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I just looked at their site and downloaded their new EasyMiner. I'm on my playbook atm, so that's not going to do me much good. :P

Has anyone started using it yet? I'd like to see some screenshots!

Interesting.

https://i.imgur.com/7zrVW.png

I forgot to shut off cgminer first, so it seems to have hung here. Not sure whether to abort or not. I hit the "run a test" button, and the small box popped up saying it was going to do a firmware update.

EDIT: I hit "abort" and it changed the display to "aborting..." but still didn't close. I then closed cgminer and nothing changed. I started cgminer again, and it started mining as usual. I don't mind if these windows want to take their time closing, but they are modal on top of everything so they are annoying.

EDIT EDIT: I hit "quit' in the main window, and it quit instantly.

The $64,000 question is: Did they include new firmware that performs better than the typical 826 MH/s?

If they had I'm sure there'd be a thread from BFL here stating they have a new feature available along with some CAD drawings or something  :D

Well there are two things I must point out:

1) This is a beta release, and the idea behind this release is to enable users to manually
adjust the operating speed of the units. The slower the unit runs, the more resistant it will
be to warmer environments (and as a result, unit will no longer throttle). Of course we have
not officially announced it yet. An updated version will be available in about 12 hours, which will
remove the dummy screen seen when 'Run a test' is clicked and will also have some other changes.

2) The unit runs at exactly 832MH/s. This means that it will always take the unit exactly 5160ms
to complete the whole 4 billion nonce check. Any number that is provided by pools or different
miners, will not be very accurate since it takes job-availability, network latencty and nonceless
jobs into consideration. These factors do not affect the hash speed of the unit.

Any way to allow us to mine where we want,pools other than Eclipse??

When i download the EasyMIner i get virus a warning from Aviar   >:(

Anti-virus business is one tricky business. They make most of their money
by falsely claiming virus existance and the fact that they wiped it out, so now
you are safe.

Either way there is no virus in easyminer. It is fully written by Butterflylabs Inc.
Not a single component, DLL, library or any other third party software has been
used in easyminer. The code is a little more than 15,000 lines so far.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Do the speed changes done by Easyminer shown here:  http://www.butterflylabs.com/drivers/ (http://www.butterflylabs.com/drivers/) "stick"? In other words, can I use Easyminer to change the speed of the device and then go back to cgminer and run at that speed?  

We will provide you with different firmwares at different speeds. Once you upload a firmware to a unit, it will stay in the unit
until you upload another firmware. So in other words, if you upload 768MH/s firmware, then your unit will perform 768MH/s
(regardless of what miner you use or how many times the unit is switched on and off) until another firmware is uploaded.

Regarding the Eclpise pool, I must say that no forcing was ever intended. We may add more pools in the future, but at the
time being, Eclpise is integrated due to technical reasons and ease of integration/coding.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

I just had a chance to have a poke at it again, and it actually is pretty nice. Although it is stuck to Eclipse, and the one dialog is broken, the rest of it seems to work. It is a tiny (414kb) executable that doesn't install, just runs. It has a useful function to blink an individual unit's front panel light rapidly for identification. It will do a test run of 100, 1000, or 3000 shares, and report back lots of useful info such as the number of throttles, number of errors, temperature, etc. The firmware upload option asks for an external file which I assume will be provided later; it is of file type "BFL Secured Firmware (*.bflsec)"

https://i.imgur.com/tQdoa.png

https://i.imgur.com/qNVcPl.png (https://i.imgur.com/qNVcP.jpg)
(Click for larger pic)

This.  I would like to see some ANUBIS like web monitoring for an entire farm.  Don't waste time/resources trying to do it yourself just provide a mechanism to get low level data via an API.

Like others have mentioned, I think it will only be used for firmware upgrades, and you can stick with cgminer etc for your large farm needs. Hopefully they will release more details of device communications, so the cgminer et al can get some nifty features like making the front LED blink on command.

