GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[aarons6]

I did setup a miner with them but when I started looking at the overall gains for 12 hours, it seemed like NH was giving me more.  The biggest problem with NH is they tend to set the difficulty way up there so it takes awhile for a share of mine to be accepted.  ZPool was accepting plenty of hashes but the payout seemed low.  I don't know.... Maybe I'm just not giving it long enough???

it depends on the market.. today NH is paying right at .00122 and zpool is at .0019...

NH has 3% fee and zpool is 2%..


you can keep track of the pools here
http://poolpicker.eu/table?algo=sha-256

keep in mind, yesterdays payout is not guaranteed to be todays payout..

but you can clearly see NH is usually on the bottom of those pools.


zpool and nh you can set the diff with a d= in the password.

you can try d=128 or d=64

You can try putting d=(whatever) but I doubt it will work. Certainly hasn't worked for me on my S7LN that im balancing between two pools. They still set the diff really high anyway even though I set the d= to what the other pool automatically sets.

it does work for me on zpool.. i put d=8000 on my s7 and its been mining away for days..
altho their website is not working right now...

[1714181912]

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[Percivul]

Well, you have to keep in mind that from the time I started posting on this forum to about now, my total experience in actual bitcoin mining has been about a week or so.  I'm kinda one of those "jump in and learn" kinda guys.  Since I've been learning, I have switched over to ZPool and haven't had any complaints.  Overall, I never expected to make a fortune (or possibly not even a RoI) but the experience is a neat one.  I DO have access to free power which is kinda what propelled me into going for it.

If you guys have any tips or tricks you care to share, I'm a dry sponge and am ready to learn.

Thanks

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Well, you have to keep in mind that from the time I started posting on this forum to about now, my total experience in actual bitcoin mining has been about a week or so.  I'm kinda one of those "jump in and learn" kinda guys.  Since I've been learning, I have switched over to ZPool and haven't had any complaints.  Overall, I never expected to make a fortune (or possibly not even a RoI) but the experience is a neat one.  I DO have access to free power which is kinda what propelled me into going for it.

If you guys have any tips or tricks you care to share, I'm a dry sponge and am ready to learn.

Thanks

Access to free power is a really good start to making money mining.

That leads to parts 2 and 3 of the equation:
2) How much power/is it in a readily accessible area for miner maint?
   and
3) Heat removal from using said free power. Remember that miners are 100% perfect heaters -- all power fed in comes out as heat. A LOT of it!

[Percivul]

Well, you have to keep in mind that from the time I started posting on this forum to about now, my total experience in actual bitcoin mining has been about a week or so.  I'm kinda one of those "jump in and learn" kinda guys.  Since I've been learning, I have switched over to ZPool and haven't had any complaints.  Overall, I never expected to make a fortune (or possibly not even a RoI) but the experience is a neat one.  I DO have access to free power which is kinda what propelled me into going for it.

If you guys have any tips or tricks you care to share, I'm a dry sponge and am ready to learn.

Thanks

Access to free power is a really good start to making money mining.

That leads to parts 2 and 3 of the equation:
2) How much power/is it in a readily accessible area for miner maint?
   and
3) Heat removal from using said free power. Remember that miners are 100% perfect heaters -- all power fed in comes out as heat. A LOT of it!

Well, to answer your questions....

2.  A fairly decent amount, but I couldn't swear to what the cap would be.  The thing about that is that it is somewhat limited as to how much network access would be available.  I'd likely have to switch to wireless (which doesn't bother me) but from the originator point to the reception point is going to be fairly small as there are thick concrete walls in between each room.  So space is not necessarily a premium, but it is limited.

3.  They have standard A/C in the various rooms but that's about it.  They keep the place at around 74 and I have no way of changing that.  I could use fans, but this goes back to the space issue.  For example, I don't have the option of setting up many (or any, in most respects) larger miners like the S7 or S9.  I MIGHT be able to get away with 1, but it wouldn't be likely.

The USB route is probably going to be the primary way I get away with it, mostly because it's fairly silent.  If I stick something in the rooms that has a pair of jets attached to them, they might have a problem with that. 

[Percivul]

Hey guys, I have a question.

So I now have 3 of the miners and the first one I dialed into .9A and on my meter it showed that it was running at around 5V.  So that one seems to be just about perfect.

The second and 3rd one are acting a bit funny (or I'm just not understanding them).  When I tried to up the voltage on those, they were showing lower voltages and higher amps.  I tried checking them by dialing them down until the amps showed around .9A but the voltage jumped up to 5.25 and higher.  At this point, they would just error out.  So I tried going the other way and the voltage dropped to around 4.7V but the amps would suddenly shoot up to around 1.7A-1.8A.

My question is, what should I be shooting for to get these two dialed into the "sweet spot" as it were.  The hub is an Anker hub 60W and .9 at the post so I know the hub has the power to run 3 of them without issue, but the ASIC's themselves are jumping all over the place.  I do have them hashing and with only minimal errors (less than 1%) but I'd like to get it even lower and I know I should be able to.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

[sidehack]

Remind us again, what software are you using and what frequency are you trying to operate at?

[boymoku]

Hello Everyone Again  

I has new quest if i has a  AntMiner S5 ASIC Bitcoin Miner

https://i.imgur.com/ign2tKs.jpg

How i set cgminer_run.bat to run that item

Thank you Gentleman  

[Percivul]

Remind us again, what software are you using and what frequency are you trying to operate at?

Sorry, forgot to add the info.

