I have been reading, and watching the market, watching youtubes looking at stuff. I finally decided to jump the big leap and join the mining like I should have done 20 years ago. I am here for the fun and the hobby not really for the money aspect.  I also want to keep in mind I am graduate college student and I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. I could give more information out like I have 2 other projects going on that I need to pay for like fixing two computers but that is for another time and place. Getting promoted at Amazon is just taking longer than expected and I started at 30 which I should have started at 20 and I am fully invested, so only time will tell if I did the right thing trying to stay with Amazon and to save and bit my time until I get that great promotion with my MBA. I AM USING WINDOWS 10 64bit.

All of my background being said, I decided I do not need a pi, sure it is cheap and its a 60 buck investment, but I realize I do not need to mess with besides I need CGMINER/BFG MINER/BITMINTER CLIENT experience in my personal belief to use pi.  I haven't used dos or command prompt since the first year of college which I actually miss I wish I went into programming mode. using command prompt and dos is far from programming I know, but I miss using commands like dir, or simple crap like that.

So I again not a big budget, but I chose to go with bitminter.com as my pool and server to mine, and I choose Electrum as my bitcoin bank, and obviously bitcointalk.org as my bitcoin community talk. My pc or in the future my old laptop will be the dedicated host for the mining operation.

So I got onto amazon.com and I Started buying the basics, powered 2.0usb strip, best-selling USB fan, and then I saw that the Ghekko 18ghz 2gpu stick was out the same price as the others but double the speed so I bought one of them.

-long-term thinking I can not afford to just get a loan out to slam four thousand down the drain for an Antminer doing a few terra bytes of lines or hashes per whatever. I can only afford one stick per paycheck that does 18ghz which is amazing compared to this 800mhz USB. So I got excited Ill do this for a year and I can train this up to 142 USB per train. 1 fan 6 sticks a strip, just make a mini farm add one every two weeks or so grow slow but surely.

So I noticed another hitch in my planning these 18ghz USB miners selling them on Amazon at that price is not that often either they have a production problem or the demand is crazy, so I either wait for them or I settle for the 8ghz Gekko one..... I look at other sellers they want 142 bucks I am just flat out not doing it I am budget mining not pay more.

So here is my first question, I hooked up my first USB strip, my first fan, my first USB bitcoin miner with two GPU etc..  I have wasted two hours already... I have installed the driver it does see the device as 2Pac BM1384 Bitcoin Miner. I really really wanted Bitminter client with a GUI to just pick it up. the first question can I get my Bitminter client to pick this device up??

First thing I tried, second thing I tried I kept seeing CGminer you gotta go CGminer, I install it I look at it I'm like wtf am I doing, then I find the piece of paper my USB miner came with so I download it, gave me the driver I believe that I needed but, when it told me to configure the cgminer_run.bat which I am going to post several ways of how I tried to do it. It would connect to solo their default pool or solo pool and sit there looking for work. when I put in mint.bitminter.com:3333 or us1 or us2 or eu1 none of them would ever connect. I kept trying to modify the .bat I run cgminer.exe put it in that way just like Bitminter.com tells me to on their front page, point the device their way username password means nothing, never connected with CG. Then I saw a post with this type of miner you really need BFGminer, so I download BFGminer.... connected to bitminter.com just fine cannot find any devices okay M+, scan all ports nothing. I typed something trying to search by port then program froze.  I run them all with admin rights. So here I am I cannot find any mining software to host my first USB miner either it sees the device but doesn't like my pool or connects to my pool does not detect my device that says its installed by installing the drivers.

That is my first question and issue. How do I get started with this USB MINER, furthermore what is your guy's advice if you were in my shoes and willing to do this has a hobby but you want to do good, next payday what USB miner would you buy the 8ghz or the 800mhz? or look on eBay for a cheaply used 18ghz or try to steal a 100 dollar old video card with water cooling doing 300ghz, I want to continue building my train, and investing in a big power surge protector have a lot of power slots, but  I don't need one until I am two 12 USB strips in but it is something that is like 14 miners already going. Right now I am running the standard surge protector power strip that only has 8 power slots and no space between them.  My biggest question is should I get the amazon 8ghz Gekko, or the official-looking 500-800mhz bitcoin miner for 20 bucks cheaper or buy them used on eBay at 20 a pop.  I am personally looking at the 8ghz or waiting for the 18 to appear again. Also this best selling fan I'm not sure if I like the height of it needs to be longer to hold right on top of all the chips right now it's on an angle I don't like that but its the same one I see in all the videos.