When do you expect the different speed firmware to become available for download?

In a few hours...

Did BFL answer this or am I just blind?

In 4-6 weeks they will release a miner that allows you to mine anywhere you like.

In the meantime they are paying Inaba for doing the PR and tech support around here by locking easy miner to his pool only.

We've forgot to mention one small thing. The blink command for the units is 'ZMX'.
Unit only accepts this command and does not reply to it. Once sent, the unit will
blink for a small period of time.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

We must say that the Easyminer was designed to target novice and new users. Professional
users may use their miner of their choice. This is our first release and in the future, other
pools will be added to Easyminer.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Not to claim I'm a professional user, but I'm a Linux only one. Any chance to also get the FW-upload command sequence documented?

Would be great not to have a spare Windows machine available just to update the Single's firmware. Or would that work from within a VM?

Firmware upload is a proprietary mechanism, which I'm afraid we cannot disclose. For your information,
it will work flawlessly through a VM. Minimum requirement is Windows XP SP2.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

^this exactly.

Unless an encrypted protocol us used to upload the FW, I don't see that the command sequence can be kept secret for ... a week max.

But having it doable from a VM lowers my personal incentive to spend time on reverse engineering that - going to upload FW maybe twice a year does not pay of investing too much time.

Thank you BFL Engineer!!

I've been using GUIminer since I started mining in june & I like the dropdown list to pick the pool I want & put my email & password info in & go mining ,something as easy as that would be very welcomed ;)

Having to setup config files & the like is time consuming & if your like me,software slow,kinda confusing :-[

Keep it simple,please ;D

Running EasyMiner in VirtualBox, I get a scary looking "The application failed to initialize properly" pop-up box.

Anyone else have this problem ?

Running diagnostics would be great right now as one of my units is DOA and I don't have any physical windows machine physically close.

Any obscurity on your part does not add any security, BFL Engineer, you are only wasting time you could use on shipping machines and deluding yourself. I am dead serious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cow_problem

So I tested out the 864 MH experimental firmware on 2 Rev3 singles and this is what I got.

https://i.imgur.com/L3eVl.jpg

Also, the status of the second one is wrong, it was done uploading firmware before I began the test.

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Do you still have that deafening fan mod? XD

Thanks for the information everyone. I might be using this software in the coming months ;)

haha no, I have it in my office and that got annoying. Also the video was mostly a troll just to poke fun at the people that were saying it was too loud. ;D

Anyone have any luck with the 'Blink Unit(s)' function? I'm running EasyMiner_V_1.0_Beta and the 'Blink Unit(s)' feature on the right-click menu doesn't do anything for me. i.e. I click on it, but no LED on my unit blinks. It would be a handy feature if it worked.

Nevermind ... it seems that my Rev2's (I tried 2 different units) don't work with the 'blink' command; even after upgrading firmware. My Rev3's work fine.

Weird story, but one of my rev2's did this, while the other didn't. However all rev3's took the new firmware.

Certain older versions of the single need a power-cycle after firmware upload.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Some of the Rev 2 do not offer the blink feature, since it was released in a later
MCU Firmware.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

I have a rev3 with the extra fan on the bottom (some don't have this?).

Using the diagnostic feature, the default firmware averages something like 844Mh/s while the 862Mh/s firmware averages 880Mh/s indicated, it is closer to the 832 and 862 advertised values in the non-ideal situation of actual mining.  Ambient temp is 74F (~23C) measured with an IR temp gun.  No throttling detected and a max temp of something like 53C for the single.  I will check power consumption in a bit when I move it to my mining rig.

cgminer 2.4.1 shows an average around 30Mh/s improvement, but I haven't let it run long enough to get a good average reading.

https://i.imgur.com/F5X7L.png

Thanks, after a power cycle it is going faster.

@BFL_Engineer: regarding the different firmware binaries available for download:

For the 864 (experimental), 792 and 768 (hot environment) firmware, are there any functional differences between these and the 832/816/808/800 versions other than hashrate? Throttling point, for example?

