The Chili – 30+GH/s BFL based Bitcoin Miner Assembly

[asjfdlksfd]

Not really. I have a 4 chip board that I play with that is similarly limited, even if I only run 2 chips on it. It's more a function of the BFL chips being broken, the highest clock divisor doesn't work so you reach a maximum frequency setpoint and then can only vary the frequency using the voltage. There's a limit to how far you can push the voltage though.

Do you played with external clock injenction to the test clock pin? I mean I saw in documentation the internal clock can be overridden by setting external clock on this pin. Also it is described as an test pin.

Cheers...

[MrTeal]

Not really. I have a 4 chip board that I play with that is similarly limited, even if I only run 2 chips on it. It's more a function of the BFL chips being broken, the highest clock divisor doesn't work so you reach a maximum frequency setpoint and then can only vary the frequency using the voltage. There's a limit to how far you can push the voltage though.

Do you played with external clock injenction to the test clock pin? I mean I saw in documentation the internal clock can be overridden by setting external clock on this pin. Also it is described as an test pin.

Cheers...

No, I didn't have a source that could provide a single ended clock up to 500MHz so I didn't bother. There actually was a clock generator on the first board, but it couldn't push it faster than the onboard oscillator anyway.

[MrTeal]

Question -

What is the max amperage provided by the 3 pin fan power ports on these? I've got a pretty hefty fan I'd like to point along the edge to keep the FETs stuff cool. It is however a 2A fan and I don't want to overdraw anything. Thanks!

The PFET is rated at -4.2A at 25C (-3.4A @ 70C) so you should be fine. It's had no problem running a Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme CLC that draws 20-30W, so I think you'll be fine.

[MrTeal]

Mr Teal or anyone "in the know",

I start and stop my bfgminer quite a bit, but often one or the other of my Chilis doesn't come up again and I can't add it manually.  I have to do a hard reset or power on/off to get it to reboot and get seen again.  Restarting bfgminer or invoking it with --force-dev-init doesn't seem to do the trick.

My question is there any way I can force it to reset via a commandline so I don't have to wait until I get home from work or whatever?  I know the devices are on /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB1 and when they're working, I can see some output if I cat them directly, but I get nothing if it's hung.  Any ideas to force a reset remotely?  

Hmm, on a whim I just did:

Code:

echo "reset" >/dev/ttyUSB1

and now a few minutes later when I started bfgminer again, it CAME BACK!   It's never come back from a hangup before, so maybe that did it?  Or was this just a fluke?

Anyone?  Bueler?

edit: spoke too soon - it was recognized for a bit, but NOT hashing.  then trying to restart from within bfgminer just made it disappear again.  Argh.

I've noticed that myself primarily with cgminer, that if cgminer crashes/exits the unit will sometime hang. We're looking into where that might be happening and hope to have a fix in for the next firmware release.

[xselam1988]

I've got like 3 or 4 cards that all of the sudden are showing 250GH/100% hardware errors?

I have them off now and will let them cool completely down before turning them back on.. But reading on here that some people solved this with firmware reflash's.

Do these cards get in situations where they need to be re-flashed? Or can a reboot always get them "back"

I am currently running the 14e flash that has the 1.1v limit.

What were those cards achieving before they went to 250GH/100%HW ?

I have some has 2Thash and 100%Hw

[twib2]

I've noticed that myself primarily with cgminer, that if cgminer crashes/exits the unit will sometime hang. We're looking into where that might be happening and hope to have a fix in for the next firmware release.

Thanks.  If it helps, I noticed that killing bfgminer with "pkill -9 bfgminer" *seems* to cause this behavior more often than with "pkill bfgminer" which lets it exit a bit more gracefully.

[jelin1984]

i have win xp

try to install   win usb drivers with zadig

but failed to install;

why that happen??
i must install something else first??

[Bargraphics]

Almost 36 Days uptime. Solid Units. As always I recommend MrTeal/ChipGeek.

[agibby5]

Almost 36 Days uptime. Solid Units.

Looks like you would have almost solved a block there (best share = 1.14G)!  Or depending on the difficulty at the time maybe you would have.

[lightfoot]

Almost 36 Days uptime. Solid Units.

Looks like you would have almost solved a solo share (1.14G)!  Or depending on the difficulty at the time maybe you would have.

Thanks for that picture. Your errors and submit ratios almost exactly match my unit, so I can say mine is working normally. I still am getting a good 39/36gh rate out of it with the water cooling heatsink, best $50 I have spent.

C

[HellDiverUK]

i have win xp

i must install something else first??

