GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[Jake-R]

I am thnking of buying two of these sticks. Does MultiMiner support them? Can you really mine without a fan?

[alh]

One of my 3 Compac sticks no longer will hash. It worked at one time, but now it will only identify and respond, but when it tries to hash, it doesn't work. This is on a variety of ports, different hubs, different platforms (RPi, Win7) and using both cgminer and bfgminer (not all combinations of the preceding). I think I tried adjusting a "smidge" clockwise, but also no effect.

Will I damage it if I turn it too much clockwise? I 'd like to know if I have been just too timid in my adjustments, and would like to know if it's safe to be more aggressive. This is all at 125 MHz or 150 MHz, so I am not trying to optimize anything in terms of efficiency or speed, I just want to know if I get it to hash again.

Thanks for your suggestions and thoughts.

[SlimePuppy]

I am new to Minera and have been looking at it for fun.  Has anyone been able to use it to control compacs, and U3's?

I was just wondering if it is a pain or easy.  Appreciate anyones who can share their experience if they have tried it.

I'm running the copy of Minera with cgminer-gekko that edonkey built (linked in the OP) on a Raspberry Pi 2 to run Compacs.  edonkey has it all configured - burn the image, boot the Pi, and it works.  I've used Minera to manage Compacs and GAW Fury but haven't used U3s.

Yes.  Did that but got to the password screen...whats the password or login info for first run?

The default password for Minera is:  minera

When/if one SSHs into the box, cgminer runs under account minera with password minera

With edonkey's build do you have to SSH to start it?  Or will it allow you to start it through minera locally?

edonkey's package is all set.  The only thing you'll have to do is change pool info, which you can do from the web interface once the machine boots.  He built a toaster - plug it in and it works.

You can always SSH in and run cgminer directly if you want.  The Pi has a default account (user: pi  password: raspberry), and there's the minera/minera account that cgminer's running under by default.  But it's debian based, so it's fully controllable at the command line like a 'regular' *nix box.

[celes8]

hooray i got it working on osx:

https://i.imgur.com/GLUmBMp.jpg

[Jake-R]

hooray i got it working on osx:

Nice! What software are you mining with?

[celes8]

sorry i actually mis spoke, I shouldve written mac with cgminer


It's on bootcamp, but Ive run nanofurys in OSX without much issue, but i dont want to download/set up xcode on this setup.

[Meech]

In bfgminer I'm getting 100% rejected "above target" on shares any clues?

sudo ./bfgminer -o url -O btc address --set compac:clock=0x0b83

edit:  nevermind seems to do that at startup for awhile.

It will only show me 3 of 4 miners on my 5A hub and takes about 5 minutes before the gh #'s start reading correctly.

edit 2: Trying cgminer on a live usb boot of linux mint :brb

[powrslave]

How is this looking? And should I change the difficulty to 8? If so how do I do that?

[sidehack]

150MHz should max at 8.25GH, so you're looking decent.

alh, regarding turning up the pot, there's no way to break the ASIC unless other things are going seriously wrong. You can spin the pot screw in circles and you'll only ever get between 550 and 800mV, which is a completely safe range. The only problem would be if you took the voltage all the way up and then ran it without a fan might damage something, but you'll easily notice that the heatsink is getting very toasty.

If the stick can't be tweaked back into functional, let me know and I'll replace it.

[Meech]

Funny, I really like bfgminer but it would only see 3 of the 4 compacs but I installed cgminer-gekko and 4 showed up no problem and it didn't start off with rejected shares.  Shows hashrate almost instantly, no waiting a few minutes to get a correct readout.  Fyi from my experience.

[notlist3d]

I am new to Minera and have been looking at it for fun.  Has anyone been able to use it to control compacs, and U3's?

I was just wondering if it is a pain or easy.  Appreciate anyones who can share their experience if they have tried it.

I'm running the copy of Minera with cgminer-gekko that edonkey built (linked in the OP) on a Raspberry Pi 2 to run Compacs.  edonkey has it all configured - burn the image, boot the Pi, and it works.  I've used Minera to manage Compacs and GAW Fury but haven't used U3s.

Yes.  Did that but got to the password screen...whats the password or login info for first run?

The default password for Minera is:  minera

When/if one SSHs into the box, cgminer runs under account minera with password minera

With edonkey's build do you have to SSH to start it?  Or will it allow you to start it through minera locally?

edonkey's package is all set.  The only thing you'll have to do is change pool info, which you can do from the web interface once the machine boots.  He built a toaster - plug it in and it works.