Currently, I'm using the Gekko modified CGminer from this forum and running at 300.  I can't really seem to get higher than that without stability problems.

[sidehack]

300MHz for me usually requires about 7W to run stable, which means 5V 1.4A in. 225MHz or so should be able to run on 0.9A but you'd have to have a pretty lean chip to get much higher. Every stick is tested for stability at 200MHz before shipping out, and pulls about 850mA at test voltage and that frequency.

[Percivul]

300MHz for me usually requires about 7W to run stable, which means 5V 1.4A in. 225MHz or so should be able to run on 0.9A but you'd have to have a pretty lean chip to get much higher. Every stick is tested for stability at 200MHz before shipping out, and pulls about 850mA at test voltage and that frequency.

Ok, so then just so I'm clear.  Is it in any danger if it's pulling slightly higher amps at around 5V?  Perhaps a better way to ask would be what should be the limit to the amps (the point you don't go past, basically).

I think the hub itself is pretty stable as it's just a tad warm and that's with 3 Gekko's running right next to each other.  It hasn't reset or dropped and my combined hash rate is hovering around 56-60 (which is much better than I anticipated) with only 1 HW error in the last 2 hours (well within tolerance).

I just don't want to burn the chips out so I'm not looking to go for absolute fastest here.  What would you recommend a good setting or frequency to shoot for?

[sidehack]

300MHz across three sticks should see 50GH. Ideally the heatsinks won't be too hot to touch. The real key to how fast you can push them is how cool you can keep them. There are people here who had sticks running at 400MHz for months, pulling up to 12W, because they had good cooling. The stick itself can probably handle more juice than your hub can - provided you keep it cool.

[Percivul]

300MHz across three sticks should see 50GH. Ideally the heatsinks won't be too hot to touch. The real key to how fast you can push them is how cool you can keep them. There are people here who had sticks running at 400MHz for months, pulling up to 12W, because they had good cooling. The stick itself can probably handle more juice than your hub can - provided you keep it cool.

Good enough.  I'm going to keep them around 300 as I want to add a few more before it's done.

Separate topic, did you catch my asking you last week about possibly compiling a version of cgminer that has both the gekko drivers but also supports #xnsub?  I don't know how to compile or I'd just do it and post it myself.  I was reading that they've compiled (latest versions) xnsub into the mix which helps with a few different pools.  Any chance you or maybe someone else who knows how to compile could pull this off?

Thanks.

[sidehack]

I don't know anything about xnsub, but I do know there's some very simple and straightforward build instructions for cgminer posted a couple times in this thread as well as in the README files bundled with cgminer source.

[Mikestang]

I've been running one stick at 350 mhz solid for months with just a simple usb fan on it to keep it cool, it's the stick I run in the gekkorun.de fun run.  It's super solid, HW errors are basically non-existent.  I think the hub you use has as much to do with these things running solid as anything else.

My other sticks run at 262 mhz, only because that is the most I could get out of them on the hub I have available to those three.

[ShiftyTripster]

Just wanted to say thanks great little USB miner you have. I am actually using it for solo mining an ALT coin but it's working great. Now that it is stable without any HW errors I'm going to work on overclocking a bit. I'm just at 137 atm. But nice little miner!! Great way to get introduced to mining.

[Shiroslullaby]

  I think the hub you use has as much to do with these things running solid as anything else.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that most USB hubs use cheap parts and your stick is going to be getting way less power than it should be,
which is what causes most peoples hardware errors.
Definitely have to measure your actual power output unless you get a hub that is known to be good and already tested by other members.

[suprsi]

Hi Sidehack,

First post on the forum, hey everyone!

I bought one of the Gekkoscience sticks from bitshopper.de via amazon (I'm in UK).. It's been great fun, I love tinkering and overclocking so this is my cup of tea! . I ran it for a while just at 150mhz on usb 2.0, then modded a usb extention cable so i had 22awg silicone wire connected directly to the grnd and 12v and supplied by an adjustable power supply set to 5.1V. Ramping it up a bit at a time I ended up with 366mhz on 0.75V with a strong fan blowing on it (1.92A at usb). Awesome! I was going to drill and tap an old cpu heatsink to run it more quietly at that speed but it's stopped working after plugging it into a mates laptop (with voltage set back down and 150mhz).

It's not being recognised any more, vcore is 5-7mV. I *think* it's the CP2102 usb chip, pin 6 should have 3.3v on it and it's outputting the same as the input voltage so I guess the internal regulator is fooked. Nothing looks burnt so do you think the BM1384 would have survived? Is it saveable? I've only had it a few days 

I'm waiting for an email back from bitshopper, hopefully they'll have a look at it for me.. If not, could I send it to you? I'd be happy to reimburse your for your time as it's not one of yours.

Thanks!

[sidehack]

Vcore and the CP2102 never interact, so I'd question why both were reading off. The 3.3V from CP2102 only interacts with the ASIC indirectly; the closest it gets is through a resistor divider or a pullup resistor on an open-collector output. Should be fine. But that doesn't explain why the Vcore is bottomed out.

Let's see what Bitshopper has to say, and if he can't fix you up let me know.

[suprsi]

Hmm, so that could be ok, and the 51219 step down chip could be bad? It's a bit beyond me at this stage anyway 

Thanks a lot, I'll let you know how I get on

Edit: Had a reply from Ernst at bitshopper, they're going to replace it for me. (Danke Schoen Ernst!)

Cool, can't wait to get going again 

[gt_addict]

Anyone thought about doing a mini watercooling set up for the gekkos? I wondered if you could make one that runs off USB power?