This is in the spirit of being complementary to HF-engineer, additional information and not a challenge....

I feel peoples' pain with underperforming BJs, and I again want to point out that 3.11 on windows has been a good setup for me. Oh, I hate windows too.  My goal is to move this all over to an OS X machine, actually, but the guys that do OS X ports have to resolve some issues, so I'm waiting a few weeks on that.

But on a little mini-desktop running Win 8 and cgminer 3.11, with some modest overclocking, my previously underperforming BJ (390 g/hash out of the box) is running at 430-435, and another machine is running very slightly higher, maybe 435-440.  

With 3.11 I have not experienced stability issues (knock on wood), save the previously mentioned need to hotplug if you restart cgminer.  (3.12 was subject to crashing.)

I've also had BJs horizontally and vertically - made no difference.  

Where I did waste time was trying to devise an extra-cool place for them.  This doesn't seem necessary.  And really cold temps seem to even slow them down. The climate is mild here now, with outside temps ranging from about 5c to 24c.  I've learned to just throw open the windows, ensure adequate (but not crazy) ventilation, and let the things hash.  The procs will go up to about 82c max, but generally hover in the 78-80c range during the day.  Right now it's 11c, and they are in the low 70s, in a room that's probably 13-14c due to the exhaust heat.

My 0.02 cents.  I'll shut up about it now, though.

Ditch the RPI folks.  

And I gotta say, I was saying, a couple days ago, that there's crash/reboot problem with 3.12, at least on a significant proportion of the machines.  Something about not getting along with the watchdog, I think.

Get a old PC (or linux box, I suppose), and run 3.11 straight from ckolivas' website.  Works best for me, so far. Stable. Only problem is a need for hotplugging on restart of the software.

Or if you want to keep crashing and rebooting, I guess it's your right to use the RPi.  Keep the network a little slower for me!  



Perhaps a topic for the other thread, but I hope that HF makes good on its pledge to have reasonably priced, HF-selected/approved hardware available for purchase when the MPP ships.  Like yesterday, hopefully.

I've seen a PCB with a 1.1 sticker on it, and one without.  What do other Babyjets say?  

(Look about in the middle of the PCB, at the top edge below the radiator.)

And, by the way, ckolivas, has anyone ever told you that your handle reminds them of bike paths?  Cklovias would be perfect, but ckolivas is so close.  But maybe I'm just slightly dyslexic.

Okay.  You start up your laptop.  You start cgminer (with the default .conf file).  You plug in the USB cable.  What does cgminer say?

I sold my old block eruptards on ebay - $20 each - rather than try to run multiple instances or such radically different hardware under the same instance. Sorry.  I think I saw in the cgminer documentation the way to do what you are trying to do though... you have to tell it to only scan certain USB ports.

You need to run Zadig and replace the driver used for the BJ with the WinUSB driver. 

Defcon, you should move this over to the BJ users' thread.  There's a chance you'll got a reply from somebody at Hashfast, or maybe somebody else with similar problems.

I had cgminer 3.12 crash twice, once unfortunately overnight.  I happened to be looking at the screen when the other crash happened.  Cgminer popped up a message about imminent reboot and something about a watchdog, and errors were spewing across the screen faster than I could read them, but rather than the BJ restarting, cgminer crashed.  I'm suspecting a similar problem caused the other shutdown.

So I rolled back to cgminer 3.11, which is not prone to the same problem.  Unfortunately, 3.11 has the disadvantage - for me at least - of usually requiring the BJ to be physically hotplugged in order to get hashing each time the program starts up (e.g. after editing the config file), or each time there is a hiccup in my setup (e.g. wifi network goes down).

I don't use minepeon or the RPi.  This is a PC.

Err... confirming:

The two fans on top of radiator:  BLOWING OUT
The two fans on the front:  BLOWING IN

easy enough...

The single fan on the back:  BLOWING IN (?)

There seems to be contradictory advice on this last one...

The fans on top of my radiator are blowing out, but what's the proper orientation for the single fan on the back?  

It should be blowing out, no?  I have one that is sucking in.

Fair enough.  But just remember that it's not your job to apologize or to make excuses for them.  They are big boys. They can speak for themselves.

Minor, what was your position in the Batch 1 order chain?

Taco, instead of bending over for John and indulging his request, you should have told him to post a clarification himself.  Duh. Are you still on the payroll or something?

Purely based on short term observation, but I think that the BubbaJet ... that's what we call them in Texas ... hashes best at around 70c.  I've had mine colder for extended periods and haven't seen any improvement. In fact, it seems a little slower. YMMV.

Opinions?



This definitely seems to have helped some issues I was having that made me need to physically disconnect the USB cable and re-hotplug with almost every little upset (e.g. wifi network reboot).

I'm even more confused than most.

At ambient 70f/21c, my BJ reported 73-74c, with cgminer 3.11, no overclock.  It did not rise higher and throttling obviously did not kick in.

But I may have a low spec machine.  Out of the box mine does 390-395 gh/s.

If it ran faster, like the 430 gh/s some people report, the temp might be higher.

Brief experience so far suggests to me that cooling it down to the upper 60s centigrade yields a few gh/s improvement.

Cooling it down further - to 58-59c - doesn't seem to make much additional difference so far, although maybe that could provide more "room" to overclock.

There are some things on this that may not be Batch 1 orders.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/FDX131

I'm thinking that the MPP or upgrade boards may be shipping... I'll have more to say by 10:30AM tomorrow.

Anybody with more overclocking reports?

If you read backwards in this thread, you will find your answers.  

Hashfast uses misleading tactics, especially with Batch 1, to induce people to believe that their machines will be delivered earlier.  In the case of Batch 1, Hashfast indicated it would ship in late October, 2013.  But it did not ship units in any quantity until late January, 2014.  

Nobody knows when your Batch 3 units will ship.  On the one hand, they now have a functional product that they are shipping in at least some quantity.  On the other, there are people in front you (Batch 2) that have not received their units.  Also, Batch 1 customers, and some Batch 2 customers, bought under the Miner Protection Program, and they are expecting further processing boards.

It's a mess.  Based on past experience, I would NOT expect that Hashfast will give you any clear answer.