Project Update

[Dataman]

I ordered three more today,  I can eat next fortnight

I had my best credit day ever today with 13,800,000 from one Gekko. 

Yep, you are addicted now.  In my first week of crunching BU, I "earned" (to use the term loosely) more credits than I did in 12 YEARS of CPU & GPU crunching.

[Dataman]

It is going to get even better. The gecko's are now readily available and getting cheaper. My first one was $76 USD, the next batch was $55 and the last ones $49.99. Can $30 be far behind? Right now I can buy a hub and 7 miners for $386 ... less than a high-end GPU.  


Footnote: I still have one miner that is taking twice as long to complete a wu than the other 5. However I cannot tell which one it is in the hub. The device number in BOINC does not correlate to the order they are listed in Win10 device manager and that does not correlate to the order they are slotted in the hub (reading right to left or left to right). I know it is device 4 but don't know which one that is.  ??? Finding this slacker is going to be a chore.

EDIT: I see the price of a Bitcoin is up to $583.77 USD.

[kashi]

Dingo, great to see that the hub got your miner working well. It seems Jugnut's are working well on a hub too and also all but one of Dataman's. Looking forward to receiving my hub.

I paid $39.97 for my Gekkos from HolyBitcoin, the original ones sold on a forum directly by the manufacturer were $25, so there may not be much room left to move on the price. HolyBitcoin offers a discount for bulk purchases and sometimes has a 5% discount code on the bitcointalk forum. It was  " Ethereum " a few weeks ago, don't know if that's still current.

I read that the light not flashing during hashing is a hardware problem with the LED trigger circuit. The diode involved is so small that sometimes the robot doesn't solder it correctly. However I don't understand how they don't notice LED isn't working when testing them.

[chooka03]

HolyBitcoin offers a discount for bulk purchases and sometimes has a 5% discount code on the bitcointalk forum. It was  " Ethereum " a few weeks ago, don't know if that's still current.

Ethereum does indeed work. :)
So does "Welcomeback15%" if you use Shopmate when buying things from Amazon. That saved me 5% in freight. Better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.

I have found that Holybitcoin has worked out the cheapest. (inc freight)

[JugNut]

For my first order at Holybitcoin I used " Ethereum " and got the 5% discount,  but for whatever reason the second time around(4 days ago) they would not except it.  Saying that the code had reached it's limit?  I'm not sure if you can only use it once or maybe it's run out permanently?  Either way I could not get it for my last two Gekko's ordered.

Sooo.. my budgets blown to pieces yet again.  Hmm I wonder if the debtors court accept's "but your honour it was for boinc" as a valid excuse? 

Also I got a bit of a break today & have now kicked into high gear.  I bought a second hand U3 a while back off ebay and it wouldn't work no matter what I did,  today I plugged it into an older PC & away it went    To get it running I did nothing different than I did with the stick miners.  The only other difference that I can think of is this time around I ditched the power supply that came with the U3 & bought a PCI-E to barrel connector off ebay and plugged it into the PC's power supply instead.  So far using 20GH work units i've received 33million credit for 12 hours work :) 

I'll cross my fingers I don't find any zombie's ;)

[Dataman]

@Jugnut: How long do the 20+ wu take? My U3 came with PCIe connectors but are only 3" long. I will have to remove a GPU to have enough power to try to use them.
EDIT: Also, is the USB for the U3 plugged into a powered hub or just into a USB port on the case?

[kashi]

Wow, you're really cooking with gas now JugNut. Antminer is go.

Last night was thinking of getting a few more Gekkos myself and actually used the Chat function on HolyBitcoin site to ask about Discount code. But after having another fiddle with my wonky one with little success, decided to wait until hub arrives to see if it will work reliably then. So probably lucky that Chat didn't work.

Can get it to go for 1 task but then it needs replugging and/or another screw adjustment. When I have both plugged in then sometimes the working one stops as well and requires replugging.

Inspired by your Antminer now working on another computer I tried again on my old computer. No luck with a USB extension cable, couldn't even get to the "initial 2 purple flashes then nothing" stage.

On a whim I tried plugging it into my monitor, which has 2 USB ports connected to my old computer. Whammo, started going straight away and did 3 tasks in a row before needing replugging. Half an hour later it actually did 6 in a row before it froze. Then an hour later 7! No it's not fixed yet but that gives hope that it can be made to work with a hub.

[Dataman]

 
Both U3's are working!!! I started them and tried 2 wu's again before I tried to connect them to PCIe and both wu's completed and validated. 2.4 million each.  


EDIT: Two more completed and validated. They are taking 52 minutes to run. Geez, now I am afraid to look at them for fear they will stop working. 

[kashi]

Yeeha, Dataman. Those Antminers can really get down and boogie.

My ornery Gekko is starting to groove a bit now too. 29 in a row without freezing, somebody stop me! Plugging it into the monitor solution, who woulda thunk it? ???

Strobes a go go, looks like Donna Summer has joined KC & the Sunshine Band. My room has light coloured walls and a huge mirrored robe, the power of those 2 tiny lights is amplified so very much, even with my little paper shields. 

Can't imagine a hub full of Gekkos flashing away, must be like adding the Bee Gees with tight, white, moose knuckle daks. biggrin

[Dataman]

  kashi. Another of mine stopped flashing so it is not too bad with two only going.

OMG I am now doing 5 million credits/hr on the ants. I do not know what the gecko's are doing as I have seen run times from 0:38 to 14:xx on them. I am just so glad all 6 of them and the two ants are working I am going to subscribe to the old adage, "If it works, don't fix it".

[JugNut]

SWEET!!! Way to go DM.  My U3 is just plugged straight into the port(no hub).   Yep mine average 52 mins also.

When you think about it there not bad value either.  I got mine for a bargain $70 bucks second hand off ebay but if you look around you can find them new with a power supply for about $150 or so. So for $150 you get 66 million credit a day. It would take 6 gekko's to get 66 million credit costing $300.  When you ramp that idea up you can see the more you spend the cheaper every credit(or bitcoin) becomes. That must be how people are getting the BIG credits.  That said it still doesn't make it cheap,  not by a long shot.

Yea my Gekko's are not 100% stable either. Some of your Gekko's are starting to get errors like this....  http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/result.php?resultid=136136113  and this.. http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/result.php?resultid=136136126  Not sure what is means but oddly there still crediting OK though

Also we both seem to have the another problem. The error is "MTX: Icarus USB failed to get 'cg-usb-4-3' - device in use" many times over & over. Like this one.. http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/result.php?resultid=136136079    Almost every one of my work units show almost the exact same error. I only just noticed this error but a quick check shows that kashi's, chooka's & Dingo's work units don't have this error. We have one thing in common with our Gekko's and that's we both are using them with USB 3 hubs.  Just speculation at this point.

Well all is not perfect but one things for sure it's certainly not hurting our credit rate.

Crunch-on 

[Dataman]

Thanks. Yes I saw those errors but as long as they validate I am going to let sleeping dogs lie.  biggrin

[kashi]

JugNut, not sure if this has anything to do with it but do you have "Use CPU" ticked in Bitcoin Utopia preferences? I read somewhere in the forum that it should be ticked when using ASIC miners, even though you don't actually process any CPU tasks. Don't know if that is correct but someone thought it was.

I didn't have it ticked before and after ticking it a few days ago, some of the error messages I was getting stopped. Can't remember exactly what they were though.

Also light seemed to start flashing a bit quicker after start of task although I haven't noticed any difference in overall task duration. Hard to tell for sure though as they vary so much. Anyway worth a try if you don't have it ticked.

I relented and bought a couple of the Arctic Breeze Mobile USB fans off eBay. Found somewhere in UK with a more reasonable price, only about 80c more than Amazon and shipping less than most other eBay sellers as well. Didn't notice the listing when I looked a week ago, maybe I missed it then.

Arctic Breeze Mobile Portable Mobile USB Desk Fan White

[Dataman]

Introducing DM-Army Ants. They swarm on wu's.  biggrin

(and yes, I do need to dust.  )

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[Dingo]

Introducing DM-Army Ants. They swarm on wu's.  biggrin

(and yes, I do need to dust.  )

I looked at those but they are sold out where I got the other miners at http://bitcoinware.net/ ?   I will have to look around when I get some more spare $$.