KNC ASIC Users Thread & FAQ

[Tigggger]

Thought it might be handy to have a seperate thread where owners can share information, tips, modifications, improvements, addons etc away from the clutter of the 'where's my order' posts in the main thread.

If I see common questions cropping up will add them here as an FAQ reference.

Latest Firmware : 0.96

FAQ
Q: How do I login to view cgminer working.
A: First ensure you have enabled SSH from the web interface.  Next use a program (eg PuTTy http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html). Connect to your miners IP, login:root password:admin then from the command prompt type 'screen -r'. When you are finished press Ctrl + A, D to detach.

Q: My miner settings page is blank and won't load
A: If you make any changes to the pools through cgminer for example adding a second backup pool, then it throws this page off as it's expecting to read only 1 pool. As long as you are mining this can be ignored, hopefully in the future the web interface will allow multiple pools.

Q: What are these errors "KnC: accepted by FPGA 21 works, but only 0 submitted"
A: These are not usually errors (*). They occur when a new block is found. Rather than submitting stale work which will be rejected the machine is getting rid of existing work and loading up new work, this is why there is a pause and hashrate drop as it slowly gets back up to speed.  * If you see these messages one after the other when no new block has been found then that does indicate a problem

Q: I've updated my firmware but it's still showing the old version number
A: The page has been cached, try F5 or Ctrl+F5 that usually fixes it.

Q: What's the deal with the Corsair HX850, is it safe to use or not
A: It's still early days with the investigation that KNC are conducting.  Some miners where caps have blown have used this particular model. The problem is thought to occur when the a safety mechanism in the PSU shuts it down, when it is powered back on it is delivering too much current.  It doesn't appear to be a problem during normal on/off usage only after the PSU has shut itself down.  If you already have this PSU and decide not to change, I would suggest that if you find your machine has shut itself down follow these steps. 1. Disconnect Power. 2. Remove all PCI-E cables. 3. Reconnect power and start with just beaglebone. 4. Run for a couple of minutes. 5. Shutdown 6. Disconnect power 7. Reconnect PCI-E cables 8. Reconnect Power & Restart.

Modifications
Fixing the time.
Machines appear to ship with the time set to UTC, although it's not important it did annoy me not having the correct time, these instructions came from Nanners on the IRC channel and worked for me, replace 'tigggger' with whatever you want.  Note these changes will probably be lost when you reboot, so might require you to repeat step 5 onwards.

1. cd /config
2. mkdir tigggger
3. cd /config/tigggger
4. wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/v2012.12/ipk/eglibc/all/tzdata_2012d-r3.0_all.ipk
5. opkg install /config/tigggger/tzdata_2012d-r3.0_all.ipk
6. rm /etc/localtime (NOTE this gave an error for me as the directory wasn't there, but not important just carry on)
7. ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/YOURTIMEZONE /etc/localtime (In my case it was ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime)
8. cd /
9. /etc/init.d/ntpd reload
10. ntpdate -b -u pool.ntp.org

Now if you look at cgminer the time should be correct.

Addons
uski has created a great little addon to show more information about your miner, like which cores are enabled/disabled, vrm voltages etc.  As this firmware is software based KNC have confirmed that it does not invalidate your warranty.



Available from the KNC Forum
http://forum.kncminer.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/6183-bertmod-0-2-unofficial-firmware-mod-feedback-thread

[1714476053]

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[1714476053]

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[Sitarow]

Thought it might be handy to have a seperate thread where owners can share information, tips, modifications, improvements, addons etc away from the clutter of the 'where's my order' posts in the main thread.

That sounds like a good idea. I have posted my experience and will keep it updated over the next few days.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306969.0

[Tigggger]

Yours was the post that prompted me, my room temp is only 23 and with my aircon set to 25 it's never coming on.  Initially I thought this was good but the amount of air coming out of the back is quite low so slightly concerned that all the heat is staying in the box.

Look forward to hearing how new fans affect yours.

[mgio]

For those of you who are upgrading the case fans (maybe even going with 120mm fan with an adaptor), what fans are you planning on using?

