Fudgy McFarlen

CoinBase BitCoin Website Status Link

Bitmain miner setup.

fzHKZuICbvI9x1NdfKx3

Research Links

• Guide: Dogie's Comprehensive Bitmain Antminer S3 Setup  I had some trouble getting the S3 to show up in the DHCP list.  What seemed easiest was to use the direct connection computer to S3 method.  Once I convinced myself that DHCP was working I switched to configuration with them both connected to a router using DHCP.  Check your router to make sure it includes 192.168.1.99 in its DHCP range.  I went through setting up my computer with a fixed IP address to talk with the S3.  After that worked experimented and found that I could see the S3 if I dialed in 192.168.1.99 but it would not show up on the DHCP equipment list. It was at that point I changed the S3 setting to DHCP.
• Setting up computer to have fixed IP to talk with the S3  – note there are some errors in the images of the IPv4 windows settings.
• YouTube: AntMiner S3 Setup – DETAILED 
• Pool Worker format:  User.Worker   where user is your user name in the mining pool and worker is a name you put on the mining device.  It's a way to see each machine individually for monitoring purposes.

The default mining pools as a result of resetting the firmware were dead.  

Quick Reference Notes

• Default AntMiner username/password:  root / root

Additional Links

• Possible problems for Antminer-Troubleshooting for S7&S9

SHA 256

I noticed a note implying that the BitCoin S3 will work with other SHA-256 hash based cryptocurrencies such as

• Peercoin (PPC)
• Namecoin (NMC)
• Terracoin (TRC)
• Unobtanium (UNO)
• TEKcoin (TEK) 

Additional Finds

• Mining of SHA-256 coins – a long list – this is an online rental of mining service

Bitcoin Developer Guide: Find detailed information about the Bitcoin protocol and related specifications.

The block chain is a race of horses

         Guess a value for the empty nonce in the last block that results in a hash with sufficient number of leading zeros and you win 18000 dollars.

Why a block chain database?

• A regular online bank account keeps you from spending digital money more than once.  That is possible because it is a centralized design that subtracts the amount spent from your account.  You can not change this because you do not have the ability to change the database.
• What do you do if there is no central database because you do not want to rely upon a central authority? How can the balances in everyone's accounts be maintained in a trustworthy fashion? How do you keep a person from spending the same buck in his bank account 2 times when it is only an entry in a database that they have access to?  Access to a normal database would mean you could set any value you wanted.  The skies the limit!
• Remember the database needs to be hard to fake up but easy to read.  Everyone needs be able to read it.  Everyone needs to be able to tell which version of it is valid.  Have you ever downloaded a file that had a hash value to compare with the hash value that you compute on the version you download to verify it is not corrupted?   This same methodology is used with the blocks in the database chain.  The hash appended to the end of the block has to have a special value and finding that special value requires lots of computation.  This makes it easy to read and verify the database block but hard to make the block in the first place.