Bitmain AntMiner U1 Tips & Tricks

[klondike_bar]

I have the issue that with either 8 or 9 of the USBs in my hubs (sufficient power IMO) they all work fine but the entire time i am seeing

----
bmsc send golden nonce
bmsc recieve golden nonce timeout
----

as well as `send frequency`statuses

The entire time all units are hashing at full speed, but after 30min-3hours cgminer crashes

any ideas why or of a solution?

[1714945033]

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[eroxors]

ok
New results from  overclocking attempts:

I upgraded my 4 Anminers with 10K and 2.5K  Resistors, and  connected only one antminer first.
Finaly i  managed to  get  very stable 2,4-2,5 GHS from one miner.
The overclocking procedure is not straight forward.

The antminer SilLab microcontroller seems to store some kind of calibration table  , which he uses to control PWM of the DC/DC converter and adjust the voltage for  TXO ( Frequency).
After you change the voltage output of the DC/DC converter those calibration values didn't match with reality, so you just cant start with high frequencies, the error is too high.
Instead start with  lowers  GHS possible: 1.4 GHS.
Wait until it stabilize, and increase the frequency by one value.
Step by step I managed to run Antimner at  0B81, which gave me about 2,5 GHS.

After i plugged the second  calibrated miner into USB3.0 HUB (4A max), the speed of the 1st miner  gone to 2.1 GHS, and the second  one gave 1.9 GHS.  The third miner just gone zombie...
Seems like there is not enough  power? But funny enough I got the same 2.5 GHS result from  USB2.0 PC port.... so current shouldn't be a problem here, probably....

I am, not quite sure WTF is wrong with AntimnerU1. Maybe some kind of connection/synchronisation errors with cgminer...
I tried to run  BFG miner, but it couldnt find any device at all....even after i deinstall zadig drivers.
Moreover CGMINER cant find a device directly from USB3.0 (my USB3.0 hub is connected to the USB2.0 Port) port.


I will purchase a PCI USB2.0 extension card with separate powersupply from the main PSU. Costs only 10 Euro, so i give it a try, in case there is not enough  current...

Where did you get your resistors (what part #s?) and how did you adjust the frequency once cgminer was running?

Thanks

[Laxe]

Got new USB 3 powered hub and I think the U1's are running ok now at 0981 (2 Gh/s) but BFG Miner lists the 'effective' hash rate at only 1.5 Gh/s.

Is this something I can adjust or is it simply a pool issue?  I've got hardly any hardware errors on all four units (2 have only 1 HW error).

Any ideas?

[chromosoma]

Where did you get your resistors (what part #s?) and how did you adjust the frequency once cgminer was running?

Thanks

there is no part number, just search for  0603 SMD resistors on ebay. You will get them  very cheap.
You cant change frequency while CGminer is running.

"....hash rate at only 1.5 Gh/s."

No, it is not he pool side, your miner  gets not enough power.

[captplanet]

Okay, so I bought this usb hub: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMN2OBU/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . Can anyone explain to me or just tell me(either one works, but I'd love to know how to calculate it myself) how many U1s I can run on it all overclocked at 0A81?

[NocTurNalFX]

I am running 6 U1's  on a Anker 9 port USB 3.0 hub.    No issues what so ever with power.  I would test to see if I could run more on it,  but only have 6 U1's.

This is the hub  http://www.amazon.com/Charging-Adapter-VL812-B2-Chipset-Firmware/dp/B005NGQWL2/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1389657073&sr=1-1&keywords=anker+9+port

[captplanet]

I am running 6 U1's  on a Anker 9 port USB 3.0 hub.    No issues what so ever with power.  I would test to see if I could run more on it,  but only have 6 U1's.

This is the hub  http://www.amazon.com/Charging-Adapter-VL812-B2-Chipset-Firmware/dp/B005NGQWL2/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1389657073&sr=1-1&keywords=anker+9+port

I was looking at that one, and saw the power supply is the same as the one I bought, but mine has an extra port, so I went with it instead. I guess we'll see if it's any good

[NocTurNalFX]

I am running 6 U1's  on a Anker 9 port USB 3.0 hub.    No issues what so ever with power.  I would test to see if I could run more on it,  but only have 6 U1's.

