LightningAsic usb miners based Gridseed GC3355 Tech Support Thread

[EricKennedy]

This thread is dedicated to Gridseed (LTC/BTC ASIC) technical support discussions.
The original thread from asiabtc is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421921.0

All guides, drivers, firmware can be found here:
http://goo.gl/G27Vxr

MUST READ
The Official LighteningAsic/GridSeed 5 Chip Setup Guide by UnicornHasher

Some answers from asiabtc as of 25/02/2014

1. will you give root password to access the controllers, so we can change them and prevent any access. This is a security issue
we cannot provide now. we developed much code based on gc3355. if public, cannot protect us.

2. no one has been able to achieve the 5Mhs hashrate from your secret screenshot, why ?
its working under pc control. we use 703N. its not so powerful. and we never promise to let it run at 5mhs by controller. we cannot release the code when find way to protect it.

3. will there be a firmware update for the controller, and will it impact performance ?
yes. new firmware can make it more stable.

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[EricKennedy]

I received this morning 2xLA3M (paid in BTC on February 9th).

Each LA3M is composed of :
- 10x hashing units (each composed of 5 chips)
- 2x 12v PSU
- 1 controller
- 1 USB hub (10 ports)
- all necessary cables and power supplies

Setup is easy, I was able to mine in less than 30 minutes.

Here are the performances :



I couldn't go over 3000khs in scrypt, whatever the core frequency is.
Dual mode LTC/BTC doesn't look very stable : 80Ghs BTC and 1500Mhs LTC.

I didn't flash the units, don't know if it would change anything, since the image I have if from January 19th

I have had one problem on a rig, caused by the USB hub. You should see both red and green light on the hub.
If only red, then something is wrong. Couldn't find what causes this.

[gigq]

I'll post the status of my rig when I get home from work.  Before then though does anyone know what the official method of getting support is.  I PMed asiabtc and sent Jack an email but haven't heard anything back yet.  Just wondering if that's the official channel to go through.

[worldlybedouin]

I'll post the status of my rig when I get home from work.  Before then though does anyone know what the official method of getting support is.  I PMed asiabtc and sent Jack an email but haven't heard anything back yet.  Just wondering if that's the official channel to go through.

Jack did mention that we could contact him for support (that someone from his team would assist us)...however, given how swamped he/they have been, I'm not sure we'll get too much...but whatever bits we do get, please post them here.  I would also ask forum members like Beastlymac to chime in as he seems to have had the most contact/experience with the devices and Jack.

[FreeJack2k2]

Yeah I haven't had much luck getting any answers from him, I think he's got too much on his plate. He says they have a support team, but he hasn't apparently set up an e-mail address for support, because he hasn't advertised one. He really needs to.

[worldlybedouin]

From Poopypants on the old thread:

Someone was asking for the controller password?  I am not entirely sure this is correct name and password but I found this from http://cybtc.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=6147&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost .


(account: root, password: 123456)

Let me know if that worked, I do not have the controller so I can not try it.

[poopypants]

Someone was asking for the controller password?  I am not entirely sure this is correct name and password but I found this from http://cybtc.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=6147&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost .


(account: root, password: 123456)

Let me know if that worked, I do not have the controller so I can not try it.

EDIT:  I am not very technically inclined but I found the Wiibox software download from this:  http://www.wiibox.net/down/v2.0.1.zip you can also get the 2.0.2 and 1.99 versions also by using same address just plug in the version,  hopefully someone more advanced than me can port this onto the raspberry pi.

EDIT #2:  Here is cybtc fourm for Gridseed, most info is useless but some interesting info is there also. Seems to be the chinese epicenter for Gridseed talk:

http://cybtc.com/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=83&orderby=lastpost&orderby=lastpost&filter=lastpost&page=1

One of the main problems with the devices that they are talking about is that the fan power wires are getting stuck under where the heatsync makes contact with the chips causing some units to overheat and die:  http://cybtc.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=6233&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost%26orderby%3Dlastpost

EDIT #3:  According the beastly mac, jack (lightningasic, Asiabtc) is the only one that can flash the controller.  His team built the custom software for the controller and is not making it available.  I would assume that is why the above account settings and password does not work.  It was probably changed so people couldn't access the files and release them, which in my opinion is crappy for the people who have them.  

-From all that I have been reading about this product, and from my experience with the beta unit (red one with white push button) these units are clearly not ready for customers that want a plug and play product.  It seems to be a complete clusterf**k with the ordering/shipping, setup, and most importantly mining stability.  Which I guess is expected with new cutting edge products and probably compounded by the language barrier / the way these products were described.  I'm sure most issues will be solved in time but it will be rocky the next couple weeks.  There seems to be effort on their part (LightningAsic / Asiabtc) to fix these issues so give it time, but in my personal opinion if you are looking for a quick easy product this is not the one, at least currently until kinks get worked out.  

[gigq]

(account: root, password: 123456)

Let me know if that worked, I do not have the controller so I can not try it.

Hmm, not working for me.  Thanks for digging that up though, downloaded that link and found the modified cgminer in there.  Might play around with that some if it will run on my linux box or raspberry pi.

[EricKennedy]

Did anyone flash their Gridseed unit? (not the controller)
If yes, with which image exactly, and have you seen any difference?

Was anyone able to hash scrypt at substantially more than 3000 khs, and if yes with which settings and on which kind of pool? (not sure if coin hashed would make a difference)

[andre1980]

How long does it usually take before it starts hashing?
Still waiting on the USB hub (none were supplied in my case), so only 1 miner connected.
Tried waffle and middlecoin, still have to try straight Doge..
With "old" firmware it says it's running.. But after an hour no hash reported and also the pool doesn't see me.
With the newer firmware, the miner never gets "online".
Also, there are red AND green lights flashing and blinking.. No explanation found anywhere..

