GekkoScience 2Pac/Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[goose1072]

"I would do the 60 and you can always upgrade the psu I think since its external." which more powerful psu would you recommend?

I would use it with the 60 amp for now unless you are looking to fill all the usb's.

Upgrade to a ATX of your choice 750w or higher, you can find one at a great price.

I had ordered 2 750w bronze from micro center and paid under $50 for each after rebate.

newegg sometimes have good sales just make sure the PSU has bronze, silver or gold in the details.

here is one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153157

[1714107618]

1714107618

[sidehack]

That power supply is actually considerably worse, given it's only a 22A 5V rail. Depending how far you want to push your sticks, that wouldn't handle a dozen.

[marousi]

I don;t live in the USA, so I have different options. How about this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-Modular-Power-Supply-210-GQ-0750-V3/dp/B017RO39TK/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520147746&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=750%2Bwatt%2C%2B80%2Bamp%2Bpsu&th=1

[goose1072]

That power supply is actually considerably worse, given it's only a 22A 5V rail. Depending how far you want to push your sticks, that wouldn't handle a dozen.

But you would be using the 12v 62A which would be very slightly better.
My under standing the usb hub uses the 24pin plug from the PSU which is 12v.

I know the PSU is not much better, it was more of an example for what to look for.

[goose1072]

I don;t live in the USA, so I have different options. How about this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-Modular-Power-Supply-210-GQ-0750-V3/dp/B017RO39TK/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520147746&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=750%2Bwatt%2C%2B80%2Bamp%2Bpsu&th=1

Marousi

Yes this one will work since it sates 12v 62.4a but why not try out the one the hub comes with.

This PSU would be slightly better than the one it comes with, not a lot of gains once your start to grow.

[sidehack]

Are we still talking about the Eyeboot USB hub, the one which comes bundled with a 5V power supply? Or the Eyeboot USB hub, the one that comes with a built-in 5V power supply?

No, it doesn't use 12V. No reason it would, since USB doesn't use 12V and why build a 12V to 5V down-converter good for 60A into a thing when you can get a 5V supply directly?

The 24-pin plug from the PSU also carries 5V, 3.3V, -12V, -5V, 5V standby and some signal lines. Don't forget that.

So no, a power supply with a 22A 5V rail secondary to its main 12V output is in no way better than a 60A 5V dedicated supply.

[GEBucky]

Doing some back of the envelope math. I have 12 2Pacs putting out about 250ghz. So, assuming they are pulling about 100W (8ish Watts each) that works about to be about 0.4 W/ghx. A Antminer S9, assuming 13.7thx and 1400 W works out to be 0.1W/ghz. Welcome to have my math checked but really surprised the efficiency difference is this large. Granted they don't sound like a jet engine is taking off from your guest room, but a 4x efficiency differential seems odd given they are essentially the same chip.

and yes - I understand they are different and serving different purposes. Not interested in a religious war. Just from a pure electrical engineering perspective interested into insights as to why the efficiency would be so different.

[vegascoinpool]

Doing some back of the envelope math. I have 12 2Pacs putting out about 250ghz. So, assuming they are pulling about 100W (8ish Watts each) that works about to be about 0.4 W/ghx. A Antminer S9, assuming 13.7thx and 1400 W works out to be 0.1W/ghz. Welcome to have my math checked but really surprised the efficiency difference is this large. Granted they don't sound like a jet engine is taking off from your guest room, but a 4x efficiency differential seems odd given they are essentially the same chip.

and yes - I understand they are different and serving different purposes. Not interested in a religious war. Just from a pure electrical engineering perspective interested into insights as to why the efficiency would be so different.

One obvious reason might be that the 2Pac sticks don't use the same Bitmain chip as the S9. I believe the 2Pacs are built on the previous gen. Bitmain chip, thus previous gen. efficiency.

At least that's my understanding.

[GEBucky]

Doing some back of the envelope math. I have 12 2Pacs putting out about 250ghz. So, assuming they are pulling about 100W (8ish Watts each) that works about to be about 0.4 W/ghx. A Antminer S9, assuming 13.7thx and 1400 W works out to be 0.1W/ghz. Welcome to have my math checked but really surprised the efficiency difference is this large. Granted they don't sound like a jet engine is taking off from your guest room, but a 4x efficiency differential seems odd given they are essentially the same chip.

and yes - I understand they are different and serving different purposes. Not interested in a religious war. Just from a pure electrical engineering perspective interested into insights as to why the efficiency would be so different.

One obvious reason might be that the 2Pac sticks don't use the same Bitmain chip as the S9. I believe the 2Pacs are built on the previous gen. Bitmain chip, thus previous gen. efficiency.

At least that's my understanding.

ahh - I may have missed that. Appreciate the feedback. Clearly this is more of a fun, and slightly out of control hobby. Have racks of S9's and L3's running off my solar system. But really do enjoy the challenge of seeing how many 2Pacs I can get running. Makes sense if it's the last gen chip. Given I blow through about 30,000 KWhr a month it's not really a big deal but just couldn't figure out why the huge difference. Thanks again!

