Bitminter client (Windows/Linux/Mac)

[Compton]

No, the unit that I used to install the driver (COM56) works in all of my hubs and direct ports.  I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver with the other 2 (COM57 and 58), but they each always time out, no matter where plugged in.  I suppose it is possible that 2 of the three are DOA, and I happened to select the working one when installing the drivers. 

Suggestions on how to eliminate that as a possibility?  I'm very much a rookie at this and haven't waded deeply into the other mining software, but that may be the next task.

Thanks for the help, by the way.

[DrHaribo]

What if you only have one of the non-working ones plugged in? It's still not working?

[philipma1957]

Did you install the bf1.inf ?

On Windows 7 I had to do that. On Mac OS X I didn't install anything, it worked out of the box.

There's a blue fury support thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319419.0 with installation instructions.

If you are using Bitminter client on Win 7, you'll need to download the bfgminerwin.zip file and install the bf1.inf from there. You don't need the rest of the files if you're not using bfgminer.

okay what mac osx mountain lion?  what browser firefox?

[Compton]

What if you only have one of the non-working ones plugged in? It's still not working?

Still not working under that circumstance.  I'm going to take the presently non-working two and goof around on a different host computer to see if I can get them working.  At present, after some jockeying, I have the presently working BF1 plugging along in a Rosewill hub along with 3 BEs.  The bad news is that the "miscalculation" rate on the BF1 is ridiculous.  As I'm typing, it is chugging along at 2.3 g, with 280 proofs accepted and over 800 miscalculations.  I think this may be the same hardware error rate being discussed in one of the support threads:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319419.140

More later.

[philipma1957]

My BEs are still visible, and the BF1 is seen but fails to initialise:

2013.11.05 [10:52] BitMinter Client v1.5.0beta2 started

2013.11.05 [10:52] Hint: Use performance mode for best GPU results (bottom right button)
2013.11.05 [10:52] Found 1 OpenCL-compatible GPU
2013.11.05 [10:52] Probing all ports for external devices
2013.11.05 [10:52] Probe of port cu.usbmodem1a12711 failed: timeout
2013.11.05 [10:52] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART38: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART37: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART36: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART35: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART34: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART33: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART32: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART31: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART30: Icarus
2013.11.05 [10:53] Device detected on cu.SLAB_USBtoUART: Icarus

I've noticed the BF1 shows up in the Network prefpane as a modem, as do the BEs.

27" iMac; OS X 10.9; Java 7; 10x Block Erupter; 1x BitFury BF1

I ran a mac mini on 10.8  with just the bf1  and i get the probe of port cu.usbmodem1a12711 failed timeout

[Compton]

What if you only have one of the non-working ones plugged in? It's still not working?

Still not working under that circumstance.  I'm going to take the presently non-working two and goof around on a different host computer to see if I can get them working.  At present, after some jockeying, I have the presently working BF1 plugging along in a Rosewill hub along with 3 BEs.  The bad news is that the "miscalculation" rate on the BF1 is ridiculous.  As I'm typing, it is chugging along at 2.3 g, with 280 proofs accepted and over 800 miscalculations.  I think this may be the same hardware error rate being discussed in one of the support threads:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319419.140

More later.

To add to the confusion, I was able to get one of the non working units recognized and hashing on different computer running the beta client, but only after about 20 Resets and probes directed at the specific COM port.  When I plugged the other nonworking one in and tried the same trick, the client again couldn't recognize them. 

I then ran the two nonworking units using BFGminer, and it recognized one and is currently hashing with it.  The third unit was detected by BFGminer (but never the bitminter client), but was listed as "SICK" and then "DEAD." 

I don't know what to make of any of this.  I have 2 of 3 working now, but only 1 with the bitminter client.  Still tons of miscalculations on that one too.

[DrHaribo]

okay what mac osx mountain lion?  what browser firefox?

OS X Maverick. I just put the red fury in the USB port and everything just worked.

Apple seems to block Java in Safari by default these days. You can use another browser, try to get Safari to accept Java, or start from the command line. From command line, open a Terminal window and type:

Code:

javaws https://bitminter.com/beta/beta.jnlp

As I'm typing, it is chugging along at 2.3 g, with 280 proofs accepted and over 800 miscalculations.  I think this may be the same hardware error rate being discussed in one of the support threads:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=319419.140

Yeah, that's normal for these devices. Apparently for every job it reports one bad nonce even when it is working OK. I'll see if I can stop counting those in the next beta version. That should make the error count more accurate. It will still be high though.

[rjg30]

That's odd. My BF1 runs just fine on both my Windows 7 and my Macbook.

Have you tried with bfgminer on the same computers? Does that work?

