Bitcoin Forum

As I have got more involved in mining BTC so have my interest in how things work.  I am hoping someone could give a brief (or detailed) explanation of how the Avalon6 software is tied together. Here is a brief explanation of what is included and what details I am looking at understanding.
-The Avalon6 uses a RasPi with OpenWrt Chaos Calmer and that ties to an I2C dongle that goes to the miner.

The file that updates the miner is the mm.mcs file

My questions are the following.
-If the firmware is on the miner and not the RasPi, could different software be used easily.
-What purpose does the I2C serve other than allowing a USB connection to go to the 4 pin connector on the Avalon.
-Does the actual Cgminer software reside in the .mcs file or on the RasPi? How can 1 access the file to view the code if it's in the .mcs file (Is it using Xilinx?)

Thanks in advance

The cgminer code is in master cgminer git.

Avalon is the best company at keeping that connection with the current code and providing updates for master cgminer.

Quite simply, you wont be expecting to have any long term known problems with the Avalon cgminer drivers ... unlike that other company ...

That is great to know, I see they are also always top miners on Kano.is ;)

Actually, the firmware IS on the miner, the mcs file you're talking about flashes onto the board that controls the two blades in each Avalon.  The RPi has a separate 'firmware', which is as you described.


I2C is a hardware protocol - one of the two most common ones (SPI being the other).   It's just a standard way of hardware talking to eachother without a bunch of overhead or buffering that would typically be required for something like Serial.  The only real downside to these kinds of protocols is that they require immediate processing and generally can't be on very long cables.


The CGMiner software is on the RPi, in the other image - completely different from the MCS.  Think of it like this, CGMiner is like a conductor in an orchestra, and the Avalon is like a musician - this is even more apt with the Avalon, since you can connect multiple Avalon's to a single CGMiner.