GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[sidehack]

===============
=Expected Performance=
===============
The expected performance of the chip is 0.055*MHz=GH.  For example, 200MHz gives 11 GH (max theoretical expectation).

[1714881371]

1714881371

[1714881371]

1714881371

[MrKaizerSoze]

Single miner freq 280

is this good or average?

https://i.imgur.com/4sd4SB4.png

yes, it's good

[chooka03]

And if you try something that destroys the miner, you are doing something very very wrong.

Sorry but I don't think that statement is true.
Out of the 5 I bought, 3 died within weeks... 2 are going strong.
All plugged into a Superbpag powered hub and all calibrated to 0.7V.

The 2 working ones are great but I'm not happy that the other 3 died for no reason and it certainly wasn't from misuse.
Cost an arm & leg with currency conversion & freight to Australia.

I'd love to know if there was anything I could do to fix or check the 3 duds.

[toptek]

As far as I know you don't need zadig for bfgminer. Just cgminer. Check on the BFGminer thread and re-check the beginning of this thread.

for bfg you need this one http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx

if it's a windows PC and windows for some reason doesn't plug and play the drivers . tip if at all possible try not to mix USB to UART Bridge VCPDrivers and zadig on the same windows PC it may lead to a bricked windows install, uninstall one before you use other to be safe unless that has been fixed, in Linux it's a lot different Linux comes with both  or it's own version of the both drivers and it works some what different .

[vapourminer]

if it's a windows PC and windows for some reason doesn't plug and play the drivers . tip if at all possible try not to mix USB to UART Bridge VCPDrivers and zadig on the same windows PC it may lead to a bricked windows install, uninstall one before you use other to be safe unless that has been fixed,

actually the only way i managed to brick my win7 install with zadig was to accidentally replace my keyboard HID driver with zadig  you can imagine how that went..

fortunately a full system image restore fixed that.. macrium reflect free to the rescue

[toptek]

if it's a windows PC and windows for some reason doesn't plug and play the drivers . tip if at all possible try not to mix USB to UART Bridge VCPDrivers and zadig on the same windows PC it may lead to a bricked windows install, uninstall one before you use other to be safe unless that has been fixed,

actually the only way i managed to brick my win7 install with zadig was to accidentally replace my keyboard HID driver with zadig   you can imagine how that went..

fortunately a full system image restore fixed that.. macrium reflect free to the rescue

I did that with my Logitech 510 so i know just how that went no keyboard no windows lmao ...i learned that one the hard way ... no mining with my windows box any more .... i use  PI ..

[sidehack]

And if you try something that destroys the miner, you are doing something very very wrong.

Sorry but I don't think that statement is true.
Out of the 5 I bought, 3 died within weeks... 2 are going strong.
All plugged into a Superbpag powered hub and all calibrated to 0.7V.

The 2 working ones are great but I'm not happy that the other 3 died for no reason and it certainly wasn't from misuse.
Cost an arm & leg with currency conversion & freight to Australia.

I'd love to know if there was anything I could do to fix or check the 3 duds.

Were you keeping them cool? Before shipping out they're all tested at 650mV/200MHz (about 3.5W) and they like having at least moderate air movement to stay cool at that speed. 700mV you were running what, 250MHz for 5W or so? They definitely needed a fan at that speed.

PM me with info on how they're behaving, and where you bought them from, and I'll see if I can't get you taken care of.

[rockmoney]

And if you try something that destroys the miner, you are doing something very very wrong.

Sorry but I don't think that statement is true.
Out of the 5 I bought, 3 died within weeks... 2 are going strong.
All plugged into a Superbpag powered hub and all calibrated to 0.7V.

The 2 working ones are great but I'm not happy that the other 3 died for no reason and it certainly wasn't from misuse.
Cost an arm & leg with currency conversion & freight to Australia.

I'd love to know if there was anything I could do to fix or check the 3 duds.

As Sidehack already stated, cooling them with a fan makes a HUGE difference (as I read somewhere in this thread, they draw more current as the temperature increases). I have been running 3 of them 24/7 at 350MHz (and a nice fan for cooling) for a LONG time now with no major problems!

Lastly, have you tried resetting them with a thin paper clip or piece of wire via the labeled holes on the back of sticks? Directions for that are also somewhere in this thread, & in the rare instance that any of mine ever start misbehaving, putting a wire in the "GND" and "RESET" holes, plugging them in my powered USB hub, & resetting them via CGMiner ALWAYS gets them behaving like they were brand new!

From my experience, these things are bulletproof when used properly!

[Neoraj3-Bitnoob]

I recently purchased GekkoScience Compac USB miner on Amazon from you.  i also downloaded the tar.gz file already.

