You know, this place seems more riddled with rudeness amongst the established members than likely any place I've ever seen. To be fair, there's no other board I've been on that involved such buying and selling, so I wouldn't have known, but still.

Anyway, please PM me if you have something you'd like to sell.

Crap, feels like learning about mining BTC from scratch all over again.

Heh.

BMP

Thanks Chup!

Are you saying that I will have to boot the machine normally, with whatever GPU is in there, then switch to the 580?

Any thoughts on how many cards the machine can run, total?

Thanks again!

Hey All,

I'm trying to help my nephew out with learning about mining and everything that goes along with it: research, reading, getting it wrong, persistence, etc. I was thinking about getting him an S7-LN or S7, but I already have the stuff below.

Any insights on mining Ethereum with a Gigabyte Aorus Radeon 580, 4GB, 256-bit GDDR5, using a Dell Optiplex 780 Tower with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93GHz with 4GB of memory? It has Windows 10 64 on it. I have them gathering dust.

As far as I remember, the Dell has two PCI slots, one PCIe x16 slot, and one PCIe x1 slot, for a total of four.

I assume the card I have is a no-brainer, but how many would the machine operate, with risers or whatnot if necessary? Will the Dell be able to power the one 580 internally since it is only one? Or, do we need an external power supply even for that? Any thoughts, tips, tricks, pitfalls, etc?

I want him to figure it out as he goes, learning along the way, but I don't want to encourage him further if the tower will only run one (two, three, seventeen?) cards. Plus, I don't want him talking (read: suckering) his mom into buying him an expensive new card that he can't use.

The machine won't be used for anything else so the optical drive can come out and it can be stripped down and left open for airflow.

I'm reading up to make sure I point him in the right direction, but any ideas, suggestions, threads, pointers greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Niagara Falls?! Slowly, I turned, step by step. Inch by inch....

Welp, I was out, really out, no more rigs, no more futzing about, all done.

And then, my nephew got me. "Pleeeease teach me about BTC, pleeeeeeese?"

So, knowing how kids can be, I gave him a couple of my old sidehack compacs: GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread.

He has stayed interested, so I have gotten him a couple of sidehack 2Pac seconds to help out a good cause (see sidehack's sig) and Laura's page, that I'll give him next time I'm over there. He's been learning about volts, amps, burning his finger, power supplies, cutting down two-liter bottles to make an enclosure, all the fun stuff.

Hence this thread, does anyone have a dirt cheap, mint condition (heh), S7-LN or 135-chip S7 gathering dust that they would be interested in selling me?

I don't want to spend much, given that he may still lose interest, but I would like to be able to give him something "nicer" relatively soon. He's been good, and has been sending me snips of cgminer showing his compacs running every few days or so. Frankly, I was pretty sure he was going to burn them out playing with the speed and voltage, but he got them purring right along. Good for him, and it's fun to have a project we can share together.

I'd love to just get him an S9 hot off of the presses, but who knows, he's a kid, and kids move on. No reason to waste the money on something like that if he does. I figure, get him an S7, and help and teach him along the way, and maybe he'll get his own S9. Or, his parents will start charging him for electricity. HA!

If you're willing to part with one (POSSIBLY two, but they would have to be CHEAP), please just PM me, no reason to post here. EDIT: I should add, I am quite familiar with value, pricing, ROI, what they sold for last summer, market flux, etc. Please save the rube/noob offers for Amazon or eBay or whatever, save us both the time.

Usual drill, either via escrow here with someone we both trust, or PayPal or eBay.

Thanks so much!!

That's gold, Jerry! Gold!!

From this thread:


I'm not sure it matters much with the 2Pacs, or any other stick miner, other than at start up.

Hey Jingles,

Well, some of what you asked is in the first post and READMEs. But quickly:

Zadig: is the only driver you can use. Windows chooses the wrong one.

Pools: this is a hobby. You aren't likely ever to make any money on sticks. However, if you mine solo, you *may* hit the jackpot and get 12.5 BTC for yourself. The odds are weak, but (and I haven't checked this) probably better than Lotto or Big Ball and trillions have been "invested" into that. If you mine mmpool, for example, and someone hits, it's small so you may make a bit of money there, too. Some (many, most?) of the stickminers point to mmpool.org for the fun and camaraderie.  Overall, run the numbers or read around, stick mining is just for fun and to learn. In my case, my nephew has stickminers pointed to mmpool and an old S3+ pointed to ckpool.

If you can use the word "marginally" as you did in your post, you can truly learn how small a margin can be with stick miners. HA! Similarly, you mentioned "significance" "worthwhile", and "productivity"; the most honest answer is that they aren't significant, worthwhile, or productive unless you enjoy them as a hobby that may, someday, make you a few bucks. Hell, donate whatever dust you make to the sidehack's friend's medical bills: https://www.gofundme.com/lauras-eating-disorder-recovery and along with generating some heat for your home this winter, you've done a good thing. Your best bet for "optimal" is to get the sticks tuned so that they run as efficiently as possible as at high a frequency as possible at as low a voltage as possible without throwing many hardware errors.

