GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[powrslave]

Is it possible to mine litecoin with this?

[VirosaGITS]

Is it possible to mine litecoin with this?

No. Its a SHA256d ASIC usb Stick. It doesn't do Scrypt.

[philipma1957]

Is it possible to mine litecoin with this?

no these mine sha-256

[Meech]

My 4 Compcac "Cube".

   

I was waiting on parts but finally found a cooling solution (thanks to fullzero) who posted his creation.
I'm using an Enermax T.B. Silence 120mm fan but may change it.
Found a great 7 port usb 3.0 hub that works with the Pi and Linux.  It claims 70w 14a across all 7 ports (2a per port) and has a built in psu.  
It's a Superbpag (yes, I know, love the name) but it's on Amazon and price has dropped in the last week.
I will have to check if it produces what it says it does once I receive my meter and then I will toy with voltage settings.



It's staying at 32C @ 200 frequency and with this fan it's running about 54db a foot away so I may change it later or reverse the fan
and see what that does.  Looks like a kaleidoscope shining off the inside walls, pretty cool.  Thanks Sidehack for putting killer led's on
these.

[notlist3d]

My 4 Compcac "Cube".

Thanks for sharing!  Very cool use of the old block erupter cube.

I have been playing wit the Y usb still some to get more speed.   I need to find a nice way to let them sit infront of the fan's.  Looks very nice with usb direct on hub but y cable means I need a new design.

[Meech]

My 4 Compcac "Cube".

Thanks for sharing!  Very cool use of the old block erupter cube.

I have been playing wit the Y usb still some to get more speed.   I need to find a nice way to let them sit infront of the fan's.  Looks very nice with usb direct on hub but y cable means I need a new design.

Thanks.  A good adhesive will mount the Y cables to just about anything.  I used 1559 from my work but just think what you want to do and mount them.

[sidehack]

If I make another one I'll probably dim those down just a smidge.

But that's a pretty sexy Cube you got there, boss. I have something like eight empty Cube shells laying around somewhere I might have to build something into just for kicks.

[VirosaGITS]

If I make another one I'll probably dim those down just a smidge.

But that's a pretty sexy Cube you got there, boss. I have something like eight empty Cube shells laying around somewhere I might have to build something into just for kicks.

The leds? They're pretty cool during the day but in the night they flash up the whole living room by its lone self. The stable green led act like a small light source and then when the bluer one turn on its pretty bright like those dimmed light like you keep plugged at night to reach the bathroom safely.

I don't really mind because a bit of electric tape does the trick however.

[sidehack]

I slept with nine of 'em in my room for a weekend when I first got test sticks together and didn't have trouble, which I'm usually pretty sensitive to lights when I'm trying to fall asleep so I figured it'd be no problem. I like the flash, but the green by itself is probably a bit brighter than it needs to be.

[VirosaGITS]

I slept with nine of 'em in my room for a weekend when I first got test sticks together and didn't have trouble, which I'm usually pretty sensitive to lights when I'm trying to fall asleep so I figured it'd be no problem. I like the flash, but the green by itself is probably a bit brighter than it needs to be.

It's not a problem, it doesn't bother me, it was just a bit embarrassing because i have many miners with blinking lights and in the dark, they dont illuminate my living room.

Meanwhile the tiny stick does and its bright enough that from the outside, you can see the reflection on the window, so my neighbor was asking me whats up with the lightshow during the night. It was casual and its not bright enough to bother anyone, it's just enough to be noticeable.

I told him i had one of those modem with some flashy LEDS and we laughed it out.

[philipma1957]

I do like to stand in the garage and watch them blink.

[sidehack]

Truth be told, we are scheming on a version 2 with a new chip sometime in the future which would have software voltage control as well. Also a brickable pod miner I might prototype with BM1384, hopefully within the next few weeks if I can get a break from manufacturing. Novak and I have a game plan for the next couple months that should mean some pretty interesting output.

I'm at the very end of the first half of the batch right now and saving up for parts for the second 500. Hopefully I won't have to open another preorder queue and we can out-of-pocket it instead but that's gonna be pretty tight.