You can always SSH in and run cgminer directly if you want.  The Pi has a default account (user: pi  password: raspberry), and there's the minera/minera account that cgminer's running under by default.  But it's debian based, so it's fully controllable at the command line like a 'regular' *nix box.

Thanks for info I like plug and play .  Hard to beat that.

I will be ordering a RPI 2 sometime to play with.  I have it on a RPI 1 B+ i think right now.  Really won't effect it much. But I would like to combine some U3's and these on same machine.

[TheRealSteve]

I am thnking of buying two of these sticks. Does MultiMiner support them?

multiminer uses bfgminer (default) or cgminer (iirc) as its underlying mining software, so that should be fine.  I haven't tried, though.  Changing clock setting would have to be done through the advancer miner settings dialog.

Can you really mine without a fan?

Absolutely, though I wouldn't use very high hash rates when only doing passive cooling.  I've got two hashing away at 100Mhz -> 5.5Gh/z and they didn't go much over 50°C in ~25°C ambient iirc (hopefully post later today / this weekend with some further tests).

[edonkey]

edonkey's package is all set.  The only thing you'll have to do is change pool info, which you can do from the web interface once the machine boots.  He built a toaster - plug it in and it works.

You can always SSH in and run cgminer directly if you want.  The Pi has a default account (user: pi  password: raspberry), and there's the minera/minera account that cgminer's running under by default.  But it's debian based, so it's fully controllable at the command line like a 'regular' *nix box.

Thanks for info I like plug and play .  Hard to beat that.

I will be ordering a RPI 2 sometime to play with.  I have it on a RPI 1 B+ i think right now.  Really won't effect it much. But I would like to combine some U3's and these on same machine.

Thanks for the favorable mini-review SlimePuppy!

Notlist3d, the current cgminer-gekko in the image does not support U3's yet. I put that on hold because there are compile problems when you enable both gekko and icarus.

Novak, have you managed to get to this yet? Maybe you fixed the sources and I missed it?

[kipper01]

150MHz should max at 8.25GH, so you're looking decent.

alh, regarding turning up the pot, there's no way to break the ASIC unless other things are going seriously wrong. You can spin the pot screw in circles and you'll only ever get between 550 and 800mV, which is a completely safe range. The only problem would be if you took the voltage all the way up and then ran it without a fan might damage something, but you'll easily notice that the heatsink is getting very toasty.

If the stick can't be tweaked back into functional, let me know and I'll replace it.

Sidehack,

Stupid question of the day...

What is your tool of choice to turn the pot on your stick?  I find it difficult to turn at times.

[TheRealSteve]

not-sidehack here: small phillips screwdriver, part of a "precision screwdriver set" < $10, last a lifetime (well, the flat ones can chip if you're rough with 'm).
Overpriced but convenient (and there's cheaper clones): iFixit's Pro Tech Toolkit.

[sidehack]

I've got a small Philips screwdriver at the bench that came in a crappy small screwdriver set from Walmart about ten years ago. There's a straight in there that'll also do it. Novak uses a better small Philips. I'm not sure of the exact size, but probably one size down from #0

[VirosaGITS]

Hello, so i finally received my stick. I went ahead and set it up on a hub on my gpu mining rig running on W8. Installing Zadig went smoothly, but then it required zlib.dll, so i'm not sure if its just W8 sucking and not having that dll by default.

Ultimately i had to go to the zlib website and get the dll intended at like windows 2000 or something, i slapped that in system32 but that didn't work, tho putting it in the cgminer did the trick. All in all it was pretty simple to setup, 4 of the 5 minutes was searching and placing the zlib.dll where needed. Now the stick has accepted share.

In the event someone else try to set it up and get the error, this report might help them, also the website i got the dll from is;
http://www.zlib.net/

[TheRealSteve]

then it required zlib.dll, so i'm not sure if its just W8 sucking and not having that dll by default.

zlib1.dll, I think?  It should be included with cgminer and bfgminer - probably missing from the custom cgminer binaries package that novak prepared.  Should be an easy fix on their end

Have fun!

[notlist3d]

I finally got my y usb cord that allows 2 ports to power the compac.    I tried a few and easily got up to 16 GH so was happy with that.

But they seemed to get hot even with a pc 130mm fan blowing on them.   Is there a temperature range I want to stay within?  I was just afraid if the level of heat might damage the chip or components.

[sidehack]

S5 run up to 80C before shutting down. The temp sensor is on the cool side of the PCB, so I imagine the chips are actually a fair bit warmer. Measuring the heatsink on the Compac will probably get a more accurate temp measure than the S5 does, and if it's well below 80C you should be fine. Could also measure the backside of the PCB right behind the chip.