Know How... 74

Replacing your Macbook optical drive with a second hard drive, and learn the basics to mining cryptocurrency.

Dual-Driving your MacBook Pro

Things You'll Need to Have

1. MacBook (or other Notebook) with an optical drive.
2. Jewlers screwdriver (or really small Phillips)
3. Flat Screwdriver
4. Magnetic tool or extractor

Things You'll Need to Buy

1. HDD Caddy (You can find them on Ebay for $7-$20)
2. A 2.5" HDD of your choice. (If you plan to upgrade your HDD to a SSD, you can use the existing HDD in the caddy.)
3. A SSD of your choice (Optional - See Know How Episode 67 for help in choosing a SSD)

The Steps!

1. Prepare your workspace: You want a clean surface and some sort of pad between the laptop and the surface. You also want a way to collect and organize the screws that you remove from the laptops.
2. Flip the notebook over and remove all the screws holding the back panel to the frame. Make sure to set aside the screws in a way that you're remember which hole they belong to. This is important - NOT ALL THE SCREWS ARE THE SAME!
3. Remove the back panel and find the two small connectors near the center of the unit, behind the optical drive. One goes to the HDD and the other to the Optical drive. Use the flat screwdriver to GENTLY pry them off their connector mounts.
4. Remove the three screws holding down the optical drive and the two screws holding down the speaker assembly. AGAIN MAKE SURE TO KEEP YOUR SCREWS ORGANIZED!
5. You should now be able to slide out the Optical drive.
6. (If you plan on upgrading the HDD to a SSD, now is the time to do it. - If you are unsure on how to do that, we'll show you in about 3 weeks.)
7. Place the HDD in the caddy and secure it.
8. Remove the cable and the mounting backet from the back of the optical drive and attach them to the caddy.
9. Slide the caddy into position where the optical drive once was.
10. Secure the caddy and the speaker assembly with the 5 screws you removed previously.
11. Reconnect the HDD and Optical drive connectors.
12. Re-secure the back cover.
13. Power it up! -- If you only replaced the optical drive, you are done (other than possibly needing to initialize the drive in the Finder). If you also replaced the HDD with a SSD, then you'll need to reinstall OSX. (And I know you're going to reinstall, because all GOOD geeks give themselves a clean OS whenever they can!)

Dogecoin Mining

Things You'll Need to Have

1. A computer. Preferably a desktop.
2. A connection to the Internet. (Did I really need to write this one? I mean, if you didn't have a connection to the Internet, you're probably not reading these show notes, are you?)

Things You Need to Download

1. You need a Dogecoin Wallet. You can download an appropriate one for your OS here
2. You need a SCRYPT miner. I suggest "CGminer" if you're doing GPU miner, "MINERD" if you're doing CPU mining. - We're only covering CPU mining in this episode.

** Extra Special Bonus for my Know-It-Alls! **

I know that Github can be a bit daunting because it offers so many different version of the miners, so here are a few links that will take you to the versions that I use on Windows.
Much Mining. So Doge. Very Padre. wow

The Steps!

In broad strokes, we're going to install the wallet, join a pool, create a worker, and configure the miner.

Install the Wallet

1. Install the Wallet. (It may take a while to sync.)
2. Click the "Much Recieve" tab and then click "New Address"
3. Give the New Address a label and click "OK"
   • The "Address" that has been generated is unique to you AND THIS WALLET. It will become you "Payment Address" from the pool.

Join a Pool

1. You need to join a pool. You're looking for a pool with a lot of workers, a high hash-rate and good uptime. I suggest Dogehouse.
2. After you sign-up, you can click "edit account" and enter in the "Payment Address" that you generated in your wallet. (We didn't cover this part. We'll be covering it next week when we start to generate SERIOUS dogecoin with our GPU mining!)

Create a Worker

1. Click on "My Workers" in your pool interface. You'll see all your current workers (should be empty) and a section to "Add a New Worker"
2. Add a worker name and password. It doesn't have to be secure because the worker accounts can only contribute to your dogestash, they can't be used to withdraw currency.
3. Once you've added a worker, that name and password will be needed when we configure the miner. For example, if your username is "PadreSJ" and you just created a worker with the name "kh1" and the password "kh1", then the worker name will be "PadreSJ.kh1" with a password of "kh1".
   • You want to create a worker for EVERY miner that you use. It allows you to properly track hash performance.

Configure the Miner

1. Unzip the miner that you downloaded and find the appropriate miner. (If you downloaded my super-special file, it will be found in the "Litecoin\Mine Litecoins with CPU" directory)
2. Edit the file called "MineWithCPU.bat" - It should look like this: "minerd -a scrypt -t 4 -s 6 -o stratum+tcp://dogehouse.org:3333 -O PadreSJ.ProducerCPU:MuchProducer"
   (This has been pre-populated with data from my miner... don't run it unless you want to contribute to MY Dogestash!)
3. Replace "PadreSJ.ProducerCPU" with your worker.
4. Replace "MuchProducer" with your worker's password.
5. Save the file.
6. Run the file.
7. So Doge!

Notes 

1. CPU mining is VERY slow. Even the fastest CPU can't mine as quickly as even an average GPU. This is for TRAINING. Get use to the process and next week I'll teach you what a proper GPU can do for you hash rate!
2. In the show we didn't configure you pool to payout. Again, on purpose. Focus on geting your hash rate stable. Next week I'll show you what a fully configured rig and pool look like.
3. Ask me questions! @PadreSJ on Twitter. (though I'll be at CES this next week, so may be a little slow in answering.)

Connect with us!

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• Email us at knowhow@twit.tv

Links

• DogeHouse Pool
• DogeCoin Wallet
• Cgminer
• Asteroid (GUI for Mac)