New to mining.....be kind

[mrgoldy]

I am brand new to mining
Right now I'm just playing around with my GPU and CPU, different miners and settings, and came across your site. I really like the concept of prohashing, so I hope I can get this working and get into mining.

I've found that I can use ccminer and minerd and successfully mine at eobot pool using the following
C:\miner\minerd-core-avx-i.exe -a X11 -t 6 -o stratum+tcp://x11.eobot.com:5555 --userpass eobot.701708:x
C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://scrypt.eobot.com:4444 --userpass eobot.701708:x
pause

So knowing that those work for me, I had thought I could just replace the url/user and everything should work with prohashing
But after running the miners for ~15mins, zero accepted, zero rejected, just constantly displaying the block/diff/temp/hashrate
My Earnings-Live Worker Status page does display that it's calculating hashrate, so it recognizes that I'm connected

These are the .bat's
C:\miner\minerd-core-avx-i.exe -a X11 -t 6 -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --userpass mrgoldy:
C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --userpass mrgoldy:
pause

Please help me understand what I'm doing wrong.
My only thought of what might be wrong, is that prohashing has a minimum accepted hashrate, and I'm not hitting it.

[GregoryGHarding]

if youre planning to mine x11, you need to specify it in the password using the password arguments found in the help section. you may have to put your password in quotes if you use multiple args like n= a= etc. give that a try with minerd first and see what happens.

[mrgoldy]

I had thought that's what the -a X11 in the beginning does
C:\miner\minerd-core-avx-i.exe -a X11 -t 6 -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --userpass mrgoldy:"a=x11"
I'm getting accepted!

I also tried it with my X11 ccminer
C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a X11 -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --userpass mrgoldy:"a=x11"
pause
and I'm getting accepted there also
not many shares, but I see on the live worker status that it switches between coins, so maybe that affects difficulty and the amount of accepted?

Any thoughts on my ccminer scrypt setup?

[GregoryGHarding]

when you set -a in the beginning of your bat file, that's only telling the application which algo its going to mine, the password argument is what tells prohashing what pool to connect you to. try using a=scrypt in your password field and -a scrypt in your application .bat.

as for shares it will start slow until your hardware submits some shares and you will see difficulty drop. prohashing will automatically find the best difficulty based on your hardware to submit 1 share a minute. so starting off it takes some time. if its a really low hash rate it could be an hour before you see consistent share activity, or you might get lucky and only take a few minutes.

[mrgoldy]

GPU started showing consistent share activity with X11, CPU is here and there. But I know CPU mining is out the door. again just playing around.

C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --userpass mrgoldy:"a=scrypt"
pause
is not getting any shares yet ~20mins, I'll update later if it finally gets some or not.

Thank you so much for your help

I plan on building a GPU rig, but wanted to trial all this with my current setup first.

If a GPU has so much power, then it doesn't matter which algo it mines, correct? Especially with prohashing because the payout is your choice.

[GregoryGHarding]

you will not get the same hash power between x11 and scrypt, one algo is more difficult than another. generally will see a higher hashrate from x11 than scrypt, and that also reflects profitability as you can see from the ticker at the top of the page. i typically CPU mine x11 on machines that are GPU mining other algos, as the hashrate is higher due to difficulty differences.

[lilbob]

Ah, your password may cause a confusion. If left blank (no password) it will automaticaly mine scrypt. the password feild is used to include specific instructions to the prohashing pool. so for you it would be:

C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --user mrgoldy --pass
pause

If you wanted to set it to the easiest (difficulty 512) for testing purposes, you can include a password argument (See help section for details on different password arguments):

C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --user mrgoldy --pass d=512
pause

[mrgoldy]

Ah, your password may cause a confusion. If left blank (no password) it will automaticaly mine scrypt. the password feild is used to include specific instructions to the prohashing pool. so for you it would be:

C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --user mrgoldy --pass
pause

If you wanted to set it to the easiest (difficulty 512) for testing purposes, you can include a password argument (See help section for details on different password arguments):

C:\miner\ccminer-x64.exe -a scrypt -o stratum+tcp://prohashing.com:3333 --user mrgoldy --pass d=512
pause

Thanks lilbob the .bat with the d=512 did work
The .bat with no d= did not work

Can you explain the pros and cons of setting the difficulty number?

It's odd how the --userpass works for X11 vs -user -pass works for scrypt

[GregoryGHarding]

pros and cons of d=:

pro: if 512 is optimum difficulty for your hardware it will maximise profit
con: if its not optimum difficulty, you will be stuck at 512, lose profit, slow shares, basically everything you dont want.

if you want to incule a password dive your device a name with n= instead of defining a static difficulty.

[lilbob]

Can you explain the pros and cons of setting the difficulty number?

It's odd how the --userpass works for X11 vs -user -pass works for scrypt

I suspect the x11 vs scypt password field problem is due to the different miners. You could try out bfgminer, i think that would work for both algorithms, cpu or gpu. I personaly use cgminer for cpu, and sgminer for gpu.

To understand the benefits of a password argument for difficulty, you should really read the help section for a deeper understanding. In general, if no difficulty is set, prohashing will find a difficulty where your miner will accept a share at least once per minute. if it is a smaller gpu for example, d=512 might be to hard, resulting in fewer than one per minute. If it the gpu is a newer one, d=512 might be to easy, resulting in a work restart penalty. If your unsure about your gear's capacity, leave them running on prohashing without a d= argument for about 15 mins, and see what difficulty has been selected as optimum, with shares being accepted.