[mjb]

Thanks for opening this thread.
However, judging from the low SNR of the main KnC thread I would suggest to close this thread and restart it as a self-moderated one before it is discovered by the trolls and people that post their ROI calculations for the 100th time, etc.

[DigginDeep]

Has anyone mounted some fans in the back to suck the air out?     Or maybe thought about cutting some holes and mounting fans on the top cover?

[iCEBREAKER]

So far the burn-in seems to be going very well!

[Xialla]

great idea. btw my photos here: http://imgur.com/a/hwZmh#0

[amencon]

Good idea.

Jupiter running for about an hour with v0.93 fw connected to bitminter.  CGminer looks to report 490-520G / ~470Gh/s for hash rates with bitminter reporting 430-450 range.  Averaging about 10% HW rates from what I can tell.

430-450 is less than Sam was announcing but still more than I ordered, unless I'm reading something wrong or just need to give it more time.

When shipped the heat sink shrouds were popped off but in good looking shape other than that (was shipped to US).

Running it with case off and a overhead fan blowing down on it.

Does this match what you guys are seeing with your units?

Oh also, looking at cgminer using putty from a windows machine, I can't see any temperature readings.  Some quick googling seems to indicate that isn't shown while remoting in, any idea if there is way to see this?

Thanks.

[Tigggger]

From talk on the IRC channel there is a wide variety of speeds reported, which I guess it related to how many cores are being disabled.

Some people say 0.90 was the fastest but for me it was the slowest

Personally mine is averaging 530 in CGMiner, usually showing about 20 less at pool, so I'd say yours is on the low side, but they do seem to take a while to stabilise and get up to speed.

There are no temp readings, whether there are sensors on the boards and not enabled yet in the firmware I don't know.

[Xian01]

Please make sure to don proper attire when entering a room to troubleshoot a unit.

[amencon]

From talk on the IRC channel there is a wide variety of speeds reported, which I guess it related to how many cores are being disabled.

Some people say 0.90 was the fastest but for me it was the slowest

Personally mine is averaging 530 in CGMiner, usually showing about 20 less at pool, so I'd say yours is on the low side, but they do seem to take a while to stabilise and get up to speed.

There are no temp readings, whether there are sensors on the boards and not enabled yet in the firmware I don't know.

Ok cool, thanks.

I'll keep an eye on it, this thread and KNC for further updates.

[joeventura]

great idea. btw my photos here: http://imgur.com/a/hwZmh#0

Some controller cards seem to have 4 places to plug in modules and some have 6.

What happened there?

[6raygp]

To get the cgminer stats on a Jupiter I would just telnet and run cgminer on a laptop correct? Do I need to configure the settings and all? Or is there a way to just see the cgminer stats?
 

[amencon]

To get the cgminer stats on a Jupiter I would just telnet and run cgminer on a laptop correct? Do I need to configure the settings and all? Or is there a way to just see the cgminer stats?
 

After you SSH in just type "screen -r" and it should pop up.

[gnar1ta$]

To get the cgminer stats on a Jupiter I would just telnet and run cgminer on a laptop correct? Do I need to configure the settings and all? Or is there a way to just see the cgminer stats?
 

Turn ssh on in the web interface and ssh into it.  cgminer runs in a screen session and will give you all the awful stats you want.

[qiuness]

hmm... what the hell is with that average?! Since friday i got 9BTC so the 5s should be correct?!
anyone any ideas?

[Vagnavs]

what does the miner show up as?





I can't seem to connect to the unit and hopefully isn't DOA. Such as my Avalon that was DOA.

any help would be greatly appreciated! I will give a bounty for helping me on this
Brian

[qiuness]

no name

[Vagnavs]

no name

okay thanks for the reply. Nothing seems to be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Brian

[amencon]

no name

okay thanks for the reply. Nothing seems to be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Brian

You could punch all those IPs into your browser and see if one connects.  Not a very elegant solution but it should work.

[jelin1984]

does anyone have any red light at front of the knc panel when minig?
what these mean?

