How to use ASICMiner Block Erupters with CGMiner on Windows 7

[bitcoinsucker1]

Getting this error...  

Win 7 x64



 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] USB init, open device failed, err -12, you need to instal
l a WinUSB driver for - ICA device 2:1
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] Icarus detect (2:1) failed to initialise (incorrect devic
e?)
 [2013-08-23 18:59:54] Need to specify at least one pool server.
Input server details.
URL:


EDIT:  Did the ziag thing seemed to work alright



Device drivers

[1714709361]

1714709361

[1714709361]

1714709361

[mdude77]

Getting this error...  

Win 7 x64



 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] USB init, open device failed, err -12, you need to instal
l a WinUSB driver for - ICA device 2:1
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] Icarus detect (2:1) failed to initialise (incorrect devic
e?)
 [2013-08-23 18:59:54] Need to specify at least one pool server.
Input server details.
URL:


EDIT:  Did the ziag thing seemed to work alright



Device drivers

ziag is the USB to UART converter.  3.1.1 needs that, 3.4.0 does not.

M

[bitcoinsucker1]

Either way im getting that error

[colemab]

If you installed the silabs USB to UART bridge VCP Drivers, be sure to uninstall them - that is unless you are using the bitminter java client.

I am using cgminer 3.3.1 on win x64 and had the same type error until I removed the above driver and then re-added the zdiag (win usb) drivers and rebooted.

[enki74]

If you installed the silabs USB to UART bridge VCP Drivers, be sure to uninstall them - that is unless you are using the bitminter java client.

I am using cgminer 3.3.1 on win x64 and had the same type error until I removed the above driver and then re-added the zdiag (win usb) drivers and rebooted.

So to be clear you are saying with cgminer 3.4.0 uninstall uart bridge drivers? How is this done thru the zadig? you have (zdiag) above is this a typo? I have been trying this all day and only gotten worse now I can not even figure out what my usb drivers should look like?
Thanks for any help....

additional info:
I have had the ASIC running on cgminer 2.11.3 and usb to uart bridge drivers from silcon labs but wanted to integrate my ASIC's with Multimine and use the new cgminer 3.4.0 which this thread says to remove the Uart drivers from Silcon labs, sooo my questions are:

How to remove the USB to UART bridge drivers and how to install the whatever drivers to run with cgminer 3.4.0 .....

I have been using the zadig utility which I must say is confusing at best.  Is there a sequence to plugging in the ASIC's or the usb hubs after before anything like that?  So anyone that can shed some clear light on this is much appreciated! now I'm off to catch som zzz'z after a 24 hrs up!

[aigeezer]

I have no helpful advice right now, but I thought it might be useful to mention my "port chaos" yesterday, still not completely resolved, from adding a few more erupters. I had ten erupters running smoothly on 3.1.1 using two Anker hubs, seven on one hub and three on the other. My intended change was to add four more erupters, to yield a total of fourteen on this 'puter (core i7, Win7 64). Should have been trivial, right?

Several hours later, I got the system stable again using three of the planned additions - a fourth would always make CGMiner crash, although that fourth erupter will run fine on other machines. A non-mining USB device using a virtual COM port (COM 1) has been disabled somehow in the process, details unknown so far. COM port allocation would change on most reboot and hub connect/disconnect cycles. USB controllers might get recognized immediately by Win7 or recognition might take minutes. Sometimes driver uninstall/replacement appeared to help, other times not.

I realize 3.1.1 is not the latest version, and that some of my problems are certainly of my own making. My main point in writing this is to warn that such changes are not trivial, and that (as far as I know) there are no clear, concise instructions around that will cover all upgrade situations.

I'm confident that a few more hours today will get everything working, but I expect it to be picky, tedious work geek summertime fun.

[movellan]

I have no helpful advice right now, but I thought it might be useful to mention my "port chaos" yesterday, still not completely resolved, from adding a few more erupters. I had ten erupters running smoothly on 3.1.1 using two Anker hubs, seven on one hub and three on the other. My intended change was to add four more erupters, to yield a total of fourteen on this 'puter (core i7, Win7 64). Should have been trivial, right?

Several hours later, I got the system stable again using three of the planned additions - a fourth would always make CGMiner crash, although that fourth erupter will run fine on other machines. A non-mining USB device using a virtual COM port (COM 1) has been disabled somehow in the process, details unknown so far. COM port allocation would change on most reboot and hub connect/disconnect cycles. USB controllers might get recognized immediately by Win7 or recognition might take minutes. Sometimes driver uninstall/replacement appeared to help, other times not.

I realize 3.1.1 is not the latest version, and that some of my problems are certainly of my own making. My main point in writing this is to warn that such changes are not trivial, and that (as far as I know) there are no clear, concise instructions around that will cover all upgrade situations.

