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Mining with ASICs

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Mining with ASICs is very similar to mining with GPUs with a few exceptions. Getting started follows the same course as GPU mining. Follow the steps on the “How to mine Bitcoins” page to set up your personal wallet as well as your account with a mining pool of your choice. The primary difference is that you will have to use different mining software with ASICs as GUI Miner does not have ASIC support. The program that I recommend is called BFG Miner and can be downloaded from the BFG miner download page. Scroll down until you reach the more recent releases and open look for the release that corresponds with the operating system you are using. You may have to mouse over and look at the status bar to see the complete file name. Download the file and extract it to a directory on your hard drive and open the directory in your file explorer. After connecting your ASIC to your machine and allowing the hardware to install on your computer, open the bfgminer application.

Once the program is started, it will prompt you for the URL for your pool. In my case, I use stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 for Slush’s Pool, but these have a tendency to change from time to time, and if you are unable to connect, check your pools instructions for the updated address. After that, you will be prompted for your username and password. Remember that in this field it is also asking for your worker name as well. I name my workers with a number, so my user name is formatted as USERNAME.1 with a period separating the user name and the worker ID. After that, you will be prompted for your password. Each worker has it’s own password, and if you are using Slush’s Pool, it will be listed right next to your worker name when you log into your account.

Once you are logged in, the program will start mining with all available devices, including GPUs. I personally choose not to mine with GPUs so I turned mine off. To do this, click “M” on your keyboard and use your arrow keys to select the device you wish to modify and click the “D” key to disable any devices you do not with to mine with. Hit the “Enter” key to return to the main screen.

Finally, from the main screen, hit the “S” key to enter the settings menu and “W” to write a config file that will store your mining information so you don’t have to type it in each time you restart the program.

The end result should look something like this:

As you can see, I am mining with a Butterfly Labs Little Single SC that is delivering over 30 GH/s. I will be adding another Little Single and a Single SC in the near future.

 

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15 comments on “Mining with ASICs”

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  1. Hi,
    What is the likely (approx) earning potential from a butterfly 10ghz miner? Any rough idea??
    How much time they take to ship it?

    Thanks

  2. There is a profitable alternative to ASIC mining. Visit my website for details
    You can purchase any amount of Ghash power and start mining instantly.
    No electricity costs, No setup, No monitoring. Just collect your mining shares.
    And you can resell your Ghash and even make a trade profit.

  3. do you need a decent inter net conection or just a hard line and and the asic itself lke does the asic need fast internet or fdoes it just rely on its own processing power

  4. Difficulty 31 Million… Nice timing on that unit.

    I just got mine today, difficulty is now 609 Million…

    But thanks for the guide. Looks good.

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