Bitmain AntMiner U1 Tips & Tricks

[kfactor]

@ brush242 - NP & GL

@ philipma1957 - So far hashrate in cgminer vs. pool is pretty spot on (cg 5s 26.75 / avg 22.99, pool shows 24.. I'll post tomorrow if long term average doesn't look right.

Running two 10-port hubs (4A) with 7 sticks in each. Cgminer for sticks only on a win7 machine, with bfgminer on a pi for blades/cube. Would like to get it all on the pi though.

[RicRock]

What are you running?  I run several flavors of linux and originally used the binary supplied (worked on only one of my machines) but then I used the source code for the modified version of cgminer from https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer, git cloned from there, then ran ./autogen.sh, then configure --enable-bmsc, then make -j 6, and voila' worked just fine.

Hope this helps!

This worked perfect for me.

Zbox running Wheezy and 49port hub.

Thanks!

[eroxors]

So, I realized that I had an old aluminum heatsink from some old desktop. Hacksawing that thing into pieces is a LOT more work than I thought, but I started, so I have to finish.

What is the best way to secure a piece to an U1? Is there a thermal paste/glue? Gorilla Glue? Elmer's? A thin slice of ham? Stagnant Hellman's Mayonnaise?

Thoughts anyone?

(I'm going to go have a sandwich. I feel like one for some reason now.)

The cheap way to do it is four small dots of super glue in the corners and your choice of thermal paste thinly applied to the rest of the surface. Regular Mayo performed better than several name-brand thermal grease's in a roundup a few years ago.

The expensive way is thermal epoxy... by arctic silver or some other brand. I mix mine "light" with half epoxy half regular grease (1 part A, 1 part B, 2 parts grease) so that it could be removed easily.

To remove the heatsink, place in freezer for several hours, then pry off.

Good luck, post pics.

[brush242]

Why did I know the mayo was going to be an issue?

Okay, I'll get them up and running and go from there. Thanks for the information.

[eroxors]

I see lots of difficulties related to hubs... is there a reason why direct motherboard USB headers are not being more utilized? Most motherboards provide headers for 6 additional ports, some more.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-January-2012/1468/1

[fractalbc]

I see lots of difficulties related to hubs... is there a reason why direct motherboard USB headers are not being more utilized? Most motherboards provide headers for 6 additional ports, some more.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-January-2012/1468/1

Most of us would rather burn out a hub than a motherboard.

That and most motherboard ports are rated at max 1/2 amp and we are looking at pulling close to a a full amp out of these guys when overclocking.

[brush242]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-January-2012/1468/1

Wow. They actually did mention, and test, mayo.

I'm gettin' a sandwich....

[Bobs Yerunkle]

I see lots of difficulties related to hubs... is there a reason why direct motherboard USB headers are not being more utilized? Most motherboards provide headers for 6 additional ports, some more.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-January-2012/1468/1

To expand my port options and sometimes just have some ports to fall back on when the hubs are acting weird  I picked up some of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Port-USB2-0-Motherboard-Rear-Panel-Expansion-Bracket-Host-Adapter-C-684-/400563283355 and these: www.ebay.com/itm/Motherboard-20-pin-To-2-USB-3-0-Female-Converter-Cable-Adapter-Connection-Cord-/360547208107

They end up mostly with peripherals connected on multi-use machines but are nice to have for low power items.

[Bobs Yerunkle]

I didn't notice this part of the config documentation before.
------------------------------------------
src: https://github.com/AntMiner/AntGen1/blob/master/cgminer/README.md
------------------------------------------
baud value should be 115200
to sets the timeout value: to*100ms. timeout value should be less than: 10*(2^32)/(freq*

argment[sic] --bmsc-freq

0581 : 150M  
0681 : 175M
4F02 : 193M
0781 : 200M
0881 : 225M
0981 : 250M
...etc

------------------------------------------
It looks a little wonky to me.
Like, to*100ms should be to*10ms?

Per their example:
run at 200M clock frequency, timeout is 2s
cgminer.exe --bmsc-options 115200:20 -o pool_url -u user -p password --bmsc-freq 0781

timeout is 2. 2*10ms = 200 for 200M clock frequency.

Am I missing something?  

At any rate, as you increase the frequency it would seem you also need to increase the to value.

note 1:
As one would expect, different sticks have different capabilities but there isn't an option to assign different frequencies to different sticks but maybe two instances of cgminer would work?

note 2:
Cooling: One of these http://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-USB-Powered-Portable-Cooling-Solution/dp/B003XN24GY and the S1s have been staying VERY cool. Almost think they don't need fans at regular speeds.

note 3:
IMO cgminer needs a % HW Error column a la bfgminer.

[brush242]

note 2:
Cooling: One of these http://smile.amazon.com/ARCTIC-USB-Powered-Portable-Cooling-Solution/dp/B003XN24GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388678769&sr=8-1 and the S1s have been staying VERY cool. Almost think they don't need fans at regular speeds.

How are those fans noise-wise? Noise is an issue hyah.

As an aside, anyone have any recommendations for a QUIET PnP replacement fan for the Cubes?

[philipma1957]

@ brush242 - NP & GL

@ philipma1957 - So far hashrate in cgminer vs. pool is pretty spot on (cg 5s 26.75 / avg 22.99, pool shows 24.. I'll post tomorrow if long term average doesn't look right.

