[GUIDE] GridSeed GC3355 5 Chip Setup/power/windows/linux/rpi by UnicornHasher

[Ferris419]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

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[rob1313]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

Yes if some one could point to the fork that this has been working on best that be awesome. im running them on linux./

[Ferris419]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

Yes if some one could point to the fork that this has been working on best that be awesome. im running them on linux./

I found this online --gridseed-freq 6D9426984857=988,6D9656774857=975,6D8956965251=975
But when I put that in my .bat and launch cgminer just crashes (Of coarse after I put my serial numbers there lol) and change the frequencies to 850 and 900

[BitMinerN8]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

Yes if some one could point to the fork that this has been working on best that be awesome. im running them on linux./

I found this online --gridseed-freq 6D9426984857=988,6D9656774857=975,6D8956965251=975
But when I put that in my .bat and launch cgminer just crashes (Of coarse after I put my serial numbers there lol)

Are you using the one linked from this page? There are many different versions floating around, defining specific unit freqs is an option that has to be compiled into the build. Links for source (linux) and a pre-compiled (win) here:
http://cryptomining-blog.com/1688-alternative-cgminer-3-7-2-for-scrypt-mining-on-gridseed-5-chip-gc3355-asics/

[suchmoon]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

Yes if some one could point to the fork that this has been working on best that be awesome. im running them on linux./

I found this online --gridseed-freq 6D9426984857=988,6D9656774857=975,6D8956965251=975
But when I put that in my .bat and launch cgminer just crashes (Of coarse after I put my serial numbers there lol)

You need a special version of cgminer for that. I think only the girnyau fork supports that, and dtbartle does not.

http://cryptomining-blog.com/1688-alternative-cgminer-3-7-2-for-scrypt-mining-on-gridseed-5-chip-gc3355-asics/

[CartmanSPC]

This version supports "Per device frequency setting by serial number ":

https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

[darkfriend77]

This version supports "Per device frequency setting by serial number ":

https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

this version gives me around 10% lesser hashrate then the orginal cgminer .... I did a test with 20 miners ....

I asked for it ... with PM no answer ... so far ...

Sorry to bother you.

I just used your https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

which was compiled in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5763819#msg5763819 for the raspberry.

Somehow I'm getting around 10% less kh with the same setup .... then with the orginal cgminer from andreed from here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5539257#msg5539257

... Why does this happen ....?

[edonkey]

As part of another investigation into a problem I have seen with disconnects, I compared the girnyau sources to the dtbartle version. As far as I can tell, the girnyau changes look reasonable and are in line with what the author intended. I can see no reason for a 10% difference in hash rate. Certainly there is nothing intentionally in the code changes that would account for that difference.

This is probably a dumb question given that you're an active forum member and this is not your first rodeo, but if you're overclocking your units are you seeing a lot of hardware errors? As you're probably aware hardware errors can eat up your effective hash rate.

I'm using the girnyau version on a Raspberry Pi, mostly so that I can underclock some badly behaved units. I'm seeing what I believe are correct effective hash rates.

At the risk of seeming paranoid, I never use prebuilt binaries. I always build them myself from source.

If you're certain that you're configuring your miners exactly the same between the two cgminer versions and you're seeing a significant performance difference, maybe you should build cgminer yourself from sources. It's easy to do and is worth it for piece of mind.

This version supports "Per device frequency setting by serial number ":

https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

this version gives me around 10% lesser hashrate then the orginal cgminer .... I did a test with 20 miners ....

I asked for it ... with PM no answer ... so far ...

Sorry to bother you.

I just used your https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

which was compiled in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5763819#msg5763819 for the raspberry.

Somehow I'm getting around 10% less kh with the same setup .... then with the orginal cgminer from andreed from here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5539257#msg5539257

... Why does this happen ....?

[edonkey]

Since disabling the Scripta cron jobs, I haven't seen a disconnect in over 24 hours. Before this change, I was seeing 5 to 10 disconnects a day.

In fact, now that I think about it, I never saw disconnects with my rig until I got the cron jobs working. Originally when I installed Scripta manually, the cron jobs would not work when run as the www-data user. I had to run them as root to get them to work.

Since the disconnects are random, I didn't put 2 and 2 together until I noticed that all of the disconnects were aligned to 5 minute boundaries, which is when the Scripta cron jobs run.

