Firmware upgrade for Asicminer Blade

[CBailey]

I just bought a used Asicminer Blade, and have firmware questions:

1) Is there an advantage to upgrading the firmware? Are some better/faster/more table than others?
2) Where can I download the firmware(s)?

From what I understand, I need a PicKit2, which I have.

Thanks!

[CBailey]

Anyone?
My blade seems buggy as hell. I've never got it over 70% efficiency (It was actually more like 45%-55%, but shows as 70%), usually hovers around 20% (Really 10%), switching the clock makes no difference, and it will often not switch servers.
Also, is there any firmware that supports stratum, without needing a proxy?

[VinCeCream]

The blade take some times up to full efficiency (around 5 minutes).

Do you use the stratum proxy on a computer linked to your blade ? May be a bad setting somewhere on the computer.

You can see here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205369.0 if there is some details that may help you.


Have you asked ASICMiner support ?

Good luck !

[CBailey]

Thanks for the reply.

I've given it almost 24 hours, but still the same results. I tried the proxy on two different computers on my network, but more or less the same results.

How can I contact ASICMiner support?

[VinCeCream]

I think you can contact friedcat via PM on this forum for the beginning.

Can you please continue posting updates on this thread ? I think it can be useful in the future.

[CBailey]

THanks for the response.

I already PM'd Friedcat a day or so ago, but no response yet.

I also have to USB asicminers, going through cgminer, then through minepeon on a Raspberry Pi. That has been rock stable. I then pointed minepeon to my mine_proxy.exe, and it still works fine. Everything seems fine, except for the ASICMiner blade.

If I get any updates, or more info, I'll post it here.

[CBailey]

As an update, the thing finally started working on it's own, somewhat reliably. Sometimes it needs a few reboots. I brought it to my office, and run it there. For some reason, I guess it didn't like my home network as much. Maybe it was because I was running the proxy on a VM, and then a computer connected by WiFi. Still terribly flaky. Nobody ever got back to me. Nobody seems to have the latest firmware. If anyone has a Ver3 blade, and the PicKit2 to pull the firmware off of it, it would be greatly appreciated to post it somewhere. If I get more miners, I'll lean towards USB devices, where I can just plug them into a Raspberry Pi minepeon, which has been rock stable, and has a nice web-based GUI with charts.

[sveetsnelda]

Are you sure that there's a 0.3 firmware?  I got some of the blades just before they went out of stock, and they were all 0.2 or original firmware.  I also asked Friedcat about the firmware differences (a long time ago) and never got a response.

[pikeadz]

Are you sure that there's a 0.3 firmware?  I got some of the blades just before they went out of stock, and they were all 0.2 or original firmware.  I also asked Friedcat about the firmware differences (a long time ago) and never got a response.

Funny, so did I.   My first blade purchased in May had the upgraded firmware.  Then the second one had the original firmware.  Friedcat asked for screenshots and then never got back.  I didn't care because they both hashed almost identically, and, well, they're damn near obsolete already.

[sveetsnelda]

Interesting.  Maybe I'll go pull some firmware from the blades when I've got time and see if I have more than just two versions.  Maybe there's a version newer than 0.2 and it's just not marked on the web interface.

[CBailey]

Did you ever get a chance to pull that firmware?

My blade is pretty much useless now. Don't know if it's the proxy, the crappy blade firmware, or something else. I REALLY wish there was some documentation that could help me convert this thing to USB. Mu USB miners, with Minepeon, have been extremely rock stable.

[svojoe]

Did you ever get a chance to pull that firmware?

My blade is pretty much useless now. Don't know if it's the proxy, the crappy blade firmware, or something else. I REALLY wish there was some documentation that could help me convert this thing to USB. Mu USB miners, with Minepeon, have been extremely rock stable.

I am also having crazy trouble with 3 blades,   They work... but only about 50% speed all things considered.

I have tried basically everything, and I am safely rule that they are not running to hot, they are not under powered, they have a strong high speed internet connection and at least on the blade config itself, they are configured correctly and I can mine on several pools.

