Bitcoin wiki Miners
I heard that bitcoins were generating by mining, meaning that a computer program would solve a mathematical problem (the kind solved by brute force) and the owner would be paid in bitcoins.
Originally, standard computers were used to solve this mathematical problem. Then, some programmers used the GPU (or video cards) to help in the calculations. The present method is to use ASICs, specialized hardware connected to the computer.
I am not interested in mining bitcoins. I must develop a program that handles mathematical problems. I hope to modify that Bitcoin software to fit my purpose. At very least, the bitcoin software may give me pointers to my software, thus making the job easier.
Assistance would be appreciated.
I learned C years ago, learned how to solve mathematical problems but not how to handle and write drivers. I must now write a program that includes new drivers.
Plan A is to modify the bitcoin miner software so it does the calculations I need. I would not mind learning how to coax the video card into doing calculations, I would not mind learning how to manage drivers for the ASICs, but time is money, and if a modification is faster than writing from scratch, I must take this path. Plan B is to write my software from scratch. My studying the bitcoin software will help me study the textbooks that I must read, in the sense that I may associate the writing material to the real world.
If you're looking at brute forcing hashes, I don't know why you wouldn't just create simple program that runs a hashing algorithm on strings in a loop. You should look into password salts, and hashing algorithms, and other methods site operators use to safeguard passwords.
Unless you're looking into doing something else..
Bitcoin Mining software not working. Why?I downloaded the mining software "GUIMiner".
When I went to "Default" in GUIMiner, in the device thingy it says "No OpenCL Devices" and when i press "start mining" it says that I have connection problems. Why is this?
Do I need to have anything connected to my laptop in order to mine?
Let's see, bitcoin.org, the official site of Bitcoin, just introduce us the Bitcoin Client and Wallets, but did not mention anything about Bitcoin Mining. At Participate page, it just says :
"You can also do some Bitcoin mining to make the network more secure by helping to process transactions."
Or Bitcoin Mining software is just a clone version of "Bitcoin Client" but it works harder than Bitcoin Client.
