GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[novak@gekkoscience]

That one might be on me for failing to gut all the icarus related stuff out of compac drivers.  I've been collecting some small things that need to be repaired and I'll probably post an updated version soon.  As far as your fix where you deleted the duplicate lines that's fine unless you don't build with --enable-icarus, because there are still apparently references to opt_anu_freq in driver-gekko.c.  As I said, I have them cleaned up in my current working version and should have it out for you guys soon.  I'll try to test with the u2 as well.

Thanks for looking into this. There are other compile problems with usbutils.c, which I've just worked through. Now I'm seeing problems with driver-gekko.c.

Unfortunately I'm out of time for the next few hours. So I won't be able to poke at this anymore.

But none of these are difficult problems. Looks like it's just some clean up to dis-entangle your gekko implementation from the same named code and variables for icarus.

If you get a clean build before I do, I'd be happy to take your source updates and rebuild for the Pi.

I've already got most of it done, I just need to test it thoroughly before I post it.

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novak

[notlist3d]

So flat edge flush with bottom would be what voltage about?

It would depend which way you turned it.   Did you turn right or left and how much?  Could be .8 or .55 depending on that or between.

Not sure what you mean but no, it's always the same voltage.  About 0.68V.

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novak

Sorry about that I must be not understanding.    With variable voltage screw how is it always the same?   Or do you mean same voltage at certain spots on it?

Thanks for time on my questions, I do appreciate it.

[philipma1957]

yeah it must affect the windows build.  I can run two sticks at freq 350 get 0 hw nice speeds like 18-19gh a stick

yet I can not run 3 sticks  on the same hub at freq 175 and get correct speeds.

Basically on windows 7 and 10  

1 stick = really good
2 sticks = really good
3 or more = ?

[mindtrip]

Yeah  a compiled version that supports both would be a huge help for me

[novak@gekkoscience]

So flat edge flush with bottom would be what voltage about?

It would depend which way you turned it.   Did you turn right or left and how much?  Could be .8 or .55 depending on that or between.

Not sure what you mean but no, it's always the same voltage.  About 0.68V.

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novak

Sorry about that I must be not understanding.    With variable voltage screw how is it always the same?   Or do you mean same voltage at certain spots on it?

Thanks for time on my questions, I do appreciate it.

Yeah, what I'm trying to say is:  If the potentiometer is at a given position, it should always output the same voltage.  The position he specified is flat edge against the bottom, so 180 degrees from 0.55V.

yeah it must affect the windows build.  I can run two sticks at freq 350 get 0 hw nice speeds like 18-19gh a stick

yet I can not run 3 sticks  on the same hub at freq 175 and get correct speeds.

Basically on windows 7 and 10  

1 stick = really good
2 sticks = really good
3 or more = ?

Certainly unique.  I'll check it out.

EDIT: Can't reproduce that at all on windows 7.  What hub are you using and has it had this sort of trouble before?



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novak

[Blackbird0]

CGMiner recognizes the sticks, but they don't mine.

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://peercoin.ecoining.com:3336/#skipcbcheck -u blackbird.2 -p 12345 --compac-freq 150

[philipma1957]

CGMiner recognizes the sticks, but they don't mine.

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://peercoin.ecoining.com:3336/#skipcbcheck -u blackbird.2 -p 12345 --compac-freq 150

what are you running the sticks in .

A powered hub?

that reading you have does happen.

run 1 stick for 10 minutes and see if you get some valid hash.

[philipma1957]

here is valid hash
note the zombies the hub was only able to run 7 sticks  see second screen shots I still  get drop outs

[Meech]

It's been awhile but I thought I remember Windows having a problem running too many sticks.  That's why many opted to using a Pi.

[Mikestang]

It's been awhile but I thought I remember Windows having a problem running too many sticks.  That's why many opted to using a Pi.

I am running 6 nanofury usb sticks on my WinXP box and no issues for many months.

Can't wait to get my Compacs, as just 1 of them will out perform all 6 of my current sticks. 

[Blackbird0]

Ok, so just restarting everything seemed to do the trick.