[sloopy]

I bricked one of my compac sticks  
RIP Compac #2
She still has a heartbeat as when sitting idle the green LED pulses slightly, but no more hash.

I want to be clear in saying I do not think this has anything to do with the quality of the product. I think there must have been something I did or it is a fluke. Anyone who was around when I spent weeks trying to get answers out of BITMAIN will know I am not shy about questioning quality and I have no reason to do so with the compac.

Symptom:
I woke up with a high HW count. Pulled all sticks and placed one at a time in the USB power monitoring device which goes between the stick and the hub and #2 was pulling amperage from 1.5 to 2.5 and bouncing around quickly from the low number to the high and all between. Voltage acting crazy as well bouncing from 4.7 to 5.1 and all between.

I checked the screw adjustment for voltage and have it sitting at about the 6 o'clock position relative to the pic in the OP by Novac which should be around .77 ish. I had been running them all at freq 200 while I slept. Nice Arctic Breeze Fan blowing on them almost directly under the AC vent.
Adjusting the voltage screw makes no change at all. It begins doing the herky jerky with volts-amps as described above upon insertion in the hub. Rebooted everything, re-installed everything, but same results. This is a pure hardware fault.

I don't think I pushed it too hard, kept the fan on, but maybe I let it get too hot somehow.
Or, maybe I had the voltage set too high for that low of frequency.
If she sits in the hub idle from a fresh cold boot of everything as soon as she sees power she starts to heat up way too fast, so I am assuming I have a short.

I plan to order more, and if you guys want me to try any tests I have a good meter and know how to use it, or if you want me to send it back to you for evaluation I would be happy to do so. If you want a vid, pics, etc I am happy to do that as well. I know from my own day job I have things sent back to me for evaluation just so I can see what happened for myself and many times it provides information I can use to help people avoid failures. No matter who is at fault we all learn from the experience.

One of my other sticks which is running beautifully at 200MHz at the moment shows a 4.98v 1.06a draw. I can lay my fingers on the ones running and it is slightly warm, but nothing that would even come close to making me move my fingers. The one which broke will burn my finger if I leave it there for more than a few seconds. She is throwing off the heat hard. The hub is cool to the touch everywhere.

I would enjoy hearing any ideas of what I might play with to try and get her back to hashing again, but it isn't anything I am going to cry about either. The first time I adjusted the voltage and used a higher frequency I accepted that I'd taken things in my own hands.

By the way, can you adjust the voltage live? While hashing?

Does the voltage adjustment have a dead zone?


What is a good difficulty to start with at 200MHz? I want to include --suggest-diff in my cgminer.bat and currently have it at 84 which is working, but can you recommend an optimal value? I will read a refresher on difficulty because that is what stick-mining is teaching spoiled miners like me who came after days of needing to use a Pi, everything stand alone with vardiff.

One other item just because I saw a couple of others mention the same thing is my cgminer will not write a conf file. Well, let me clarify, in the menu when cgminer is running you can select a menu option to write a conf. When I do so, it creates the file but it is completely empty.
I have done everything as administrator, from running zadig to cgminer I run as administrator.

[philipma1957]

I bricked one of my compac sticks 
RIP Compac #2
She still has a heartbeat as when sitting idle the green LED pulses slightly, but no more hash.

I want to be clear in saying I do not think this has anything to do with the quality of the product. I think there must have been something I did or it is a fluke. Anyone who was around when I spent weeks trying to get answers out of BITMAIN will know I am not shy about questioning quality and I have no reason to do so with the compac.

Symptom:
I woke up with a high HW count. Pulled all sticks and placed one at a time in the USB power monitoring device which goes between the stick and the hub and #2 was pulling amperage from 1.5 to 2.5 and bouncing around quickly from the low number to the high and all between. Voltage acting crazy as well bouncing from 4.7 to 5.1 and all between.