Hopefully, it works when i receive the USB hub i ordered..

Andre

[eightcylinders]

Did anyone flash their Gridseed unit? (not the controller)
If yes, with which image exactly, and have you seen any difference?

I don't think they can be flashed, at least not with the tools provided by Jack.  The original (red) units have a firmware flashing button, that was removed on the official shipping units (at least not on mine, gold fins).  I tried to flash to the image provided in Jack's OP, and I was able to connect the miner successfully to com4 using the STL drivers.  However, the flash tool said it could not open the device to flash when i tried.

If anyone has success, would love to know details on how you did it!

[gigq]

Was anyone able to hash scrypt at substantially more than 3000 khs, and if yes with which settings and on which kind of pool? (not sure if coin hashed would make a difference)

I finally got my controllers back up and running.  Many thanks to eightcylinders for the help.  The trick was for some reason starting the controller with all miners plugged in would cause the controller to never start mining and they would be stuck either "offline" or "online" but with 0Kh/s.  I heard in another thread the unit will restart itself every 10 minutes if no work gets done so it may have been in an endless cycle of being unable to get started.  After starting up the controller I plugged in one miner and made sure it started hashing after a couple minutes then I could plug 4 more in, then after they started hashing I could plug in the remaining 5.

As for settings and hash rates I was able to get around 3600 Kh/s on each unit.  This is at the 850 MHz clock speed.  I found going to 900 MHz would cause it to be below 3000 Kh/s instead of speeding it up so 850 seems to also be the sweet spot for me.  I'm on multipool.us multiport and it also reports roughly the same hash rate I'm seeing locally.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/117000/scryptminer/hash1.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/117000/scryptminer/hash2.png

[gigq]

 I am not very technically inclined but I found the Wiibox software download from this:  http://www.wiibox.net/down/v2.0.1.zip you can also get the 2.0.2 and 1.99 versions also by using same address just plug in the version,  hopefully someone more advanced than me can port this onto the raspberry pi. 

I have a raspberry pi so tried to see if the cgminer binary from this would run on it.  The problem is that the binary is built for MIPS32 hardware not ARM hardware like the raspberry pi.  So unfortunately it won't run on there but it might be possible to get it to run on other MIPS32 hardware (for example the linksys routers that can be flashed with openwrt are MIPS if I remember correctly).

[OgNasty]

Is there a decent setup guide for these things anywhere other than that .pdf files that jump all over the place?

[Andareed]

 I am not very technically inclined but I found the Wiibox software download from this:  http://www.wiibox.net/down/v2.0.1.zip you can also get the 2.0.2 and 1.99 versions also by using same address just plug in the version,  hopefully someone more advanced than me can port this onto the raspberry pi. 

I have a raspberry pi so tried to see if the cgminer binary from this would run on it.  The problem is that the binary is built for MIPS32 hardware not ARM hardware like the raspberry pi.  So unfortunately it won't run on there but it might be possible to get it to run on other MIPS32 hardware (for example the linksys routers that can be flashed with openwrt are MIPS if I remember correctly).

Can you just build cgminer from source using a cross-compiler? From reading the GridSeed datasheets, I'm pretty confident I can get a cgminer built that will turn off the BTC portion of the miners and set a custom frequency. My plan was to actually use the controller that is being shipped, but install my own Linux distro on it.

[velvethammer2]

Some thoughts...

- I got the gold fins

- mine was missing the USB hub, Jack said he will add an extra one to my next order

- When Jack's programmer turned off the "reboot after 10 mins if no shares found" for me he SSHed into my controller.

- 850 MHZ seems like the best setting for now.

- I believe you can do firmware updates by clicking on Update firmware when you log into the controller.

- They have a lot of firmware updates planned.

- units take 1 - 6 mins (ish) to start hashing.

[gigq]

Can you just build cgminer from source using a cross-compiler? From reading the GridSeed datasheets, I'm pretty confident I can get a cgminer built that will turn off the BTC portion of the miners and set a custom frequency. My plan was to actually use the controller that is being shipped, but install my own Linux distro on it.

I tried building cgminer on my ubuntu box from https://github.com/gridseed/cgminer-3.1.1-GC3355-SV but was unable to get it to recognize the miners.  I got the included controller working though so didn't try very hard.

[Beastlymac]

Some thoughts...

- I got the gold fins

- mine was missing the USB hub, Jack said he will add an extra one to my next order

- When Jack's programmer turned off the "reboot after 10 mins if no shares found" for me he SSHed into my controller.

- 850 MHZ seems like the best setting for now.

- I believe you can do firmware updates by clicking on Update firmware when you log into the controller.

- They have a lot of firmware updates planned.

- units take 1 - 6 mins (ish) to start hashing.

You can firmware update but you need to upload the file to the device.

[Andareed]

Anyone try cpuminer on a PC with these connected? Looking at the changes gridseed made, that should work and also not have the excess power draw. Once I get my units I'll provide a patch against cgminer 3.7.2 that will disable the BTC cores and support configurable frequencies.

[maardein]

I think it's a great idea to make a central thread for this!

Mine are still on the way, but I would also love to see some results with these mining from a linux/windows based machine (raspi?), using the customized cpuminer.

What I would like to know is:
- Do you have control over single/dual mode?
- Can you change the frequency of the miners with this setup?

More general questions I have:
- Does the USB hub need to be a powered hub?
- How noisy are they?
- How much heat do they produce?