[GUIDE] GridSeed 5-Chip USB, Blade & Black Miner Support/Tuning

[wolfey2014]

Do anyone knows what's going on here ?

Thanks guys ! 

As was explained in the other thread, 1000 MHz is too optimistic. Start at 800-850, and for most Gridseds frequencies higher than 850 rarely produce higher hashrates.

I beg to differ.

As I recall, 850MHz with comm port buffers set to Receive = 8 - Transmit = 14 yielded me positive results.
The 'Red Nonce' is not always, or only caused by HW errors. They can be caused by other things too.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_nonce for a more in depth explanation.

[flounderella]

Update:
Got 11 units. 1 DOA, the other 10 have been mining mostly LTC the last two weeks, mostly non-stop (using BFGMiner). I usually bounce the power supply and usb hub once per day. So far its been good.

With newer scrypt ASICs coming out in Q2-Q3, I figure the only way these will ever ROI if I mine 40-60 LTC before that and LTC/USD goes to $30-40... what are you guys thinking in terms of ROI?

[suchmoon]

Update:
Got 11 units. 1 DOA, the other 10 have been mining mostly LTC the last two weeks, mostly non-stop (using BFGMiner). I usually bounce the power supply and usb hub once per day. So far its been good.

With newer scrypt ASICs coming out in Q2-Q3, I figure the only way these will ever ROI if I mine 40-60 LTC before that and LTC/USD goes to $30-40... what are you guys thinking in terms of ROI?

There is no chance for ROI for a half of my farm, but the other half should make up for it. I'm hedging my bets basically. All other ASICs are still vaporware - gotta love how they "double" the estimated hashrates overnight just by redrawing their "plans" - and Gridseed is here and now, and will be the only Scrypt ASIC for 3-4 more months. But yeah, it would help if exchange rates recovered.

[flounderella]

Update:
Got 11 units. 1 DOA, the other 10 have been mining mostly LTC the last two weeks, mostly non-stop (using BFGMiner). I usually bounce the power supply and usb hub once per day. So far its been good.

With newer scrypt ASICs coming out in Q2-Q3, I figure the only way these will ever ROI if I mine 40-60 LTC before that and LTC/USD goes to $30-40... what are you guys thinking in terms of ROI?

There is no chance for ROI for a half of my farm, but the other half should make up for it. I'm hedging my bets basically. All other ASICs are still vaporware - gotta love how they "double" the estimated hashrates overnight just by redrawing their "plans" - and Gridseed is here and now, and will be the only Scrypt ASIC for 3-4 more months. But yeah, it would help if exchange rates recovered.

vaporware == Yeah that's true...

In any case, I think its much better than gpu. These run really cool and my apartment can use that (with 3 antminers and couple of gpus running as well)

[maranello1561]

Is there any way to make it hash faster than 360MH without tinkering with soldering ... what about those firmware rumors from back in early March?

[Pistachio]

Is there any way to make it hash faster than 360MH without tinkering with soldering ... what about those firmware rumors from back in early March?

You mean mid-Feb. and they still have not released it yet, just more 'secret' pictures.

[usao]

All, I have 3 GSD's running on a W7 box with cgminer with the gridseed mods.
For unknown reason, one of the miners is not submitting any shares.
The pool confirms hashrates similar to only 2 of the GSDs. However, cgminer sais it's working.
Ive tried rebooting PC, disconnect/reconnect USB as well as powercycle GSD, no difference.

[suchmoon]

All, I have 3 GSD's running on a W7 box with cgminer with the gridseed mods.
For unknown reason, one of the miners is not submitting any shares.
The pool confirms hashrates similar to only 2 of the GSDs. However, cgminer sais it's working.
Ive tried rebooting PC, disconnect/reconnect USB as well as powercycle GSD, no difference.

Not sure I understand this correctly - you mentioned 3 miners and posted a picture with 5, all hashing away happily? I should learn to not reply too quickly and allow posters to edit out their mistakes 

Have you tried swapping cables/ports/lowering frequency?