I'm just wondering why you have labels ('experimental' or 'hot environment') on some but not the others.

Only speed is different. Throttle-point is decided by the microprocessor on board, based on chips condition.
Lower speed however, will keep the chips cooler, thus in most cases no throttle is ever needed.

All the firmwares marked with 'Experimental' are not guaranteed to work on all units. My guess is that it will
work on 99% of them all, but it may force unit to throttle. Keeping the units in a cooler environment may
enable them to run at higher speeds. 864 is not the Highest we can reach, but it does meet our quality
requirements.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Out of curiosity what is the absolute highest hashrate you've gotten out of these units?

Now if someone was to build a waterblock for the babies we could push them to the edge :)

I have the generation of singles that can not blink the front light it seems. Firmware update doesn't fix this?

Anyway, I figured out that I could identify a particular single but doing a short test it. I could then look through the grill of the case and see the red mining light turn on and blink occasionally. I now have all of mine labeled.

I like the easy miner, looking forward to seeing it with more features.

Oh, BFL, could you add teh average temp for the testing period to the results that display at the end of the test? Thats an important reading.

Thanks

Hmm, Easyminer doesn't see my boxes at all, weirdly (they're currently happily mining away)...

EDIT:  Ok, I had to quit out of Cgminer before they were picked up.  Fair enough.

In case no one noticed they have released Beta 1.1

I don't notice anything new yet but fyi.

I found I had to stop cgminer from mining or it didn't see mine either.

Looking forward to more firmware releases.

Maybe even some community ones   ;)

I can't find my units using easyminer :/ tried several cables and ports while connecting to a desktop (win7) or a laptop (xp)

I installed EasyMiner.  It shows my units just fine, but only allows me to select the 3rd option on the menu (the diagnostics/testing/statistics option, forgot what it was called).  The other two options are grayed out.  So, I can see the units, but I can't mine with them using EasyMiner.  Any suggestions?

Passwords are security through obscurity.  Just sayin.

Mining feature is still under development, as we have something a lot more important to finish
before we proceed with the rest of the EasyMiner coding.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Please note that any other application that may use the units (or simply holds their COMPORT open)
must be closed. No two applications can access the same Com Port at the same time.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

960 MH/s has been confirmed, although the unit throttles every 40 seconds. Running at
that speed needs special cooling (it may work in the freezer however, without throttling).


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

BFL recommends putting your singles in the freezer!!!

lol, that's only with an unreleased test firmware. Although it would be fun to try.

I can imagine a whole freezer with bunch of neatly stacked singles.. idea people!!!

I suppose I am confused where they are leaving you with only one OS choice and one mining pool?

Use CG Miner, use whatever OS you want, and mine at whatever pool you want.

Just a quick note catfish, so that you are aware - these devices have their own microcontroller and flash, and come preloaded with "a" bitstream, but as you well know cannot be updated to a faster version outside of Windows. But they don't need to be reprogrammed each powercycle, since the firmware/bitstream is stored locally.

However, making it updateable within a *nix OS is definitely preferable, even if the bitstream remains encrypted all the way to the device. That would make it much better.

Got it.  I kind of gathered that you thought you couldn't mine with them on linux.  Guess I got the wrong impression there.

EDIT:  You seem to be implying that this is a dealbreaker.  Before BFL released the faster firmware, were you considering purchasing them?  Or was it only potentially worth purchasing after the faster firmware was released?  Or are you just rejecting them on principle?