[Charles999]

You guys think I can put two Saturns on one power supply?  Or is it better to just run each on it's own PS.

I have a 1200 Watt PS.  I'd prefer to use one as it saves space.

Thanks for your input.

[sickpig]

hmm... what the hell is with that average?! Since friday i got 9BTC so the 5s should be correct?!
anyone any ideas?

You should have minted @1TH/s to get 9btc with only 1 jup

[Tigggger]

Added an FAQ to the first post for questions I see coming up quite often.

Anything you'd like to add let me know.

[OgonDark]

We got our 2 Jupiters on Monday.

Anyone who is getting a miner from KnC should be sure to open up the box, as both units had fans that had fallen loose and one unit had a couple of plugs that had wiggled their way free. 

After checking that everything was ready to go, setup was a breeze and the miners have been running fairly stable.  Averaging around 500+ on both, so good so far.
 

[uski]

Hi,

I just posted a firmware mod for KnCminer 0.93, I thought you might be interested in it :
http://forum.kncminer.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/5712-bertmod-0-1-announcing-the-first-kncminer-unofficial-firmware-mod-available-now

uski

[erschiessen]

does anyone have any red light at front of the knc panel when minig?
what these mean?

Green light up front, blue back on the beaglebone a ways.
Solid on the left, blinking on the right.

[erschiessen]

One more thing:

Thanks to all of you guys on the KNCMINER chat page.
Your assistance was vital.

Zum Wohl!

[ecliptic]

Suggestion: Figure out how to mine through Tor or similar anonymizing network

Remember, several people with early batch Avalons had their homes broken into and their units stolen.

Why take unnecessary risk?

[gnar1ta$]

Suggestion: Figure out how to mine through Tor or similar anonymizing network

Remember, several people with early batch Avalons had their homes broken into and their units stolen.

Why take unnecessary risk?

Yeah mining through tor...no latency or connectivity issues there.  How about just not posting your IP, address, or order information....otherwise known as common sense.

[mininganon]

Hi guys I have a Jupiter and have been around the forums a long while 1yr... new name under VPN.

OK how do you mine with a VPN? Easy get an old PC load it with PFsense and use openvpn to route all traffic through the VPN. Really any linux will do. Search engine skills required for this task yet not to hard to pull off. Can do the same trick with TOR using linux it's called a transparent anonymizing proxy < search that. TOR's own site has instructions how to set it up.

How to find the miner IP, log into your router 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 go to the DHCP page or the ARP table and find the IP. You can also use nmap with GUI like umit in ubuntu. Just 'sudo apt-get install umit' go into it (yes root) and type in the target box 192.168.0.* then quick detect, go!

[mininganon]

My Jupiter won't run the .92 or .93 firmware it just causes CGminer to crash over and over. I've found .91 to be the most stable and fast avg. 460ghs@535 watts and guys get a meter so you can see when you are hashing, It's been a life saver. Using 50btc.com pool

I think the main problem we're all having is that KNC in their infinite wisdom spiked(maybe to harsh) almost every Jupiter with 1 lower grade unit you can see in the one I have 3 units that have "1" stickers on them and the HOT one thats causing issues has a "3". Our machines can only hash as fast as our worst unit right now. Other company sell by grade as KNC should start doing if they can't solve this with a firmware update.

P.S. Can someone post a cheat sheet on cgminer commands ur using? I'm not a linux noob just cgminer and this OS on Jupiter. Basics start, stop maybe add redundancy pools if KNC does not in FW .94

[sickpig]

My Jupiter won't run the .92 or .93 firmware it just causes CGminer to crash over and over. I've found .91 to be the most stable and fast avg. 460ghs@535 watts and guys get a meter so you can see when you are hashing, It's been a life saver. Using 50btc.com pool

this is precisely what's happening to me. stick with 0.91 cause .92/.93 cause cgminer to restart very frequently

[mininganon]

New firmware out...

[fhh]

Has anyone an idea why Jupiters and p2pool don't like eachother?
Mine is operated by a third person because I can't take care on it my own. But it's delivering only 300 GH/sec because cgminer takes often some thinging breaks. On other pools it works fine so far...

