I was inspired by a few other Steemit members recently, ( @cryptos and @williambanks mostly) to put into motion a passive mining source based on easily installed software and running on the random computers I have running everyday around my house.  The post that led me down this path can be read here:

<center>[How to Easily Mine With Your Computer and Get More Steem, A Guide for People Not Into Crypto Currencies](https://steemit.com/mining/@cryptos/how-to-easily-mine-with-your-computer-and-get-more-steem-a-guide-for-people-not-into-crypto-currencies)</center>

In this post, @cryptos explained how to download and install a free mining program distributed by [NiceHash.com](https://www.nicehash.com/), who is a reputable site and have been in the game for a while.  I've had an account there for a couple years and have sold some mining hash from the S7's.  I trust them and their software has been developed for a while and is maintained on [github.com](https://github.com).

Even though i like Nicehash, I found their software worked a little wacky with my laptop.  Also, it doesn't run on Mac or Linux, so i discovered @williambanks reply on the same post and tried out MinerGate's software, which is pretty similar, and as well known by myself.

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<center>![enter image description here](http://www.crowdfunder.website/linux/pics/tutorials/11-08-16/miner-gate/miners-1.jpg)</center>

<center>[Original Image Source](https://pixabay.com/en/coal-black-black-and-white-1626401/) Sketch Render Done By @vegascomic</center>


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# <center>Are You Willing To Take MinerGate's Monero - And Turn It Into Steam Power?</center>

I have to admit, I was never into MinerGate before.  I have a couple "real miners" chunking bitcoin over at [Elegius](http://eligius.st/~gateway/), (yes, Grandpa still uses Elegius :) and have never installed their software.  They've always had a cool looking site, and to this day, I've never read much bad about them.  I like their loose association with the DigitalNote based coins, (ByteCoin, Monero, FantomCoin, QuazarCoin, MonetaVerde, AeonCoin, etc).  That whole platform has stuck it out and actually thrived.  Monero is a base coin on Poloniex along side BTC, ETH and Dollars, so there really isn't any hokum with what they're putting you into in my opinion.

I decided to setup MinerGate on three computers I have already running in my home:

 - iMac
 - Toshiba Laptop
 - Zotac HTPC

The iMac was one of the driving forces behind opting for Minergate over Nicehash.  NH doesn't have a Mac version, and the quad core processor is just a rock.  I folded on this machine for years and really wanted this experiment to include Mr. Mac.

The other driving force in the decision of MG over NH, was my sensitive Toshiba Satellite notebook.  It never seems to like anything running on it to get anywhere near it's precious little AMD A7 Vision GPU or it'll crash like a drunk prom date.  I had to stop folding on this PC because FAH always wanted to make Mr. Toshiba die.

The Zotac ZBox has served me well in the past.  it's always hooked up to my main living room TV.  Currently a 60 Inch LG.  It ran 6 New R-Box's once upon a time in Las Vegas, back when I was into New R-Boxes and 100 GHS was a lot of hash power.  The HTPC has been a horse for me in the past, we''l see how it handles MinerGate.

 I have the program up and running on all three machines for almost 2 days now and nothing bad has happened so far.  Here's a screenshot of it on the Mac:

<center>![enter image description here](http://www.crowdfunder.website/linux/pics/tutorials/11-08-16/miner-gate/miner-gate-1.jpg)</center>

It looks the same on the other two, just not as productive.  I'm using three out of four cores on the cpu only and I know it isn't very much production, but the mission here is to make three boxes in my house that would be running anyway, get off their asses and produce something besides electric consumption.

Here's a screenshot of my results over at MinerGate from about 1.75 days of production:

<center>![enter image description here](http://www.crowdfunder.website/linux/pics/tutorials/11-08-16/miner-gate/miner-gate-2.jpg)</center>

It isn't all the coin in the world by any stretch, but is accumulating and I want to wait till the one week mark on Sunday and get a grand total for seven days.  I'll do a follow up post then and report what's happened after getting a more stable benchmark.  my intentions with all of this is:

 - Get as much tradable crypto as possible from my home computers.
 - figure the most cost effective means to turn that crypro into either BTC, ETH, Bitshares, or STEEM.
 - Move it all into my static Steem Power Wallets for a weekly powering up.

We'll see what happens.

James

<center>**Check Out My Two Most Recent Tutorials Here:**</center>

<center>[Steemit Tutorial - Creating A Steemit Android In Photoshop Part 2 - Skin Smoothing Via High Pass](https://steemit.com/steemit/@vegascomic/steemit-tutorial-creating-a-steemit-android-in-photoshop-part-2-skin-smoothing-via-high-pass)</center>

<center>[Steemit Tutorial - Creating A Steemit Android In Photoshop - Part 1 Model Isolation](https://steemit.com/steemit/@vegascomic/steemit-tutorial-creating-a-steemit-android-in-photoshop-part-1-model-isolation)</center>