Possibility to enable Dual Mine mode on Gridseed G-Blade

[Kulturnilpferd]

Hey there,
in a lot of articles around the internet i have read that the G-Blade has GC3355 chips in it. This chips have the same name like in the usb / Dualminer.
I have found out that the Pinout of the Gridseed make it possible to load there any software that you want (ic2 bus or something like these).
So maybe there is a chance to enable the Dual Mine mode... a very small but yeah...
you think this is possible?
This is not an idea to make the Blades rentable again,
 just a little play around from a student who has too much free time 

[1714778495]

1714778495

[1714778495]

1714778495

[ab1jx]

Well, I'm retired with too much free time, same idea.

Dual mining, as in both at the same time, has 2 problems.  Finding software that supports it firstly.  Secondly if you look at the cg3355 datasheet available at https://github.com/gridseed/gc3355-doc/archive/master.zip the chip draws roughly 10 times as much power doing sha256 as it does doing scrypt.  That causes overheating problems.  I'd read that sha256 was officially abandoned on these.  I think the key is that you want to do scrypt at something like 800 MHz and sha256 at something like 150 MHz, so it's difficult to do them both at the same time.

But I invested $62 in my G-Blade and after about a week I'm just coming up on 0.1 LTC.  With LTC at $15 and BTC at $1300 I know which I'd rather be working at mining, even at reduced speed.  I've been hanging out in the GekkoScience areas for a couple days and by their standards 150 MHz isn't so low it's out of the question.  The cg3355 may actually come to within a factor of  2 of being in the same efficiency class with a bm1384.  I think putting a second heat sink above the chips would help the heat, but not the efficiency.

From the data sheet:
  BTC mode up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate, with 2.4W/GHash

[QuintLeo]

Don't.

 The "dual mine" mode on the Gridseed GC3355 chips soaked about 10 TIMES as much power as just single-mining Scrypt.

 There is a reason the Gridseed Blades pretty much used the SAME power circuit as the 5-chip orbs did - the orbs WERE designed to dual-mine with, the blades were NOT.

 Even on just Scrypt mining, the blade power circuitry was marginal at best, and tended to die a lot due to inadaquate heat sinking.

 The actual chips *might* handle dual-mining, the power circuitry isn't even in the right COUNTRY to do so, much less the right ballpark.


 Yes, the Dual Miner used the same Gridseed chip.

[ab1jx]

Well personally I wasn't going to try both modes simultaneously, for one thing it means dealing with 2 different pools at the same time.  I've been studying the Gekko Science areas for a few days, finally got a 2pac and got it working.  But in not a lot more time than that my G-Blade has made me 1/8 of a Litecoin.  And by coincidence the value of them went up.

Anyway I can't help but wonder if some value of frequency and core voltage might let me do SHA256 safely.  The two chips, BM1384 and GC3355 are about the same vintage, so in a sense they were competitors.  I did try to set that cgminer to 150 MHz and SHA256 but it ran at 600 MHz and didn't actually hash.  I think the SHA core is disabled somehow, maybe I should read through the Gridseed driver.  Just looking at the boards I have to wonder why there isn't any heat sink on top of the chips, I could make one.  Cut holes in it where tall capacitors might be, put a little heat sink compound on the tops of the chips.  There are 15 holes through the boards, drill the heat sink to match and bolt them together.  Having 80 chips running on Bitcoin sounds appealing.

I can't figure out how to post pictures here, maybe new users can't do that.  I did a screenshot of cgminer, looks like it was going to run at 23 Gh/s (at 600 MHz).  I didn't dare leave it running more than a few minutes as a first test.  Didn't heat up, which makes me think something was disabled somehow.

Maybe there was a change in firmware that locks out SHA256, this is version 02140317.  But I've got it hashing away on Litecoin and upstairs my 2pac is doing Bitcoin.

[QuintLeo]

 Just looking at the boards I have to wonder why there isn't any heat sink on top of the chips, I could make one.  Cut holes in it where tall capacitors might be, put a little heat sink compound on the tops of the chips.  There are 15 holes through the boards, drill the heat sink to match and bolt them together.  Having 80 chips running on Bitcoin sounds appealing.