This is the hub  http://www.amazon.com/Charging-Adapter-VL812-B2-Chipset-Firmware/dp/B005NGQWL2/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1389657073&sr=1-1&keywords=anker+9+port

I was looking at that one, and saw the power supply is the same as the one I bought, but mine has an extra port, so I went with it instead. I guess we'll see if it's any good

From the picture, It looks like the 10th port on the Juiced hub is a charging port,  the same as the Anker.  I could be wrong.   Let me know how it works out for you after you get it.  Im in the market for another hub or two.  The juiced looks nice.   

[JONXLR8]

I've been running my antminer for about 24-hours using the following instruction:

cgminer.exe --bmsc-options 115200:20 -o stratum+tcp://mint.bitminter.com:3333 -u user_worker -p 123 --bmsc-freq 0681

Does this look healthy to you? I should add, it's not plugged into a hub or anything, it's straight into the USB port on the front of the PC.

I'm considering running it at 0781 once I've got a heat sink and CPU pad to put on it, any thoughts on this appreciated, thanks

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48985321/cgminer.jpg

[Jay_Pal]

I've been running my antminer for about 24-hours using the following instruction:

cgminer.exe --bmsc-options 115200:20 -o stratum+tcp://mint.bitminter.com:3333 -u user_worker -p 123 --bmsc-freq 0681

Does this look healthy to you? I should add, it's not plugged into a hub or anything, it's straight into the USB port on the front of the PC.

I'm considering running it at 0781 once I've got a heat sink and CPU pad to put on it, any thoughts on this appreciated, thanks

You have a quite extreme hardware error rate...!!
I'm running mine with 0981 and in less than 12h I get this:

Code:

 cgminer version 3.9.0 - Started: [2014-01-13 21:42:48]                                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 (5s):10.34G (avg):10.87Gh/s | A:102450  R:0  HW:2298  WU:148.1/m                                                                                                                      |
 ST: 2  SS: 4  NB: 75  LW: 152113  GF: 1  RF: 0                                                                                                                                        |
 Connected to mmpool.bitparking.com diff 10 with stratum as user                                                                                                               |
 Block: bdc4fc94...  Diff:1.79G  Started: [08:58:47]  Best share: 1.52M                                                                                                                |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                       |
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit                                                                                                                                 |
 AMU  0:                | 335.6M/335.8Mh/s | A: 3110 R:0 HW:  20 WU: 4.8/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  1:                | 447.2M/447.8Mh/s | A: 4320 R:0 HW:  43 WU: 6.2/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  0:                | 2.024G/2.009Gh/s | A:18920 R:0 HW: 151 WU:27.8/m                                                                                                             |
 ANT  1:                | 2.672G/2.012Gh/s | A:19970 R:0 HW: 148 WU:27.9/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  3:                | 335.4M/335.6Mh/s | A: 3290 R:0 HW:  41 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  4:                | 335.5M/335.5Mh/s | A: 2900 R:0 HW:  26 WU: 4.5/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  5:                | 335.7M/335.9Mh/s | A: 3010 R:0 HW:  25 WU: 4.6/m                                                                                                             |
 BAJ  1:  max 32C 0.99V | 4.676G/4.694Gh/s | A:37640 R:0 HW:  13 WU:65.4/m                                                                                                             |
 AMU  6:                | 447.4M/447.7Mh/s | A: 1710 R:0 HW:1822 WU: 3.1/m                                                                                                             |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------        

0.79% in Ant 0 and 0.74% on Ant 1.
You are getting 3.04% on yours!!!
I have nothing else than the original heatsink and a fan blowing through them (not from the top but from the side).

[JONXLR8]

You have a quite extreme hardware error rate...!!

Thanks for your quick reply, is this most likely to be down to...

cooling?

lack of power? (I'm sure I read in this thread somewhere that normal USB ports dont provide enough power by themselves and they should be put through a powered hub? Are yours in a hub?)

or should I try running it at 0581 or even 0781 just to see if it changes the HW rate as it is? What do these things run at if you dont specify a frequency?