[-ck]

Has anyone an idea why Jupiters and p2pool don't like eachother?
Mine is operated by a third person because I can't take care on it my own. But it's delivering only 300 GH/sec because cgminer takes often some thinging breaks. On other pools it works fine so far...

Read from here onwards:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg3294238#msg3294238

[sickpig]

Has anyone an idea why Jupiters and p2pool don't like eachother?
Mine is operated by a third person because I can't take care on it my own. But it's delivering only 300 GH/sec because cgminer takes often some thinging breaks. On other pools it works fine so far...

Read from here onwards:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg3294238#msg3294238

thanks for the info/pointer ckolivas !

edit: they've just released a new fiw version (.94) hopefully they have fixed that. 

[mininganon]

Firmware .94 is a WIN was having multi probs couldn't run .92-.93 etc... Now it seems solid at 470-480!! not to bad was hoping to have a full on half terrahash of power but this is nice considering I paid for a 350-400ghs machine?

I'm only using 535 watts, it spikes to 555w at CG start but then drops slow to settle at 535. Is this normal? I'm hearing people saying they're running 850watts?! I have a Corsair HX850 and the cores are at 44c to 35c. I KNOW this thing can push a LOT more.

Good job KNC but lets unleash this thing in the next firmware.

EDIT: FW .94 not winning anymore, It slow dies after a few hr.

[AFox]

Has anyone an idea why Jupiters and p2pool don't like eachother?
Mine is operated by a third person because I can't take care on it my own. But it's delivering only 300 GH/sec because cgminer takes often some thinging breaks. On other pools it works fine so far...

Read from here onwards:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg3294238#msg3294238

Good to know, I had the same problems on Eligius.

[nwoolls]

According to this post on the KnC miners forum, there are users interested in using MultiMiner with their KnC miners.

Any of you lucky folks feel like testing the Stratum Proxy feature in MultiMiner to see if it works with your KnC miner? It currently works well with Erupter Blades and I'm curious to see if it will work with KnC miners.

First, download and run MultiMiner. Go into the Settings and choose bfgminer as the backend miner. Then click Advanced backend miner settings and enable the Stratum Proxy setting.



This will cause a "virtual" device to show in MultiMiner which you can then use to configure coins, pools, failover, etc.

Then you should be able to configure your KnC miner to use the IP address and port of the Stratum Proxy configured above.

Again it works with the Blade miners and I am curious to see if it works with the KnC hardware as well. Thanks in advance if anyone feels like having a play and leaving some feedback!

[ecliptic]

Suggestion: Figure out how to mine through Tor or similar anonymizing network

Remember, several people with early batch Avalons had their homes broken into and their units stolen.

Why take unnecessary risk?

Yeah mining through tor...no latency or connectivity issues there.  How about just not posting your IP, address, or order information....otherwise known as common sense.

The pool has your IP.  That is more than enough.

God help you if you use P2Pool.

[gnar1ta$]

Suggestion: Figure out how to mine through Tor or similar anonymizing network

Remember, several people with early batch Avalons had their homes broken into and their units stolen.

Why take unnecessary risk?

Yeah mining through tor...no latency or connectivity issues there.  How about just not posting your IP, address, or order information....otherwise known as common sense.

The pool has your IP.  That is more than enough.

God help you if you use P2Pool.

Oh no...all my Jupiter has been stolen!!!  I shouldn't have used p2pool.... Oh wait, back to reality, everything is good...still hashing.

[fpgaminer]

Reporting my experience so far:

I have one of the duds.  v0.9.4, case off, box fan.  Only 440 GH/s, ~16% error rate, and 900W.

Using Bertmod 0.2 I was able to look at the voltages and such.  Looks like my unit is being overvolted to 0.92V on all the modules.  As far as I can tell the nominal voltage is 0.7V, so I think their firmware is choosing to overvolt to compensate for bad chip(s).  So all the dies are pulling 50 Amps, driving my total power usage to 900W.