So If I fix my continuing problem, and I get a plan on what I am going order and collect next as miners, I am set, but I do have a few other minor questions.... are bitcoin mining pools ever attacked is it wise to run a VPN while mining or does it matter?  I trust my mining pool I just don't trust outside influence but then again I am sure the pool has its own firewalls to protect its pool so again is VPN a smart idea?  If I trust my pool, but I want to mine here and there I think I should definitely VPN it up. I just wanted miners opinions on mining with VPNs. I pay for 4 VPN lines a month, I try to VPN all the time on the main PC but it so hard with gaming and lag IPVaninsh not trying to advise I just hope they are a decent VPN company.

Last question and I am done, I have 4 old phones behind me I am going to throw them away soon if not one wants them or I thought about mining with them, true I will not get much out of them but leave them charging strip them with everything they got and just mine with them and leave them alone forever under the desk until they just burn out, I figured 4 phones might get me 200mhz? maybe more id be surprised one does have a six or eight core dragon snap, the ram is what slowed it down so much. anyways should I just run them as miners see what I get? or a total waste of money and time? We are talking a galaxy note 2, a Blu studio that is like an 8 inch tablet phone, screen half away works so to even get it to mine is going to be like okay where now lol, then I got an iPhone 3i or 4i  and another galaxy note 2. 4 phones that I could be mining non stop forever, a 5th one soon if I buy this galaxy 7s for one buck from a friend then id have my Blu HD R1 I could mine with.again probably 200mhz in hashes. Id love to post results I am bettering the 8-inch Blu will do the best due to the screen and having to push out more for the GPU if the iPhone does better I'm just going to be like WHAT THE BLEEPING BLEEP.

but the first thing I totally need to do is figure out why I cannot find mining software/hoster for windows ten, for my train that I want to start slowly. My first Miner is not even running.  And I can turn on my GPU when I sleep I just don't want to fry it my ATI RADEON 580 4 gig of ram is my baby..... lets me play all my games.  It is air cooled but I would love to put that puppy on a closed loop water cooling. but I hear GPU cooling fits are expensive.  No my future plan is for my USB MINING farm will be running on my old laptop which is Intel 5core 3.8 or 4.2 GHz quad core with 8 gigs built in GPU just some intel cheapo GPU but I am sure it can do 100mhz. anyways overkill to host and run mining software if a pi can do it my laptop can do it not like I use to anymore.

please, any help suggesting what software I should use how to use it would be amazing, what would be my best options for the pool I am going to be part of which sorry guys I wish I was a big spender too to make you more but I am gonna try to keep adding power to it.  But also the method I am doing USB chaining with USB miners. and why is it CGminer is not finding my pool or my devices which my windows ten is completely telling me its there and driver is working. Which I did install from the URL the product gave me. which was also a customized CGminer or CGminer that was designed for my chip or just set up for my chip but it didn't work for my pool you guys will see the lines I did.

DEFAULT LINE


MINE

- did show my real key figured wouldn't harm anything only thing u can do is give me money lol not like I got any to take.

I have no idea wtf .asicpuppycompac is behind my bitcoin receive address, "--"I am guessing means look or load "gekko driver"... set the "freq to 150mhz", I don't want to tweak or overclock anything at the moment so 150 is fine loading the Gekko is fine. so I tried so many ways of tweaking for example


I downloaded BFGminer, again I connected to my server just fine, NO DEVICES FOUND so i hit M+ to manage, + to add, scan all for scanning all ports.... The USB MINER IS physically in, Port_#0004.Hub_#0010, how to use this in BFG I have no idea but I bet a hundred bucks it will still say nothing is there.

Any help, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas, support,  Thank you all and God bless.