I agree to let the funds to be paid out. I have a stable and good speed bitstream working (hashvoodoo175) on my 2 boards. They do not appear to like the faster ones, but with so many reporting good reports for the faster ones I can't blame the bitstream. So it's achieved what I want and I do look forward to improvements.
My boards are 430 series yet are unstable too. They often need resetting several times a day. Can your hashvoodoo175 bitstreamed CM1s run for days or better without needed to be reset?
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Mine might be unstable-ish...but I dont think it is the bitstream and I want to encourage work not stamp it out...
I vote for a release of the bounty....run free with the buffaloes oh wild bitcoins
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Question on stability...
I am running the 200MHs bit stream by Makomk on 2 * CM1s, series 460-ish (at work and using memory) and mining using cgminer 2.7.0 (have used 2.6.1 for a few weeks previous to upgrade).
My concern is that the CM1 boards hang several times a day with all orange lights coming on. This is normally preceded by a "lame duck" event were one of the FPGAs go offline first (normally #2 and rates drop to 2~4u/m). The red "heart beat" still continues. The only way to get them mining again is to shutdown cgminer, then disconnect power to reset the boards and fire it back up. 75% of the time I also need to disconnect the USB comms cable whilst off inorder to reset the comm port. The boards are connected to independent USB ports on my gigabyte MB which has "power boost" dedicated lines so I dont think USB brown outs are the issue.
Is it peoples opinion that the poroblem lies in; 1. the bitstream is unstable, or 2. the CM1 hardware is unstable, or 3. the independent USB lines are causing EMI/EMC issues resulting in the system being unstable, or 4. cgminer has a bug, or 5. something else.
Your help in providing the most popular line of investigation is appreciated.
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As a technology consultant whom operates an independent buinsess that accepts bitcoins, I find that our analytical services are very well suited to direct exchanges of funds without 3rd parties trying to take a slice *wink* which results in the advantage of being able to charge less. For interested parties, please look at www.twsconsulting.webs.com****************** Who are we? TWS consulting is a technology focused business that seeks to reduce risk for our customers through the logical examination of functionally based assessments and solution derivation using Systems Engineering methodologies. What do we offer? TWS consulting provides specific solutions for specific problems. We work with our customers to define the scope of their issue then develop and recommend a particular course of action or solution. Products/Services TWS consulting offers the following services; •Systems Engineering ◦Impact analysis ◦Project scope definition ◦Requirements development •Process mapping ◦Current processes documented ◦Development of new processes •Technology ◦Analysis reports ◦Road-mapping ◦Watching briefs •Bitcoin mining ◦Economic evaluation ◦Rig configuration (Hardware) ******************
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This artcile has given me a great idea....besides mining for bitcoins, I also; 1. have a home aquaponics set up (3000L) which grows up to 300 fish for consumption (cod, perch, barramundi) + more veggies than my family can eat, 2. have space for raising batches of 30+ meat birds (chickens) every quarter, and 3. have 10 chickens that produce more eggs per day than we can consume (about 4 dozen a week surplus).
This articles has really inspried me to start on selling these "off the grid" via private arrangements and using bitcoin as the medium of payment so the government cant rape me.
are u growing hydroponic carrots? root crops dont penetrate the growing medium...and no I am not growing dope. I grow predominaetly leefy veges, vines, stalked & herbs such as lettuce / bok choi, pumpkin, corn, parsley. This list is the tip of the iceberg...the turn around for veges is nearly twice as quick as a dirt garden because the veges are continually "dunked" in nutrien rich water i.e. fish shit and water check out aquaponics.com.au if you like the thought or are curious
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This artcile has given me a great idea....besides mining for bitcoins, I also; 1. have a home aquaponics set up (3000L) which grows up to 300 fish for consumption (cod, perch, barramundi) + more veggies than my family can eat, 2. have space for raising batches of 30+ meat birds (chickens) every quarter, and 3. have 10 chickens that produce more eggs per day than we can consume (about 4 dozen a week surplus).
This articles has really inspried me to start on selling these "off the grid" via private arrangements and using bitcoin as the medium of payment so the government cant rape me.
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gyverlb, sorry that things are not working out for you. but why did you purchase a hardware when you don't know how to do updates etc.