I suspect that not all of the dies are bad; only some.  But the firmware is indifferent to the particular needs of each die, and simply overvolts all of them to keep up the hashrate.  If that's the case, I could see a future update which only overvolts the under-performing dies, reducing my overall power consumption.

It's better than nothing, and I sincerely understand that KNC's schedule was extraordinarily tight.  I commend them for meeting their goals on such an ambitious project.  It's still disappointing to see some people getting good units, and others getting bad units, though

EDIT: I poked around with the firmware.  It seems that I was wrong about it setting the voltage to 0.9V automatically.  Rather, it looks like it's that way from the factory; the firmware isn't setting the voltage.  Though the screenshot here shows someone at 0.7V.  So for whatever reason KNC is shipping some units at 0.7V and some at 0.9V.

On top of that, unless the DC/DC modules they're using have changed, these are only rated for 40A.  Mine are pushing 50A.  ...

I did discover, though, that it's possible to digitally tweak the voltage.  Perhaps a future firmware upgrade will take advantage of that.  I don't have the balls to try it myself manually.

[warhawk187]

Does anyone know why my Saturn stops hashing after 15 minutes???! This is ridiculous, it will hash @275-280 and then cgminer will start throwing FPGA errors and then either die completely or turn off a core and run @170ish Gh/s, but its never consistent. I've used 3 different PSU's and used all of the available firmware versions (mine came with 0.91).

What the F??! Anyone have any insight, or at least know how I can script cgminer via Putty to restart every 10 minutes? The case is off and when it hashes it hashes fine, but then, it just....dies. What gives?!?!

[hagbase]

Try this:
downgrade to 0.90 and upgrade than to 0.94, do a hard reset, wait till miner is online, maybe u'll get an error message pool config is wrong or something like that, connect with putty and restart cgminer/config.

I've mounted two Noctua NF-S12B FLX Fans sucking air out to streamline the airflow in case.

[warhawk187]

Try this:
downgrade to 0.90 and upgrade than to 0.94, do a hard reset, wait till miner is online, maybe u'll get an error message pool config is wrong or something like that, connect with putty and restart cgminer/config.

I've mounted two Noctua NF-S12B FLX Fans sucking air out to streamline the airflow in case.

Thank you! The good news is that has been stable for at least 20 minutes now. The bad news is that it now runs at ~230Gh/s instead of ~275Gh/s for the 10 minutes it would run before throwing endless FPGA core 21 errors. I hope they sort this out soon.

[billywilly]

Someone knows what does it mean "FAULT 17" on status of VRM's?


https://i.imgur.com/c8tDprM.png

[sickpig]

Someone knows what does it mean "FAULT 17" on status of VRM's?

never seen before. how many cores are enabled for that die/asic?

[sickpig]

Someone knows what does it mean "FAULT 17" on status of VRM's?

never seen before. how many cores are enabled for that die/asic?

fw 0.95 was just released. give it a try.

[fpgaminer]

Just updated to 0.95; seems to have fixed my problems.  Went from 440GH/s, 16% errors, 900W to 530GH/s, 5% errors, 620W.  Much better!

As I suspected, this update dropped my voltages from 0.92V to ~0.73V, thus the drop in power usage.  Obviously they must have also fixed something else that corrected whatever hashrate issues units like mine were having.

[ralree]

Just got my jupiter and installed 0.95.  After 30 minutes or so of running and slowly creeping to 420GH or so, cgminer restarted and the unit now is averaging 475GH or so, with spikes above 500 being rather common.  Lots of the cores are going off and on due to hardware errors over and over again.  Overall, I'm pretty happy, but I wish it was over 500GH consistently.  It's pulling 2A @ 220V from my PDU, so I'm assuming it's rounding down and it's just above 500W.

[mininganon]

Upgraded from .91 to .95

Erratic first hour, it would go up to 550ghs then crash to 300 something and back. It looks to be settling now at about 450ghs. Will update

[mininganon]

.95 firmware for me is a little slower but more stable... Really torn here between loading .91 back and keeping .95?

Don't know how KNC is going to fix my issue if they are shipping 4vrm per module now and I have 8. It's like I have a different product.