Running two 10-port hubs (4A) with 7 sticks in each. Cgminer for sticks only on a win7 machine, with bfgminer on a pi for blades/cube. Would like to get it all on the pi though.

thanks I have to figure out why I am getting lower pool rates .

 my 8 sticks show about 12 and my  pool rate is 8-9  big diff.

 I am running bfg miner with 5 nano-ice furies and that may be causing the issue. I am going to turn off the bfgminer and see what happens. just run the 8 sticks of ant miners.

[Bobs Yerunkle]

note 2:
Cooling: One of these http://smile.amazon.com/ARCTIC-USB-Powered-Portable-Cooling-Solution/dp/B003XN24GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388678769&sr=8-1 and the S1s have been staying VERY cool. Almost think they don't need fans at regular speeds.

How are those fans noise-wise? Noise is an issue hyah.

As an aside, anyone have any recommendations for a QUIET PnP replacement fan for the Cubes?

I think they are quiet as far as fans go.
I don't like that they take up a USB port but they are a simple, effective, and a fairly cheap solution.

[dave111223]

Having trouble on Raspberry Pi

As per iluvpcs and fractalbc posts I have installed the antminer version of cgminer.

I can run 10 miners for about 20 minutes; then the Raspberry freezes up.  With more miners (tested up to 20) it freezes up more quickly (within 10 minutes)

Any ideas how to fix?

[iluvpcs]

Having trouble on Raspberry Pi

As per iluvpcs and fractalbc posts I have installed the antminer version of cgminer.

I can run 10 miners for about 20 minutes; then the Raspberry freezes up.  With more miners (tested up to 20) it freezes up more quickly (within 10 minutes)

Any ideas how to fix?

is it locking up hard, or still have console access and the network is dropping?

Can a PI user chime in with what I'm saying below?  It's been about a year since I really used my PI's to mine with, at first they were great, but as I added more devices I started to loose the NIC's more often, and had to write a script to stop/start the NIC to get them to come back.

Summer/fall of 2012 I mined with the Cainsmore1 (FPGAs) who also used the USB/Serial bus like these, and at the time the NIC would drop on the PI more often as I added USB traffic and the NIC itself would freeze due to a bad driver design of the LAN And USB sharing something on the bus. 

[Dunkelheit667]

Having trouble on Raspberry Pi

As per iluvpcs and fractalbc posts I have installed the antminer version of cgminer.

I can run 10 miners for about 20 minutes; then the Raspberry freezes up.  With more miners (tested up to 20) it freezes up more quickly (within 10 minutes)

Any ideas how to fix?

is it locking up hard, or still have console access and the network is dropping?

Can a PI user chime in with what I'm saying below?  It's been about a year since I really used my PI's to mine with, at first they were great, but as I added more devices I started to loose the NIC's more often, and had to write a script to stop/start the NIC to get them to come back.

Summer/fall of 2012 I mined with the Cainsmore1 (FPGAs) who also used the USB/Serial bus like these, and at the time the NIC would drop on the PI more often as I added USB traffic and the NIC itself would freeze due to a bad driver design of the LAN And USB sharing something on the bus.  

Not sure if it will solve this particular issue, but the workaround/fix mentioned here below "Raspberry Pi is locking up when running CGMiner" solved my headaches with a freezing Raspberry (using ten Block Erupter USBs).

Might worth a try.

[minter12345]

Not sure if it will solve this particular issue, but the workaround/fix mentioned here below "Raspberry Pi is locking up when running CGMiner" solved my headaches with a freezing Raspberry (using ten Block Erupter USBs).

Might worth a try.

Oh wow, that might solve my random rasp PI (I have 3 of them) freezes.  Thank you so much, I'm trying it now.  I've tried so many things, lets hope this solves it.

[lithod02]

Anyone want to share most profitable pool for use with U-1? So far since getting mine I have been using BTCGuild and tompool.

[twib2]

Anyone want to share most profitable pool for use with U-1? So far since getting mine I have been using BTCGuild and tompool.

Multipool.us SHA pool automatically switches to the most profitable of 5 coins.  Or you can write a script yourself that takes info from coinchoose.com APIs.

[brush242]

Multipool.us SHA pool automatically switches to the most profitable of 5 coins.  Or you can write a script yourself that takes info from coinchoose.com APIs.

You are a WEALTH of information. Any suggestions for sites to learn how? Someone posted one around here somewhere, looked long. Heh.

[twib2]

Multipool.us SHA pool automatically switches to the most profitable of 5 coins.  Or you can write a script yourself that takes info from coinchoose.com APIs.

You are a WEALTH of information. Any suggestions for sites to learn how? Someone posted one around here somewhere, looked long. Heh.

How?  - to use multipool.us or to write scripts?  

The first is easy: just set up an account and point your miners to the multipool servers:ports.

The second is sort of easy...  I admit I'm a quick-and-dirty bash-er, so I use bash for any trivial task even if it's not elegant.  I could post my code, but it's gotten pretty frankenstein-large and needs config files to specify the pool(s), port(s), user(s), and password(s) I want to use for each of the SHA coins listed on coinchoose.com.

But, basically, I just load the API, parse it with JSHON, look at which is most profitable after rejects are factored in, then make that coin the "currentcoin" and restart all my miners with the currentcoin.  In some cases, I have it use the slush proxy but for others I have it invoke the bfgminer proxy.

There are some other codes that do this automatically for you, like multiminer (google it), cgswitcher (same), and some others.

Hopefullly this gives you more of what you want.  Wasn't trying to be flip, just didn't know how much you knew or didn't.

Best,
- Tye