Because I had no idea that there still were hardware manufacturers that wouldn't support Linux by default today. Especially in this very case: addressing the Bitcoin mining community: many (most?) of us have Linux rigs some even use the RasperryPi or home routers to connect to their FPGAs. Bitcoin is open-sourced at its roots. The only question that I asked myself is if the board could be updated via USB (this is why I didn't purchase a JTAG cable). Even the documentation of the controller programming interface would be enough. In fact no Linux support isn't the problem, having to rely on an obscure utility that only runs on some OS versions without the safety net of documentation of the interfaces it uses is a recipe for transforming anything in a paper weight mid or longterm. This is not the first time I purchase hardware for which I have to code the driver or some tools myself: you can still grep my name in the Linux kernel for the support of some long forgotten IDE controllers. So usually I'm not especially worried, but reading that there is some IP in there that can't be disclosed to build the tools I need is worrying me. This is not the way I would buy hardware. When I know I have limited opportunities to work with hardware like this (dev board, no informations, not know software to update, forced to use only Linux etc.), I would better go for something that is better supported and documented. It's just my point of few. We knew very little of the details when we pre-ordered. Everyone took a risk, myself included. But having the thing closed to me because I can't have access to the information I need to make it work the way I want is exasperating. I'm a tinkerer : if I can't hack it I won't like it and it better make itself forgotten (which it doesn't do well currently). It's already too bad that Xilinx won't sell you the right to hack the Spartan6 with it but separately. I already had difficulties wrapping my mind around this fact, seems the FPGA world is not for me. But to give you also an other hint to update from the controller from Linux. Buy an simple JTAG cable, then use the xc3sprog with the -Ixc3s50an.bit option. This way Zefir managed to flash the controller from Linux successfull. Just ask him about the used cable. I think it will not cost the world (~10-20$) and it would make you also happy with your boards =o)
That's a good alternative thanks for the heads up. If you want / need to offload your CM1 collection...msg me to discuss prices
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2*FPGAs (CM1s) + 2*6770s produce a weeks worth of groceries per month
I want to expand to 15*FPGAs, or ASIC equivelant when / if they become real, as this will cover my monthly mortgage after pay back period...
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"Whitelisted addresses" does not equate to "only government-mined coins are good" Sorry, you cannot bend Bitcoin to your socialist dream. If you want something like that, go make SocialistCoin. +1000
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Good point - ASICs and FPGAs made for bitcoin solving can't be used for Litecoin, so reaper gives GPU owners a chance to keep earning. I don't think it was what the OP was getting at though.
cgminer also supports scrypt now I have been wondering on this topic since about a month after I opened the pool whoever solves this could become very wealthy We have a huge resource thats great for sha256, how can we use this resource for other applications. And more importantly how do we sell this to the market we identify "Hi I have a bunch of home computers in a distributed computing network, can I sell you some hashpower" - sounds legit if cgminer now supports scrypt, does this mean my FPGA array can mine LTC?
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---------------------------------------------------------- Price per kWh | AUD $.21 > $0.24 (tiered on usaage...gets more expensive) AUD$1=USD$1.05 therefore ~USD$0.2kW/hr Current as @ | August 2012 Provider | Origin Energy (Coal + Hydro) + my own 1.5kW solar system State/Province | Victoria Country | Australia ----------------------------------------------------------
Bills come in quarterly and are $350 ~ $500 depending on my solar production
See why I need FPGAs.....when BTC <$4 I turn off my GPUs
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Glasswalker...thank you for that great update!
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software improvement thoughts...
1. is it possible to monitor an FPGA, or set, and if it drops below a particular average U value (preferably user defined value) then the FPGA set is "reset"
2. monitor FPGA status so when the orange stand by / shit itself light comes on, then the FPGA set is reset
P.S.Spicolli...great post with an even better explination of waht ppl are seeing...it has helped me a lot just o get my head around some key figures
Well if you are using cgminer - you can check on the FPGA's with the API (I wrote the API) But that only tells you info from what cgminer knows, it won't know about the leds on the CM1 (NFI if you can even get that info from a CM1) However, relying on U is not ideal ... U is random - and can drop and rise - however, it should normally stay within 10% of the expected value after an hour or more runtime. But there is no guarantee it will (independent of MH/s) Really you should be tuning the parameters (--icarus-timing and --icarus-options) to cgminer and make sure the MH/s value is correct. "--icarus-timing long" would keep the performance correct as long as the machine it's running on isn't CPU starved in any way I'd go as far as saying that there is actually no reason that MH/s should be wrong any more if you use the correct parameters ... though, even that takes a while to settle, since the device reports results back at a different timing to the MH/s calculations so it takes a while Kano, My intent was to suggest an option to software reset the CM1 boards when they stop performing as expected. Can cgminer reset cards mid-mining? If so, can we automate this for when they crash?
