Custom Innosilicon A2 Terminator image - Anx Edition

[madmartyk]

My new A2 is on the way from ZoomHash.  Going to throw your image on it as soon as it arrives!!  Hoping for next week!!

[emdje]

Burning your image now to check it out 

[2x2lcallingcq]

Burning your image now to check it out 

Only 11 more days or so until the new image!!! I am stoked this one that is out now is great but it can only get better!

[MarkAz]

heheh, it's coming along.  Most of what I'm doing is general cleanup - for example, periodically the Pi's temperature sensor gives bad values, and it screws up the charts (annoying).  So I've made it so the script checks the temp twice within 5 seconds, and makes sure the two values are relatively close to eachother - and if they aren't, then it dumps the sample, so hopefully this resolves that issue.

I also will probably be making a JSON responding page, for automated control of the A2, that way if anyone wants to script things like clock rate changes, rebooting, etc - there will be one page that does everything.  With that done, it then frees me up to split the one page into a couple, so some of the settings that are never changes are removed.

I've also cleaned up the image some more, so it's smaller and a little easier to manage.  

I've also ordered a Pi2, so I'll be looking into what it takes to get the A2 running off of it - the Pi2 is considerably faster than the original one, plus it's much easier to get so if you have a failure, it would be nice to have something you could just grab off Amazon Prime.

If there are any other feature requests, now's the time to make them!  

[emdje]

Sometime tonight the miner stopped mining and didn't continue automatically.
And the miner lost my pool settings as well. Weird.
But the time it mined it did so very smooth, good work.

I'll try out your new image when it comes out.

[MarkAz]

Sometime tonight the miner stopped mining and didn't continue automatically.
And the miner lost my pool settings as well. Weird.
But the time it mined it did so very smooth, good work.

I'll try out your new image when it comes out.

The current version is similar to the original one from Innosilicon, and doesn't start back up automatically - that will be in my new version.

Interesting that it lost the pool settings - I save everything in the same way that Innosilicon does, it basically just stores the settings in text files.  It's strange that those both happened at the same time - short of the Pi not saving them to the SD card, I'm not sure how it could happen.

On my new version, I've also been experimenting with disabling the swap and just storing the logs into tmpfs, since they're really not used for anything, and I'd prefer to keep the churn on the SD card to a minimum.  So far on my machines this hasn't caused any issues...

BTW; is the version of cgminer on my firmware one of yours?

[emdje]

It does not seem my version because, this one seems to also be for the 12 chip blades (if you look at the name on one of the stats pages). But I have not checked the md5 yet.

[MarkAz]

It does not seem my version because, this one seems to also be for the 12 chip blades (if you look at the name on one of the stats pages). But I have not checked the md5 yet.

Yeah, I noticed that, but it runs fine on all of my Terminators (both 88's and 110's - new and old), so I wasn't sure if it really mattered or not.  Do you have any devices that have a different number of ASIC's?  Since the description is different, it's pretty safe to say the MD5 isn't going to match. 

[madmartyk]

Loaded the image and it's running fine.  My 110 is only generating about 88 Mh/s though.  That's running at a clock of 1200.

[MarkAz]

Loaded the image and it's running fine.  My 110 is only generating about 88 Mh/s though.  That's running at a clock of 1200.

Strange - did you just buy it?  Just wondering, because I've seen a bunch of 88's being sold on eBay as 110's - with all of mine, the 110's all have 5 fans, where the 88's only have the 3 in the front.  I don't know if there are any other obvious physical signs of which are which, but worth noting.

With the firmware you were running before, was it doing 110?

[madmartyk]

That is very strange, mine only has 3 fans!!  Maybe ZoomHash sent me a 88 in error.  This is the 1st silver one I have gotten, the other 2 before were black.

What is even more strange, it came with your firmware on the card!!

[MarkAz]

That is very strange, mine only has 3 fans!!  Maybe ZoomHash sent me a 88 in error.  This is the 1st silver one I have gotten, the other 2 before were black.

What is even more strange, it came with your firmware on the card!!

Well, I've gotten black, silver, all kinds of cases - those tend to not be a good indicator of what is what.  The 3 fans vs 5 fans has been 100% on all my machines, 3 fans being 88MH, 5 fans being 110MH.  I'm sure there's another method to tell one way or the other, but that's the simple way I use.  

So I would be willing to bet based on the speed it's hashing and the fact it has 3 fans that it's an 88...

