It's not that I have a heat issue, it's that I use passive heatsinks and they are cooled by the building ventilation, so come summer (when we open balcony door etc.) the airflow will stop intermittently and I need to limit the damage.

The *REALLY* strong case for temperature measuring control is that you can raise/lower the frequency forever and thus leave the chips TOTALLY unmanaged for longer periods at maximum "non damaging" speeds.

Using error control (specially one way like it's today, having to reboot the java process to up the frequency again) will wear the chips more and/or not get max hash rate.

What happened to me was that my gf opened the balcony door and one chip triggered the overheat thing. If I hadn't noticed the diode lighting up I would have lost 20% of my mining power!

Of course I could just use the -oh 0.9 parameter and let the chips error down to some low frequency, but temperature would let me leave the chips (balcony door open or not) and have them perform maximum depending on heat not error over years without worrying.

Also a shame that DeepBit doesn't support MH/s drop warning mails!

Hm, so they sell you a 160$ without adding a temperature sensor to it? I mean common, intel sells you a complete Atom motherboard with processor, GPU and everything for 80$!?!? I'm pretty sure theres a temp thingy inside the Spartan-6, it's just not connected on the ZTEX board?

Yes, but then the chip will be really hot, hot enough to burn your fingers on the heatsink, and that's not good for longevity.

I don't mind hashing slower (I'm talking 100-200 range here), if it allows me to hash longer.

ZTEX, does the chip use 8W at 100MHz too? Or will the chip use like 4W and be half as warm?

I'm really just looking for settings to be able to passively cool the thing without having to worry.

It's a shame there is no temperature reading on the chip!

Then can I get a parameter for specifying the initial frequency and another to disable initial step-up of frequency. You can cap the initial frequency parameter to max 200 since I'm going to use this to _lower_ the frequency for passive cooling during summer.

Hi, can you gather temperature from the chip? Could we get a temperature/frequenzy controller as a complement to the error/frequenzy controller for passive cooling mining? My dream would be a -t <celsius> parameter which keeps the chip at that temperature!

What would you expect the price of a ZTEX Artix-7 chip would be?

600 - 900 is a big range, what makes you uncertain?

I think this might be as easy as to ask the sources directly no? I mean they all have companies that pay taxes, that can be viewed by anyone, so hiding this data is useless.

BTW: 5x ZTEX

Hm, can somebody explain how this works like I'm 5 years old?

Neat! I really can't recommend PicoPSU enough, and also you should remove the fans, at least on the Atom; it doesn't need it. Try to use your imagination on how you could cool the chip without using a fan, like placing it in a box outside for example.

Silence is priceless!

BTW: I started a ZTEX team on deepbit, use same name as here and join it, so everyone can see how well the rigs perform in realtime depending on setup!

Now I run 5 via USB, but its only 1 java process that controls the cluster. CPU is 0% for that process... It would be close to 0% for the 128 I could run with the limitations of USB.

You kinda did just there, and that also proves my point!

Too bad! EDIT: kind of proves my point, we didn't need it in the protocol!

Yeah, it was more meant as a critique: if the bitcoin protocol was properly designed it would allow for alternate coins WITHIN the protocol to "make inflation possible" EDIT: without needing separate block chains.

Ok, nice to hear! So can I use it to sign blocks/coins that where mined with FPGAs in order to create a greencoin branch of bitcoins?

When you make protocols/APIs based on "could" you sometimes try to solve everything. I think bitcoin urgently needs a low bandwidth protocol that can scale to millions of transactions per day without needing terrabit internet / petabyte harddrives. Everything else is prio 2, like extensions; which if they are added should not be "hardcoded".

In my 10 year time as programmer I have learned to discern between generic and applied code. Unless the BIP 16/17 application is implemented in a broader generic solution that doesn't make the protocol that much heavier and already has many other vital applications, it should be carefully be considered.

I'm just suggesting the developers focus on the complex and hard to solve core matters, and let the community build the "nice to haves".

The hex spacers are 5,5 cm, but you have to measure your heatsinks, bought at the most assorted screw shop in town... When it comes to temperature I actually "underclock" my chips. The way to do this is remove them from the cold air stream at boot up so they clock down to about 208/212 and then I place them over the air inlet on the edge of the window board. I can barely feel that they are warm, even on the bottom if the first FPGA. That way I know they will last as long as they can. The trick here is to have window board ventilators that are drawn by the evacuation air pump of the building, cooling without noise!

FYI, the brick from ztex get's a little too hot with 5 boards, atleast if you want it to last 10 years. I would buy a 80 watt instead. The DC splitter is awesome though!

EDIT: One last tip... the d-link usb router with 7 connections actually run 5 ports fine without external power, great to reduce power cable salad!

ztex is more expensive but the MH/w is higher and thus the chips can be completely silent like my solution above!

Quick cluster tutorial:

java -cp ZtexBTCMiner-120221.jar BTCMiner -f ztex_ufm1_15d3a.ihx -m p
java -cp ZtexBTCMiner-120221.jar BTCMiner -host XXXX -u XXXX -p XXXX -m c

Done!

My issue is the 'could' in your first sentence. API's and protocols are about 'should' not 'could'. All of your examples can be solved without it too. Just because you can (could) doesn't mean it's a good idea.