[usao]

All, I have 3 GSD's running on a W7 box with cgminer with the gridseed mods.
For unknown reason, one of the miners is not submitting any shares.
The pool confirms hashrates similar to only 2 of the GSDs. However, cgminer sais it's working.
Ive tried rebooting PC, disconnect/reconnect USB as well as powercycle GSD, no difference.

Not sure I understand this correctly - you mentioned 3 miners and posted a picture with 5, all hashing away happily? I should learn to not reply too quickly and allow posters to edit out their mistakes 

Have you tried swapping cables/ports/lowering frequency?

I did switch USB ports in the hub, but didn't try different freq.
Interesting note, when I shutdown, cgminer showd average hashrate of 1.1 MH/s over 14 hours. Seems like it's working on the client side.
Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

[suchmoon]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

[jamieb81]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

I see to many people having problems with cgminer.

most people that have not more than 5/6 miners go with CPUminer. BFGminer seems to be not that bad too

especially that with those you dont need any zadig driver mod

[usao]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

I see to many people having problems with cgminer.

most people that have not more than 5/6 miners go with CPUminer. BFGminer seems to be not that bad too

especially that with those you dont need any zadig driver mod

Ill try the hotplug option, then will give cpuminer a shot. Other than that, I will have to do the physical unplug/replug when I get home tonight.
I wish there was a remote USB power-cycle option...

[wolfey2014]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

I see to many people having problems with cgminer.

most people that have not more than 5/6 miners go with CPUminer. BFGminer seems to be not that bad too

especially that with those you dont need any zadig driver mod

cpuminer
will someone out here catch this and add local hash rate to cpuminer before I am forced to change over to something else....there has to be an easier / better way to run and monitor our rigs or a real once and for all fix-em-all for all time bug fixes for cgminer, bfgminer and .... I hate to say it, cpuminer too
She was a great lil pony car, but I had to let'er go!

[jamieb81]

Anyone here knows a dev or something that could cook a version of CPUminer etc..

like I stated before, would be just wonderfull to have a GUI where we could monitor each miner, apply voltmods on the fly, make pool mods etc etc
instead of having multiple cpu miners of modded cg/bfg miner etc..

[rob1313]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

I see to many people having problems with cgminer.

most people that have not more than 5/6 miners go with CPUminer. BFGminer seems to be not that bad too

especially that with those you dont need any zadig driver mod

Ya and i cant get bfg past 23 miners and it crashes.

[wolfey2014]

Ratz. When I restarted, cgminer no-longer sees any of the GSDs...

Sorry, can't help you much here, I couldn't get cgminer to work myself. It would recognize miners if I specified hotplug option and unplugged/replugged them, but that was just too much hassle.

I see to many people having problems with cgminer.

most people that have not more than 5/6 miners go with CPUminer. BFGminer seems to be not that bad too

especially that with those you dont need any zadig driver mod

Ya and i cant get bfg past 23 miners and it crashes.

I've been wondering. What is so bad about having to run all those cpuminer windows if the process is automated?
It can be using a Macro program. But the macro program I am using - 'Macro Express' - copies and plays back all mouse moves, clicks and keys. Only problem is it won't record or play back mouse moves inside of device manager keeping me from using it to schedule automated restarts of the comm ports every x period.
Can someone write a Windows program to encapsulate all miner windows in one or two windows with say 10 miners running per window?
Can batch files be created to automate these tasks. I need a macro program sophisticated enough to perform all tasks required for soft restarting miners. I know it can't be programmed to monitor each separate window. That would require too much overhead anyway.
I'd love to see cpuminer improved in these simple ways. If I could, I would have been working on it already.
Then there is no more need to hassle with other inadequate programs obviously not fulfilling what is really needed and wanted. I'm sure writing software for these things is quite the challenge, even for the most seasoned hacker

[organofcorti]

Can someone write a Windows program to encapsulate all miner windows in one or two windows with say 10 miners running per window?
Can batch files be created to automate these tasks. I need a macro program sophisticated enough to perform all tasks required for soft restarting miners. I know it can't be programmed to monitor each separate window. That would require too much overhead anyway.

