GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[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

[sidehack]

Appears to be something with the low-side FET. The damage is at the gate pin. Not sure what's up.

But if the buck is bouncing up to 1.1V, that's the point the ASIC will shunt it off to.

The low-side FET should never not conduct at all unless it's sorely damaged. Even if the gate doesn't kick the transistor on, the body diode would still conduct during the low swing of the switching. It'd run hot and not very efficient; I forget the Vf of the body diode but it's probably around 0.8V so if you were trying to crank 4W into the ASIC at 660mV that's six amps and a good 5W dissipated by the low-side FET with about 85% duty. The FET itself is rated much higher than that but this installation lacks the required PCB heatsinking to hold up. If the FET completely shot craps such that the switch and body diode aren't conducting at all, it's possible that the high-side could cause an overvolt condition.

I watch the current levels on every stick I test, and they're always in the same range (with about 5% variance) so it should have been working when it left my bench. But that doesn't always mean it'll work forever, unfortunately, and something could have gone wrong caused that transistor to drop out.

If you want to mail it back to me I'll send you a replacement. If you want I'll send it straightaway, or you mentioned ordering more and I can add one to that order when it's eventually placed.

[edonkey]

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.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

[notlist3d]

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.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

Very clean setup.  I really like the plastic.   I really wonder what a 3d printing master could do with plastic.

How fast are you running those 2 compacs?

[powrslave]

Here is something you might like

PCB UV inspection - Find bad capacitors and other problems on a PCB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0qTOLBhlVs

[VirosaGITS]

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.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

Thank you, this is great, i found this;
http://www.homedepot.ca/product/egg-crate-white-louver-2375-inch-x-4775-inch/924867

Its like 10$USD for 24*48inch~ thats a ton of material and its hella cheap. I'll have to pick some up next time i got the car. I will definitively use this as base from now own instead of the convoluted stuff i came up with for my GPU rig. And on top you can have air from go through. Great find!

With this i might even be able to afix the Sidehack stick to my GPU rig that has a box fan blowing air between the GPUs. Wont need to use the USB Fan.

[edonkey]

Very clean setup.  I really like the plastic.   I really wonder what a 3d printing master could do with plastic.

How fast are you running those 2 compacs?

Currently both of them are running at 306. That results in about 16.9 GH/s with 0.08% HW errors.

I would have gone higher, but one of the units is a little weaker. I had to turn up the voltage proportionally more on the weak unit to get to 300-ish.

I probably could mess around a bit more with the voltage and frequency to go higher. Or I could explore per-unit frequency options since one stick outperforms the other. Assuming that cgminer-gekko can in fact do that (I don't know).

In the end it seemed good enough to get double the stock hash rate for the amount of fiddling I did.

[AJRGale]

...

I am assuming this is the root of my failure.

...

to me that just looks like flux residue..

already shipped back? sidehack, I'm interested in a autopsy..

[sidehack]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

[AJRGale]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

lol, i didn't even check when it was posted, thought it was a few days back!

don't take it the wrong way, I do have interest on failures like this, maybe that's the reason 90% of my miners are dead

[edonkey]

Thank you, this is great, i found this;
http://www.homedepot.ca/product/egg-crate-white-louver-2375-inch-x-4775-inch/924867

Its like 10$USD for 24*48inch~ thats a ton of material and its hella cheap. I'll have to pick some up next time i got the car. I will definitively use this as base from now own instead of the convoluted stuff i came up with for my GPU rig. And on top you can have air from go through. Great find!

With this i might even be able to afix the Sidehack stick to my GPU rig that has a box fan blowing air between the GPUs. Wont need to use the USB Fan.

You're welcome. Post some picts when you've got your rig set up.

The only downside of egg crate is that when you cut it, you can end up with a jagged edge. You can scrape yourself on it if you're not careful.

[sloopy]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

lol, i didn't even check when it was posted, thought it was a few days back!

don't take it the wrong way, I do have interest on failures like this, maybe that's the reason 90% of my miners are dead

I am the same way and have a big interest to hear Sidehack's official cause of death.

Sidehack, I appreciate you being willing to send one out under warranty. That's a standup decision and I hope people recognize such.

I am going to PM you to confirm any RMA information, the ship to address, along with discussing ordering a couple more.

The more I play with these bad boys and develope some of my more

 

[HerbPean]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
build-essential is already the newest version.
libncurses5-dev is already the newest version.
libtool is already the newest version.
libudev-dev is already the newest version.
pkg-config is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev libgnutls-openssl27
  libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev libkadm5clnt-mit8
  libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libp11-kit-dev
  librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtasn1-3-dev
Suggested packages:
  doc-base krb5-doc libcurl3-dbg libgcrypt11-doc gnutls26-doc krb5-user
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev
  libp11-kit-dev librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc
  libtasn1-3-dev
0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,711 kB/8,018 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-dev armhf 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-doc all 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_armhf.deb
 404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-doc_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_all.deb
 404  Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with
--fix-missing?

[Jake36]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
build-essential is already the newest version.
libncurses5-dev is already the newest version.
libtool is already the newest version.
libudev-dev is already the newest version.
pkg-config is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev libgnutls-openssl27
  libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev libkadm5clnt-mit8
  libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libp11-kit-dev
  librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtasn1-3-dev
Suggested packages:
  doc-base krb5-doc libcurl3-dbg libgcrypt11-doc gnutls26-doc krb5-user
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev
  libp11-kit-dev librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc
  libtasn1-3-dev
0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,711 kB/8,018 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-dev armhf 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-doc all 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_armhf.deb
 404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-doc_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_all.deb
 404  Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with
--fix-missing?

Yes, the server where the files are, has been having some kind of trouble or they limited traffic.

It did it to me the other day, just wait a little while and try again, eventually it will come back up and you can get the files. Or you can search around for another source server and add them to your /etc/apt/sources.list (I think that's it).

[HerbPean]

I did an sudo apt-get Update

/fixed !