What are the simplified steps to mining ethereum

Question

I'm totally new to this. I had a chance to buy 100 bitcoins a few years back for $500, Recently, with the bitcoin bubble, I learned about ethereum. I barely understand the technology, but find it fascinating. I bought a couple "ethers" a few weeks ago and then............... I bought a computer with 8gigs RAM, a quad processor, AMD radeon 5070 graphics card , etc and dedicated the whole deal to downloading eth.........

2 days ago.

I've made every mistake and assumption I think a person can make trying to download ethereum.(including asking multiple questions in the same post, editing now) I've looked at a lot of Q/A on the web. Step by step answers are scattered all over. The box is currently cooking along. My "geth" is currently running ad nauseum the phrase, "imported new chain segment", but it doesn't seem to be catching up with the blockchain. Every few hours the block count on my "geth attach" screen increases about 2k give or take. So....can someone answer simply a few questions please?

1. if/when the blockchain is completely downloaded can ethereum wallet and ethminer be drag/dropped into the window or do i have to execute a command?

Thanks

Steve

Answer 1

if/when the blockchain is completely downloaded can ethereum wallet be drag/dropped into the window or do i have to execute a command?

Same question goes for the miner program. d/d or execute command?

As I understood you would like to have a more friendly UI on your miner instead of command-line like interface. In this case you can try something like minergate or parity. They provide friendly GUI. When you add new account to parity it automatically detects keystore files on your computer, so you don't even need to drag&drop.

If I unplug my computer and set it up again do I need to download the entire blockchain again?

If you haven't deleted blockchain from you disk (HDD/SSD) you won't have to download the entire blockchain. You will just sync to the latest block from the point you stopped.
In geth you can specify directory where your blockchain is stored like this:

geth --datadir D:\data

If I add a second AMD card can I dedicate just THAT card to a pool and have the original mine on its own?

I can assume this scenario is possible. But I will leave this question open until other people answer or I will find the answer myself.

Answer 2

I have been mining for 1yr & 1/2. Do not try to solo mine, point your miner at a mining pool.

The simplest steps for me

1

Get the EthOS Linux Distribution and burn it to your SSD hard drive as per their instructions.

2

Once booted into EthOS, modify the config file as per the documentation to point to your mining pool of choice and set the rig into single rig mode also given in the documentation.

3

reboot & it will start automatically mining and sending contributions to your mining pool under your wallet address. Once you reach the minimum threshold payout Eth arrives in your wallet.

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If the system reboots or crashes when it boots back up again it will start mining automatically. My rigs run 24/7 with barely any human intervention. I go in every few days and reboot them manually.