Welcome :)

ChrisJ, as always nice read.
Love the ‘muddy shoe’ comparison !

[b]What is mining and how does it work?[/b]

Simply put, ‘mining’ is the process of breaking down blocks of encrypted data using processing powers such as your GPU or CPU. The Feathercoin network runs on these encrypted blocks, which carries various information such as transactions, as well as the amount of FTC in every individual’s wallet.

Everyone’s information is spread throughout the network, rather than one stationary source, which it makes it very difficult if not impossible to hack into the network to make malicious changes. This is because information is sent in every block, which as I mentioned, is encrypted. This is where miners come in. Each encrypted block must be broken down by miners. After this is done, that information then becomes verified. After “x” amount of verifications, the transaction becomes complete. As you can see, the only way to make a successful change in the network is to have over 50% to verify the false injected data.

Miners are needed not only to verify blocks (since the difficulty adjusts to work with even a very low network hash rate), but to prevent these 51% attacks. The more individual miners there are, the harder and more expensive it is for a malicious attacker to achieve over half the network hash rate.

By being a miner, you both help maintain and protect the Feathercoin network.

[b]How does mining make me money?[/b]

Yes, the important question: ‘How does mining make me money?’

When you or your pool break a block, you are rewarded with Feathercoins that come from one of two ways:

1- Transactions made charge a very small transaction fee, much smaller than what you would be charged from ordinary fiat transactions.
This fee is recycled and goes to the miners who put in their hashing power into running the network.

2.
For the time being, and for several years more to come, Feathercoins are still in the process of being “printed”.
There will be a maximum of 336,000,000 Feathercoins in existence, which won’t be achieved until approximately the year ([b]Anyone knows this?[/b]).
Until then, you are basically printing out the currency yourself and being rewarded with it.

Now is a very opportune moment to mine since there are still millions of Feathercoins to be created.

Feathercoins themselves already have spendable value, the merchants and store-base that accept Feathercoin are quickly expanding through our community’s efforts to publicize and promote Feathercoin.

You can also use one of many exchanges to convert Feathercoins into USD, EUR, etc.
From there you can use any options that the exchange offers in order to withdraw it as cash.

You can use our [url=http://calc.feathercoin.com/]Feathercoin calculator[/url] to approximate how much you’d make if you ran your miners for a day, after electricity costs.

Article made by aysyr.

[quote name=“dustinhamlin” post=“54513” timestamp=“1390528461”]
I have a few questions,
what do you put into the .BAT file you make. the tutorial doesn’t mention.
Also what do you name the file “???.BAT”
[/quote]

It seems that, with the latest forum issue the post got a bit messed up…
Will edit now :)

Added to: [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,685]http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,685[/url]

Cheers.

Feathercoin - Start mining with a pool

There is some good information in @Sheepson 's guide, BUT it is now out of date.

Start at this link to find the latest mining information, NSGMiner has it’s own documents include on Github

http://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/8235/nsgminer-v0-9-0-the-fastest-neoscrypt-gpu-miner

https://github.com/ghostlander/nsgminer

NSGminer v0.9.2:

Linux - GitHub (source code) https://github.com/ghostlander/nsgminer

32-bit Windows release :
https://github.com/ghostlander/nsgminer/releases/download/nsgminer-v0.9.2/nsgminer-win32-0.9.2.zip

64-bit Windows release :
https://github.com/ghostlander/nsgminer/releases/download/nsgminer-v0.9.2/nsgminer-win64-0.9.2.zip

NSGminer is an advanced NeoScrypt CPU and GPU miner with the OpenCL support delivering the best hash rates for the AMD Radeon hardware (HD4000 series and newer). Should be compatible with the latest AMD Catalyst drivers. Also provides limited support for all NVIDIA OpenCL capable GeForce, Quadro and Tesla hardware. No external dependencies other than libcurl. Getwork, GetBlockTemplate and Stratum protocols are supported.

Example configuration for R9 280X (HD7970):

Code:

nsgminer --neoscrypt -g 1 -w 128 -I 16 --gpu-engine 1000 --gpu-memclock 1500 -o stratum+tcp://some_pool:some_port -O some_user:some_password

–thread-concurrency, --shaders, --vectors are not used for NeoScrypt. --intensity or -I is the primary performance optimiser. May be set between 8 and 20 according to your video card’s memory size. For example, -I 16 means (2 ^ 16) GPU threads each of 32768 bytes = 2,147,483,648 bytes or 2Gb. There are some configuration tweaks available in neoscrypt.cl which might deliver a little bit of additional performance.

The old Guide

This guide assumes that you have already setup a wallet and created your own Feathercoin address to receive FTC ([url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=337]Create a wallet[/url]. Now it is time to mine some Feathercoins (FTC’s)!

