The combined sidehack-novak usb stick review thread. AKA GekkoScience BM1384

[TheRealSteve]

I have the silabs driver working fine, used it on an older cgminer for TheRealSteve's block erupter competition.

I've not used suggest-diff but that's probably a good idea. Eligius starts out at 128, which this stick should see about 7 instead.

Speaking of which - I couldn't get Eligius to go below 127 when I tested it, suggest-diff be damned.  Might have been user error, though.  But if not, the pool that was used for that comp goes all the way down to Diff=2, and I'm gonna guess is currently seeing one of these miners hashing away quite nicely.  Philip / other reviewers, if you'd like a user/pass, I'd be happy to set those up.  Or see that thread for some other lower diff pools.
( and yes, feel free to delete this post when the time for clean-up comes )

[sidehack]

I've been using the BEUSB creds on that pool as a low-diff test for when I wanted to see what shares were actually coming out (and yes, the one on the hub on the Pi is pointed there now). One annoying thing with the U3 driver is the timeout; it's expecting about four times the hashrate it's actually getting so it resets the device occasionally if it hasn't seen a share for 2-4 seconds (depending on frequency). With a high-diff pool, you don't often see cgminer-reported shares, so sometimes your whole window is just "timeout reset" notices when you know the thing is submitting, typically, a couple shares a second (well below vardiff). The LED flashes with each returned share, so you know it's doing something.

[HerbPean]

Sidehack, may I ask which USB hub you're using for your Raspberry Pi ?

thanks

I got one of those $8 11-port junkers from Ebay about two years ago, stripped it down and beefed the power lines with extra wire and capacitors for running overclocked block erupters. There's pictures in the dev thread. We're thinking about building our own hub that'll take in higher than 12V and internally regulate high-current 5V to the ports, which would be good for Compac and Amita stuff but also for anyone working on a solar setup or charging a lot of devices in a car or something. So I'll probably be testing that in a month or so, but for now I have a junker hub that's been rebuilt for higher current.

Allright thanks, I was asking as I had no luck with the few usb hubs i tried. My Pi couldn't see more then 1 CP2102 (I had 8 connected)

[philipma1957]

Okay many tries on 2 different windows 7 machines and success!

I loaded zadig  8 or 9 times and it finally works .
  this stick is mining on www.mmpool.org

see screen shot


it is pulling  11gh

[alh]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Just couldn't leave it at 150 MHz, could you?   

[sidehack]

Running it at 200? What's the power like?

[philipma1957]

no it is at 150 I think mmpool was over generous I am running it at btcguild pool now and getting  lower pool side numbers.

7.79gh which is more like it.


BTW I got cgminer 4.9.0 working not 4.9.1



I hate loading zadig.

Got to make it easier for newbies 2 pc's and multiples boots stripping drivers out putting drivers in got to make this easy to help people start it.

[alh]

Have you worried about "cooling" at all yet? I never ran a stick miner that didn't get pretty warm in dead air.

Good result, regardless of the hashrate.

[philipma1957]

cooling is done. there is a 5volt usb fan on the right

note this is pulling 5.9 watts but it does the usb stick the hub and the fan
I will post a cleaner photo of the fan.






full size links

http://imageshack.com/a/img540/9515/t1ZiQF.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img909/6822/c4yNVi.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img661/7720/W7VmTl.jpg

[philipma1957]

sticks are impressive. 5.9 watts which bounces on kwatt meter  5.6 to 5.9

this includes the entire hub the fan and the stick.

if I unplug the fan kwatt drops to 4.7 to 4.9 watts

so the hub is a 18 dollar junk hub with a junk wallwart 12volt 3 amp rating  I know it wastes power.   so these sticks are easy 3 watt for 7.7gh on a hub using  a platinum atx psu.

Other then zadig driving me fuckng nuts  for hours nice.



full size show more
http://imageshack.com/a/img538/7651/7MB7T8.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img905/8661/3rxbOi.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img673/3948/91XDte.jpg

cooling


poolside stats



cgminer 4.9 stats

[sidehack]

At 150MHz it should converge to 8.25GH. Good to see no HW errors. You might be able to turn the voltage down a bit and it still run smooth at slightly lower power. Startup currents tend to bounce the voltage a bit so they don't always start at as low a steady-state voltage as they'll run.

At 610mV 150MHz I ran a set for 24 hours in my ~90F shop with no air movement and zero problems. Hopefully with a decent fan and cool ambient it'll go hotter better. The makeshift heatsink on there is a bit bigger than the stock which will be on the final version.

[philipma1957]

At 150MHz it should converge to 8.25GH. Good to see no HW errors. You might be able to turn the voltage down a bit and it still run smooth at slightly lower power. Startup currents tend to bounce the voltage a bit so they don't always start at as low a steady-state voltage as they'll run.

At 610mV 150MHz I ran a set for 24 hours in my ~90F shop with no air movement and zero problems. Hopefully with a decent fan and cool ambient it'll go hotter better. The makeshift heatsink on there is a bit bigger than the stock which will be on the final version.

basement is cold 70f and the fan so it will be cool ..  Going to let it run overnight then play with it on fri.

[philipma1957]

not so clear on the pot for  power adjustments.  I will photo close up tomorrow and ask questions.

so far it runs well and is actually cold to the touch. (due to ac  for the house and a fan for the stick)

[sidehack]

The pot in the bottom corner near the USB jack allows the output voltage to adjust between about 550mV to 800mV. I believe turning clockwise increases the voltage. It should have been set to about 610mV when you got it.

[Mikestang]

BTW I got cgminer 4.9.0 working not 4.9.1

4.9.2 was just released, it should work with the U3 stuff now (per the changelog, I haven't tried it yet).

[cavaliersrus]

very nice sofar will be following here as well as the dev posting

[philipma1957]

ran it over night .  my pc is acting a bit flakey. it is dedicated to mining so no info is at risk.  I think I picked up some kind of malware loading  down loading zadig.



So today I cranked the little pot  from 12 oclock to 2 oclock and I re set the stick to  freq 175.

the kwatt meter jumped from 5.7-5.9 to 6.6  watts so lets say    a .7 watt jump

and hashing jumped about  2 gh  to 9.81gh

full size

http://imageshack.com/a/img910/9928/ILBKHN.png


 

[philipma1957]

so moving from freq 150 to freq 175 jumped .7 watts and added 2.02gh   that is pretty good  .


less then .35 watts a gh.  

lower right corner is adjustment pot   it was like this

+    I turned it clockwise just a bit.

full size

http://imageshack.com/a/img633/1461/h1JKa4.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img537/166/bEy7uV.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img540/938/Pflb7O.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img912/9630/Ou1Of7.jpg


good clear shot

[sidehack]

If you have a multimeter, you can check the voltage either at the caps along the left edge below the heatsink, or on the test pads on the back of the stick. I believe from top to bottom they are SGND, Vcore, 1.8V (ASIC logic/signals), 0.9V (ASIC PLL) and PGND

[philipma1957]

If you have a multimeter, you can check the voltage either at the caps along the left edge below the heatsink, or on the test pads on the back of the stick. I believe from top to bottom they are SGND, Vcore, 1.8V (ASIC logic/signals), 0.9V (ASIC PLL) and PGND

I will get to it later today.