Now I have the compac's running, but when I try to run my Antminer U1/U3's in BFG, they fail to initialize.

[Blackbird0]

Ok, so just restarting everything seemed to do the trick.

Now I have the compac's running, but when I try to run my Antminer U1/U3's in BFG, they fail to initialize.

Found a solution to the Antminer / Compac problem.

I ran the compac's on the CGMinger-gekko version. I have two of them, and I added to the end of the command line argument "--usb :2" This keeps CGMiner from scanning for other USB interfaces.

Then, I ran the Antminer units utilizing BFGMiner. BFG didn't seem to conflict with the Compacs when I do it that way.

[novak@gekkoscience]

here is valid hash
note the zombies the hub was only able to run 7 sticks  see second screen shots I still  get drop outs

I'm still more inclined to wonder about hardware than software, unless there is some difference between our win7 setups.

Do you have something else to test on- a raspi, a mac, or linux box?  You've already used this same powered hub for large numbers of stickminers before, right?

If you run it with --debug and create a log file I can look at it some more.  Example:

cgminer.exe -o stratum+tcp://stratum.mining.eligius.st:3334 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr --compac-freq 150 --debug 2>logfile.txt

Just run a few minutes or the file will get pretty big, so log long enough to see some failures, then kill it and you can send me the file.

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novak

[Ecnad]

Having the same issue with the sticks I got today. running a log for you now.

Update: have 2 running stable at 100Mhz. Anything over 100 and they start throwing the errors, and that is in an eyeboot powered hub that should more than support them.

Any more than 2 sticks causes the usual reboots believed to be windows' fault.

[Jake36]

Here you go:




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novak

Thank you novak!  I was afraid of turning it much on my own.  This explains a lot.

Has anyone used the RPI 1 B with it and RPI 2? I was wondering if there is any noticeable difference for this with the RPI 2 that is worth the upgrade cost of getting another PI.  Was not sure if worth buying one or not.

I'm using the Pi 2, getting ready to do another build, been having trouble with saving the configuration file in cgminer-gekko. Think I narrowed it down to libjansson-dev, but not sure yet.

One difference on the Pi 2 is 1GB of ram and Broadcom BCM2836 ARMv7 Quad Core Processor at 900 MHz. So not sure if it's worth the cost to upgrade or not.

[edonkey]

I'm using the Pi 2, getting ready to do another build, been having trouble with saving the configuration file in cgminer-gekko. Think I narrowed it down to libjansson-dev, but not sure yet.

Are you sure that your config file is not damaged? If you're been cutting and copying from web pages, it might have high ASCII or other unreadable characters in it.

I don't know what platform you're on, but you probably can "clean" the text to make sure it doesn't have whacky characters in it. On the Mac there's a tool called TextWrangler (it's free) that has a "Zap Gremlins" command that removes non-ASCII characters. Very useful.

[philipma1957]

here is valid hash
note the zombies the hub was only able to run 7 sticks  see second screen shots I still  get drop outs

I'm still more inclined to wonder about hardware than software, unless there is some difference between our win7 setups.

Do you have something else to test on- a raspi, a mac, or linux box?  You've already used this same powered hub for large numbers of stickminers before, right?

If you run it with --debug and create a log file I can look at it some more.  Example:

cgminer.exe -o stratum+tcp://stratum.mining.eligius.st:3334 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr --compac-freq 150 --debug 2>logfile.txt

Just run a few minutes or the file will get pretty big, so log long enough to see some failures, then kill it and you can send me the file.

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novak

I need to play with it some more.  But the hub is really pretty good.

 I am able to run quite a bit higher freq 350 and 0 errors  2 sticks around 20gh.

Yet I can't run 3 sticks at good numbers..

I have many hubs and will do more testing tommorrow.

I have 3 pc's
 I have 1 doing windows 7 pretty new build and i5 cpu ------------ This is doing 8 sticks at freq 150
 I have 1 doing windows 7 in a vm shell a mac mini i5 ------------- This is doing 7 sticks at freq 125

 I have 1 doing windows 10 an i5 cpu new build new mobo -------- This is doing 2 sticks at freq 250 perfectly  I can go to freq 350 perfectly on 2 sticks  So far this setup is the really weird one as it allows 2 sticks as high as freq 350 yet does not  like to do 3 or more sticks.
could be a mobo issue. 

