Status as of Saturday, June 11

[CritterDog]

In addition to that bugfix, I made another change that will be more conservative with work restart times. The work restart times are now higher than they used to be, which will cause coins with longer block times to be chosen more frequently.

If you could try this again later, please let me know what you find. I think the result will be that you see dramatically increased hashrate. If you do, then I'd like to try finding a middle ground where profitability will be higher but hashrate is slightly lower.

I just went back on line will report any changes..BTW I posted the software I am using on my A2 on the other thread where the miner lost some coins. If you want to download it and look at the code. It is custom software because insillocon stopped supporting the A2 from what I read. But it is pretty much the same as original.

[CritterDog]

Interesting right off the bat here.. Only mining 22 minutes the pool states I have yet to find a block. But my cgminer software states I have found 5 blocks

[CritterDog]

Status after 49 minutes the A2 seems to be stuck on Anoncoin it has not switched and it found a few blocks but states "Lost" on blocks found.. So I fired up a gridseed blade and it started mining litecoin at only 5.4Mhs which is its rating set at d=1024 on the gridseed blade.. When it switched to Elephantcoin the hash dropped down to 2Mhs but as you can see it found some blocks.. It only stayed there a few seconds then went back to litecoin. The A2 is still stuck on Anoncoin and the hashrate is dropping.

Elephantcoin 50 0 2,564 $0.0002 Immature 1 minute ago 2098105
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,060,090 $0.2641 Lost 4 minutes ago 544121
Elephantcoin 153 0 2,039 $0.0007 Immature 4 minutes ago 2098095
Popularcoin 2475 0 7,738 $0.0022 Immature 6 minutes ago 1338231
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,277,827 $0.2629 Lost 16 minutes ago 544077
Anoncoin 2.5 0 1,085,448 $0.2621 Lost 17 minutes ago 544073
Dotcoin 500 0 4,288,849 $0.0842 Immature 27 minutes ago

[Steve Sokolowski]

Status after 49 minutes the A2 seems to be stuck on Anoncoin it has not switched and it found a few blocks but states "Lost" on blocks found.. So I fired up a gridseed blade and it started mining litecoin at only 5.4Mhs which is its rating set at d=1024 on the gridseed blade.. When it switched to Elephantcoin the hash dropped down to 2Mhs but as you can see it found some blocks.. It only stayed there a few seconds then went back to litecoin. The A2 is still stuck on Anoncoin and the hashrate is dropping.

Elephantcoin 50 0 2,564 $0.0002 Immature 1 minute ago 2098105
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,060,090 $0.2641 Lost 4 minutes ago 544121
Elephantcoin 153 0 2,039 $0.0007 Immature 4 minutes ago 2098095
Popularcoin 2475 0 7,738 $0.0022 Immature 6 minutes ago 1338231
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,277,827 $0.2629 Lost 16 minutes ago 544077
Anoncoin 2.5 0 1,085,448 $0.2621 Lost 17 minutes ago 544073
Dotcoin 500 0 4,288,849 $0.0842 Immature 27 minutes ago

Hi Critter,

The Gridseed seems to be working as expected. When it switched to Elephantcoin, the profitability was so high that it knew you would lose hashrate, but still mined it anyway because the shares were so valuable. That's fine.

We've determined a correlation with the A2s, the persistent hashrate problems, the lost blocks, and the "low luck" miners. Is there any way you can use completely different software with the A2, and see what happens?

[galixxx]

I have an A2 mini Terminator. Don't know if I can help with some figures from my side maybe?
If so, pls let me know.

[CritterDog]

Status after 49 minutes the A2 seems to be stuck on Anoncoin it has not switched and it found a few blocks but states "Lost" on blocks found.. So I fired up a gridseed blade and it started mining litecoin at only 5.4Mhs which is its rating set at d=1024 on the gridseed blade.. When it switched to Elephantcoin the hash dropped down to 2Mhs but as you can see it found some blocks.. It only stayed there a few seconds then went back to litecoin. The A2 is still stuck on Anoncoin and the hashrate is dropping.

Elephantcoin 50 0 2,564 $0.0002 Immature 1 minute ago 2098105
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,060,090 $0.2641 Lost 4 minutes ago 544121
Elephantcoin 153 0 2,039 $0.0007 Immature 4 minutes ago 2098095
Popularcoin 2475 0 7,738 $0.0022 Immature 6 minutes ago 1338231
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,277,827 $0.2629 Lost 16 minutes ago 544077
Anoncoin 2.5 0 1,085,448 $0.2621 Lost 17 minutes ago 544073
Dotcoin 500 0 4,288,849 $0.0842 Immature 27 minutes ago

Hi Critter,

The Gridseed seems to be working as expected. When it switched to Elephantcoin, the profitability was so high that it knew you would lose hashrate, but still mined it anyway because the shares were so valuable. That's fine.

We've determined a correlation with the A2s, the persistent hashrate problems, the lost blocks, and the "low luck" miners. Is there any way you can use completely different software with the A2, and see what happens?

I am going to try a few things on my end I may have something set wrong.
Couple things... Positive is My hashrate does seem more steady. But something has happened to my restart rate. The A2 has always stayed under the threshold and I never got restart penaltys.. Now something has changed that my restart rate is much higher? Above the min.. I didnt change anything to cause that.
Just noticed that my found blocks are not matching what is being reported. I show on cgminer I found 11 blocks in 23 minutes. On the pool it only shows I found 3 blocks. Why is this?

