BiFury

[lmp]

Hello,

As I'm not allowed to post anywhere else, I'm posting here.   

I have got several BiFury miners, it looks like it has very little or almost no support at all.
That's why I'd be happy if someone could help me a little bit.

First o fall is there some way how to get it running under Linux? To be more specific Debian 7.2.
When I connect device to system in kernel log I see:
[1704559.597506] usb 2-2.1: new full-speed USB device number 9 using uhci_hcd
[1704559.733273] usb 2-2.1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[1704559.860650] hub 2-2:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

It looks like I need some driver is missing (module).

Few more questions:
Under windows I have running devices with cgminer, but no device is running with promissed 5+gh/s I have about 4.6-4.7gh/s. What can cause this problem?
What is normal running temperature and what is maximum acceptable temperature for this device?
What dose red blinking led mean?

In bgfminer readme I written:

If you want to upgrade the firmware, unplug your device. You will need to
temporarily short a circuit. With the USB connector pointing forward, and the
heatsink down, look to the forward-right; you will see two tiny lights, a set of
2 terminals, and a set of 3 terminals. The ones you need to short are the set of
2. With them shorted, plug the device back into your computer. It will then
pretend to be a mass storage disk drive. If you use Windows, you can play along
and just overwrite the firmware.bin file. If you use Linux, you must use mcopy:
    mcopy -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC1XXX_IFLASH_ISP-0:0 firmware.bin \
        ::/firmware.bin
After this is complete, unplug the device again and un-short the 2 terminals.
This completes the upgrade and you can now plug it back in and start mining.

It looks quite clear, but only problem is where I can get mentioned file firmware.bin? And why should I change it?

Maybe there is some way to overclock device, to get higher hash rate?

I'll be happy if someone could help or explain me any of questions written
Thank you!
Cheers,
Lauris

[alexandre_ganso]

Firmware can be found at http://c-scape.nl/bi-fury/

According to the website, the LED should not turn on when you short-circuit it. All of mine do, so I don't know how to upgrade them.

On the webpage, you have the option of choosing which temperature is too much to turn the chips off. Mine apparently turns off around 78 degrees, but that can be bfgminer.

Did you figure out the meaning of the lights? When it's red or green?

[510499784]

DFHRDER

[askhimthatsoon]

While I got those to run under Windows with bfgminer, under linux I was only successful with cgminer. Possibly newer versions of bfgminer work well, but as cgminer works now, I'll operate under the directive "never change a running system". I suggest you ignore the urge to update the firmware, you should be able to get way higher than 5GH/s out of the box (depends on the chips on your stick a bit, as well as cooling).

If you plug the stick in, it doesn't matter that linux doesn't find a driver, cgminer communicates with the devices directly.
After the USB stick is plugged in, you should see a line similar to this, after issuing an "lsusb" command.

:Bus 001 Device 020: ID 198c:b1f1

The "b1f1" device is your bifury and you can access it.

I suggest you get the latest cgminer and compile it. Under Debian Wheezy (Raspberry Pi), this will lead to success (make sure you increase the version number, if latest version has progressed further):

:sudo apt-get update
:sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev libusb-1.0-0 libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev libudev-dev
:wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/cgminer-3.10.0.tar.bz2
:tar xvf cgminer-3.10.0.tar.bz2
:cd cgminer-3.10.0/

we need to enable the bitfury driver

:./configure --enable-bitfury

then we compile

:make

and install

:sudo make install

Now you can start cgminer from anywhere, like this:

:sudo cgminer -o your_pool_ip:pool_stratum_port -u worker_id -p password

=> Hashrate should be >5GHs

Ignore the LEDs. The red one is only toggled by bfgminer and indicates the stick is hashing (i guess). Under cgminer it is always hashing, so continue cooling the stick, even if you quit cgminer. LED should be green at all times.

[askhimthatsoon]

I should add that the USB port and cooling also has a big impact on the hashrate. The devices get recognized as USB 1.1, smarter USB hubs or USB 2.0 ports will limit the peak power the device can draw to 500 mA. Other hubs will not allow you to operate more than one device in the same hub successfully. Attaching a USB 3.0 hub to a USB 2 port will often also limit the power draw from the ports as the whole hub operates in 2.0 mode. In order to check the hashrate of your stick, I would recommend testing a single stick on a USB 3.0 port directly on your computer and then solve the USB hub problem, either by getting a dumb hub that allows enough power to be drawn or by wiring separate 5.0V power to the each stick in a USB port. Somebody somewhere recommended a Dynex 7 port hub as a working solution. I use two no-name hubs I picked up at a local computer store. This might require some experimentation.

[djrxr6]

Hi,

I've followed the guides in this thread and found them very helpful, however I'm still unable to mine with my Bi-Fury. I'm hoping for some guidance.

I'm mining with cgminer 3.11 on Debian. All my block erupters are still fine, but my Bi-Fury is not. It shows up in Cgminer as a BX device and also shows the temperature, but it will not mine. The hash rate is 0.0.

I have upgraded the firmware, but it has not helped. I'm hoping I've done it correctly.  I must be doing it partially correct, cause I can access the device and copy the firmware.bin file. I'm just not sure if the process is 100% successful.

 Prior to updating, when I plugged in my Bi-Fury, the green LED would illuminate and stay on. Since upgrading, the green and red lights briefly flash, but then no lights come back on until cgminer picks up the Bi-Fury. Then the green light stays on even though it's not actually mining. Is this normal?

I've tried upgrading in Windows and in Linux, neither works. I originally tried mining with cgminer on Win7, but couldn't get the Bi-Fury to come up in cgminer at all.

My mining rig is an older Acer laptop. I've tried plugging the Bi-Fury directly into a USB port and through two different powered USB hubs. None of the ports are USB 3.0.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks