Will keep a lookout for bitminter when they decide to implement litecoin support.
As of now all my equipment has gone over to solomining litecoins. but what a hassle compared to bitminter!=)
Bitminter will be my goto pool for litecoins!
One other question, it is to my understanding that it is not possible to use fpga/asics for mining litecoins due to bitcoins is sha256 and litecoin is something else.
Can this issue be overcommed? (hope not since all my rigs are gpu...) did a count earlier and found out i have 15 cards running.
Half the reason everyone is switching to LTC is because ASICs (not sure about FPGA) cannot do scrypt things very well, if at all. The other half is that LTC trust increases as long as more people are switching and LTC community becomes stronger and stronger each day = TRUST. BTC community is loosing miners which can affect us badly in long term period |
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I think that the real memory requirement would be in range of 500Mb-1Gb based on what gpus use.
With LTC diff increase 1G will not be enough very soon  |
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Litecoins on BitMinter would be nice.
There seems to be somebody "big" joining the party at about 700GH/s on top of the ranking list. Is that like 11 Avalons or what could it be?
BFL nuclear chips mining at bitminter  Avalon or ASIC miner simple as that 10 Avalons clocked at 300 |
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05-April-2013 Refund received in full.
So those people (or at least most of them) claiming to have not BFL received refunds are trolls? I am wondering what will happen with BTC payments though? You get Dollars. I am glad to hear that. I am not BFL customer but i am wandering what would be the legal cause for BFL to refund all of their BTC orders if massive wave of refund requests begun. simple answer is none. And what shall do all who paid in BTC? Nothing! BFL can simply get a fancy scammer tag and that is pretty much all of it. The btc of their customers are gone! They are gone already (even if BFL delivers something in near feature) but they just refuse the fact to accept it. Hope dies last as we all know |
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05-April-2013 Refund received in full.
So those people (or at least most of them) claiming to have not BFL received refunds are trolls? I am wondering what will happen with BTC payments though? |
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there is only 2 sensor. I hope you didn't unplug the wrong thing in the processor of trying to find something that doesn't exist.
I understand. I did not unplug and plug to random connector. I simply re-seated the sensor coming from the heatsink in the same socket/connector as I understand this is "temp3". It is still reporting value of 0 always. Any suggestion? As stated it will always report 0. The sensor is not installed buy design. Get used to it dude |
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BFL and Avalon are just following supply and demand
supply of ASIC devices is near zero at the moment
demand for miners is high since BTC are now > $100 USD and there are only 2 games in town, Avalon and BFL (or buying shares in asicminer)
how much it actually costs to make has almost no impact on price. At some point in the future, the supply of Avalons and SCs will be higher and prices will come down.
Dude, BFL is a joke so do not compare them with Avalon. Please Supply ? What is BFL supplying actually and raising the prices on top? I can supply fancy video also. Mine would be better than BFL's one.Please send me at least 2K x 1000000 times  Their current behavior is ridiculous for me. Probably this is their last card to play (to win some bump time or whatever next excuse is) before massive wave of refund will put them in history where they belong |
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Im going to start work on a modular design. Thinking of towers of cards with 10 or less chips per card. One is the main controller that interfaces to the PC and power supply. With a maximum of 5 to 8 cards per stack. Cooling is my biggest concern at the moment.  Any suggestions which micro we should use? So we have a common base for these open source projects. A common host interface would save considerable amounts of development time. I'm familiar with AVR, PIC32 and TI's Stellaris . Regarding manufacturing: i can get larger batches made. +1 for modular design + external power  |
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Sell Sell Sell! You should count yourself lucky if you manage to get your fiat back as a price, because those BFLs that are going to ship any day now are going to make your rig worthless.
PM me with your prices.
That was rude due why are you putting so much stress on the guy Keep them! |
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Am i wrong ?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: You were so close! You mentioned 0.42A @ 5V (2.1W) remaining power budget. The ASIC consumes 1.7W (1.48A @ 1.15V). Add 5% (0.085W) for online DC-DC power conversion losses and voila; 2.1W - 1.7W - 0.085W = 0.315W power margin. That 15% margin might be handy for some dynamic overclocking, given the right conditions. I went to school for this stuff I'm an electrical engineer for a municipal utility company, working on several research and development projects. If I can't get simple DC power calcs right, I'd have bigger problems than an overloaded USB port. Powering multiple devices; why not just buy a powered USB hub for $10? That was actually what i was saying - just one chip not at full speed for usb What about add 10$ on top of usb hub and build single PCB with 12V/1A (assuming 20 USD are enough for such converter) and save money for 3 USB cables +3 PCB's + with all components apart of the ASIC chip, space for hub+power supply + 3 PCB's Seems more reasonable for me What i am saying is: A board with usb power ony will doubtfully handle even single ASIC chip at full speed reliably. As many chips as we put on a single board we go down in terms of price for the board itself and all the components inside excluding asic chip The killer board would be 4 chips 1-1.2GH with option for the chips to be added later who wants will solder just one, two or three or four. I dream for a bigger board personaly but we have to start from somewhere and a start is a board with external power for two chips at least just my two cents |
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Well, theres just one little flaw - when you step down voltage, you step up current in the same proportion if using a transformer. It's the most intelligent and efficient way to reduce voltage without significant loss.