I think it should be easy enough to translate miaviator's cpuminer shell start-up:

Code:

sudo -s
cd ~/usb-miner/software/cpuminer
for i in `seq 0 10`; do screen -dmS $i ./minerd -G /dev/ttyACM$i -F 800 -o stratum+tcp://stratum.scryptguild.com:3333 -u unicornhasher -px;done

I use something similar at home. Can you run an instance of cgminer per gridseed, the way you do with cpuminer? Some Gridseeds prefer a different OC frequency to others.

[jjj0923]

I'm familiar with virtual com ports and all that from phone flashing.

I was able to get it working on a custom clean installed Windows 8.1 64 bit computer.  I used the WinUSB and a copy of CGminer.  I could NOT get this thing to work on Usb 3 and on any laptop I had.   

Now I can only get two on, the rest are not detected.   Does BAMT with a modified cgminer work for this asic

For me it didn't work connected directly to an USB 3 port but worked on a USB 2 hub connected to a USB 3 port. Not sure what would be an issue with a laptop.

BAMT is a bit of an overkill for this, since it has all that AMD crud installed. But yes, you can compile a modified cgminer version on it and it would work. I don't know if it would help with USB 3 though.

I think it's still a minority that cannot make the Gridseed's work, there has been hundreds of thousands sold, and you see very few people with problems. As for USB3 we all know they only work well on UB2 port and hub

I've had my gridseeds for two weeks now. the first week I was running 20 off a Pi Rasberry with cpuminer and they'd run great for about 8 to 10 hours then they'd just slow down and my pool stats would start off showing them as running at about 7,200 Kh/s and then they'd start to slow down to abut 3,500 Khs and I'd reboot the Pi and they'd run fine again.

I got tired of this after about 5 days so last saturday I put Ubuntu server 13.04 on an old PC I had laying around and downloaded and compiled cgminer for gridseed and for about about 100 hours now and they've been perfect - non stop.

[jamieb81]

I'm familiar with virtual com ports and all that from phone flashing.

I was able to get it working on a custom clean installed Windows 8.1 64 bit computer.  I used the WinUSB and a copy of CGminer.  I could NOT get this thing to work on Usb 3 and on any laptop I had.  

Now I can only get two on, the rest are not detected.   Does BAMT with a modified cgminer work for this asic

For me it didn't work connected directly to an USB 3 port but worked on a USB 2 hub connected to a USB 3 port. Not sure what would be an issue with a laptop.

BAMT is a bit of an overkill for this, since it has all that AMD crud installed. But yes, you can compile a modified cgminer version on it and it would work. I don't know if it would help with USB 3 though.

I think it's still a minority that cannot make the Gridseed's work, there has been hundreds of thousands sold, and you see very few people with problems. As for USB3 we all know they only work well on UB2 port and hub

I've had my gridseeds for two weeks now. the first week I was running 20 off a Pi Rasberry with cpuminer and they'd run great for about 8 to 10 hours then they'd just slow down and my pool stats would start off showing them as running at about 7,200 Kh/s and then they'd start to slow down to abut 3,500 Khs and I'd reboot the Pi and they'd run fine again.

I got tired of this after about 5 days so last saturday I put Ubuntu server 13.04 on an old PC I had laying around and downloaded and compiled cgminer for gridseed and for about about 100 hours now and they've been perfect - non stop.

I have NONE experience with Ubunto ( or a Pi ) but I know I asked someone and he runs even more of them on xubuntu with 0 problem

I've been looking a bit in how to use Ubuntu, but coming from windows experience only, it seems a bit complicated all that compiling etc.. ^^

[rob1313]

Ya i also tried to get ubunto 13.1 running but i get compiling errors and then the system don't fully work. i be trying it again today. i  would even pay .1 btc for a good guide for a fresh install. the one i found in the other main gridseed discussion thread worked ok until i had compiling errors and did not know what to do.