Avalon ASIC users thread

[ProfMac]

Having trouble pointing an Avalon @ Alt coins... any suggestions as to why?

Also, can't seem to connect anywhere that uses Getwork. IE pit.deepbit.com:8332 is socket error, same with Coinotron unless I add stratum. however, simply changing the port and etc for Coinotron that would normally allow me to mine alt coins does not do so, rather it just forces BTC. These mine SHA-256, is there some trick I am missing to mine more than BTC?

I have installed Ubuntu and eloipool in a virtualbox.  This works well with the test network for bitcoin.  It fails with bytecoin, an almost identical coin.  There is some discussion on the bytecoin thread, search for 'Maria 2.0', about abandoning their p2pool efforts, and making eloipool work with Avalons.

The bytecoin version, bytecoin-qt does list my connection in getpeerinfo.

I was approaching it as a quick configuration problem, so that I could throw some hashes at the coin.  It has only mined about 300 blocks since May, apparently someone mined 2016 blocks quickly, then orphaned the network at high difficulty.

I am going to rebuild my virtualbox installation from scratch with very good notes and a checklist.  Pending on how much time that takes, I will package it as an "appliance."  I may or may not include the blockchain.  I have to go learn about diff files and merging them, I haven't done that in 25 years and my memory is empty.

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[BitCoiner2012]

Also, any guesses on the bandwidth requirements for these machines, the Avalons?

[thejestre]

Also, any guesses on the bandwidth requirements for these machines, the Avalons?

Pretty negligible, if I understand your question.  My Avalon [batch 2, black case] barely effects my network's access to the Internet.  Also, the reverse seems true as well.  I am able to stream Netflix, browse the web, FTP large files, without effecting the Avalon's performance from what I can tell.  I'd bet any DSL-equivalent Internet access speeds are sufficient.  I have cable access at about 6 Mbps up and down, but would trust a 1 Mbps up/down link to be more than sufficient for mining.

_theJestre

[shmadz]

Also, any guesses on the bandwidth requirements for these machines, the Avalons?

Pretty negligible, if I understand your question.  My Avalon [batch 2, black case] barely effects my network's access to the Internet.  Also, the reverse seems true as well.  I am able to stream Netflix, browse the web, FTP large files, without effecting the Avalon's performance from what I can tell.  I'd bet any DSL-equivalent Internet access speeds are sufficient.  I have cable access at about 6 Mbps up and down, but would trust a 1 Mbps up/down link to be more than sufficient for mining.

_theJestre

-just to add to what Jestre said, as far as I can understand it, the latency of the connection will have a much greater effect on your performance than your bandwidth. Bandwidth requirements are pretty much negligible, whereas poor latency could cause you to submit more stales... I think...

[pikeadz]

Also, any guesses on the bandwidth requirements for these machines, the Avalons?

Pretty negligible, if I understand your question.  My Avalon [batch 2, black case] barely effects my network's access to the Internet.  Also, the reverse seems true as well.  I am able to stream Netflix, browse the web, FTP large files, without effecting the Avalon's performance from what I can tell.  I'd bet any DSL-equivalent Internet access speeds are sufficient.  I have cable access at about 6 Mbps up and down, but would trust a 1 Mbps up/down link to be more than sufficient for mining.

_theJestre

-just to add to what Jestre said, as far as I can understand it, the latency of the connection will have a much greater effect on your performance than your bandwidth. Bandwidth requirements are pretty much negligible, whereas poor latency could cause you to submit more stales... I think...

What would you say is an acceptable latency?  When I ping two of my Avalons, I get 2-3ms consistently.  The third is running over a powerline adapter and latency varies from 3ms to 35ms.

[pikeadz]

Okay, I have 3 avalon 3-module units.  They are all overclocked and running ckolivas 0703 firmware.  Two of them consistently average 80-81Gh/s.  The other is a little slower and averages about 76.5Gh/s when left alone for a day or so.  All the settings are the same, but the slower one generates 5% HW errors and the other are almost exactly 2%.

I have tried everything I can think of.  I moved the slow learner to sit in front of the AC register and turned fans to 100% so it runs very cool now, swapped out the power supply with a 1250 watt OCZ.  I have tinkered with the clock settings between 325 and 350.  The result is the same.  I realize it's a small amount of hashing power, but the perfectionist in me wants it the same as the other two.  Here's a screenshot: 

https://i.imgur.com/u7KU53Y.jpg

In the config, I have the chip frequency set to 350 but in more options I have:  --avalon-auto --avalon-fan 100

Any ideas why this one would be throwing  more errors?