I checked the screw adjustment for voltage and have it sitting at about the 6 o'clock position relative to the pic in the OP by Novac which should be around .77 ish. I had been running them all at freq 200 while I slept. Nice Arctic Breeze Fan blowing on them almost directly under the AC vent.
Adjusting the voltage screw makes no change at all. It begins doing the herky jerky with volts-amps as described above upon insertion in the hub. Rebooted everything, re-installed everything, but same results. This is a pure hardware fault.

I don't think I pushed it too hard, kept the fan on, but maybe I let it get too hot somehow.
Or, maybe I had the voltage set too high for that low of frequency.
If she sits in the hub idle from a fresh cold boot of everything as soon as she sees power she starts to heat up way too fast, so I am assuming I have a short.

I plan to order more, and if you guys want me to try any tests I have a good meter and know how to use it, or if you want me to send it back to you for evaluation I would be happy to do so. If you want a vid, pics, etc I am happy to do that as well. I know from my own day job I have things sent back to me for evaluation just so I can see what happened for myself and many times it provides information I can use to help people avoid failures. No matter who is at fault we all learn from the experience.

One of my other sticks which is running beautifully at 200MHz at the moment shows a 4.98v 1.06a draw. I can lay my fingers on the ones running and it is slightly warm, but nothing that would even come close to making me move my fingers. The one which broke will burn my finger if I leave it there for more than a few seconds. She is throwing off the heat hard. The hub is cool to the touch everywhere.

I would enjoy hearing any ideas of what I might play with to try and get her back to hashing again, but it isn't anything I am going to cry about either. The first time I adjusted the voltage and used a higher frequency I accepted that I'd taken things in my own hands.

By the way, can you adjust the voltage live? While hashing?

Does the voltage adjustment have a dead zone?

Can you turn it too many times one direction or the other? I don't see that happening, but wanted to confirm.

What is a good difficulty to start with at 200MHz? I want to include --suggest-diff in my cgminer.bat and currently have it at 84 which is working, but can you recommend an optimal value? I will read a refresher on difficulty because that is what stick-mining is teaching spoiled miners like me who came after days of needing to use a Pi, everything stand alone with vardiff.

One other item just because I saw a couple of others mention the same thing is my cgminer will not write a conf file. Well, let me clarify, in the menu when cgminer is running you can select a menu option to write a conf. When I do so, it creates the file but it is completely empty.
I have done everything as administrator, from running zadig to cgminer I run as administrator.

the conf file bug is for all of us and has not been fixed yet.

as for the bricked stick.

let it sit for a day.

power off all sticks.

set freq for 175 try to start just the lone 'dead' stick  make sure it has a fan on it.

if it does not hash but is detected by windows  turn the pot from 6 to 5 o clock  restart and try again


by windows detection see here.

[sidehack]

To quote myself from a post on the previous page made some three days ago:

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.

One thing to note is this:



0.77V is about right for if you're planning on running up around 375MHz. Sticks come off my bench about 610mV and Novak runs 'em at 200MHz off that voltage. Errors are probably around a couple percent; it's hard to get an accurate read with the 512 vardiff we end up with but according to Bitmain's chip data 650mV is good for clean at that speed.

Sounds like your ASIC is damaged. Drawing excess current could be a bad FET on the buck or a near-shorted load downstream of it. If the heatsink is getting hot that means it's taking most of the power, which indicates the buck is probably working right but the ASIC isn't.
Another thing to consider is the buck isn't working right and is overvolting the ASIC, which is shunting the excess power and cooking that way. The real test is going to be measuring the Vcore and seeing what you find. If you can do that and let me know what it looks like would be a good first step. A different good first step would be to send it back for a replacement. I don't like selling things that break.

Regarding using cgminer to generate a config file, well that'd be something Novak'd have to look at. I've never used a cgminer config file, outside whatever's autogenerated by internal controllers on things. I've always run command line, or a batch file on rare occasions.

[Ecnad]

Is there a MAC version of the CGminr for Compac? Windows will only let me run 2 sticks, and I have a Mac Mini sitting on my desk only running my security cameras I could be playing with.

[sloopy]

To quote myself from a post on the previous page made some three days ago:

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.