I'm confident that a few more hours today will get everything working, but I expect it to be picky, tedious work geek summertime fun.

What works for me:

1) Shut down computer

2) Shut off all hubs containing Erupters. Do not use other devices on the same hub with Erupters.

3) Start computer and let it normalize to idle. If you are using any sort of VPN, do not start it yet.

4) Open up device manager and open the COM ports entry.

5) Turn on the first hub (with 7 USB units in your case) containing Erupters and watch the COM ports listing. After a few seconds you should have COM3 through  COM9 listed. If not, check for dupes. If found, check for missing COM port(s). If missing are found, right click on the second entry of the dupe and go to Advanced and change it the the missing port number. Once everything is set OK, run your miner to verify that all COM's are working OK.

6) Shut down computer and shut off the hub. Unfortunately I have to go through this each time changes are made. Perhaps your experience will differ.

7) Start computer, let normalize, and turn on the first hub again. Check device manager to see if all ports have returned properly.

8) Now turn on the second hub and go through the above procedure to set the COM ports correctly.

9) When everything is working OK, you can turn on the VPN if in use. Go through the startup routine a few times. It seems Windoze will "remember" the COM setup after a few starts and give less trouble on subsequent runs.

HTH

[enki74]

I have no helpful advice right now, but I thought it might be useful to mention my "port chaos" yesterday, still not completely resolved, from adding a few more erupters. I had ten erupters running smoothly on 3.1.1 using two Anker hubs, seven on one hub and three on the other. My intended change was to add four more erupters, to yield a total of fourteen on this 'puter (core i7, Win7 64). Should have been trivial, right?

Several hours later, I got the system stable again using three of the planned additions - a fourth would always make CGMiner crash, although that fourth erupter will run fine on other machines. A non-mining USB device using a virtual COM port (COM 1) has been disabled somehow in the process, details unknown so far. COM port allocation would change on most reboot and hub connect/disconnect cycles. USB controllers might get recognized immediately by Win7 or recognition might take minutes. Sometimes driver uninstall/replacement appeared to help, other times not.

I realize 3.1.1 is not the latest version, and that some of my problems are certainly of my own making. My main point in writing this is to warn that such changes are not trivial, and that (as far as I know) there are no clear, concise instructions around that will cover all upgrade situations.

I'm confident that a few more hours today will get everything working, but I expect it to be picky, tedious work geek summertime fun.

I have had 14 total running with 3.1.1 two 10 port hubs half populated (seems to not be able to go more than that) one 5 port with three and one straight into the back of the machine running on windows 7 but noooo I wanted to put them into multiminer and now have none working .......

[aigeezer]

Getting this error...  

Win 7 x64



 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:49] Started cgminer 3.4.0
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] USB init, open device failed, err -12, you need to instal
l a WinUSB driver for - ICA device 2:1
 [2013-08-23 18:59:50] Icarus detect (2:1) failed to initialise (incorrect devic
e?)
 [2013-08-23 18:59:54] Need to specify at least one pool server.
Input server details.
URL:


EDIT:  Did the ziag thing seemed to work alright



Device drivers

After some trial and error I got to that stage also (using 3.4.0 now with old drivers deleted and so forth). I've gone a bit farther in an attempt to pin things down. I disconnected both my hubs, and used only a single block erupter plugged directly into a casefront USB socket. My list of USB devices now shows only that single device which I had renamed to "Block Erupter" using the edit function in Zadig.

After reboots and appropriate waits, I get the same kind of error some of us have been getting with hubs, namely this kind of thing "open device failed, err -12, you need to install a WinUSB driver for...". This is after installing a WinUSB driver as shown in bitcoinsucker1's post.

If I run just cgminer it will find my graphics card as expected and start mining with it, while also producing the error message for the Erupter. If I run cgminer-nogpu it produces only the error message. With multiple Erupters it produces multiple similar error messages.

I'm still digging, but that's what I know so far - it's not a hub or multiple Erupter issue, and 3.4.0 finds my graphics card (anyone remember them for mining?) without any fuss.

Edit: It's getting interesting. The single erupter was plugged in to a USB 3.0 port on the front of my machine. CGMiner was giving "error -12" messages. I added a second erupter on a USB 2.0 port also on the front of the machine and it started mining right away. CGMiner was running throughout, so it recognized the hot-plugged second erupter. The "error -12" messages continued. I pulled out the original erupter but the messages did not stop. I plugged that erupter into another USB 2.0 port and it started mining after a brief delay. So at the moment my miners work with CGMiner on USB 2.0 ports but not on a USB 3.0 port (which used to be connected to a hub that worked with miners on 3.1.1). The error -12 messages keep coming though. More testing soon - getting closer.