I'm using BitMinter not just because it's the best miner  , but because I mainly use my computers for running quantum mechanics software and need to use both MacPorts and Fink which the other miners complain about during compilation. I can't understand why they are distributed as source-only, since putting together a simple installer for precompiled binaries would be relatively easy.

Since Firefox and Safari both block 'unsigned' java code, I am running the beta.jnlp files using JavaWebStart. I wouldn't expect this to affect the proper execution of BitMinter though. The Block Erupters work fine.

[winit]

Can't get the beta Bitminter client to recognise the BF sticks on OSX have tried Snow Leopard and Mavericks.

Any help appreciated

[philipma1957]

doc you have a working blue fury stick .  I can't get my red fury to work.   As is the same for a lot of other miners on this thread.

 I am wondering if it is more the gear then anything else. 
If you want I can ship this to you via us mail as a broken part for testing/repair.
 No value no taxes.
 You can test it against the working one you have.   

 Just PM me a mailing address I know it is an overseas shipment  but If I recall it is only about 12 usd for me to ship it.


  Having 2 units one that works  (your in hand  blue fury model) and one that does not (my red fury)  may allow you to troubleshoot this gear.

[fastcore]

Red Fury gives me a "Probe on port COM6 failed: timeout" everytime. The BF1.inf drivers are installed and working fine.

[uberdag]

Was able to get my red fury working on bfgminer... but not on bitminter beta 1 or 2. Bfgminer Even runs rhe other usb sticks.
I have xubuntu 13.04... I think... ran updater

Hashing at around 2.2 Gh/s

At work now.

[DrHaribo]

doc you have a working blue fury stick .  I can't get my red fury to work.   As is the same for a lot of other miners on this thread.

I think they are the same, just different color. The one I got is just regular grey metal for the heatsink and green circuit board.

[TDR]

Running OS X Mavericks with BitMinter Client v1.5.0 Beta 2; BF1 won't work, always get:

Probe of port cu.usbmodemfa1331 failed: timeout

[fastcore]

Finally had time to mess with this. Got it working into the Bitminter pool by using bfgminer so the device is known to work. Didn't try Bitminter beta again but realized I can run Bitminter on my erupters and bfgminer on my BF1 so running them in tandem for the time being.

[philipma1957]

Finally had time to mess with this. Got it working into the Bitminter pool by using bfgminer so the device is known to work. Didn't try Bitminter beta again but realized I can run Bitminter on my erupters and bfgminer on my BF1 so running them in tandem for the time being.

I am running 13 BE's  and 1 BF1    the be's are bit minter's java client and the Bf1 is using bfgminer 3.5.1   >  I am hashing at about 2.37 gh    now that I got one set up I decided to buy 3 more.

[rjg30]

After wrestling with OS X and Windows (XP and 8.1), I installed bgfminer on a Mint 14 (Ubuntu) virtual machine in VMWare Fusion. My BF1 is finally hashing:

 BPM 0:       |  2.42/ 2.43/ 2.44Gh/s | A:331 R:7+0(2.1%) HW:460/ 58%

A 58% HW error rate seems unacceptably high  , but at least the device is functioning. 

I can't wait to try a new BitMinter client.

[rjg30]

A bit more experimenting may have helped shed some light on the BitFury BF1 failing to work (on Mac/Linux at least). If run as a user with standard access permissions, it will timeout during initialisation. If run as root (or 'sudo') it will work OK. This is true for BFGMiner, but I can't figure out how to 'sudo' a .jnlp file to test the BitMinter beta.

[DrHaribo]

Instead of running as root it is much better to give a less privileged user access to the serial ports. In general you should run as few programs as possible as root.

As the Bitminter client says if you probe all ports and find nothing: You may lack access to serial ports (Ubuntu: "sudo usermod -a -G dialout USERNAME" then log out and back in).

Yes, serial ports were once used to access a modem that would use a copper wire called a telephone line to communicate. Initiating these ancient connections was known as dialling out. So on Ubuntu if you add the "dialout" group to your user then you will get access to the serial ports. Other Linuxes may work differently.

[rjg30]

Instead of running as root it is much better to give a less privileged user access to the serial ports. In general you should run as few programs as possible as root.

As the Bitminter client says if you probe all ports and find nothing: You may lack access to serial ports (Ubuntu: "sudo usermod -a -G dialout USERNAME" then log out and back in).

Yes, serial ports were once used to access a modem that would use a copper wire called a telephone line to communicate. Initiating these ancient connections was known as dialling out. So on Ubuntu if you add the "dialout" group to your user then you will get access to the serial ports. Other Linuxes may work differently.

Hi Dr. H.

Avoiding doing things as 'root' is excellent advice.

It wasn't until I sudo'ed bfgminer that I got it working at all. Until then, both BitMinter and bfgminer were failing to initialise the BF1 and reported 'timeout' errors. I was wondering if access permissions might be the common factor causing some people to see their BF1 units fail to initialise with the beta client.