Realistically the problem isn't that BFL is limiting our options with proprietary software - we sill have plenty of FOSS alternatives to easyminer. The problem is BFL's general attitude of secrecy and proprietary nonsense when selling to a community that loves their open-source. First they claim to be using a totally proprietary design that no one will ever ever reverse engineer. ZhouTong desolders a chip and hooks it up to JTAG headers, finds out it's an Altera Stratix III EP3SL150 FPGA. Now they're telling us the firmware flash mechanism is proprietary - how long do they think it'll be before someone breaks that too? They're handing us closed-source software but as was mentioned it's not hard to sniff COM port activity and reverse engineer that too. Classic "smart cow" problems all - I'm just wondering how long it'll be until BFL figures out that all their secrecy buys them is time. There's no reason to keep this stuff under wraps - there's no harm in letting people experiment with custom firmwares as long as they're clear on what that does to warranty support, there's no harm in just telling people what chip they're using either, it's just confusing how secretive BFL acts.

Note that I'm not saying their product is bad or that I don't approve of it - I'm on the wait list for a single, actually - I'm just saying that they have a very secretive business model and *that* I don't approve of.

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from.  For me personally, it doesn't bother me at all, but I know why people who love open-source would be bothered.

My guess as to why they remain as closed as possible about these things is so that they can keep competitors out as long as possible.  If people knew right from the start that they were using an Altera Stratix III EP3SL150 FPGA, and had the open source firmware, it wouldn't take much for someone else to start copying the process and selling it themselves.  As it is, BFL still has a corner on the market for the price/MH/s, and that's largely in part because they kept everything closed-source.

It is usually smart, financially, to do things closed-source to avoid competitors stealing your work.  Not always smart, but usually.  And I think the smarter choice in this case WAS keeping things closed-source.  Maybe they'll open it up in the future, once there is less risk of competitors stealing their work (perhaps after competitors are more focused on ASICs instead), and there is more incentive to offer consumers a modifiable platform.

We have exactly zero free software or non-Windows BFL firmware upgraders. Despite BFL's claim, I was unable to get my Singles recognized by a Windows VM no matter how I passed the device through. When/if someone else* documents the protocol (I hear their EXE is easily decompiled), I plan to write a free firmware upgrade tool. In most countries, this process would be perfectly legal (yay clean-room reverse engineering), so it's just a matter of time.

(since I intend to write such a tool, I cannot myself look at or decompile BFL's code without tainting the "clean" status of my code)

Exactly. Sanding the chips for example cost them time they could have used to do other things. It took only a few weeks for someone to figure out the FPGA model, nullifying any "benefit" of sanding the chips in the first place.

Not saying it has happened, but how difficult would it be to make a chip spit out bogus info? Purely from a technical standpoint, ignoring other clues such as package and pin layout.

Makes sense catfish - sounds like a lot of little things add up to make BFL not worthwhile.  Long delivery times, require Windows to reflash, import tax, high electric usage compared to other FPGA's, etc.  Anyway, thanks for the lengthy explanation.  ;)

Import tax is only VAT at 20% in UK, however Enterpoint quote a price without VAT, and unless you are VAT registered you will still pay VAT on the product, so it makes no difference, BFL or Enterpoint, you just pay a bit more to Enterpoint for better efficiency and faster ship times.

Got my Single today  ;D

But.....Easy miner says its mining but the places to put in my wallet addy or paypal addy are "greyed" out (all options are greyed out,even run a test & install drivers) ),so I shut it down.I did go back & update the firmware thinking that may be the prob & ran a test from the second window,say's it works fine.I also made an account at Eclispe in the hopes that something might "work" somehow,but noooo ::)

Then tried CGminer,I'm software stupid so can't make a .bat file,so no mining there.Also have no idea how to --enable-bitforce,where do you put this command?? I never used cmd before,except for tracert runs.I just build PC's & hotrods  ;D

DL'd Ufasoft,this has got to work,it keeps shutting down when I fire it up........first windows said it was a virus,I know better so I allowed it in the popup.....ran it again.......now windows wants to send a report,yeah that'll fix it  :D

I'm running Win7 64bit,how did you guys get this thing to work with any of these miners ??? Windows saw the bitforce & installed FTDI,so I don't think thats the prob.But in device manager,under ports it just says com3 (the usb port),not bitforce.