1. What is mining
By running the official FTC client (basically, your wallet), your PC connects to all other FTC clients running and forms a network between which FTC payments can be made. As explained in the [wallet guide], every FTC transaction is added to the blockchain, which stores all transactions and is shared between all connected clients.
To make sure that the network functions and integrity is maintained, the FTC network needs miners. Without going in too much detail, miners perform mathematical calculations that ‘generally speaking’ check whether payments send out over the network are genuine and valid. In return, miners receive FTC’s as a reward. The amount of the reward is determined by the FTC protocol and part of the software itself. Mining is essential for FTC to function properly and, of course, a nice method to earn some FTC yourself.

2. Type of mining (solo or pool)
FTC can be mined ‘solo’ or by connecting to a pool. Solo mining is done on your own PC without help from others. Your PC tries to solve the calculations and when successful, it is called finding a so-called ‘block’. For FTC a block is 200 FTC which you receive in your wallet as miner. That sounds pretty nice, but the chance that you are successful in finding a block is not very high. It may take a lot of time (weeks) to obtain a block, because there is a lot of competition from other miners.
In order to spread the risk of finding a ‘block’, people have formed groups of miners in so-called ‘pools’. Each miner creates an account with a pool (run by smart people that know the ins and outs of mining) and let’s his minder(s) work in a pool with other miners in a joint effort to find a block. When a block is found, the pool software divides the revenues of the block found to all miners of the pool in accordance with the rules of that pool. It is quite common that pool owners also pay you as a miner for submitting mining power even if you ultimately do not find a block. This makes mining in a pool a lot more interesting for the casual miner and miners with only a small amount of mining power than solo mining.
In this guide, we will focus on pool mining.

3. Joining a pool
Before you can start mining with the CPU or GPU, you need to create an account with a pool. There are already a lot of pools that support FTC mining. The pools differ in the rules, payout methods and fees but the larger pools use similar conditions. Here is a list of pools: [url=http://coinpools.sdfg.org/ftc.]http://coinpools.sdfg.org/ftc.[/url]
In this guide I use FTC d2 pool as example.
You need to go to the pool’s website [url=http://ftc.d2.cc/]http://ftc.d2.cc/[/url] and create an account.
Once you are logged into your account, go to: My account -> My workers. Here you find your “workers”. Workers are entry points to which you can connect a PC that acts as minder. If you have multiple PC’s to use as miner, you can create multiple workers that all add to your total mining power in the pool.
On the ‘worker’ page, you can find the credentials needed when connecting your miner to the pool.
In this case I have created the following worker credentials:
username: sheepson_demo.1
password: x

We will get back to connection to the pool in the following paragraph.

4. CPU or GPU mining
You can mine FTC with the CPU of your PC or your GPU (the 3d chip of your video graphics card). For mining FTC, GPU mining is generally a lot more powerful than CPU mining. CPU mining is rarely profitable unless you do not have to pay for the electricity (mining requires quite some electricity).
If you want a list of the kHash/s other people get with specific video cards you can check this topic on the Feathercoin forum: [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=264.0]http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=264.0[/url] or check this hardware mining comparison site: [url=https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison]https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Mining-hardware-comparison[/url] (this one is made for Litecoin - another crypto currency -, but since Feathercoin also uses ‘scrypt’ for mining it provides useful information).

4.1. CPU Mining
First, we will describe CPU mining.
For CPU mining, you need a third party program. There are several software solutions for CPU mining. This guide takes ScryptMiner - GUI as example. This miner has a dedicated thread at Bitcointalk.org where you can download the latest version: [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62414.0]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62414.0[/url]
After downloading the latest version, extract it to a folder of choice and then run ‘ScryptMiner.exe’. Your screen will look as follows:
[img]http://sheepson.nl/ftc/scryptminer.png[/img]

The program provides for several options. You will notice the details of the pool inserted as well as the username and the password. The data inserted matches the credentials created at the pool website. The pool server details can usually be found in the FAQ of the pool website.
The option ‘thread’ relates to the numbers of cores of your CPU. Every core that your CPU has counts as a ‘thread’. Therefore, if you have - for example - an AMD X6 CPU, you have 6 threads. If you want the software to use all 6 cores, you can choose this option form the ‘Threads’ dropdown list, but it is also possible to keep a few cores free for other tasks.

Now press ‘Start Mining’ and the program will try to start mining (give it 30 - 60 seconds to start).
Note that it will take some time before your kHash/s will appear on the pool’s website. Furthermore it is noted that everything below 500 kHash/s is not very accurate.