So, yes, more than a single chip could be powered.
That makes sense dude as i said i am not hardware guru Thanks for clarification But let us have 12V option also - whoever wants it to be able to use it best PS: i am still not getting it. When you setp-up current it can not exceed USb 0.5A (2.5W) max current itself..Anyway do not explain me i will hardly understand it after all My point is that we are limited at 2.5W buy usb itself. and no matter what we do and how fancy we convert it we have to stay in USb input limit correct? Assuming we power two chips 1.7325 W each it makes 2.46W and there must be some loss and spare correct? I am not mentioning the fact that some of the PCB elements will need power also and they will "eat" some Wats 10X No problem, I'm not criticizing, just reminding something we all tend to forget - we can step down voltage using many ways - voltage regulators or resistors lower voltages converting electricity into heat (totally undesirable...!!!) maintaining the current. While it is useful and the only option for some applications, this is highly undesirable to power other devices. Let's see if I'm doing the right math here... :-D We have kVA = (V)oltage*(I)Amperes/1000. From there we also can say that V= kVA/I*1000. We might then say V1*I1/1000 = V2*I2/1000, or simply V1*I1=V2*I2 Let's fulfill the variables: V1=5v I1=0.4 (a nice current draw, even so) V2=1.15v (from your data) I2=A2 As so we have A2=V1*A1/V2=1.739A But never forget that (P)ower (watts) = V*I P1=V1*I1=5*0.4=2 Watt P2=V2*I2=1.15*1.739=2 Watt which is more than 1.7325W on one chip. Oh, now I see your point... Just need to explain out loud the math to myself, lol! I'd vote for an external power source also at least 12V@500mA - this would power 4 chips, if I'm correct. 12v@1000mA are quite common, also. Hard to find are those from 1000mA up and they're not cheap... Quite interesting would be to power the circuit from a Lead/Acid 12V battery, solar charged!!! muhahahahah! Nice.. what i was pointing out that no matter what we do we can not exceed 2.5W in total allowed by USB simple as that I am voting for something powerful for 4 chips thanks dude. Let us wait for allten input My vote is: 12V/1A - will be able to handle 4 chips at full speed with some spare I guess when they run clocked at 300 they go above 2W |
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Well, theres just one little flaw - when you step down voltage, you step up current in the same proportion if using a transformer. It's the most intelligent and efficient way to reduce voltage without significant loss.
So, yes, more than a single chip could be powered.
That makes sense dude as i said i am not hardware guru Thanks for clarification But let us have 12V option also - whoever wants it to be able to use it best PS: i am still not getting it. When you setp-up current it can not exceed USb 0.5A (2.5W) max current itself..Anyway do not explain me i will hardly understand it after all My point is that we are limited at 2.5W buy usb itself. and no matter what we do and how fancy we convert it we have to stay in USb input limit correct? Assuming we power two chips 1.7325 W each it makes 2.46W and there must be some loss and spare correct? I am not mentioning the fact that some of the PCB elements will need power also and they will "eat" some Wats 10X |
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Nope. The core runs at 1.2V, not 12V. That means a 12V - 1.2V DC-DC converter will need to added to the BOM, significantly increasing the cost of a 'stock' device. If you're after processing power density for your serious mining operation, go buy an Avalon mining rig.
Maybe the direction of this project has changed but I saw this as a way of getting hashing power and Bitcoins into EVERYONE's hands, not just greedy profit driven serious miners (like myself, too, I admit). We're aiming to have only slightly worse ROI than a full rig to encourage long term use.
My personal view is that USB stick miners will be incredibly popular and will eventually account for more hashing power than mining rigs/farms. The main reason is risk, or the the lack of it. The average person has no problem spending $20 on a punt; lotteries, betting and gambling are clear evidence of this. But what if this $20 punt was several orders of magnitude better odds than gambling? Make these units accessable - put them in a big dump stack at every 7-11 right next to the lottery poster. You'll sell millions.
Sam.
Sam, I am completely aware at what voltage core runs and what is needed. Do you still think that whole PCB can be fit in single USb stick and mine just with plug and play? However what i suggest is just to have two version of the boards or at least not throwing away 12V option. I personally would like to be able to build more dense boards with real power supply. And of course i will pay additional price for DC/DC and other components. USB is just a crap and it can not be reliable to power anything which requires more that -.2A even though standard says 0.5A just my two cents. Best PS: just some calculations http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Avalon - Power Chip power efficiency: 6.6W/GHs @ 1.15 V Single ASIC board is making between 20-22GH depending on clock and has 80 chips so 21 GH at average/80 = 0.2625 GH per chip 6.6 x 0.2625 = 1.7325 W per chip at 1.15 V (i am not taking into account losses when converting 5V USB power down to 1.15V ) Max output of USB by specs is 0.5A so 5x0.5=2.5W - when you take in account power loss (5V down to 1.15V) and assuming that we will have at least 15% Spare of USB specs (0.42A max) it is turning out that even a single ASIC chip will not be powered. Am i wrong ? allten, I am not in hardware part at all, but can you comment that pls? 10X |
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If you want to operate a public pool and do not know linux... then my arguments, well... just please don't.