[BitCoiner2012]

Also, any guesses on the bandwidth requirements for these machines, the Avalons?

Pretty negligible, if I understand your question.  My Avalon [batch 2, black case] barely effects my network's access to the Internet.  Also, the reverse seems true as well.  I am able to stream Netflix, browse the web, FTP large files, without effecting the Avalon's performance from what I can tell.  I'd bet any DSL-equivalent Internet access speeds are sufficient.  I have cable access at about 6 Mbps up and down, but would trust a 1 Mbps up/down link to be more than sufficient for mining.

_theJestre

I only ask as I was testing a unit on a different network and it hashed for a bit, but it felt like my ping died completely, severe packet loss that didn't exist prior. Strangely the Avalon lost and refused connection suddenly. Afteer disconnecting the Avalon the net problems absolved, my other network however is having no problems.

Must be something in this network. Thanks for all the responses.

[BitCoiner2012]

I am in the market for new pools for BTC, any suggestions? Also, are there any reputable pools for alt coins that aren't Coinotron? Seems like the only other one I remember closed down.

Also, I used to really like, and still do love, PPLNS when mining. But I haven't used PPLNS for BTC in months, and when looking at BTCGuild and considering their market share, it seems like a great situation. Why would you choose PPS with a higher fee when they have ~25% of the hash rate..? Or am I missing something?

[pikeadz]

I am in the market for new pools for BTC, any suggestions? Also, are there any reputable pools for alt coins that aren't Coinotron? Seems like the only other one I remember closed down.

Also, I used to really like, and still do love, PPLNS when mining. But I haven't used PPLNS for BTC in months, and when looking at BTCGuild and considering their market share, it seems like a great situation. Why would you choose PPS with a higher fee when they have ~25% of the hash rate..? Or am I missing something?

I have been happy with eligius. 0% fee PPS.  The catch is you only get paid when a block is found, so some of your coins get "shelved" until that happens.  Been there over a month though with my other miners and have had no issues getting paid.

[Bogart]

I am currently running firmware openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr703n-v1-squashfs-factory_20130519b.

1. Is this the most up to date / stable firmware version?

I run ckolivas' 20130703 release, and find it to be more stable:

http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/avalon/20130703/

It has proper fan control too.

[tarui]

I am in the market for new pools for BTC, any suggestions? Also, are there any reputable pools for alt coins that aren't Coinotron? Seems like the only other one I remember closed down.

Also, I used to really like, and still do love, PPLNS when mining. But I haven't used PPLNS for BTC in months, and when looking at BTCGuild and considering their market share, it seems like a great situation. Why would you choose PPS with a higher fee when they have ~25% of the hash rate..? Or am I missing something?

Im using btcguild and pps scheme. It seems to say the fees are 7.5% ??

[Bogart]

Having trouble pointing an Avalon @ Alt coins... any suggestions as to why?

Also, can't seem to connect anywhere that uses Getwork. IE pit.deepbit.com:8332 is socket error, same with Coinotron unless I add stratum. however, simply changing the port and etc for Coinotron that would normally allow me to mine alt coins does not do so, rather it just forces BTC. These mine SHA-256, is there some trick I am missing to mine more than BTC?

I have installed Ubuntu and eloipool in a virtualbox.  This works well with the test network for bitcoin.  It fails with bytecoin, an almost identical coin.

I had success using this setup to mine Terracoin.  However, it did not work for me for PPCoin.  I guess something's a little bit different.  I never tried any others.

[el_rlee]

If I decide to use one Raspberry Pi instead of the three TP-Link routers, are there any known disadvantages? Is the clock frequency still set individually?
Also I feel that it would to my Avalons good to split them into smaller units, maybe only one modul per control board. Is somebody selling clones of this control boards?
Is it a problem if the control board is on a different power supply than the miner?

[weevil]

I am currently running firmware openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr703n-v1-squashfs-factory_20130519b.

1. Is this the most up to date / stable firmware version?

I run ckolivas' 20130703 release, and find it to be more stable:

http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/avalon/20130703/

It has proper fan control too.

Excellent - this is now uploaded and running.

[BitCoiner2012]

I am in the market for new pools for BTC, any suggestions? Also, are there any reputable pools for alt coins that aren't Coinotron? Seems like the only other one I remember closed down.

Also, I used to really like, and still do love, PPLNS when mining. But I haven't used PPLNS for BTC in months, and when looking at BTCGuild and considering their market share, it seems like a great situation. Why would you choose PPS with a higher fee when they have ~25% of the hash rate..? Or am I missing something?