One thing to note is this:



0.77V is about right for if you're planning on running up around 375MHz. Sticks come off my bench about 610mV and Novak runs 'em at 200MHz off that voltage. Errors are probably around a couple percent; it's hard to get an accurate read with the 512 vardiff we end up with but according to Bitmain's chip data 650mV is good for clean at that speed.

Sounds like your ASIC is damaged. Drawing excess current could be a bad FET on the buck or a near-shorted load downstream of it. If the heatsink is getting hot that means it's taking most of the power, which indicates the buck is probably working right but the ASIC isn't.
Another thing to consider is the buck isn't working right and is overvolting the ASIC, which is shunting the excess power and cooking that way. The real test is going to be measuring the Vcore and seeing what you find. If you can do that and let me know what it looks like would be a good first step. A different good first step would be to send it back for a replacement. I don't like selling things that break.

Regarding using cgminer to generate a config file, well that'd be something Novak'd have to look at. I've never used a cgminer config file, outside whatever's autogenerated by internal controllers on things. I've always run command line, or a batch file on rare occasions.

I read your answer to alh but hadn't remembered it when I posted. Thank you for the refresher and appreciate the further clarification. I understand what vcore is and that I did not need to have it set that high for running 200 or 250 but as I was playing and since I have played with many other devices which utilize a vcore I didn't see an issue with leaving it set higher than needed. I understand it burns more power and heats things up, but didn't think it would be an issue since I had a good fan and ac on the situation.
I actually hadn't given it much thought at all because what I'd read from the Compac threads I didn't see a red flag with using a maximum vcore adjustment with a low frequency.
I am assuming this is the root of my failure.
Too hot:


I don't know how I did it and will be using a couple of more fans when I actually perform real overclocking with my survivors. I examined my running pieces with a nice lighted magnifier and do not see anything on those two which resembles the damage in the picture above. Hopefully it was a fluke.

The vcore measures .86 to 1.1 and bounces between those values.
As a reference I measured one of the living sticks while hashing and it was at .663 rock solid.

If you do want it back confirm the ship to via PM and I will send it out.

 

[edonkey]

My 4 Compcac "Cube".

Thanks for sharing!  Very cool use of the old block erupter cube.

I have been playing wit the Y usb still some to get more speed.   I need to find a nice way to let them sit infront of the fan's.  Looks very nice with usb direct on hub but y cable means I need a new design.

I'm a big fan of egg crate for smaller rigs. It's not pretty, but it's super versatile.

Here's what my stick rig with Y cables looks like (repurposed from running a bunch of DualMiners recently):

[VirosaGITS]

My 4 Compcac "Cube".

Thanks for sharing!  Very cool use of the old block erupter cube.

I have been playing wit the Y usb still some to get more speed.   I need to find a nice way to let them sit infront of the fan's.  Looks very nice with usb direct on hub but y cable means I need a new design.

I'm a big fan of egg crate for smaller rigs. It's not pretty, but it's super versatile.

Here's what my stick rig with Y cables looks like (repurposed from running a bunch of DualMiners recently):

I'm actually impressed, that make it super simple and super modular. How do you cut the plastic? With a wood saw? And where do you get those... "Egg Crates" for cheap? Then you just tie wrap the miner stuff and maybe hot glue or screw the plastic in place.

Right now i just put my stick on the hub and put it on the side so that the USB fan sticking out from the mobo blow air on it.

[TheRealSteve]

What is a good difficulty to start with at 200MHz? I want to include --suggest-diff in my cgminer.bat and currently have it at 84 which is working, but can you recommend an optimal value?

a switch that'll work with solo.ckpool: --suggest-diff N.  Set N equal to or greater than your hash rate in Gh/s.  Saves some unnecessary diff switching and high diff on startup.

In your case, 200MHz * 55 = 11Gh/s, so suggest-diff at 11 is pretty reasonable.  I like powers of two so I'd probably bump it up to 16, myself, but if you want to see more share activity, 10 will do just as well.  Setting it 'too low' just makes the pool go ಠ_ಠ, setting it 'too high' just means you're increasing your variance unnecessarily