i can understand your frustration with those of us who don't have the experience with linux that you do. but my feeling is that you should be encouraging and helping those of us who are willing to mine solo and don't mind the variance. IMO, mining is becoming too centralized at pools and anyone who can distribute that power away from the pools helps the community at large. my personal goal is to always be able to be a full node and mine solo if possible as i think it's more healthy for the network long term. if it turns out i can't do this b/c i can't get sufficient help then so be it. Well, the real reason you can't solo mine is because you're using a fork of cgminer on Avalon. Encourage the Avalon team to switch to BFGMiner so you can get GBT support that both works and supports solo mining Then you won't need to setup a pool at all. is it possible to run two avalons (threads) with a single instance of bfgminer currently? what i mean -S/dev/ttyUSB0 -S/dev/ttyUSB1 assuming that both tty's are avalons? Yes, just be sure you have an Avalon-enabled build. The default for all other platforms does not have it enabled at the moment. 10X Luke.I will give it a shot sooner. I am waiting for my er703 spare to arive |
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Update OP: April 1st 2013 Project is at a stand still until more details are released regarding AVALON ASICs. I was hoping to encourage BitSyncom to just give us a few preliminary details in the forum so we could make sure the hardware design was appropriate. Unfortunately, That has not happened. Instead of waiting until complete and official Spec's are available online I would like to ask anyone with an AVALON that has skills with an oscilloscope and ohm meter to please help with this. Shouldn't take too long. I wanted to offer a bounty, but then I remembered anyone with an Avalon probably wouldn't be motivated for anything less than a Bitcoin. Here are the spec's available so far: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon#Chip_SpecificationWhat is needed? 1) Pin out for all 48 pins. What pins are ground? What Pins are power? Clock pins? Data pins? etc. 2) Do the ASICs have a frequency multiplier? What is the frequency on the core clock pin? Internal core clocked is spec'ed around 256 MHZ 3) What is the data bandwidth on the clock/data lines? Just need to know what the clock frequency is for the clock pins and that would be sufficient. Bonus: are there any serial communication protocols being used: SPI, I2C, Proprietary, etc.? Thanks! Dude, I will be glad to do it but i do not have enough skils ans osciloscope also  Ngzhang please put a word here when you can. Thank you very much in advance. |
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If you mean 8gig of ram, then yes should be fine, most probably over kill for a couple of avalons To the above person who asked about merged mining, I dont know anything about namecoin. Someone posted in the stratum pool software thread that they got it working on litecoin and were going to re-release the software. Maybe post in that thread? 10X I will check |
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See, and you all were worried about batch #3 wouldn't sell the cheapest batch, why not ? My thoughts exactly. Tons of people are predicting $1000-$2700/ BTC1 and in few years even $100,000/ BTC1 if that happens, people will think batch 3 was practically free plus 100K bonus at least:) |
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If you want to operate a public pool and do not know linux... then my arguments, well... just please don't.
i can understand your frustration with those of us who don't have the experience with linux that you do. but my feeling is that you should be encouraging and helping those of us who are willing to mine solo and don't mind the variance. IMO, mining is becoming too centralized at pools and anyone who can distribute that power away from the pools helps the community at large. my personal goal is to always be able to be a full node and mine solo if possible as i think it's more healthy for the network long term. if it turns out i can't do this b/c i can't get sufficient help then so be it. Well, the real reason you can't solo mine is because you're using a fork of cgminer on Avalon. Encourage the Avalon team to switch to BFGMiner so you can get GBT support that both works and supports solo mining Then you won't need to setup a pool at all. Luke, is it possible to run two avalons (threads) with a single instance of bfgminer currently? what i mean -S/dev/ttyUSB0 -S/dev/ttyUSB1 assuming that both tty's are avalons? Best |
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$25 was a guess based on prices people posted earlier. It would be for parts only, I think.
Yes, parts only. $25.00 dollars sounds like a really good guess (assuming cheap ASIC chips, no USB cable, no PCB stand offs, and without the price of a heatsink). I'm giving away the hardware design and don't expect compensation so there will be no NRE costs involved. Purely voluntary and driven by bounties. I'll work on a preliminary BOM (Bill Of Materials) and see what the price is going to be. allten, Can you consider the option for 12V Molex power also. My arguments - the PC PSU at 12V (by design) has highest output in term of AMPS. The USb cable is crappy in most cases and it may turn out that wires are too thin for AMPs consumed by Avalon chips. Having the option for 12V could make possible to use both three chips at full sped (clock) + Designing PCB with more than three chips in the feature + plus to add as many boards as we want to a single PSU. About cooling every one of us will take care. In my personal opinion Passive cooling without airflow is not good at all. But it is just me. I will blow at radiators for sure ... 10X |
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tiktoc,
I am impressed very nice tutorial
What about merged mining can you put a word on two just basics for guidelines?
10X
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