Thread Summary
Please feel free to do anything with this information. Organize, format, add other information, make corrections, etc, or even ignore.
Over a few days I read through and took some notes which may be helpful to me. I though they may also help someone else since so many people (most) do not read entire threads, they ask for whichever specific item where they are interested.
For example, I am still looking for something to tell / show me the placement of the temperature sensors on the A6. Currently I have the "control" board mounted outside the unit. I would like to know the placement of each temperature sensor for further "playing"
It does not seem like I am the only person having significant issues with the temperature causing downclocks which I do not feel are needed, or should at a minimum have an ability to be overridden through a switch if nothing more than the Bitmain equivalent of shut off if over 80c check-box. We have all agreed the smart speed "feature" should be able to be disabled at will.
notlist3d:
Obviously this is your Winter mining thread and I realize this information would be better if formatted in a more appropriate manner which unfortunately I do not know when / if I would get the time on my current list to do so. I usually make summaries of information which apply to me personally, but I grabbed a couple of things I felt like are important to many newer miners.
I would appreciate you allowing this to linger, and maybe I can find time to pretty it up in due course.
I am sure I speak for many of us in thanking you for your review threads as they may start with only basic information, but they initially give us a glance in what a real home miner is doing with the product over a long term (I use long term in our sense of the expression with what you and I use in a home miner sense.)
Your reviews generally spark input from many of the best and you do a good job of pointing out where people should be safe in terms of invalidating warranty, repeatedly reminding people how they may hurt themselves, or their equipment through real life observations of others or your own experiences.
I want to stress what I mean by input from the best, or in general other miners. We see people such as Phil who are taking products to upper and lower extremities in terms of under / over clocking, Rich with a technical analysis of that information and more, sidehack pointing out ways we may do things in an alternative and many times "better" way and I will say "etc" here because obviously I cannot name the contributions made by everyone but all anyone would have to do is read the entire thread to see how many people offer their own opinions. Normally these are people with the product in hand and are speaking from their own success or failure, but usually based on real world activities, or at a minimum the conjecture is based in fact of experiences by others contributing to the thread.
Here are some of the highlights I have picked up. These are in no particular order and some may not make sense out of context in which case again I welcome contributions and corrections, but if looking for such context feel free to peruse / search this thread. Everything quoted here is from this thread and I will use the QUOTE tag to separate each item :IMPORTANT FIRST NOTES TO FOLLOW WITH A6:
from Phil - and Others through experience:
do not over volt past 12.2 on the gui reading ---- My addition here is - check GUI!!! back to Phil: which means 12.4 max leaving the psu. My opinion again: The 12.4 is approximate as others have reported different values. Obviously there are many variables but people have blown hash boards AND other components. Be safe, and proceed at your own risk.
let the fan blow air without restrictions. big heat sink 1 fan you need to allow fan to move the air.
lastly keep room cool.
KEEP IN MIND RE: ACTUAL VOLTAGE from tlhIlwI: Edit: When I think about it, I'm only running 8 inch 16 gauge leads from the PSU to the miner instead of a more typical 2ft. of 18ga., so maybe the discrepancy is simply in having less cable loss.
Edit: Did some more testing, if you change the code to just:
Code:
AVA4_OPTIONS=" --avalon4-fan $_fan --avalon4-freq $_cf "
Then it will just run what ever flat fan speed % you enter in the GUI, so you only need to edit the file once and play around with the fan speed % through the GUI. If you do it this way, the fan speed is not variable no more, it's just a flat constant fan speed % to what ever you set.
Sloopy here - I believe there is follow up information to this and would look further if utilizing this information
2) The base image from ehash.com is actually quite small. It would almost certainly fit on a 1 Gbyte card, if that's what you happen to have. No need for an 8GB card.
3) As downloaded, the initial login is root with NO PASSWORD. Once you are in, you can add a password to root, and also enable ssh.
4) It appears that OpenWRT doesn't use the usual Linux shutdown -h command to shut down the raspberry Pi cleanly. Instead it appears you use "poweroff" from the command line (i.e. ssh in), and wait about 10 seconds. I am always nervous about just yanking the power on a running Pi, to avoid SD card corruption. Yes, it's inconvenient to have to ssh in, but it sure avoids the anguish of corrupted SD card.
Two questions.
1. How do you know which version of A6 you have? I understand there are 2 hardware revisions for A6, so how do you find out which version you have?
2. Both of my A6 have hot spots on the bottom side. Is it okay to place it upside down? I think I can reduce the heat coming from the bottom side by directing forced air on it if it's placed upside down. Are there something innards that can fall from being placed upside down?
TIA
from Phil:
the fan on the older model is a delta.
the newer model is not.
I would say you could based on my disassembly of mine. I have a link
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1336377.msg13742867#msg13742867the controller is the top it could go on the bottom. your first number is the controller temp like 30 or 35
when you turn it upside down see if the first number stays under 42 as the controller will turn off at 45
you know the 35 68 67
that = controller 1st board 2nd board
2. Both of my A6 have hot spots on the bottom side. Is it okay to place it upside down? I think I can reduce the heat coming from the bottom side by directing forced air on it if it's placed upside down. Are there something innards that can fall from being placed upside down?
From MarkAZ:
The reason I was told that they have a hot spot on the bottom is because the heat sink is closer to the case on the bottom - plus there's a pretty big open air cavity on the top. Flipping them over probably wouldn't hurt, and might also help address the issue that hot air sometimes gets trapped in that upper area (because it doesn't have a clean air inlet that goes over the controller board), which can cause the controller to read higher temps than actual ambient.
And yes, those Sanyo Denki Ace fan's are sweet in terms of quality, price and performance! I use them on all my PSU's as well...
From HerbPean:
Anyone have any ideas where I can pickup 2 more USB dongles?
try =>
sales@blockc.coThey are USA reseller for Avalon.
I just asked them for a dongle and a few spare link cables (as i broke one but managed to repair it)
Just got a quote.
10$ for a dongle and 2$ for the link cable. (Us dollard)
For the record, They were charging me 40$ for international shipping so I didn't order ... shame it was that much for 1 dongle and 5 cables
Notes on Dongle from Fanatic26:
I would verify the 4 pin cable is good and change the micro usb cable but it sure looks like you are seeing a continuous restart loop of the AUC dongle. You will almost assuredly need to replace it. As far as power requirements go the Rpi should have at least a 1.5 amp power supply (I would recommend a minimum of 2amp personally). A 1 amp power supply will not support the AUC dongle and the RPi at the same time. The dongle will sit idle with just a single green LED on and the Pi itself will crash and only have its red power LEDs on. My impression is it is corrupt firmware on the dongle causing the boot loop. Avalon does has firmware for the AUC on its canaan creative site but I do not know how you would actually reflash the dongle itself or if that will even fix the proble
AND Follow up notes from alh:
Thanks to folks most recent responses. As it turns out, the fundamental issue was the 4-pin cable. I had run a continuity check on the lines, but the problem is that it had two of the lines crossed. That is what was causing the "dongle" to reset on a regular basis. Now that I have a working configuration, with a fragile 4-pin cable, I can easily work issues from here. It's now hashing, and I can interact with the actual mining hardware.
Yan at BlockC helped me diagnose this. He indicated that during their early days, the cable producer would do this from time to time and hence they included additional 4-pin cables with their bulk orders to deal with any mis-wired cables.
For anybody else having a "regular dongle reset" issue, the 4-pin cable is a STRAIGHT THROUGH arrangement, no cross-overs between the ends. Once you know what too look for on the dongle in terms of LED patterns, it's pretty easy to recognize.