It's also worth pointing out that the big "88MH/s" or "110MH/s" that displays on the top of my firmware doesn't mean anything - you set in the config if the machine is 88 or 110, then I use that to estimate the hash rate based on clock rate (and I couldn't figure out a way to query the machine to determine which is was).  So you can tell my firmware it's a 110 (even though it's an 88), and it will display the estimates - but the graphs and the live statistics will show what the actual hash rate is.

[madmartyk]

Yep, already sent a note to ZoomHash, I have never had an issue with them, and I'm sure they will make it right.

[psycodad]

I have a black 110Mhs with 3 fans and a silver 88Mhs with 3 fans, my last buy from Innosilicon are 110Mhs and silver with 5 fans. However the miners with 3 fans have NIDEC 1.6A fans, the miners with 5 fans have 1.4A DELTA fans.
HTH

[MarkAz]

I have a black 110Mhs with 3 fans and a silver 88Mhs with 3 fans, my last buy from Innosilicon are 110Mhs and silver with 5 fans. However the miners with 3 fans have NIDEC 1.6A fans, the miners with 5 fans have 1.4A DELTA fans.

Well, there you have it - there is officially no consistency with A2's!    I have 15 110's and 13 88's, black cases (all my black ones are 88's), silver cases, short cases, long cases - the only thing that was consistent between them was the 3 fan/5 fan thing, so I assumed that was the easiest indicator, so back to the drawing board as far as figuring out which is which.  The last two I bought from Zoomhash were silver 110's with 5 fans.

Personally, I'm surprised the 110's would run with 3 fans, my 88's run considerably cooler than the 110's, and the 110's run hot with 5 fans, I couldn't imagine running them on 3.  What are the temps like on your black one?

[MarkAz]

As I'm starting to lock down this next release, one thing I was considering adding was the ability to change the Pi account password from "innosilicon" to whatever you wanted... The security is basically non-existent on any of these miners anyway, so I don't know if this is that important to anyone, but if it were then I would add it, and the ability to require authentication on the web interface as well - to at least give you the ability to lock things up just a tad if you were so inclined. 

I haven't looked into it in any great detail - I thought I would see first if people had an immediate desire for this option - otherwise I'll just punt it until a later version.

[psycodad]

Personally, I'm surprised the 110's would run with 3 fans, my 88's run considerably cooler than the 110's, and the 110's run hot with 5 fans, I couldn't imagine running them on 3.  What are the temps like on your black one?

The 110 with 3 fans is currently running in a datacenter env for summer, just checked: 38-39°C on all blades avg. The 88 in my basement is on 31-33°C avg.

[MarkAz]

The 110 with 3 fans is currently running in a datacenter env for summer, just checked: 38-39°C on all blades avg. The 88 in my basement is on 31-33°C avg.

Interesting, I would assume that the datacenter is cooler than your basement, correct?  Does the case the 110's are in have spots in the back for fans to be mounted?  With all of my 88 cases, they have vents in the back obviously, but none of them have fan mounting holes on them, whereas the 110's clearly have spots for fans on the left and right side.  Just wondering if they just weren't included in yours for some reason.  I have had 110's that were missing fans before, but I've always just chalked it up to being used and put a new one in...

[madmartyk]

It has spaces for the fans.  ZoomHash so far has sent this, Can you send me a picture of the SD card slot?

Pic sent.  Still hashing at a constant 87 Mh/s.

[psycodad]

The 110 with 3 fans is currently running in a datacenter env for summer, just checked: 38-39°C on all blades avg. The 88 in my basement is on 31-33°C avg.

Interesting, I would assume that the datacenter is cooler than your basement, correct?  Does the case the 110's are in have spots in the back for fans to be mounted?  With all of my 88 cases, they have vents in the back obviously, but none of them have fan mounting holes on them, whereas the 110's clearly have spots for fans on the left and right side.  Just wondering if they just weren't included in yours for some reason.  I have had 110's that were missing fans before, but I've always just chalked it up to being used and put a new one in...

Yes, it's at the moment slightly cooler in the datacenter (~24°C) vs. basement with 25-26°C. Also the air entering the miner in datacenter is quite cooler as it is sucking in air directly from the ACs blower.

One difference I noted between the black and silver 110s is: The black has 3x NIDEC 1.6A fans, the silver has 5x DELTA 1.4A fans which are not as strong in terms of airflow.
Regarding temperature: I had no chance to compare them with a laser thermometer yet, but just from touching the backside where all the blades are mounted to I would say both, the black and the silver 110s are at around the same feeled temperature.  The 110s I have are all around the same temperature, the only "cool guy" here is the 88.

Once I receive my spare fans (next 2 days) I'll make some comparisons and pictures and post them. I am also considering to replace some of the DELTA fans with the stronger NIDEC fans to see if I can reduce temperature a bit more.