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Hey guys,

I've been banging my head against this for a day and thought I'd toss it out and see if anyone has any ideas.  I have an old box that I'm putting 2 XFX Radeon 5850's in to mine with.  Hardware specs are as follows:

• ECS P45T-A Motherboard
• Core 2 Duo e6600
• 4 GB Ram
• 2 x XFX Radeon 5850's
• A dummy plug with 68 Ohm resistors in each card

So I've installed Windows 7 Pro x64 and for the life of me I can't seem to get the Catalyst drivers, ATI Stream and MSI Afterburner to recognize the cards correctly.  I've tried various versions of each, (Catalyst 11.4 & 11.5, ATI Stream 2.1 & 2.5 & Afterburner 2.1 and 2.2 Beta), yet no matter what I try, Catalyst Control Center won't open and MSI Afterbuner comes up seeing the card, but missing the driver and all other clock information.


I've tried installing the different applications in different orders (Cat, Stream, AB / Stream, Cat, AB, etc) and still no dice.  Strangely, if I install Win 7 Home Premium x64, everything appears to work fine.  Of course, I don't have a license key for that, only the Pro version.  I've even tried Windows XP, but couldn't get it to enable both cards.

I may just have some drivers kludged up now, but DriverSweeper is no more, so I have to keep reinstalling the OS, which is painful with all the patches.

Anyone have any thoughts?

You have to 'attach' the dummy card in properties in XP. The numbering system is

1 card1 output1
2 card2 output1
3 card1 output2
4 card2 output2

so you'll need to attach 'monitor' 2 or 4.

I had to manually install the catalyst drivers using the command line after a problem with a driver cleaner, so you may want to try that; however this was on Win7 x64 HP.

When you say attach, what do you mean?  Like expand the desktop across?

If you open up the desktop/graphic properties in XP, with the exception of the primary screen, the other possible 'monitors' are greyed out. Right click on one of them and select attach. XP will then start to use that 'monitor'. This wasn't needed in Windows 7.

Ah...alright, I get it.  So as long as I have 2 monitors (1 from 1/2 and 1 from 3/4) I should see both cards for mining.

I assume that's the same for up to 4 cards?

Alright, I figured it out.  The problem stems from the fact that I was trying to do the setup/configuration through a terminal server window, which apparently strips out the actual video drivers.  Of course, now I need to figure out how to manage the box without having to stick a keyboard, mouse and monitor on it.  I thought going to the 'console' through RDP would work, but I guess not.  Also tried VNC with no luck.  I had to be on the machine with a monitor to do all the config.

What do you guys that have multiple rigs do to monitor/manage your machines?  You hook a monitor up to every one, or is there some software out there that I can use to connect once in a while and check in?

+1 if you can find an answer!  I'd love to be able to tweak without connections to the monitor... 3 BTC bounty paid by me for a viable solution!

-EP

I'm using TightVNC (http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php) on Win7-64, although I'm running NVidia cards... Hey, I'm new here, it's all I have to play with! ;D
179ebJqeaxjPYgaqMbnhz8NKsV8UyVx8GX   ;)

http://oi56.tinypic.com/1zxmcn5.jpg

I've been testing it out, and it does appear that you can RDP into the box after it's set up and things are running to check on things without blowing everything out.  I did all the setup with a keyboard, monitor, mouse attached to the machine, got everything set to autostart on reboot, shut down, put on dummy plugs and disconnected everything and restarted.

Appears to come up fine and work as expected, and I did RDP into the box after that and GUIMiner/Afterburner appeared to stay up and keep running.  Though, I assume if you make any attempt to mess with Afterburner or any graphics settings, you should probably do it directly on a keyboard, monitor, mouse attached to the box and not through any type of remote session.

If you do try RDP, make sure you use the correct switches to connect directly to the 'console'.

To connect to any windows box prior to Win7 you want to use:

mstsc /v:SERVERNAME /console

If you're connecting to a Win7 box use:

mstsc /v:servername /admin

If you're keeping all your machines in one location, a KVM switch might do the job as well.

I've tried UltraVNC viewer with no luck and will keep looking to see what I can find.

Use Teamviewer. I run 2 headless win7 machines on teamviewer. I can admin them perfectly from my android phone if I want. Teamviewer is free.

Yeah, Teamviewer did the trick.  I've used it before to help family/friends on occasion, but hadn't thought about using it for monitoring the mining machine.  Works like a champ.

I did notice one weird thing though.  Have 3 x 5850's running without a problem.  If I'm directly on the box, they're all running close to 290 mh/s.  If I connect with Teamviewer, the first GPU stays running strong and the other two take a dive down under 70 mh/s.  As I'm connecting, just for a moment I see them all still running full bore, but then they drop.

Strangely, if I stop the first GPU from mining, the other two shoot right back up again.  It's weird, but not a major issue because when I disconnect all three jump back up again.

Thanks!