I am a bit tired will get back with more info

[novak@gekkoscience]

I need to play with it some more.  But the hub is really pretty good.

 I am able to run quite a bit higher freq 350 and 0 errors  2 sticks around 20gh.

Yet I can't run 3 sticks at good numbers..

I have many hubs and will do more testing tommorrow.

I have 3 pc's
 I have 1 doing windows 7 pretty new build and i5 cpu ------------ This is doing 8 sticks at freq 150
 I have 1 doing windows 7 in a vm shell a mac mini i5 ------------- This is doing 7 sticks at freq 125

 I have 1 doing windows 10 an i5 cpu new build new mobo -------- This is doing 2 sticks at freq 250 perfectly  I can go to freq 350 perfectly on 2 sticks  So far this setup is the really weird one as it allows 2 sticks as high as freq 350 yet does not  like to do 3 or more sticks.
could be a mobo issue. 

I am a bit tired will get back with more info

Interesting, so the other machines can both do as many sticks per hub as want?  It seems that at least one other person (Ecnad) is having the same issue so motherboard issues seems maybe too specific.  It could maybe windows 10.  I'll keep looking at it, Ecnad got me a logfile.

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novak

[Jake36]

I'm using the Pi 2, getting ready to do another build, been having trouble with saving the configuration file in cgminer-gekko. Think I narrowed it down to libjansson-dev, but not sure yet.

Are you sure that your config file is not damaged? If you're been cutting and copying from web pages, it might have high ASCII or other unreadable characters in it.

I don't know what platform you're on, but you probably can "clean" the text to make sure it doesn't have whacky characters in it. On the Mac there's a tool called TextWrangler (it's free) that has a "Zap Gremlins" command that removes non-ASCII characters. Very useful.

No, it's after the build and cgminer is running, when I hit "s" and "w" to save the cgminer.conf file, it quits cgminer and kicks me back to terminal.

When cgminer is running, if I hit "s" and "c" to restart cgminer that's where the fatal json error message comes up and with another message saying it can't read the cgminer.conf file (because all it makes is a blank file). Even when I fill in the cgminer.conf file with pool/s and freq, it can't read it.

[philipma1957]

I need to play with it some more.  But the hub is really pretty good.

 I am able to run quite a bit higher freq 350 and 0 errors  2 sticks around 20gh.

Yet I can't run 3 sticks at good numbers..

I have many hubs and will do more testing tommorrow.

I have 3 pc's
 I have 1 doing windows 7 pretty new build and i5 cpu ------------ This is doing 8 sticks at freq 150
 I have 1 doing windows 7 in a vm shell a mac mini i5 ------------- This is doing 7 sticks at freq 125

 I have 1 doing windows 10 an i5 cpu new build new mobo -------- This is doing 2 sticks at freq 250 perfectly  I can go to freq 350 perfectly on 2 sticks  So far this setup is the really weird one as it allows 2 sticks as high as freq 350 yet does not  like to do 3 or more sticks.
could be a mobo issue. 

I am a bit tired will get back with more info

Interesting, so the other machines can both do as many sticks per hub as want?  It seems that at least one other person (Ecnad) is having the same issue so motherboard issues seems maybe too specific.  It could maybe windows 10.  I'll keep looking at it, Ecnad got me a logfile.

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novak

more or less as one hub I am using on  one of the windows 7 can provide 1.1- 1.3  amps  for 3 jacks  so I can run 3 sticks at 250 freq.  which is good.

the mac mini build is in a shell and it has its own quirks but that is partially due to the vmware fusion shell but 7 sticks at freq 125 is okay. about 5.6gh each.

it has the quirk that I can't make a good .bat file.  I have to run cgminer alone then enter a pool.  pretty sure that is something to do with vmware fusion shell.

but I am happy with 7 sticks at  freq 125 stable enough.