GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[sidehack]

Peltier is a lossy cooling method, if I'm thinking right. With a bit of beefing on the power systems we pushed a stick to 488MHz off the stock heatsink and about a 1.5cm square stick-on on the back that probably wasn't doing much. But if you could pull that much heat out of the ASIC you could get some serious speed out of this guy. Probably have to replace the inductor with something that could handle more current, and make sure your bus voltage stays above about 4V or your power will be unstable.

[1715369921]

1715369921

[vapourminer]

Peltier is a lossy cooling method, if I'm thinking right. With a bit of beefing on the power systems we pushed a stick to 488MHz off the stock heatsink and about a 1.5cm square stick-on on the back that probably wasn't doing much. But if you could pull that much heat out of the ASIC you could get some serious speed out of this guy. Probably have to replace the inductor with something that could handle more current, and make sure your bus voltage stays above about 4V or your power will be unstable.

it is lossy. cant remember the loss percentage offhand

hmm i can see a hot air rework station in my future. although a temp controlled iron i have could probably do it.

which inductor do you recommend?

[AJRGale]

sidehack, what do you thing a peltier would do? 22 watts of cooling capacity. cool the power section and chip. I would need frost precautions etc but I can do that easy.

stupid? oh yeah that has vapourminer written all over it. I mean anything worth doing is worth overdoing as the saying goes.

ive only known +50W peltiers to go below 0 degrees Celsius, i've been playing with a 40mmx40mm, that runs at 15v 7A for best results, cant get it lower then 7 degrees lower then ambient, off a sink..

[irritant]

sidehack, what do you thing a peltier would do? 22 watts of cooling capacity. cool the power section and chip. I would need frost precautions etc but I can do that easy.

stupid? oh yeah that has vapourminer written all over it. I mean anything worth doing is worth overdoing as the saying goes.

ive only known +50W peltiers to go below 0 degrees Celsius, i've been playing with a 40mmx40mm, that runs at 15v 7A for best results, cant get it lower then 7 degrees lower then ambient, off a sink..

what about novec, anyone wants to drown these babies?

[AJRGale]

sidehack, what do you thing a peltier would do? 22 watts of cooling capacity. cool the power section and chip. I would need frost precautions etc but I can do that easy.

stupid? oh yeah that has vapourminer written all over it. I mean anything worth doing is worth overdoing as the saying goes.

ive only known +50W peltiers to go below 0 degrees Celsius, i've been playing with a 40mmx40mm, that runs at 15v 7A for best results, cant get it lower then 7 degrees lower then ambient, off a sink..

what about novec, anyone wants to drown these babies?

only if they are in a fish bowl, with an IP cam on them, sinkless

[Mikestang]

Note that for bfgminer you have to use the hex value for a given clock rate, whereas for cgminer you specify the clock rate in MHz.
A table of values to use in BFGminer is as follows:

Per discussion with luke-jr in the bfgminer thread, the leading 0 should be dropped from the hex values in that list in the first post.

Sounds like the "leading zero" is your problem.
There was never any expectation/support for one.
How can I improve documentation to make that clear?

[Luke-Jr]

Also note that BFGMiner 5.4 will support setting Compac clocks as the MHz number directly.

[AJRGale]

Also note that BFGMiner 5.4 will support setting Compac clocks as the MHz number directly.

Nicely done, making things easier!

[chiguireitor]

Also note that BFGMiner 5.4 will support setting Compac clocks as the MHz number directly.

Nice, i have one customer that was running BFG and switched to cgminer because somehow he couldn't attain more than 12 GHs with these sticks. Is this a known issue, or should i debug it further?

[Luke-Jr]

Also note that BFGMiner 5.4 will support setting Compac clocks as the MHz number directly.

Nice, i have one customer that was running BFG and switched to cgminer because somehow he couldn't attain more than 12 GHs with these sticks. Is this a known issue, or should i debug it further?

I have no problem getting 15 Gh/s myself.

[sidehack]

There have been a lot of people mentioning they can't figure out how to set the clock and whatever they type in, it goes to default instead. The new version where you just type in the actual MHz should be pretty foolproof and awful dang handy.

[AJRGale]

Also note that BFGMiner 5.4 will support setting Compac clocks as the MHz number directly.

Nice, i have one customer that was running BFG and switched to cgminer because somehow he couldn't attain more than 12 GHs with these sticks. Is this a known issue, or should i debug it further?

I have no problem getting 15 Gh/s myself.

AKA, debug further. Get the latest BFG, set just the MHz number, see if it works, don't forget to add a little more juice to compensate.