I have been happy with eligius. 0% fee PPS.  The catch is you only get paid when a block is found, so some of your coins get "shelved" until that happens.  Been there over a month though with my other miners and have had no issues getting paid.

So say I hash 5 BTC a day on average, they pay my PPS, but withhold until that block is found? What if it isn't found for a week? All the shares for the past week back paid or... ?

Trying some hash on BTCGuild PPS and PPLNS. I've always been a HUGE fan of PPLNS (Esp P2Pool), but the sheer hash amount + PPLNS attracts me majorly to BTCGuild. Running equal hash on PPS and PPLNS until I decide which I like...

Question - I can't find ANY info on Namecoin on BTCGuild.. just seems like I make one sometimes. It's automatically merge mining NMC? That's both for PPS and PPLNS?

Thanks !

[BitCoiner2012]

I am in the market for new pools for BTC, any suggestions? Also, are there any reputable pools for alt coins that aren't Coinotron? Seems like the only other one I remember closed down.

Also, I used to really like, and still do love, PPLNS when mining. But I haven't used PPLNS for BTC in months, and when looking at BTCGuild and considering their market share, it seems like a great situation. Why would you choose PPS with a higher fee when they have ~25% of the hash rate..? Or am I missing something?

Im using btcguild and pps scheme. It seems to say the fees are 7.5% ??

This is what's flooring me, a nearly 8% fee... Pretty sure I'll be directing all hash power to PPLNS shortly. That fee is unreal..

Having trouble pointing an Avalon @ Alt coins... any suggestions as to why?

Also, can't seem to connect anywhere that uses Getwork. IE pit.deepbit.com:8332 is socket error, same with Coinotron unless I add stratum. however, simply changing the port and etc for Coinotron that would normally allow me to mine alt coins does not do so, rather it just forces BTC. These mine SHA-256, is there some trick I am missing to mine more than BTC?

I have installed Ubuntu and eloipool in a virtualbox.  This works well with the test network for bitcoin.  It fails with bytecoin, an almost identical coin.

I had success using this setup to mine Terracoin.  However, it did not work for me for PPCoin.  I guess something's a little bit different.  I never tried any others.

I have since had success mining PPC very easily, Coinotron just sucks period. TRC is just broken, so I'm not bothering to try for fear of orphan blocks, and pools are closed... Anyone know of a solo TRC calculator?





Also, strangely, one of my units has a large amount of stale shares  (1.5% compared to others that are less than 1%). Any thoughts on why this would be ? out of 100k shares, this unit has 56 dupes, others units have ZERO... Settings are same across the board..

[Tesla71]

Is somebody selling clones of this control boards?

I would also be interested in this.. I think my control board have a problem or where does it come from when the avalon section of cgminer screen went sometimes empty after some time of hashing ?

Any ideas? I don't think it is the router because I can access it normaly but the router seems to loose contact to the controller ?
Where to look for bugs ? It is an avalon batch 2 with controller V 1.5
Tried already different firmware and another PSU

[force66]

REWARD: 1 BTC if you can help me fix this today.

I have a used batch 2 avalon and I don't have the password. What is the easiest way to get it going? It's all set up with my info too, but it's not automatically connecting to my wireless and I can't login to change anything because I don't have the password. I've heard about resetting it by reflashing OpenWrt, but I don't see a reset button on the avalon and I don't want to mess it up. I also don't want to lose the system settings that have it overclocked, but I will if necessary.

[cypherdoc]

REWARD: 1 BTC if you can help me fix this today.

I have a used batch 2 avalon and I don't have the password. What is the easiest way to get it going? It's all set up with my info too, but it's not automatically connecting to my wireless and I can't login to change anything because I don't have the password. I've heard about resetting it by reflashing OpenWrt, but I don't see a reset button on the avalon and I don't want to mess it up. I also don't want to lose the system settings that have it overclocked, but I will if necessary.

i think you're going to have to reset it to enable you to put in your own.

[cypherdoc]

REWARD: 1 BTC if you can help me fix this today.

I have a used batch 2 avalon and I don't have the password. What is the easiest way to get it going? It's all set up with my info too, but it's not automatically connecting to my wireless and I can't login to change anything because I don't have the password. I've heard about resetting it by reflashing OpenWrt, but I don't see a reset button on the avalon and I don't want to mess it up. I also don't want to lose the system settings that have it overclocked, but I will if necessary.

here are instructions to reset in Failsafe Mode:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n

once you do that you'll need to reinstall cgminer 7/3