the pool has only recently added solo mining - I dont know the exact date but it was this year if I recall.

This is the code showing the testing of the ticket mask value set.
It's normally only 3 or 4 messages over the entire run, on a normal bitcoin pool so I left it in.

The ticket mask is the difficulty of work the chip returns over USB to cgminer.
A ticket mask of zero means return all 1 diff nonces.
A ticket mask of 0xf0 means return all 16 diff nonces.
It's using a CDF[Erlang] calculation to determine when enough nonces returned correctly, means the ticket mask is working correctly.

As per the code:

i.e. how many nonces returned gives a good idea that the ticket mask is actually working correctly.
i.e. at 5000 nonces at 16 diff (mask 0x0f) it's about a 1 in 21739 chance of it always returning correct nonces but the mask isn't working correctly,
but if in the rare case that happens, it will try again anyway

The aim of the ticket mask is to reduce the amount of unnecessary data over USB.
The new compacF code, however, also links it to the pool diff, to ensure it's not incorrectly higher than the pool diff.

Kano would have to tell you for sure, but I believe it's an artifact of some testing we did on a part of the protocol we weren't 100% sure about. It's nothing you need to worry on.

Just be aware that upping the voltage will up the draw from the 5v port. IIRC if you are 1A at 12V that would mean you are pulling 2-2.5A from the 5v side.

Fan slows down when miners are connected? Miners aren't able to run full speed?

Probably your hub is underpowered.

Added the details:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/blob/master/mac-build.txt

(and at the bottom of https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470.60)

It doesn't appear either of the retailers mentioned in the ANN thread have the USB miners in stock/for sale. Even without this pesky little detail, the default settings allow each of these miners to mine at 23 GH/sec, and at current difficulty/price, that works out to be about $2.75 per year in total mining revenue. It appears some settings can be changed so that the miner can get up to 90 GH/s, which works out to about $10.77 per year in total revenue. Before accounting for cooling costs, and costs associated with having many USB ports for these to connect to (and associated electric costs), you can't pay more than about 0.062/KWH to turn any profit with those miners.

Its trying to set the freq to 275. What setup are you using? What hub? What OS?

The pool no longer has a server in Germany, only one in the U.S, however, o_solo_miner has a passthrough located in Germany


108ms is more than good, there is nothing to worry about.