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software improvement thoughts...
1. is it possible to monitor an FPGA, or set, and if it drops below a particular average U value (preferably user defined value) then the FPGA set is "reset"
2. monitor FPGA status so when the orange stand by / shit itself light comes on, then the FPGA set is reset
P.S.Spicolli...great post with an even better explination of waht ppl are seeing...it has helped me a lot just o get my head around some key figures
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ny1 know if I can run different bitstreams in each FPGA..eg p0,p2,p3 = 190MHs bitstream whilst p1=180MHs
thinking of this as p1 is unstable and keeps shitting itself. NOTE: "Shitting itself" is a professional engineers term for fucking up or crashing
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ok..so I have finally deduced what functions the cm1 board lights represent and no, I didn't find it in any enterpoint instruction manual.
FPGA on standby or idle (not mining) Orange, constant - standby
FPGA mining Green, flash - found a successful result Orange, flash - normally with green flash, mining Orange, constant - FPGA not responding ---shit itself or controller not communicating with it
I have p1 on 62- 0433 presenting a constant orange during mining so I assume it is playing up...will reflash 190MHs bitstream tonight and report back
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so after some time...I stabilise around the U: 5/m ICA line in cgminer...is this right for the 190MHs bitstream? basically what sort of rate should I be getting? My pool is reporting about 1200~1400MHs for 2 * CM1 190bit flashed systems
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ok...after 18 hours of testing, well short of the 48 hours I hoped for, here is my 190 bit stream findings;
System - Win 7 64bit, cgminer 2.6.1 + phatk, cm1 #62-0432 & #63-0433 Average hash rate per cm1 = ~725MHs at pool & via cgminer Note: neither board is reaching the bounty threshold of 750MHs Average U = 17.5~17.8/m HW & R are very low. HW = 0 & R <5 Maximum run time between failures (resulting in need for system reset to recover e.g BSD or non-responsive) - 14 hours Minimum run time between failures (resulting in need for system reset to recover e.g BSD or non-responsive) - 0.5 hours Average restarts of cgminer before both boards detect successfully - 3 Identified conflicts - use of 2nd 6770 GPU for mining causes system to BSD on start up of cgiminer or intedpendent start of of phoenix miner when cgminer is FPGA only. Note: Can mine on 1st 6770 GPU though.
I hope this helps developers... Tweakers, any idea on how to tweak to get up to 750MHs and improve stability?
What are your per worker U values? U=17.5 on 2 boards looks like 1 fpga isn't hashing which is a common issue with that bitstream. running as pr above but on + poclbm gives (approx) ICA 0: 360/360 U: 4.30/m ICA 1: 355/360 U: 4.15/m ICA 2: 355/355 U: 2.05/m ICA 3: 360/360 U: 6.75/m overall U: 17.3/m hint? is ICA2 not flashed properly despite VM saying it was a success?
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ok...after 18 hours of testing, well short of the 48 hours I hoped for, here is my 190 bit stream findings;
System - Win 7 64bit, cgminer 2.6.1 + phatk, cm1 #62-0432 & #63-0433 Average hash rate per cm1 = ~725MHs at pool & via cgminer Note: neither board is reaching the bounty threshold of 750MHs Average U = 17.5~17.8/m HW & R are very low. HW = 0 & R <5 Maximum run time between failures (resulting in need for system reset to recover e.g BSD or non-responsive) - 14 hours Minimum run time between failures (resulting in need for system reset to recover e.g BSD or non-responsive) - 0.5 hours Average restarts of cgminer before both boards detect successfully - 3 Identified conflicts - use of 2nd 6770 GPU for mining causes system to BSD on start up of cgiminer or intedpendent start of of phoenix miner when cgminer is FPGA only. Note: Can mine on 1st 6770 GPU though.
I hope this helps developers... Tweakers, any idea on how to tweak to get up to 750MHs and improve stability?
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apologies for the mash up...
2 boards flashed and now undergoing 48hr stability test...thnx ppl...it has been about 5 years since I touched any Linux flavoured OS hence some rustiness
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