 The chips are heat-sinked through the board into THAT heatsink - which is enough for running Scrypt on them.
 The GC 3355 eats a TON more power doing SHA256 - I'm pretty sure that none of the CCMiner/SGMiner/etc varients intended for use with the Gridseed blades enables SHA256 because you were guarenteed to FRY the board if you tried.

 I can see WANTING to do this - but it would be like trying to run 200 MPH in a YUGO at Indy, it just won't WORK.

 Also, the reason that they came up with the "blade" designs was that the GC 3355 was NOT very efficient at SHA256 mining, it got beat out VERY quickly (IIRC it was similar efficiency to the Antminer S1, which wasn't even CLOSE to the S3 much less the S5) but it had no competition at ALL on Scrypt for several months and it took something close to 2 years for the competition to get significantly more efficient and make the GC 3355 non-profitable on Scrypt for most folks.

[ab1jx]

The chips are heat-sinked through the board into THAT heatsink - which is enough for running Scrypt on them.

Doesn't seem very efficient but maybe that board material is more thermally conductive than most.  I still need to come up with a better fan arrangement or find a way to stick it out in the garage or something.  I pulled a fan out of an old ATX PSU but I don't have many 92 mm, most I've got are the next size smaller.  Still too loud and it takes several minutes to come up to speed like maybe some lubricant gradually warms up.  Bestbyte doesn't seem to have anything, I'll try Newark.

Probably the best thing to do is hope for retrofit boards if I want to do SHA then cob together some replacement heat sinks if I still want to use those boards for scrypt.  The number I was seeing of 10 Gh/s per board is in the ballpark of one of Gekko Science's 2pacs, not that great for a board with 40 chips.

I'm getting kind of burnt out on this mining thing, I just want everything running cool and quiet so I can forget about them for a month or so and let them run.  If I were in a position to want to heat with electricity this wouldn't be a bad game.

[QuintLeo]

The chips are heat-sinked through the board into THAT heatsink - which is enough for running Scrypt on them.

Doesn't seem very efficient but maybe that board material is more thermally conductive than most. 

Probably the best thing to do is hope for retrofit boards if I want to do SHA then cob together some replacement heat sinks if I still want to use those boards for scrypt.  The number I was seeing of 10 Gh/s per board is in the ballpark of one of Gekko Science's 2pacs, not that great for a board with 40 chips.

I'm getting kind of burnt out on this mining thing, I just want everything running cool and quiet so I can forget about them for a month or so and let them run.  If I were in a position to want to heat with electricity this wouldn't be a bad game.

 The GC 3355 doesn't use a lot of power mining Scrypt, so it doesn't need a lot of cooling. 1 watt or a bit less per chip - the heat sinks on the "80 blade" units are actually severe overkill for the actual heat dissipation they have to handle.

 It *might* be possible to refit the heatsinks with Sidehack "pod" boards, but since he seems to be putting heatsinks on both sides of his "pod" board designs it seems unlikely a retrofit would work - might be doable if you tap new screwholes in the right place of the Gridseed heatsink assemblies, but kind of a waste.

 There is no such thing any more as a "cool and quiet" miner, it takes way too much computing ability to be able to compete which means quite a bit of power soaked and quite a bit of heat. I think the closest to a "quiet" miner that is currently competative is the Bitmain R4, but even that thing isn't particularly COOL.

[ab1jx]

The GC 3355 doesn't use a lot of power mining Scrypt, so it doesn't need a lot of cooling. 1 watt or a bit less per chip - the heat sinks on the "80 blade" units are actually severe overkill for the actual heat dissipation they have to handle.

 It *might* be possible to refit the heatsinks with Sidehack "pod" boards, but since he seems to be putting heatsinks on both sides of his "pod" board designs it seems unlikely a retrofit would work - might be doable if you tap new screwholes in the right place of the Gridseed heatsink assemblies, but kind of a waste.

 There is no such thing any more as a "cool and quiet" miner, it takes way too much computing ability to be able to compete which means quite a bit of power soaked and quite a bit of heat. I think the closest to a "quiet" miner that is currently competative is the Bitmain R4, but even that thing isn't particularly COOL.