Frequency: First post. For example:


See that tag at the end? There is a chart, in the first post under expected performance, Vcore/Freq. that will give you some idea what you can do.

Work Reports: I don't have time to explain, but that miner isn't likely set up correctly.

Gotta go, but seriously, read the first post carefully, skipping all the linux stuff and the README in detail.

Best of luck!

Speaking of which, does anyone have a particular meter or seller they would recommend, with the case and screen similar the picture above?

I just looked and there are about 500 available on eBay running from about $0.01 to about $20. I don't mind paying a little extra for quality or a bell or a whistle, but that price range presents a lot of options.

EDIT: While I'm asking, any recommendations for a decent multimeter as well? Billions to choose from.

Thanks!

You know, I was out, really out, and then my dang nephew badgered me into learnding him this stuff, and so, here I am. Again. However, I am very glad that he is interested in something like this!

Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

Number one reason BTC isn't worth $100K or more by now?

Hobby mining is a complete and utter pain in the ass and as a result drives the learning curve and costs of acceptance in the general population through the roof.

Hey All,

I just resurrected an S3+ from broken status and gave it to my nephew to play with. He plugged it in and it powered right up, green for go.

However, I'm having trouble figuring out the password. Last time it was powered it was pointed to:

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (that may not be the actual URL, but whatever is in the miner would correspond)

Until I get there to help him with it, is that still a valid mining address? If so, I'll let him keep going. If not, I assume that the ol' paper clip reset clears ~everything~ and not just the password? In that case, I'll have him shut it down.

Thanks folks!

It is not. It's an illustration of the principle involved. The guy that sells you Bud, for profit, has every incentive to sell you more, and to do so everywhere and every time. He has to compete with all the other beer sellers on quality and cost, thus driving quality up and prices down. Pure benefit to consumer, and beer makers slaughter each other to give you the best product.

Everyone needs bread. Should the gov't create a bread monopoly such that the extremely poor would always have some protection against the eeeevil food companies that won't give a little bit of bread away free? I mean, we do that with power. Let's just pass a law creating a Department of Bread, then ban Allinson, Alvarado Street Bakery, Arnold, Ball Park, Beefsteak, Bimbo, Brownberry, EarthGrains, Entenmann's, Eureka! Baking Company, Francisco, Freihofer's, J.J. Nissen, Mrs. Baird's, Old Country, Oroweat, Sara Lee, Stroehmann's, Thomas', Tía Rosa, Weber's, Bost's Bread, Breddy, Dave's Killer Bread, Davidovich Bagels, Flowers Foods, Holsum Bread, King's Hawaiian, Lender's Bagels, Merita Breads, Mother's Pride, Nature's Pride, Pan Desuyo, Pepperidge Farm, Polarbröd, Rudi's Organic Bakery, Schwebel's Bakery, Sunbeam Bread, VitBe and Wonder Bread, and all the tens of thousands of other bakeries out there from selling anyone bread that wasn't provided by Federal Bread and Water Co. Think that's a smart plan? I mean everyone needs bread. It's not a luxury anymore, it's a necessity. Let's make goddamn sure those bread companies won't shut down people's bread supply after six months of not being paid for their bread.

There are any number of entities that are capable of selling you power right now, with no, or minor, changes to the last mile. Most, if not all, are forbidden by law from doing so or are bound by thousands of pages of regulation such that it isn't worth the effort.

Why *anyone* thinks that limiting to one the number of people that can provide you power somehow *helps* anyone or drives costs down and quality up is beyond me. It doesn't happen.

Meh. Ever try to build your own car by buying the parts individually?

Generally, there is far more profit in a part than in a whole that comprises parts.

Certainly I cannot speak for Bitmain, but GM doesn't tell you that you cannot get new fuel injectors for their newest model the day it goes on sale because they need those fuel injectors to build more cars.

Ah yes. True monopoly pricing. "We can't have monopolies because they'll be able to charge whatever they want!!!"

"Well, except for true monopolies created by force of law! They'll be able to charge whatever they want!!"

Brilliant.

Energy has been democratized. Too bad you don't have 50 providers to choose from. I wonder why...

Happy?

It is a direct result of a true monopoly. The only monopolies that have ever existed: those created by force of law and defended by physical threat.

A heat wave is coming. Ever hear Budweiser (or Budvar, if you're an originalist) take to the ether and beg you all to cut down on buying Bud because the company can't keep up, and it's the right thing to do, and then "ask" you to accept rationing? Then, just when you need your ice cold Bud most, they take it away from you? Ever wonder why true monopolies do that? Ever wonder why true monopoly prices do just keep going up, *in spite* of regulation?

And people BEGGED for them. Still do.

Happy?

Any word on the free shipping on Amazon theory?

I have several, would like several more. Great piece of kit.

And it's sidehack for the win!

Well played, Sir.