Yes I surfed the forum,for about 4 hrs last nite,no luck.................  :'(

I read the HeavyB posts,I'm still lost.

Thanks for any help  8) If this was posted in the wrong place,just give it a shove to the right place  ;)

For now you might try bitminter just to get going. I'm off to bed and have to get up early so can't go through the whole .bat thing right now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg877772#msg877772

Here is a semi blank batch file for cgminer 2.4.1. 
1)Copy the text to notepad and modify what you need then save it as cgminer.bat.
2)Put it in your cgminer folder and run it.

If you have gpus as well you just need to add the relevant commands found in the first post of the cgminer thread.

cgminer -o http://poolurl:port -u user -p pass -S COM3 --failover-only

Additionally, COM3 may not be your COM port. Look in Device Manager to determine the actual COM port.

I left it as COM3 because he had mentioned it but definitely make sure that is the correct port or cgminer will not find the BFL.

Thanks !!!!!!! That did it  ;D

I was sooo tired after doing a landscape job yesterday,I must not have been thinking right :D

I made about 10 .bat files & none of them worked,I was mislabeling them,duh ::)

My hashrate is half though any thoughts??

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/BFLHash.jpg

Maybe I flashed the wrong firmware version,I DL'ed the 832 version & flashed it instead of a higher one just in case of throttling like I had read about.

Is the temp correct in CGminer??

Is there any chance you can test 824 and see what happens? Also, does the front LED occasionally blink
for around 15 seconds while you're hashing?


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Thanks for responding BFL ;)

The light only seemed to flash for reject shares or in between work.

Ok,I flashed the 824 firmware & ran a diag :

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/BFLdiag1.jpg

My room temp is 78 f.

That flash dropped the hashrate to 125. Now it doesen't flash at all ???

EDIT: Duh...again........I didn't restart it ::)

Can you right click on the unit, and click on Device Information and let us know what it reads?


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[/quote]

I only have one unit & it's sitting on an open shelf away from any sources of heat,other PC's or electronic devices are at least 3 feet away & nothing is exhuasting anywhere near it.I'll setup another PC in another room later & move it there & see how it goes.

I went ahead & tried the 864 firmware just to see how it goes:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/BFLdiag3.jpg

Yep,throttling is occuring :'(

I'll try flashing the hot environment firmware & post the results,before moving it to another location.

Thanks for the help BFL-Engineer  ;)

Well,I flashed the 768 firmware & viola,it's mining @ 750mh/s ;D

I expected a learning curve,so I'm not disappointed in the issues I've run into  8)

It's a great little device & I'm very pleased with it.I'll be getting more soon!!!

Hope you guy's at BFL can get these to work a little better in a hotter enviroment,like 80 degrees.I'm in florida & to get to 72 degrees is very costly.

Thanks again for all the help guys !!!!! 8)

OK, now you can test with 792, 800 and 808. Increase firmware version one by one to find
the sweet spot. Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Sure will 8)

Thanks for responding so quickly  ;)

I've noticed out of my 10 BFL units, two seem to throttle themselves.  I've done some testing between the 872 and 864, at 100 units, and they all pass (using windows 7 in Parallels on OSX).

They only seem to throttle after I power cycle them.  I had them all mining for about a day, and I decided to stop cgminer and let them cool down.  I shut down cgminer, and powered them all off for about 15 minutes, so they could get back to about 21 C.  When they came back up, they all reported a good hashrate, till I checked them again about 8 hours later. 8 of the units acted as expected (about 850 mhps), while one was at 752 (47 C) and the other at 663 (51 C).  I've been running the a/c through the hottest part of the day, and none of them get hotter than 58 C.

When I noticed this a few days ago, I read that there might have been an issue with thermal paste, so I took the worst of the units apart and cleaned off the "lumpy" paste and reseated the heatsink and pipe.  After reassembling it and bringing it back up, it reported an increase of about 10 mhps (bringing it in line with the others).  Sadly, after running yesterday and most of today and being power cycled and cooled this afternoon, it's fallen back to previous levels after about 4 hours (664 @ 51.6C).