[vegascoinpool]

ahh - I may have missed that. Appreciate the feedback. Clearly this is more of a fun, and slightly out of control hobby. Have racks of S9's and L3's running off my solar system. But really do enjoy the challenge of seeing how many 2Pacs I can get running. Makes sense if it's the last gen chip. Given I blow through about 30,000 KWhr a month it's not really a big deal but just couldn't figure out why the huge difference. Thanks again!

Definitely more of a hobby device... but I've had my 2Pacs mining to a paper wallet that's my "rainy day" BTC stash... so perhaps they have some utility beyond a particular efficiency or profitability. If we see the BTC $100k days some people see coming... these little boogers did more than any current probability calculator ever said they could.

[sidehack]

They're in no way the same chip as the S9. They're using the S5 chip. Any glance at the math would tell you that they're not the same chip, not just from efficiency charts but hashrate per MHz. The best-case efficiency of the BM1384 chip is almost 3x power-per-hash than typical efficiency for the BM1387 from an S9.

These sticks were never meant to be profitable. They're toys, learning tools or at best a solo-mining lottery ticket. That's the only utility, unless you get lucky with an altcoin. If you want BTC, it's far and away better to have just bought $X worth of BTC than to have spent $X on this stick.

[GEBucky]

They're in no way the same chip as the S9. They're using the S5 chip. Any glance at the math would tell you that they're not the same chip, not just from efficiency charts but hashrate per MHz. The best-case efficiency of the BM1384 chip is almost 3x power-per-hash than typical efficiency for the BM1387 from an S9.

These sticks were never meant to be profitable. They're toys, learning tools or at best a solo-mining lottery ticket. That's the only utility, unless you get lucky with an altcoin. If you want BTC, it's far and away better to have just bought $X worth of BTC than to have spent $X on this stick.

Excellent points and thanks for clarifications. I certainly wasn't assuming these were going to meaningfully increase my profitability as running 10 S9's, 10 L3's, and 16 AMD 580 GPUs. I still love tinkering with them and trying to get a rig over 500G with 2Pacs is something of a personal challenge. Getting them at $45 direct certainly helps . Running everything on solar so it's not a total lost cause, but it is interesting reading through the thread where people are building 10 - 20 stick rigs as their primary mining device. Not a great idea just from a math perspective. Funny as the NiceHash site actually has 2Pacs on the dropdown list of devices. Not profitable unless your power is free, and would take a year at today's diff to make it back (unless BTC goes nuts, which we all hope it does).  I think Bitmain dropped S9's to just under $2K so the math is pretty clear there. Thanks again for insights. Looks like the efficiency of the S9 chip is almost 4x on both axis. Different things for different purposes.

Man - 1600+ posts. You are very busy!!

[sidehack]

Activity and post count are not the same number. Apparently I've posted almost 6000 times, but this account is also almost five years old.

[GEBucky]

Activity and post count are not the same number. Apparently I've posted almost 6000 times, but this account is also almost five years old.

lol - it's still a lot. You need to go outside

[merlin3287]

Are we still talking about the Eyeboot USB hub, the one which comes bundled with a 5V power supply? Or the Eyeboot USB hub, the one that comes with a built-in 5V power supply?

No, it doesn't use 12V. No reason it would, since USB doesn't use 12V and why build a 12V to 5V down-converter good for 60A into a thing when you can get a 5V supply directly?

The 24-pin plug from the PSU also carries 5V, 3.3V, -12V, -5V, 5V standby and some signal lines. Don't forget that.

So no, a power supply with a 22A 5V rail secondary to its main 12V output is in no way better than a 60A 5V dedicated supply.

With these hubs, use the Logisys 550 watt PSU. They are on Newegg for under $40. They have 5V @38-40A. Dont use anything bigger (575W or 650W) because they upped the 12V and not the 5V

[gerrymcc]

Today I ditched the 5v 20w PSU that came with a 4 port USB Hub and put in a 5v 70w PSU.
I manage to run 1  x 2 PAC stick at 400MHz for 1 hour. (HW2).
This is running on Windows 10, cgminer d5.....
For cooling I used a strong laptop fan that blows through the fins. Voltage was set at 1.634, which gives .800 across the ASIC
Hash was 43.57Gh/s
 I would post a photo of cgminer if i knew how?

Gerrymcc

[marousi]

"Getting them at $45 direct" - from where?

[sidehack]

That's one of the small-order price breaks available when ordering direct from laura@gekkoscience.com

[djjabb83]

I have been tirelessly attempting to install this miner with cgminer on my raspberry pi 3 but I have no clue what to do or how to do it. I followed all of the steps listed to no avail. I formatted my sd card and started from scratch with a fresh copy of NOOBS/ Rasbian. I open a new terminal on raspbian and enter all of the steps. But nothing ever works. Can anyone please give me step by step instructions on how to accomplish this? Preferably like I'm a 5yr old. Because I'm ready to pull my hair out over all of this. All I want to do is mine some alt coins. So frustrating.

[sidehack]

The instructions in the first post are about as simple as it gets.

What errors are you seeing?

If it's because of -O2 I'm gonna laugh because I've lost count of how many times someone has made that mistake.