    

[mdude77]

I have no helpful advice right now, but I thought it might be useful to mention my "port chaos" yesterday, still not completely resolved, from adding a few more erupters. I had ten erupters running smoothly on 3.1.1 using two Anker hubs, seven on one hub and three on the other. My intended change was to add four more erupters, to yield a total of fourteen on this 'puter (core i7, Win7 64). Should have been trivial, right?

Several hours later, I got the system stable again using three of the planned additions - a fourth would always make CGMiner crash, although that fourth erupter will run fine on other machines. A non-mining USB device using a virtual COM port (COM 1) has been disabled somehow in the process, details unknown so far. COM port allocation would change on most reboot and hub connect/disconnect cycles. USB controllers might get recognized immediately by Win7 or recognition might take minutes. Sometimes driver uninstall/replacement appeared to help, other times not.

I realize 3.1.1 is not the latest version, and that some of my problems are certainly of my own making. My main point in writing this is to warn that such changes are not trivial, and that (as far as I know) there are no clear, concise instructions around that will cover all upgrade situations.

I'm confident that a few more hours today will get everything working, but I expect it to be picky, tedious work geek summertime fun.

Hmm.  I'm using 22 erupters atm, 19 on 10-port hubs, 3 on a 5-port hub.  I started with one hub.  Every step along the way to add more, this is what I do:

1 - Plug in the new erupter.  If a new hub is needed, plug it in first.
2 - Shut down cgminer.
3 - Change my cgminer script to reference the new COM ports (have always been incremental, so if I have 5 and the last one is COM7, the next one is COM8)
4 - Restart cgminer.

Sometimes I have reset a USB hub, but usually "it just works".

Note my hubs are not daisy chained.

M

[miter_myles]

I was starting to get pissed one night setting things up when I realized on my mobo (ASrock extreme 3)... I had half of my setup plugged into a usb 2.0 port and the other have on a usb 3.0 port.. which was reading the erupters differently and not playing nice... keeping everything on usb 2.0 ports (for me at least) keeps things playing nice..

[aigeezer]

I was starting to get pissed one night setting things up when I realized on my mobo (ASrock extreme 3)... I had half of my setup plugged into a usb 2.0 port and the other have on a usb 3.0 port.. which was reading the erupters differently and not playing nice... keeping everything on usb 2.0 ports (for me at least) keeps things playing nice..

I'm starting to think the same way. I just got all my miners working finally (see gory details upthread). Things started to get better when I stopped using USB 3.0 ports (where CGMiner 3.1.1 used to work fine with ten miners on two Anker hubs) and switched to USB 2.0, working up from a single Erupter miner there to my present setup which is:

Two Anker hubs daisy-chained, one with six erupters and the other with seven, plugged into a single USB 2.0 socket on the mobo at the back of the case.

It's not conclusive, but it's strongly suggestive that something goes wrong with USB 3.0, possibly only after version 3.1.1 of CGMiner.

One more little thing that I'm too tired to look into right now - the CGMiner reporting window is pretty full with "accepted" messages (yea) but from time to time I see a truncated "e?>" popping up in the left hand corner. I fear it's the old "error -12" message still coming up, but mainly hidden by the good stuff now. I'll check into it Real Soon Now.             

Thanks for the help, everyone. It seems like we all have similar but still unique things happening.

[JBT]

this really helped to get going.   but all this is to use one worker, i got mine like this
cgminer.exe -o http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u worker.name1 -p password5 -G -S \\.\com11 --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 3.0=100

i have 5 shortcuts for each stick. i just changed worker.name1 to worker.name2 3 4 5.

is there a better way?

[aigeezer]

this really helped to get going.   but all this is to use one worker, i got mine like this
cgminer.exe -o http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u worker.name1 -p password5 -G -S \\.\com11 --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 3.0=100

i have 5 shortcuts for each stick. i just changed worker.name1 to worker.name2 3 4 5.

is there a better way?

It seems to be safe now to move up to 3.4.0 or 3.4.1, in which case the parameters become much simpler. I have one machine still running 7 erupters on 3.1.1 with the messy parameters. It never crashes. My machine running 3.4.0 for a week or so and 3.4.1 as of yesterday crashes cgminer about once a day, for reasons yet unknown.

One shortcut should handle several workers though, regardless of version.

