3.9.0 finds all 22 of my BEs within a minute or two on restart pretty reliably (win7 i3 box using powered 7-port USB2 hubs and an fan to keep them cool). I also am running cgminer 3.3.1 to mine scrypt on a gpu (it doesn't see my BEs), and cpuminer using just 2 threads mining a cpu-only coin just to keep from wasting available cpu cycles   (I found cgminer had problems managing the BEs if I used more cpu threads mining).  I have 4 antminer U1s running on another machine using a forked version of cgminer since they don't play well with BEs at the current software level of maturity (they are a relatively new device that unfortunately share the same USB ID as the BEs, but the 4 are as fast as my 22 BEs!). 

Bottom line - I've had good luck with the newer versions of cgminer - great devs!

Are you using 3.7.2 or earlier?  That was the last version to support GPU's and Altcoin mining

I'm not maintaining mining software to help people make profits. I'm maintaining a bitcoin miner because I believe in bitcoin, and while miners are primarily interested in making a profit from mining, I'm interested in promoting and supporting bitcoin, which needs miners and mining software.

Did you read the whole thing? It DOES say why. Let me crop out a few parts:


The BTC difficulty is increasing because more and more people are buying newer and newer hardware. The network doesn't just increase by 500x in a one year span without people buying the hardware, and mining on them. CGMiner is at the forefront of running those millions of dollars of hashrate, BTW.

And as far as your ASICs are concerned, it's not Con's fault people bought a bunch of BEs or a Jalapeno and realized they're too expensive hard to maintain to successfully mine any coins from them. Those ASICMiner devices have always been overpriced. ASICMiner and Avalon units consume way too much power. Those BFL Singles are decent devices. Those AntMiners look very promising. KNC or BitFury are amazing devices. I dare you to ask anyone who has any of those and see if they're losing money.

My V1 Blades have paid for themselves a few time over - they've been totally solid and reliable, and just hash away in the corner with zero intervention.  Same with the Jalapenos. 

What is annoying is the ASICMiner Cube - it's unstable at best, uses quite a bit of power.  I'm not sure it'll ever pay for itself, but this winter it's keeping the living room about 2C warmer than usual this time of the year, and all summer it'll cost nothing to run thanks to free power.

I know how difficult is calculated, I have been on this for almost a year, as I said before, i build several farms (5, one is mine, the other as a consultant/technician for investors) and the only ones making real money are the altcoins, the only way to make real money mining bitcoin is buying the chips and produce the rigs yourself before anyone else, or better.... design the chips yourself and don't sell them, use them.
I will get ROI with my Fury's probably between febrary and march, I already achieved ROI with my Blades, but you know what, I can make ROI in alt-coins in 3 months, sometimes less.
I never talked about loosing money, just not earning enough to make it worth it, period.

Only because the price of BTC has risen.

However, you lost BTC. The BTC price paid for said items at the time they were bought is greater than the BTC they have produced.
Thus your profit is less than if you had simply bought BTC instead.
(also you need to subtract the running cost and time mining that would not have been necessary if you only bought BTC)

Well, no, that's false, but hey don't let facts get in the way of a good argument.    I've never bought BTC for fiat, every BTC I've mined has been reinvested or cashed out to fiat.


Agreed on the first point.  

However, my running costs are essentially zero when averaged out across a year, and over the year I've been mining I've spent essentially nothing in fiat to keep my BTC production around 1BTC every 6 weeks.  1BTC every 6 weeks means I can keep up with increase in difficulty by buying new hardware, and sometimes my older hardware is sold to top up that BTC fund - I sold my 10 Block Erupters and bought two BlueFurys.  Selling the Blues paid for the 10 Antminer U1s.  Without spending a fiat penny I've gone from 3.3GH to 5GH to around 20GH.

You also have to consider that I'm not really in this for profit.  I have a good job that pays me enough that I live comfortably and have enough left over at the end of the month to not only save, but spend on my hobby of building PCs and buying little things to tinker with.  Mining is a hobby.  Some people play games on XBox.  Some people go and piss £100 up the wall on a Friday night.  I mess about with my miners.