At this point I may just clean and reapply thermal paste on the two "bad" ones, as this is about all I can think of trying.  It appeared that the "lumpy" thermal paste may have been applied, then allowed to sit for some time until it got seated on the chips (my best guess), so it wasn't getting 100% of it's surface touching between the heat sinks and chips.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to simply clean all of them really well, and use a higher quality thermal paste.

I'd do that. Just get them all running how they should be then you won't have to watch them all day :P

Update:

I tried flashing the 792 & 800 firmware & the unit still throttles (room temp 76 degrees f) & won't get over 300 mh/s.

However with the 768 firmware I can mine with room temps of up to 84 degress f @ 760 mh/s,I opened my windows just to see if the higher temps would make it throttle & no throttleing.

Next step is to turn down the A/C to 70 degrees f & keep flashing firmware,higher each time & see what happens.


Before I do,is there any limit to flashing?? I already flashed 4 times so far............don't think so,but its better to ask ;)


Also,if after all this & I still can't run anything but the 768 FW,I may try reapplying the H/S compound.Those that have done this,what compound are you using??

I always use Ceramique on CPU's & GPU's,but it's pretty thick stuff & I'm thinking it may be too thick for this application.

I've been keeping up with rkozola's issues to maybe be enlightened as my problem is similiar.

BTW,I know USB 2.0 works,but is there anything to gain with using USB 3.0 ??

Please let us know how the unit works after reapplying the H/S compound.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

So,I am assuming there is no real limit to how many flashes one can do to a unit ??

I've flashed them a number of times, with a couple bad flashes too (something interrupted it halfway through).

Here are how they look after mining for two days:

http://phraust.com/photos/Mining_5.20.12.png

I'll probably be taking them down tomorrow to check the thermal paste.

 :o Nice setup :o

What compound are you going to use ?? I'm taking a survey  ;D

Thanks :D. Honestly, I have no idea yet, i was going to do some research to see what has the best reviews.

It seems that one of your units is throttling. You may want to check heatsink, Intake air temperature.
Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Okay, so I've re-done the thermal paste on the three units that were causing the most trouble...

The worst one, #8, is now running at 807.7/828.5 @ 54.0C.  Much better than it was, but still not keeping up with the others.

The second one, #5, is now running at 857.7/848.8 @ 48.6 C.

The third one I redid, #7, was dropping off yesterday.  It's now running 857.7/848.8849.1 @ 55.3C.

I just noticed that it was running better than all of the others by a hair.  #7 is pulling 857.7/849.1 where all of the other's  (except for #5 and #8) are at 857.7/848.8.  Weird.

The thermal paste seems to be at the heart of the issue.  I took a bunch of pictures of the process, and I'll put together a walkthrough.  One thing I noticed was that this one, #7, had a diffferent thermal paste and fan connector than the others.  The thermal paste was silvery, metallic looking, where #5 and #8 were white.  #7's hadn't dried up and became "lumpy" like the others.  The connector was also a black 2-pin, instead of the white three pin connector.

I used the AcrtiCleaner 2-part stuff, as per instructions.  q-tips and paper towels to get off the gunk with a quick wipe from a no-lint swatch I had after using the second cleaner.  Reapplied a dot of ArcticSilver 5 to the center of each chip.  They say the burn-in is around 200 hours, with a steady drop in temps over that time, we'll see.

*I may have goofed up #8, as I didn't apply enough ArticSilver the first time, and had to pull it off and apply another dot, so there may be bubbles.  I'll let it run throughout the night and see how it's averaging in the morning before I do anything else.  Oh, and all 10 units are using the 872 firmware.

Well, after two day sof running, #5 and #8 have returned to throttling (709 and 604 mhps).  total bummer :(

I guess I'll try flashing them lower to see how they handle it.