For example, this bat file using 3.4.1 finds all 13 erupters mounted on two hubs and allows for a backup pool:

C:\cgminer\cgminer-3.4.1-windows\cgminer-nogpu.exe -o http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u blah.blee -p somepassword -o http://stratum.btcguild.com:3333 -u blah_something -p whatever

[mdude77]

this really helped to get going.   but all this is to use one worker, i got mine like this
cgminer.exe -o http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u worker.name1 -p password5 -G -S \\.\com11 --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 3.0=100

i have 5 shortcuts for each stick. i just changed worker.name1 to worker.name2 3 4 5.

is there a better way?

It seems to be safe now to move up to 3.4.0 or 3.4.1, in which case the parameters become much simpler. I have one machine still running 7 erupters on 3.1.1 with the messy parameters. It never crashes. My machine running 3.4.0 for a week or so and 3.4.1 as of yesterday crashes cgminer about once a day, for reasons yet unknown.

One shortcut should handle several workers though, regardless of version.

For example, this bat file using 3.4.1 finds all 13 erupters mounted on two hubs and allows for a backup pool:

C:\cgminer\cgminer-3.4.1-windows\cgminer-nogpu.exe -o http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u blah.blee -p somepassword -o http://stratum.btcguild.com:3333 -u blah_something -p whatever

Good to know.  I was thinking I'll put 3.4.2 on another rig and move the erupters over there.  That way if it doesn't work, it won't take an hour reconfiguring the drivers.

M

[Rival]

I have  W7 x64. Just got in 9 sticks delivered today Plugged them into a 10 port Anker Uspeed 3.0. Loaded cgminer 3.1.1, and loaded the UART to COM drivers listed by the OP. Ran into the issue where I had to specify -s for each COM device, but that was it. 9 sticks hashing at just over 3Ghs happily cooled by the Artic Breeze as recommended by the OP.

It could not have been easier, it took less than 20 minutes from part arrival to hashing.

My total out-of-pocket was a little high at $370 but I bought the sticks on ebay. This includes the hub and fan from Amazon. From a $$ standpoint (not a bitcoin standpoint) I should ROI in around 130 days assuming btc price remains stable.

Thank-you mdude77 for a very good and useful guide. Now my graphic cards can get a well deserved rest. They already paid for themselves, as well as my new little 3ghs rig.

[aigeezer]

Good to know.  I was thinking I'll put 3.4.2 on another rig and move the erupters over there.  That way if it doesn't work, it won't take an hour reconfiguring the drivers.

M

Tag-team updates can save a lot of grief. I hadn't even noticed 3.4.2 was out until I saw your post though - thought I was up to the minute with 3.4.1.

I took a chance and switched my 3.4.1 'puter to 3.4.2 just now with no safety nets of any kind. No drama yet. Same bat file, except for the change in version number of course.

[bitcoiner49er]

I added some erupters yesterday via a new DUB-7 hub daisy chained into another DUB-7. I was using 3.3.4, which was crashing every 24 hours. Anyways, when I ran cgminer it would detect all of them fine, but within 5-10 mins I would get a ZOMBIE erupter. I tried rebooting and changing the erupters around (to make sure it wasn't just a bad erupter). I even tried 3.1.1 - no luck.
I downloaded 3.4.2 and tried again. ZOMBIE!  So I unplugged it without shutting down cgminer and then hot plugged it another port. After a brief pause and windows notifying me that the drivers were installed, it was detected by cgminer and ran strong all day. Weird.

[aigeezer]

I added some erupters yesterday via a new DUB-7 hub daisy chained into another DUB-7. I was using 3.3.4, which was crashing every 24 hours. Anyways, when I ran cgminer it would detect all of them fine, but within 5-10 mins I would get a ZOMBIE erupter. I tried rebooting and changing the erupters around (to make sure it wasn't just a bad erupter). I even tried 3.1.1 - no luck.
I downloaded 3.4.2 and tried again. ZOMBIE!  So I unplugged it without shutting down cgminer and then hot plugged it another port. After a brief pause and windows notifying me that the drivers were installed, it was detected by cgminer and ran strong all day. Weird.

I get occasional zombies on 3.4.2, actually on 3.4.x come to think of it, but never on 3.1.1. Sometimes I can hot-swap the zombie and it starts up fine. Other times I have to hot-swap the whole hub it is on (power off, disconnect USB, then reconnect). I see I have a zombie right now, in fact. It's random with respect to position on a hub, which erupter fails, and choice of hub itself as far as I can see.

[kano]

A zombie is simply a device that has stopped responding to libusb and thus I can no longer talk to it otherwise libusb will crash.
Normally, it should simply hotplug the device back again and push the zombie off the screen and replace it with the hotplugged device.
A common cause of this is the device overheating.
They have no temperature sensors so I can certainly not throttle the device when they get too hot ... all I can do is keep mining until it fails.
Yes I still do not understand why they don't have a temperature sensor ...
(I almost burnt my finger on one the other day trying to unplug it )