Not always best to be first!

[ecliptic]

.95 nets me around 275/257 GH/sec for a Saturn on cgminer

the crazy thing is the onboard temps don't read above 48C, and i'm not seeing ANYTHING - VRM modules, caps, etc above 55C at the most.

Makes me think they're not thermally limited for clock rate.  Maybe the buck converters can't push enough current to clock higher or there's not sufficient decoupling capacitance/other voltage issues?

Or do these have untapped potential?  I am ignorant to how these devices are clocked, if cgminer / etc software can adjust the clock frequencies or if it's a hard-soldered oscillator / clock divider or what.

301 watts at the PSU line in

this is also with the cover off, but no external fans

[edgar]

.95 firmware for me is a little slower but more stable... Really torn here between loading .91 back and keeping .95?

Don't know how KNC is going to fix my issue if they are shipping 4vrm per module now and I have 8. It's like I have a different product.

Not always best to be first!

also very interested in the 8 vs 4 VRM boards....

seems to be the difference between a stable 550 and an unstable 400+

[jelin1984]

Which is stable and which is unstable ??with 0.95

The 4 or 8 version?

[billywilly]

Someone knows what does it mean "FAULT 17" on status of VRM's?


https://i.imgur.com/c8tDprM.png

never seen before. how many cores are enabled for that die/asic?

Now upgraded from 0.90 to 0.95 and the errors went off, but the cores disabled on that core were 48 in total, that's the reason because that core ran much cooler than the others. Dropped to 430w.

[Tigggger]

Added details of how to show the correct times into the first post

Modifications
Fixing the time.
Machines appear to ship with the time set to UTC, although it's not important it did annoy me not having the correct time, these instructions came from Nanners on the IRC channel and worked for me, replace 'tigggger' with whatever you want.

1. cd /config
2. mkdir tigggger
3. cd /config/tigggger
4. wget http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/v2012.12/ipk/eglibc/all/tzdata_2012d-r3.0_all.ipk
5. opkg install /config/tigggger/tzdata_2012d-r3.0_all.ipk
6. rm /etc/localtime (NOTE this gave an error for me as the directory wasn't there, but not important just carry on)
7. ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/YOURTIMEZONE /etc/localtime (In my case it was /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Belfast)
8. cd /
9. /etc/init.d/ntpd reload
10. ntpdate -b -u pool.ntp.org

Now if you look at cgminer the time should be correct.

[btc_uzr]

if you want to change the timezone only, you can set your env var 'TZ=GMT'  (or whatever you prefer)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg3337684#msg3337684

However it will not sync your time with ntp servers as the approach above from Tiggger

[Tigggger]

if you want to change the timezone only, you can set your env var 'TZ=GMT'  (or whatever you prefer)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg3337684#msg3337684

However it will not sync your time with ntp servers as the approach above from Tigggger

Tried that method as well, but although #date gave the correct response it didn't update the already running cgminer for me which was the thing that was annoying.

Be nice to have a permanent method, ideally an option in the GUI to select timezone.

[btc_uzr]

I see, thanks for letting me know

[Tigggger]

I see, thanks for letting me know

If somehow you could set that TZ variable during boot that may be a good solution but I know nothing about linux so no idea how.

[btc_uzr]

Code:

Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                245.1M         0    245.1M   0% /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p3          511.7M     88.0K    511.6M   0% /config


rootfs on / type rootfs (rw,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=251008k,nr_inodes=62752,mode=755)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/mmcblk0p3 on /config type vfat (rw,sync,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)

As it seems the only persistent storage is device /dev/mmcblk0p3 mounted on /config.
Therefore cgminer.conf and passwords remain on the system during upgrades&reboots.

One would have to modify the firmware file.

[Danglebee]

do use multiple knc minor with same pool ?
should use different pool ?

any tip ?

Thank you =)

[dogie]

do use multiple knc minor with same pool ?
should use different pool ?

any tip ?

Thank you =)

This is an older thread, see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=456033

[Danglebee]

thanks i post there.