However, they restart every 2-3 minutes on they're own, and on the config windows they show zero hashrate and zero accepted shares.  Though they download around 300 before restarting, and resetting the counters.    Chips all read OOOOOO.

I had a mini-break through that has now resulted in more confusion.   Just an hour ago I re-configured my third blade to mine on Deepbit.   Through the normal 8332 ports.  And holy crap I got accepted shares and a slowly growing hashrate (4ghs) on the blade config.  But after 4 minutes the config page will not load (after hundreds of retries) and yet I can still ping the blade with only a 1-2ms return.   So why the config page is too slow to be reached I don't know.     And after around an hour deepbit is showing 6.7ghash.   So I can't see what is on the config, but I can only assume that it is performing exactly how it did before and I can't get back to the config page to try the 'high' speed setting.  And if it is resetting on its own it would go back to low anyway.

I am very confused, and I bet the diff will be 1.50 before I get this sorted out

[pidge]

I'm having this problem, too.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294645

Two blades were hashing just fine, then they just stopped consistently submit work back to mining_proxy.

Occasionally if left running they do may be 2 - 40 shares, then stop for 5 - 40 minutes, askig for work every 2 minutes but not submitting work (oh, and if you view the config page, it looks like it's restarting)

I've found a reference in the p2pool source code to the Blades having a buffer overrun issue on responses https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/blob/master/p2pool/bitcoin/worker_interface.py

But what's changed recently that might have caused this?

[wpgdeez]

Have you tried playing with the worker difficulty, mine are happiest at 16.

[Dalkore]

Thanks for the reply.

I've given it almost 24 hours, but still the same results. I tried the proxy on two different computers on my network, but more or less the same results.

How can I contact ASICMiner support?

What type of cooling setup do you have on the blade?  What is your temperature near the unit?

 

[CBailey]

In addition to two big fans on the heatsink side, I have another big fan on the underside. It runs pretty cool.
I've also checked the power supply on an oscilloscope to check for excessive ripple.
The problem could be the proxy. It doesn't seem to have been updated in a while. What would REALLY be great is if this blade supported Stratum.
After dealing with it a few more weeks, I've seen that it sometimes will start working (Never at full capacity, but sometimes close), but will stop if I mess with it. It's constantly rebooting, even when it is working. It's got to be the flakiest mess I've ever seen.

Well, this is absolutely positively my LAST blade. I'm just hoping to get it working good enough. I'm hoping someone has one that works well, and dumped the firmware from it.

Any luck on that firmware? Anyone?

[eastpk]

In addition to two big fans on the heatsink side, I have another big fan on the underside. It runs pretty cool.
I've also checked the power supply on an oscilloscope to check for excessive ripple.
The problem could be the proxy. It doesn't seem to have been updated in a while. What would REALLY be great is if this blade supported Stratum.
After dealing with it a few more weeks, I've seen that it sometimes will start working (Never at full capacity, but sometimes close), but will stop if I mess with it. It's constantly rebooting, even when it is working. It's got to be the flakiest mess I've ever seen.

Well, this is absolutely positively my LAST blade. I'm just hoping to get it working good enough. I'm hoping someone has one that works well, and dumped the firmware from it.

Any luck on that firmware? Anyone?

Are you not on stratum?
EDIT: you can put them on stratum. You just download a proxy, then point it to it.

[sveetsnelda]

Any luck on that firmware? Anyone?

Sorry, I had forgotten about this thread.  I tried to read the firmware for you, but it looks like the code protect flag is set.  I tried three different blades that were different versions.  I can only erase and write, not read.  :-/

[CBailey]

I was afraid of that. Thanks for trying.

Maybe the manufacturer would be kind enough to release the firmware?

[CBailey]

Have you tried playing with the worker difficulty, mine are happiest at 16.

I haven't played with the difficulty. None of the pools I use allow it. Is there another way to adjust it?