How about installing an OS that's less than 13 years old?   

[Bargraphics]

Thanks for that picture. Your errors and submit ratios almost exactly match my unit, so I can say mine is working normally. I still am getting a good 39/36gh rate out of it with the water cooling heatsink, best $50 I have spent.

C

Mine are just using the EVO212 heatsinks with the Recommended Padding (not even arctic silver)

[lightfoot]

Thanks for that picture. Your errors and submit ratios almost exactly match my unit, so I can say mine is working normally. I still am getting a good 39/36gh rate out of it with the water cooling heatsink, best $50 I have spent.

C

Mine are just using the EVO212 heatsinks with the Recommended Padding (not even arctic silver)

*nod* And running a few gh slower, matches what I saw with the cooler master. Oddly enough I am running two 7 chip jallies, one with the cooler master and a big heat sink on the back (60-70c), and one with a corsair water block on the back and the cheap BFL AL sink on the front (40c). The temp difference is quite impressive, but so is the value of cooling the back of the board as well as the chips.

Fun stuff.

[twib2]

So, with my rooms being nice and cold now, I finally ran into the situation where my Chili would overvolt.  I installed the e1v1.hex to limit the voltage, and it works, but I definitely take a hit - about 5% or 2 GH/s.  I see 4 places where the e.hex differs from the e1v1.hex file, and I was wondering if I could just get a bit of the voltage back since my units run so well.  But it's not clear what to change.  Thoughts?  I'm thinking 1.14V would be a better limit than 1.1V since mine runs well up to 1.18V.

Can a firmware file be posted that has a different limit?  Or a guide so that we can put in the limit of our own choosing?

Thanks much!

[agibby5]

So, with my rooms being nice and cold now, I finally ran into the situation where my Chili would overvolt.  I installed the e1v1.hex to limit the voltage, and it works, but I definitely take a hit - about 5% or 2 GH/s.  I see 4 places where the e.hex differs from the e1v1.hex file, and I was wondering if I could just get a bit of the voltage back since my units run so well.  But it's not clear what to change.  Thoughts?  I'm thinking 1.14V would be a better limit than 1.1V since mine runs well up to 1.18V.

Can a firmware file be posted that has a different limit?  Or a guide so that we can put in the limit of our own choosing?

Thanks much!

Most of my best performers are working well between 1.14v and 1.16v

[twib2]

Also, following up on the Chili that died during a reset gone bad (short pins 5-6 but must have also touched something adajacent)...  I replaced the FTDI, so now two parts are working:

1.) The boot up light sequence appears to be functioning correctly, so I would imagine that most of the Chili should be in good order (was working right after I lost comms/hashing, too).
2.) The FTDI seems to work.  I can see the device in the USBs and in Windows I can *try* to read or even flash the firmware, but I get garbage in the results window.

Something else must be dead, but I'm not sure where to go from here.  Ideas, anyone?

[lightfoot]

Are you sure all the pins are soldered and there are no bridges? It took me the ass end of ever to get the FTDI chip working on a jally; class one pain in the ass.

C

[MrTeal]

Also, following up on the Chili that died during a reset gone bad (short pins 5-6 but must have also touched something adajacent)...  I replaced the FTDI, so now two parts are working:

1.) The boot up light sequence appears to be functioning correctly, so I would imagine that most of the Chili should be in good order (was working right after I lost comms/hashing, too).
2.) The FTDI seems to work.  I can see the device in the USBs and in Windows I can *try* to read or even flash the firmware, but I get garbage in the results window.

Something else must be dead, but I'm not sure where to go from here.  Ideas, anyone?

I would concur with lightfoot, it sounds like the microcontroller is running fine and the FTDI chip is also working or at least partially working.
When the device shows up in Windows, is it a serial port / serial convertor, or does it show up as a Bitforce SC? If it doesn't show up in Windows and you're getting garbage from the EEPROM in the FT_PROG window, I'd look for a cold solder joint on the FTDI chip.

[Mudbankkeith]

I have just assembled my 7th Chili

On power up, the leds 5,6,7,8, come on and stay on, then leds 1,2,3,4, flash once.
The com port is not found. nothing else happens.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[MrTeal]

I have just assembled my 7th Chili

On power up, the leds 5,6,7,8, come on and stay on, then leds 1,2,3,4, flash once.
The com port is not found. nothing else happens.

Does anyone have any ideas?

This is one of Lucko's boards?

LEDS 5-8 being on indicate that it is in the hardware initialization phase and if there is a hardware fault it keep those on. This is usually due to the 1V power supply not being able to turn on for whatever reason.