4.2. GPU Mining
Below, GPU mining is described.
First, we will create another worker at the pool’s website to keep things separated. I recommend doing so in order to know where to start looking if something is not working correctly.
In this guide, credentials for the GPU mining worker are:
username: sheepson_demo.gpu
password: x

GPU mining also requires third party software. This guide takes cgminer as example. You can download the latest version here: [url=http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/]http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/[/url]
[b]Update: From version 3.8 CGMiner does not support ‘scrypt’ anymore, so the latest version you can use for mining scrypt coins is 3.7.[/b]
After downloading, extract it to a folder of choice. In that folder where the cgminer.exe file is located, you need to make a new text file (.txt).
You can make a new .txt file by clicking the right mouse button and go through the menus appearing (see screen below). This will create an empty text file in the folder.
[img]http://sheepson.nl/ftc/newtextfile.png[/img]

Name the text file “d2 mining pool.txt” or something that you will continue to recognize.
Now open the text file and add this single line to the file:

cgminer.exe --scrypt -o [url=http://pool.d2.cc:9344]http://pool.d2.cc:9344[/url] -u sheepson_demo.gpu -p x --intensity 13
This line is a command line running the cgminer.exe file including certain commands. Those commands are called ‘flags’ and set certain data or options of the program. Below, you will find a brief explanation of the flags.
–scrypt means that you are mining a scrypt coin. You have to add this flag to let cgminer know that you need a specific type of mining method
-o means the server you are connecting to
-u means username
-p means password
–intensity (also used as -I) means the intensity your card is working to solve blocks (please note that higher is not always better)

Note that this is a line to begin with; there are many other parameters that can be configured and tweaked to obtain optimal results. You can read up on the different parameters here:
[url=https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/SCRYPT-README]https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/SCRYPT-README[/url]

Now save the .txt file as a ‘batch’ file (by changing the extension of the text file from ‘.txt’ to ‘.bat’). You can do so in the file explorer if the explorer is configured to show file extensions. Another method is using the ‘save as’ option of the text editor with which you have opened the text file. See screen shot below for an example.
[img]http://sheepson.nl/ftc/saveas.png[/img]

You have to create a filename with .bat and select “All Files” at ‘Save as type’.

When you have saved this file, double click on the .bat file and a command window will pop up. Your screen will look like this.
[img]http://sheepson.nl/ftc/cgminer.png[/img]
Now you are mining FTC with your GPU!

This command window gives you some information on your GPU temperature (as reported by your video card), fan speed, average kHash (may differ from that reported by the pool website) and more geekish data.
If you run into problems like ‘cgminer stopped responding’ instantly, you probably need to download the AMD APP SDK, which can be found here: [url=http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/heterogeneous-computing/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/downloads/]http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/heterogeneous-computing/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/downloads/[/url]

A good tool to completely uninstall your AMD driver is: [url=http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/catalyst-uninstall-utility.aspx]ADM Uninstall Utility[/url]

Hardware errors appear most of the time because your settings are too high (like the intensity setting). Try lowering them and play with the settings in the .bat file until you reach an optimal balance between noise, temperature and (uncorrupted) kHash rate. Preferably, your GPU temperature should hover around 75C. This may take some experimenting.
It is also possible that you have the newest drivers and windows isn’t allowing you to load your GPU for 100%
You should add the following line above the “cgminer.exe” line in your .bat file:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

5. Conclusion
You have now learned how to set up mining FTC with a pool. I hope this guide was helpful and furthers your interest in mining FTC. Please do not forget to fill in your FTC wallet address at the pool website and an appropriate threshold for the pool to automatically pay out mined FTC to your wallet.
Any questions? Just ask!

The Feathercoin blockchain will grow overtime and if you want to be one step ahead of an full C:\ disk you may want to replace the default blockchain location to another disk, lets say D:\

Here is what you need to do:
On Windows Vista or later, the whole %appdata%\Feathercoin directory can be replaced with a symbolic directory link:
(0) Make sure the feathercoin client is not running.
(1) Move the %appdata%\Feathercoin directory to its target location (e.g. D:\Feathercoin)
(2) Run the command prompt as root and issue the command mklink /d “c:\users\\appdata\roaming\Feathercoin” “D:\Feathercoin”

Now start the client.

I am running a few 7950’s @ 580 ~ 600 k/hash each (XFX) 200eu (alternate.nl).

Get a cheap board / cpu / ram @ marktplaats.nl and a decent 600watt power supply and you will have a 1mh/s+ rig :)

Because of the max rise per diff change, the diff is till lower then it ‘should’ be at this hashrate.

Welcome back Calem.

Nice :)

@ Pryderi, sorry i just deleted your post :-[ .

Was trying to delete a spam message.

Welcome :).

Maybe you’ll find someone local to you that you can buy feathercoin from.
Otherwise you can trade them on different crypto exchanges.

Have fun.

Looks very neat! 8)

You could get some more coins by selling items on the feathercoin market.
https://feathercoinmarket.com/index.php

Welcome btw :)

Hi there!

Welcome, i’ll pm you about the tutorials ;)

On your site it won’t allow me to let it sent to The Netherlands, are you willing to ship there? And what would be the shippin costs ;)?