I know there are people on this message board who are sitting on tens of thousands (or more) of bitcoin. It seems to me that it would be in everybody's interest (especially theirs) if a group of these Bitcoin-billionaires got together to create a real venture capital fund, to support the growth of some high-quality Bitcoin sites/apps/etc. I'm still having to make posts on a reddit board to try and buy/sell goods using bitcoin. If bitcoin is going to stabilize and grow, it needs a wide user base, and in order for that to happen, we need good sites where we can actually buy and sell things with bitcoins. Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere (there are a couple hundred thousand posts on here), but I just wanted to throw this out there for discussion. Thanks.

I'm looking for a good bitcoin marketplace where I can sell some odds and ends (boxing gloves, a bass guitar, etc), the kind of stuff you might put up on craigslist. I've been bouncing down the sites on this list (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Material_products), but not many actually seem to be getting a lot of action. What is the best marketplace site out there for selling used goods for bitcoin?

From what I've read, the GPU's are really the heart of your mining rig, and the rest of your hardware is just there to get your mining software hooked up to your GPU's. The only real consideration in selecting your other hardware is to make sure you have an adequate power supply for your computing needs (bronze level certification for clean power recommended), to make sure that your motherboard has enough pci-e slots for all your GPU's, and to make sure that your case is adequately ventilated so your cards don't overheat.

Bitcoinpool is still down.

Congratulations! Did you use an e-commerce bitcoin site, or just a man-to-man trade? I'm thinking about selling some stuff for a bit-o-coin ...

I have my two ATI 6790's running between 75 - 85 C. I had read on a number of sites that anything less than 100 C won't damage your card, but I was still concerned, so I contacted my card manufacturer (HIS), and they said that even as high as 100 C should be fine. I suspect that they weren't considering continual use like in mining, so my new *play it safe* cutoff is 90 C, but I don't even see how I would get that high without overclocking.

The CPU temp should be considerably lower. The sources I was able to find on the internet recommended keeping the CPU and motherboard temps below 70 C.

Bitcoin is a nerd/libertarian godsend. I agree that all the real money mining has already been made by the early adopters. I'm personally in it just to learn more about bitcoins, hopefully pay off my GPU's, and just be apart of something I think is great.

Even though the real money has already been made in mining, don't forget that we all get the benefit of using bitcoins for all our anonymous, online purchasing needs. Governments will certainly try to ban them if they really catch on, but who cares. Lets enjoy the internet while it's still undomesticated.

I like lebuen's suggestion ... I can see myself dropping a bit-o-the-coin for a nice, quality poster along these lines ... very nice!

I had a hell of a time piecing together instructions from different posts/blogs/websites that got me from the clean setup of a new box to bitcoin mining. It looks like things change so fast in this game that instructions are outdated as soon as they're posted, but I figured I'd put up what worked for me, along with the sources that supplied the information.

I went from a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04 on a AMD Phenom II / ASUS motherboard / 64 bit / 2x Radeon 6790 system to mining with the following steps:

1.) Installing GPU drivers (from http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Natty_Installation_Guide#Installing_the_drivers_manually)

First, I tried to use the default ubuntu third party driver install for the cards (left watermark on screen). Had to wipe Ubuntu and start again. This time, used a manual install:

• sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 dh-modaliases
• sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
• sudo wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-11-6-x86.x86_64.run
• chmod +x ati-driver-installer-11-6-x86.x86_64.run
• sudo sh ./ati-driver-installer-11-6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/natty
• sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
• sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all

2.) Installing AMD APP SDK and Phoenix Miner (from http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.0;all)

After multiple fails and restarts, I decided to give these instructions a try, and they worked. I’m not sure if there is an overlap here with my previous installation of Catalyst (above), as these instructions didn’t call for a separate step where you install the drivers. There also seem to be some unnecessary steps (screen?), but whatever, it worked for me ...

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install screen
• screen -S update sudo apt-get install fglrx vim openssh-server g++ libboost-all-dev subversion git-core python-numpy
• Enter your password.
• Once the updates are going, press CTRL-A then press D.  You should detach from the screen and be returned to a prompt.
• screen -d -m -S icd wget http://download2-developer.amd.com/amd/Stream20GA/icd-registration.tgz
• screen -d -m -S pyopencl wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pyopencl/pyopencl-0.92.tar.gz
• screen -d -m -S stream wget http://download2-developer.amd.com/amd/APPSDK/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64.tgz
• screen -r stream
• If you get a "There is no screen to be resumed" message, continue on.  Otherwise, you should get a download status, wait until it's done, then continue on.
• sudo tar xvfz AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64.tgz -C /opt
• sudo tar xvfz /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/icd-registration.tgz -C /
• tar zxfv pyopencl-0.92.tar.gz
• screen -r update
• If you get a "There is no screen to be resumed" mesasge, continue on.  Otherwise, wait for the update to finish. You will be returned to a prompt when it's done.
• svn checkout http://svn.json-rpc.org/trunk/python-jsonrpc
• svn checkout http://svn3.xp-dev.com/svn/phoenix-miner/trunk
• git clone git://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm poclbm
• mv trunk phoenix
• echo export DISPLAY=:0 >> ~/.bashrc
• cd pyopencl-0.92
• sudo sh -c 'echo "/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64/" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf'
• ./configure.py --cl-inc-dir=/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/include/ --cl-lib-dir=/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64
• sudo ldconfig
• source ~/.bashrc
• make -j3
• sudo make install
• cd ../python-jsonrpc
• sudo python setup.py install
• cd ~
• chmod +x phoenix/phoenix.py poclbm/poclbm.py
• sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all
• sudo reboot

Also, this website has come in handy for me:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Aticonfighelp (all about the aticonfig command)

Howdy,

I just ordered my first (modest) bitcoin mining rig, gonna get it set up this weekend and I can't wait. I've never seen anything which so completely combines my nerd/libertarian impulses as bitcoin, I only wish I had found it sooner ...

Thanks everyone. I ordered the rig, will try to get it setup this weekend...

I'm very new to bitcoin, and only a novice with Linux. I've been trying to get my brain around mining for the past couple days, and at the same time price out a mining rig that can double as a general linux-box playground for me. I've settled on a setup which would use two Sapphire Radeon HD 6790 in Ubuntu 11.04 to do the mining. I haven't seen much on using the 6790, anyone have any comments about this for a rig?

My top three questions about moving forward and buying this rig are:

1.) Will I be able to find drivers for the 6790 in Ubuntu, and how difficult will it be to find software to get them online and mining? (My concern is that setting up the cards/miner will be a repeat of my effort to get my old D-Link wireless card working with Ubuntu ... i.e. 12 hours of frustration ending in defeat)
2.) Is it difficult to get both cards mining simultaneously, or is that a standard feature in most mining software packages?
3.) Does constant mining wear out the cards really quickly? How long can I expect them to last?

I'm sure there are threads somewhere on these topics. I have and will continue to look for them, but if you have any helpful comments or links, I'd be obliged.