I'm super new to Bitcoin and little new to Ubuntu 16.04.  Ubuntu is the system that I would like to use but the instructions for building Cgminer is confusing. This liink https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/README

This github page mentions this:   " If building on Ubuntu:    sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config \libcurl3-dev libudev-dev "

Is that all i need to do in Ubuntu?   Or do you have a clearer set of instructions for a standard set up for Ubuntu?  Please I am very new at this and just want a standard setup (nothing special).

[murasame2003]

I recently purchased GekkoScience Compac USB miner on Amazon from you.  i also downloaded the tar.gz file already.

I'm super new to Bitcoin and little new to Ubuntu 16.04.  Ubuntu is the system that I would like to use but the instructions for building Cgminer is confusing. This liink https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/README

This github page mentions this:   " If building on Ubuntu:    sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config \libcurl3-dev libudev-dev "

Is that all i need to do in Ubuntu?   Or do you have a clearer set of instructions for a standard set up for Ubuntu?  Please I am very new at this and just want a standard setup (nothing special).

Better build of CGMiner 4.9.2 will soon be available once vh releases it with 2pac and pod supports.

For the time being, you can use https://github.com/wareck/cgminer-gekko
The above ran ok with Ubuntu 16.04. However, I had a bit of trouble keeping HW number down when running more than 3 sticks.
Good luck.

[vapourminer]

compac support is now officially in cgminer 4.10.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

@sidehack maybe @novak can update the op with this info?

[murasame2003]

compac support is now officially in cgminer 4.10.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

@sidehack maybe @novak can update the op with this info?

Cool. Thanks for the info. 

[sidehack]

Nifty, I'll have to check that out and see how well it works. If it's Novak's code, it'll work okay for Compacs. If it's VH's code, it'll work well for Compacs, 2Pacs and the Biggie.

[murasame2003]

Nifty, I'll have to check that out and see how well it works. If it's Novak's code, it'll work okay for Compacs. If it's VH's code, it'll work well for Compacs, 2Pacs and the Biggie.

Running 4 original Compac with 4.10.0 on Pi3 right now.
Everything seems to be fine. One difference I noticed right away is how the clock speed appears on the screen.
I run the sticks with '--compac-freq 333' option. However, when cgminer starts, it shows something like 300 -> 310 -> 315 -> 320... then settles at 338 (instead of 333)

So far, it has not produced any HW, so I can't complain.
Is this how the new ramping code supposed to work? 

[murasame2003]

Well, vh clarified the question.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg17596575#msg17596575

[sidehack]

If you were previously running Novak's cgminer-gekko, it's the same ramp code it always was. His code jumps the frequency up in steps to ramp up the power use, which is actually pretty twitchy if you look at the current draw - but still better than just dumping into full speed from the get-go.

VH's new code, which will be available soon for 2Pac releases (exactly when is up to him), mimics the smooth ramp routine the S5 uses. From a hardware standpoint I'm not sure what's going on since the ramp itself is implemented inside the ASICs when given some specific data, but I suspect it's actually sequentially enabling hashing cores so the current draw increases in a clean linear ramp. This was essential to make work out for proper 2Pac functionality, and is one reason why VH's driver will be better overall for the original Compac than Novak's original code.

I haven't tested the new cgminer to see how it actually behaves, maybe I'll do that today.

[gorillazilla9]

I just purchased and installed this miner and I've gotten it to run in cgminer, however trying to mine only ever creates rejected shares with the description "Share above target". I'm completely new to cgminer (and to Bitcoin mining in general, I've been dabbling in GUI mining with Nicehash) and am totally baffled as to why this is happening or what to do about it. I've tested multiple mining pools and they all produce the same result.

[sidehack]

Did you let it run for very long, or turn it off immediately? I got the same error testing 2Pacs on solo.ckpool, but after a minute or so it started accepting shares regularly. Not sure what's the cause.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Did you let it run for very long, or turn it off immediately? I got the same error testing 2Pacs on solo.ckpool, but after a minute or so it started accepting shares regularly. Not sure what's the cause.

Running under BFGminer I see the same delay with the Compac I bought from Phil with it pointed at solo.ckpool. After the delay a message is displayed saying something along the lines of "miner authorized for pool' and then the shares are accepted. Possibly the pool is verifying the send-to btc address before allowing real work to begin?

[gorillazilla9]

Did you let it run for very long, or turn it off immediately? I got the same error testing 2Pacs on solo.ckpool, but after a minute or so it started accepting shares regularly. Not sure what's the cause.

I let it run for about a minute or two. I'll try letting it run for longer to see if there's a change.

EDIT: I've left it running for about 10-15 minutes now with no change.