[Steve Sokolowski]

Status after 49 minutes the A2 seems to be stuck on Anoncoin it has not switched and it found a few blocks but states "Lost" on blocks found.. So I fired up a gridseed blade and it started mining litecoin at only 5.4Mhs which is its rating set at d=1024 on the gridseed blade.. When it switched to Elephantcoin the hash dropped down to 2Mhs but as you can see it found some blocks.. It only stayed there a few seconds then went back to litecoin. The A2 is still stuck on Anoncoin and the hashrate is dropping.

Elephantcoin 50 0 2,564 $0.0002 Immature 1 minute ago 2098105
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,060,090 $0.2641 Lost 4 minutes ago 544121
Elephantcoin 153 0 2,039 $0.0007 Immature 4 minutes ago 2098095
Popularcoin 2475 0 7,738 $0.0022 Immature 6 minutes ago 1338231
Anoncoin 2.5 0 4,277,827 $0.2629 Lost 16 minutes ago 544077
Anoncoin 2.5 0 1,085,448 $0.2621 Lost 17 minutes ago 544073
Dotcoin 500 0 4,288,849 $0.0842 Immature 27 minutes ago

Hi Critter,

The Gridseed seems to be working as expected. When it switched to Elephantcoin, the profitability was so high that it knew you would lose hashrate, but still mined it anyway because the shares were so valuable. That's fine.

We've determined a correlation with the A2s, the persistent hashrate problems, the lost blocks, and the "low luck" miners. Is there any way you can use completely different software with the A2, and see what happens?

I am going to try a few things on my end I may have something set wrong.
Couple things... Positive is My hashrate does seem more steady. But something has happened to my restart rate. The A2 has always stayed under the threshold and I never got restart penaltys.. Now something has changed that my restart rate is much higher? Above the min.. I didnt change anything to cause that.
Just noticed that my found blocks are not matching what is being reported. I show on cgminer I found 11 blocks in 23 minutes. On the pool it only shows I found 3 blocks. Why is this?

I think the reason is that your miner is not submitting the found blocks to the pool because the software you are using is buggy. This is what we think caused the "low luck" miners. It also causes hashrate spikes, because when shares aren't submitted, it results in lower hashrate.

Once you try different software, we can confirm that bad software is the problem. In the meantime, we ask that you don't use that miner to mine for long periods except for trying to figure out what's wrong. It will drag down the profitability of this pool or others, and may result in the forfeiture query being triggered. If you get triggered, I'll get Chris to reverse it because you're doing testing to help us figure out the problem.

[CritterDog]

Hi Critter,

The Gridseed seems to be working as expected. When it switched to Elephantcoin, the profitability was so high that it knew you would lose hashrate, but still mined it anyway because the shares were so valuable. That's fine.

We've determined a correlation with the A2s, the persistent hashrate problems, the lost blocks, and the "low luck" miners. Is there any way you can use completely different software with the A2, and see what happens?

I am going to try a few things on my end I may have something set wrong.
Couple things... Positive is My hashrate does seem more steady. But something has happened to my restart rate. The A2 has always stayed under the threshold and I never got restart penaltys.. Now something has changed that my restart rate is much higher? Above the min.. I didnt change anything to cause that.
Just noticed that my found blocks are not matching what is being reported. I show on cgminer I found 11 blocks in 23 minutes. On the pool it only shows I found 3 blocks. Why is this?

I think the reason is that your miner is not submitting the found blocks to the pool because the software you are using is buggy. This is what we think caused the "low luck" miners. It also causes hashrate spikes, because when shares aren't submitted, it results in lower hashrate.

Once you try different software, we can confirm that bad software is the problem. In the meantime, we ask that you don't use that miner to mine for long periods except for trying to figure out what's wrong. It will drag down the profitability of this pool or others, and may result in the forfeiture query being triggered. If you get triggered, I'll get Chris to reverse it because you're doing testing to help us figure out the problem.

I am changing some settings and trying stuff.. The hashrate is steady now..The restarts seem ok.. Now I need to figure out why I am losing blocks.. It seemed to help by lowering my d=all the way down to 2048.. But to early to tell.. When I run a high difficulty I don't find any blocks and I am stuck on Anoncoin 90 percent of the time.. Useless.. It was never like this before you changed things.. I was up all night working on this while I was losing money... Trying to help you guys and others that I am sure have A2s and already left this pool long ago.. I can stop right now this is costing me money.. But what are you going to do tell everyone that has a A2 they cant mine here? Seems to me you guys need to figure this out not the customer.. Sorry but I have been up all night working on this losing money..

[CritterDog]

Anoncoin is useless I loose every block when I am on that coin. My miner is on it way to long.. It finaly switched to experiencecoin and I picked up 2 blocks in 2 minutes! How can that be my machines fault!

Experiencecoin 17500 0 315,147 $0.0012 Immature 2 minutes ago 465185
Experiencecoin 17500 0 81,375 $0.1207 Immature 2 minutes ago 465183
Anoncoin 2.5 0 11,304,818 $0.4626 Lost 11 minutes ago 545038

[Chris Sokolowski]

I looked into Anoncoin, and the lost blocks have nothing to do with your miner. Last weekend, I updated the Anoncoin daemon to prepare for the hardfork. What I didn't realize is the programmers changed the difficulty calculation. Now, Instead of stating scrypt difficulty directly like every other coin, they changed the client so it displays the inverse of difficulty. So of the difficulty is actually 100, Anoncoin reports it as 0.01. Thus, we were trying to submit difficulty 0.01 blocks to the daemon and they were getting lost.

I hate when coin developers make these changes that break compatibility with previous versions for no reason. There is no excuse for this; it is bad software design. Other pools have complained about this change in the Anoncoin forums, so we are not the only ones frustrated with this change.

I have disabled Anoncoin mining for the moment. We are not going to modify our stratum server to account for the way they think difficulty should be reported. Instead, I am going to modify their source code to report difficulty the "old way", the same way as every other coin.