I was getting 15GH/s out of the box myself. I was running in stock CG with a OC'ed U3, so I wasn't sure the numbers propagated to the GSC (both were running at 250MHz/0.875V according to CG)

[Mikestang]

Nice, i have one customer that was running BFG and switched to cgminer because somehow he couldn't attain more than 12 GHs with these sticks. Is this a known issue, or should i debug it further?

There have been a lot of people mentioning they can't figure out how to set the clock and whatever they type in, it goes to default instead. The new version where you just type in the actual MHz should be pretty foolproof and awful dang handy.

Yes, it's a known issue and I have brought it to luke-jr attention in the bfgminer thread.  The command line frequency adjustment will be fixed in 5.4.0 as he noted and as a result of that discussion, but in 5.3.0 the compacs will only run at "stock" 225 setting.  A work around it to use RPC's pgaset and set the frequency that way.

1) Start bfgminer and your sticks via command line like normal, but omit the frequency setting command.
2) Once running, open another command line and navigate to your bfgminer directory.
3) Input the following:

Code:

bfgminer-rpc "pgaset|0,clock,x0982"

4) In the above command, the "0" refers to the position of the miner in the list in bfg.  If it is at the top of the list it is 0, second down is 1, third down is 2, etc.
5) Replace hex code at the end with hex code from first post in this thread for the freq you want, omitting the leading 0.
6) Hash away.

Feel free to copy/paste any of this into the first post of this thread until 5.4.0 is released.

See the following for the orig. discussions:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877081.msg12705080#msg12705080
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877081.msg12732711#msg12732711
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877081.msg12741394#msg12741394
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877081.msg12747938#msg12747938

[Luke-Jr]

Note --set cbm:clock=xNNNN will also work; you just need to abbreviate it "cbm" and can't spell out "compac".
(That's what is being fixed in 5.4 - being able to spell it out)

[Mikestang]

Note --set cbm:clock=xNNNN will also work; you just need to abbreviate it "cbm" and can't spell out "compac".
(That's what is being fixed in 5.4 - being able to spell it out)

I was unable to get --set cbm:clock=xNNNN to work.  I believe you said you used it on the pre-production stick that was sent to you, but I cannot duplicate your success on the production stick.

[AJRGale]

Note --set cbm:clock=xNNNN will also work; you just need to abbreviate it "cbm" and can't spell out "compac".
(That's what is being fixed in 5.4 - being able to spell it out)

I was unable to get --set cbm:clock=xNNNN to work.  I believe you said you used it on the pre-production stick that was sent to you, but I cannot duplicate your success on the production stick.

I'll attempt to duplicate with mine, I believe there is little to no difference between the test and production versions, if anything, only the naming revision on the firmware.
I could send you one of the production models Luke, if you think there is a difference?

[sidehack]

The only firmware difference between the test and production version is updating the CP2102 with data that Luke provided, so it seems likely that he can, for all practical purposes, turn his test stick into a production stick as seen from the mining software.

[Luke-Jr]

Note --set cbm:clock=xNNNN will also work; you just need to abbreviate it "cbm" and can't spell out "compac".
(That's what is being fixed in 5.4 - being able to spell it out)

I was unable to get --set cbm:clock=xNNNN to work.  I believe you said you used it on the pre-production stick that was sent to you, but I cannot duplicate your success on the production stick.

I assumed that your problem was the extra leading zero... no? :/

Can anyone else with a prod unit confirm/deny a problem?
I can't imagine what would be different.. :|

[Mikestang]

Note --set cbm:clock=xNNNN will also work; you just need to abbreviate it "cbm" and can't spell out "compac".
(That's what is being fixed in 5.4 - being able to spell it out)

I was unable to get --set cbm:clock=xNNNN to work.  I believe you said you used it on the pre-production stick that was sent to you, but I cannot duplicate your success on the production stick.

I assumed that your problem was the extra leading zero... no? :/

Can anyone else with a prod unit confirm/deny a problem?
I can't imagine what would be different.. :|

Ahh, could be.  I was thinking the leading 0 issue was with the RPC command, I do not recall if I used a leading 0 on the --set as well.  I will confirm tomorrow.

As an aside, the RPC way of adjusting frequency is pretty darn cool since you can do it while they are running.  Couple that with the adjustable voltage, also while running, and you've got real time feedback from a very customizable piece of hardware!

[Luke-Jr]

As an aside, the RPC way of adjusting frequency is pretty darn cool since you can do it while they are running.  Couple that with the adjustable voltage, also while running, and you've got real time feedback from a very customizable piece of hardware!

Don't forget bfgminer-rpc "zero|all,false" for that, too!
I'm also adding the ability to change the clock frequency from the TUI interface directly.