I've also noticed that the speed fluctuates regularly, although it's averaging at around 1.363gh/s, watching the (5s) in the top left hand corner, it drops down to 600-800 mh/s then up to over 2 gh/s, should this remain relatively static or is it normal for it to fluctuate like this?

Another thing to point out in case it's made a difference, is that there are two versions of cgminer on the link from the pdf guide:

https://github.com/AntMiner/AntGen1/tree/master/cgminer

And I'm using the newer version - cgminer-run-windows-20131224.zip rather than the 20131222

[Mudbankkeith]

You have a quite extreme hardware error rate...!!

Thanks for your quick reply, is this most likely to be down to...

cooling?

lack of power? (I'm sure I read in this thread somewhere that normal USB ports dont provide enough power by themselves and they should be put through a powered hub? Are yours in a hub?)

or should I try running it at 0581 or even 0781 just to see if it changes the HW rate as it is? What do these things run at if you dont specify a frequency?

I've also noticed that the speed fluctuates regularly, although it's averaging at around 1.363gh/s, watching the (5s) in the top left hand corner, it drops down to 600-800 mh/s then up to over 2 gh/s, should this remain relatively static or is it normal for it to fluctuate like this?

Don't worry about the 5 second rate, it's the long term rate that matters most.
It is safe to experiment with the speeds so long as you have some cooling. Try from the lowest speed first, then build up and see what happens.
Give each setting plenty of time to stabilize before trying the next one. If you go above 2Gh you will probably need a powered hub to supply the extra current.

[JONXLR8]

Don't worry about the 5 second rate, it's the long term rate that matters most.
It is safe to experiment with the speeds so long as you have some cooling. Try from the lowest speed first, then build up and see what happens.
Give each setting plenty of time to stabilize before trying the next one. If you go above 2Gh you will probably need a powered hub to supply the extra current.

OK thanks, I've just restarted it at 0581. I'll run that for 24 hours to see if it brings the HW rate down, if it does I'll leave it at that until I've got a decent heat sink for it. I'm looking to salvage an old CPU heat sink or similar from somewhere and just get hold of some of those CPU pads as the go between

[Laxe]

Where did you get your resistors (what part #s?) and how did you adjust the frequency once cgminer was running?

Thanks

"....hash rate at only 1.5 Gh/s."

No, it is not he pool side, your miner  gets not enough power.

I'm not sure if it's the power as I've tested the hub with only one U1 and I get the same hash rate at 0981 using BFG Miner. 

To compare I reverted back to the CG Miner recommended by BitMain for the U1 and after all the plugging in one U1 at a time it's sitting steady at 2Gh/s each.  I can confirm this by the reported hash rate that the pool tells me.

For some reason BFG Miner doesn't allow the U1's to go above 1.6 Gh/s for me, often less than that.  But since I'm using the same BFG Miner version as everyone else here and CG Miner does set the hash rate of the U1's properly I'm unsure what to think.

[Mudbankkeith]

Don't worry about the 5 second rate, it's the long term rate that matters most.
It is safe to experiment with the speeds so long as you have some cooling. Try from the lowest speed first, then build up and see what happens.
Give each setting plenty of time to stabilize before trying the next one. If you go above 2Gh you will probably need a powered hub to supply the extra current.

OK thanks, I've just restarted it at 0581. I'll run that for 24 hours to see if it brings the HW rate down, if it does I'll leave it at that until I've got a decent heat sink for it. I'm looking to salvage an old CPU heat sink or similar from somewhere and just get hold of some of those CPU pads as the go between

1 hour is probably enough, then up the clock and try the next one, then keep upping till the error rate shoots up.(then go back one step).  Up to 2gh air cooling with a small fan is usually enough.
Above 2Gh then the power resistors need to be modified to reduce the error rate.

[Jay_Pal]

Don't worry about the 5 second rate, it's the long term rate that matters most.
It is safe to experiment with the speeds so long as you have some cooling. Try from the lowest speed first, then build up and see what happens.
Give each setting plenty of time to stabilize before trying the next one. If you go above 2Gh you will probably need a powered hub to supply the extra current.