Hi, I have my BFL's up and running but wanted to flash them.. the only windows machine I have here is running VISTA (my normal mining is all on Linux), so i grabbed the EasyMiner_V_1.1_Beta to see if I could flash one with the higher firmware, but cant get it to run.... my device manager shows the one BFL Single i plugged in properly on COM3 (well COM3 appeared when i plug it in), but when I open EasyMiner, (the only option available is "administrative mode") and click "Proceed", I get the windows dialog "BitFORCE-Miner has stopped working  A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available"

Any idea how to fix this?

James

Hello James,

One possibility is that windows is denying access to COM port. This can be resolved if you right-click on Easyminer
and click on 'Run as administrator'. Please run this test and let us know how it goes. Of course, I must add that
Windows Vista is probably the worst operating system ever developed since the Big Bang.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Hahaha! So true.

No, that honor should be left for Windows ME

Nope still the same problem, I've tried the various compatibility modes as well, still no luck.  Also, tried it on a windowsXP VM i had here (VirtualBox) and get the samet thing!

No arguments from my side about window (especially vista) sucking, so that begs the question, where's the linux based firmware updater?? :) I don't want to use your easyminer software to mine, i just want to flash the singles then put them back on my Linux machines.

James

Is there any other COM devices or virtual COM devices connected to your computer?



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Nope, only the one listed in Device Manager

->Ports (COM & LPT)
  -> USB Serial Port (COM3)

I must say that this is very strange. Easyminer is compiled under XP with .NET version 2.0. It's the first instance of
such failure. We will investigate the issue and come back with some response. Has this computer ever been infected with
virus or trojans before?


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

No its a fresh install -- i shrunk my linux partition, and setup a dualboot with the dell-provided windows vista CD, let it do all its windows updates, downloaded chrome, downloaded easyminer.

If it's just a throwaway install that you will never use again, might as well go with Win7 30 day trial install.

You probably need to install the FTDI driver if it's a fresh install.

Nope it installed automatically when i plugged in the BFL Single.

Right click Com3->Properties->Driver
Driver Provider: FTDI
Driver Date: 4/10/2012
Driver Version: 2.8.24.0

Actually that reminds me - .Net is an optional feature in Vista that might need to be turned on. If you get Windows Updates and install .Net 4.0 Client Profile, it is backward compatible with apps compiled for .Net 2.0.

Downloading and installing.. taking forever.... will report back when it finishes.

Grr, installed, rebooted, computer wont even get to BIOS or GRUB now... :( gah! i gotta go do  "real work" now, have to attempt again tomorrow. thanks for all your help so far.

Well, I've reflashed the two "bad" singles down to 800, and they are keeping up for now (about 15 minutes in) at 800 mhps. :(

I've also got the problem with the mining options being greyed out.

BFL: Do you have any guess as what the issue is? I have Windows 7 Home Premium.

Mining feature is still not present in Easyminer. We'll finilize it as soon as our schedule permits us
to do so.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Ah ok, glad that it's not just me then.

Has anyone got EasyMiner to work on Windows 7 64-bit?  I've tried everything I can think of.
Is the "Load VCP" option supposed to be checked? Very annoying not to have a Linux version when most of the serious miners are using Linux.

EasyMiner needs the Microsoft .NET runtime in order to run; works with .NET 2.0, but might as well install the latest (.NET 4.0) and you should be good to go.

Wonder if it would be possible to port to Mono and/or run in Wine.

It loads fine, but doesn't recognize the BFL or the drivers aren't right. The BFL never shows up in the list.

Sounds like you are missing the FTDI driver for the virtual COM port, and you don't have driver auto-download enabled in your Win7 installation.

Note that this driver is NOT packaged with Windows, but is downloaded automatically by Windows Update as soon as the device is detected. The problem is that, by default, new Windows installs do not have this feature enabled.

Unplug your Single, enable the driver auto-download feature in Windows, reboot, and plug the Single back in. Windows should then detect it and download the driver automatically from the Windows Update server.