I haven't had it apart but I wonder if taking off the case covering the heat sinks to let room air at them would let me dispense with the fan.  They remind me a little of heat exchangers on the old air-cooled VW engines.  There the engine exhaust heated aluminum heat sinks and a blower forced air through them to heat the inside of the car.  When it worked and they weren't rusted out.

Yeah, I've got one of Sidehack's 2pacs blinking away here.  The heat sink's too hot to touch even at 150 MHz but the chip specs say it can run up to 125 C.  I'll probably bolt a couple of hard drive cases onto it to enlarge it  Or mount it to a file cabinet..  I like the Gridseed, might pick up another.  It's earned me $4, the 2pac has earned $0.04.  I wouldn't mind a board out of an Antminer S3 but I don't want a whole one.  Just looking at expanding in the scrypt direction, there isn't much out there.

Oh, I did order my Gridseed a new fan: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/NMB-Technologies/3610SB-04W-B20-B00/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMsiJ7OlpASoDhDwog2Qgd8idgg49r%2FTrHQ%3D

[QuintLeo]

The "case" setup on the Gridseed 80 blades was specifically designed to channel maximum airflow through the heatsink assembly - opening it up won't let them run without a fan unless you're running them at a VERY low clock setting, as they need the airflow over the power supply parts to keep THEM from frying.

 The limit isn't the GC 3355 mining chips on those units, and never was.

 I believe the fan you ordered is the SAME model I used as a Gridseed replacement fan, it's very very close if not and should prove to provide plenty of airflow.
 I'm also a long-standing fan of NMB fans on lower-flow needed setups, they were widely used in servers because they last a very long time with no maintainance.
 NMB doesn't (or at least they didn't used to) make super-high-flow fans like the high end Delta units and the rare Delta competition, so they're a bit less known to miners in general.

[Rodderman]

I would not run them in dual mode, the rate of income will be lower due to electrical cost and I have been running some and still making profit from mine as is.

I am running at 825 frequency, does the HW errors look ok?


 GSD 0:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.74Mh/s | A: 881 R: 6+0(.68%) HW:4/.45%
 GSD 1:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.33Mh/s | A: 748 R: 6+0(.80%) HW:1/.13%
 GSD 2:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.65Mh/s | A: 852 R: 8+0(.93%) HW:0/none
 GSD 3:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.64Mh/s | A: 850 R: 6+0(.70%) HW:1/.12%
 GSD 4:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.58Mh/s | A: 829 R:10+0(1.2%) HW:1/.12%
 GSD 5:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.63Mh/s | A: 847 R: 2+0(.24%) HW:1/.12%
 GSD 6:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.60Mh/s | A: 837 R: 5+0(.59%) HW:0/none
 GSD 7:       |  2.74/ 2.74/ 2.52Mh/s | A: 810 R: 5+0(.61%) HW:1/.12%

[ab1jx]

I believe the fan you ordered is the SAME model I used as a Gridseed replacement fan, it's very very close if not and should prove to provide plenty of airflow.
 I'm also a long-standing fan of NMB fans on lower-flow needed setups, they were widely used in servers because they last a very long time with no maintainance.

I don't think I'd really heard of NMB specifically, I was thinking more like Top Motor.  I've had cheap fans that die in a month and fans in PSUs in PCs that are still running fine when the computer's in the scrap heap.  This is rated for 100k hours, but I picked it because I wanted a flow rate around 30 CFM, ball bearings, and low noise.

I bought this G-Blade kind of on a whim, Pooler tried to talk me out of it, but I don't regret it and I'm thinking about buying another.  There aren't many Scrypt ASICs around right now and at 5 mhs for $62 it beats stickminers.  Litecoinpool.org ranks me faster than about 60% of other miners when I have it running.  I can't afford or justify an L3.  This earns about $0.20/day, which might be more than it costs to run it, I'm not sure.  I need to take my power connections apart again and stick an ammeter in there for a while.  I've got about enough solar panels to run it too, at least some of the time.  It's not a 1500 watt monster.