OK thanks, I've just restarted it at 0581. I'll run that for 24 hours to see if it brings the HW rate down, if it does I'll leave it at that until I've got a decent heat sink for it. I'm looking to salvage an old CPU heat sink or similar from somewhere and just get hold of some of those CPU pads as the go between

1 hour is probably enough, then up the clock and try the next one, then keep upping till the error rate shoots up.(then go back one step).  Up to 2gh air cooling with a small fan is usually enough.
Above 2Gh then the power resistors need to be modified to reduce the error rate.

I second that: Get a fan and cool the Ant miner down.
Look in here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.0 for plenty of examples using BE's and other miners.
Also look earlier in this topic.
You don't need any special heatsink under the 2.2gh/s.

[Laxe]

Update:

I'm starting to think my '--set-device antminer:freq=0981' command in BFG Miner isn't working properly.  Before I was looking at an average hash rate of 5.5 Gh/s with that setting with BFG Miner. 

After trying the CG Miner provided by BitMain I reverted the drivers back to the regular ones to use the U1's with BFG Miner.  After using the same .bat file with the above freq command I'm now getting more HW errors but a faster speed similar to what I would expect the U1's to do at 2 Gh/s. 

 Block: ...3b2c1f04 #280440  Diff:1.79G (12.81Ph/s)  Started: [11:13:50]
 ST:15  F:0  NB:2  AS:1  BW:[ 69/ 61 B/s]  E:28.05  I:90.22uBTC/hr  BS:1.25k
 4             |  8.22/ 8.18/ 7.59Gh/s | A:328 R:1+1(.50%) HW:112/8.7%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ANT 0 :       |  2.06/ 2.05/ 1.70Gh/s | A: 87 R:0+0(none) HW: 46/ 15%
 ANT 1 :       |  2.07/ 2.04/ 2.15Gh/s | A: 78 R:0+0(none) HW:  8/2.4%
 ANT 2 :       |  2.07/ 2.05/ 1.71Gh/s | A: 68 R:1+0(1.6%) HW: 21/7.3%
 ANT 3 :       |  2.06/ 2.04/ 2.00Gh/s | A: 95 R:0+1(.58%) HW: 38/ 11%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My procedure was to uninstall the WinUSB drivers after using the U1's with CG Miner and 'rescan for hardware changes' in the device manager without unplugging and replugging the U1's again. 

After that I ran my BFG Miner bat file.  If I'm right, setting the freq using CG Miner and the WinUSB drivers would properly set the overclock on the U1's but the BFG Miner command doesn't seem to work - for me at least.

A bit more testing is needed but at least I'm getting somewhere.

[JONXLR8]

I second that: Get a fan and cool the Ant miner down.
Look in here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.0 for plenty of examples using BE's and other miners.
Also look earlier in this topic.
You don't need any special heatsink under the 2.2gh/s.

The only thing that might be an issue is the noise from a fan due to the location of the setup, if I can get the same level of cooling from a heat sink I think I'd rather do it silently.

I think some of the issue may be due to the fact that it's plugged into the USB port directly and is chip side up, so the heat sink is below, perhaps this is meaning it's dissipating the heat less effectively. I've ordered a 1m USB 2.0 extension cable to allow me to reposition the thing.

Here's the result after an hour of 0581 mining:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48985321/cgminer2.jpg

As expected hash rate but worse HW, up to 5.36% now.

[BITCOIN-PIZZA-DAY]

Okay, so I bought this usb hub: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMN2OBU/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 . Can anyone explain to me or just tell me(either one works, but I'd love to know how to calculate it myself) how many U1s I can run on it all overclocked at 0A81?

12V*5A = 60 Watt
I have the same and run 10 at 2GHS. 0981 mine don't like 0A81.

[JONXLR8]

BTW
Running at 2 GHS  at chip Temp.  just 40 C°  (room temp 21 C°)
Passive cooling FTW=)

Do you have a link to those thermal pads, and do you know their thickness, and thermal conductivity rating (w/mk)? Thanks