I don't think this is a Scripta problem per se. I believe that there is likely a cgminer bug that sometimes happens when multiple processes attempt to access the JSON API at the same time. Three of the four Scripta cron jobs make the "summary" or "devs" API call. All of these cron jobs run concurrently on 5 minute boundaries.

The forth cron job just calls "/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp". This apparently returns an error on my Pi. Regardless, I doubt that the vcgencmd tool could interrupt USB communication. It's more likely that concurrent cgminer API calls cause the problem.

I've done a brief code review of cgminer but I haven't spotted a problem yet. I'm an experienced developer, but I have to admit that I'm new to cgminer, so I could easily be missing something. I'll keep poking at it to see if I can spot a problem.

I'm still seeing disconnects where after running for a while units disappear and are rediscovered. I'm on a Raspberry Pi running 10 GS units with the girnyau version of cgminer that I built from sources, plus Scripta as the web front end. Most of the units are on an Orico P10 U2.

After a disconnect, the device always reconnects a couple of seconds later. This leaves a "zombie" in the API because cgminer doesn't mark the device's status as dead. Sometimes more than one device at a time disconnects.

Here's an example of a disconnect from the log:

Code:

[2014-04-06 06:45:03] Stratum from pool 0 detected new block                    
[2014-04-06 06:45:03] GSD 8 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 06:45:03] work prepare failed, exiting mining thread 8                    
[2014-04-06 06:45:05] Device found, firmware version 01140113, driver version v3.8.5.20140210.02                    

The errors are *always* in the "prepare_work" method of the driver. In the sources, the function name is gridseed_prepare_work. I never see any other USB errors in the log. I've reviewed the various Linux system logs but don't see a correlation to the problem there.

When this error happens, the thread associated with the device exits. But the code doesn't mark the device as dead. That, in combination with the way that Scripta detects "live" devices by verifying that the last 5 second hash value is non-zero, results in irritating and bogus device info and hash rate totals in the web front end.

I don't have a spare 10 port hub, so I can't swap that out. I do have some poorly behaving Gridseeds that have excessive hardware failures, so I've tried further under-clocking them. But I still get disconnects.

One thing I've noticed is that all of the failures in the log are aligned on 5 minute boundaries within a few seconds. Here's the most recent ones:

Code:

[2014-04-05 13:45:03] GSD 6 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT
[2014-04-05 20:35:02] GSD 9 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 02:35:03] GSD 5 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 05:10:03] GSD 10 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 05:55:03] GSD 12 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 06:45:03] GSD 8 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    
[2014-04-06 07:40:04] GSD 13 SendWork usb write err:(-7) LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT                    

Scripta has several cron jobs that run on 5 minute boundaries. Most of the cron jobs call the cgminer API for status, which should be harmless.

But the timing of these events is very suspect. I'm starting to think that there's a cgminer race condition where sometimes an API status call can interfere with the general operation of cgminer.

As a binary chop, I'm going to try disabling the Scripta cron jobs to see if the problem goes away.

If anyone else has any suggestions, I'm all ears...

[simpic]

Hello,
what is the recommended frequency i can set for cgminer?
I'm currently using 650... what is the maximum and what is the recommended?

Moreover, what is it "chips=5"?

[suchmoon]

Hello,
what is the recommended frequency i can set for cgminer?
I'm currently using 650... what is the maximum and what is the recommended?

Moreover, what is it "chips=5"?

Start at 800 and if it works well (few hardware errors and good pool hashrate) you can move up to 850, which is where most Gridseeds work best. You can try 900 too, but that typically doesn't yield any increase in performance. Gridseed has 5 ASIC chips inside, but as far as I can tell cgminer works fine without that parameter.

[CartmanSPC]

This version supports "Per device frequency setting by serial number ":

https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

this version gives me around 10% lesser hashrate then the orginal cgminer .... I did a test with 20 miners ....

I asked for it ... with PM no answer ... so far ...

Sorry to bother you.

I just used your https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

which was compiled in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5763819#msg5763819 for the raspberry.

Somehow I'm getting around 10% less kh with the same setup .... then with the orginal cgminer from andreed from here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5539257#msg5539257

... Why does this happen ....?

Interesting. I started using the girnyau version recently but have not noticed this. Will take a closer look. The two versions are not much different from comparing the source code. The dtbartle version went away from setting static freq's and now support increments of 25. The version you referenced is an earlier build of dtbartle that had static freq.

I have considered forking the current dtbartle version with the per miner freq part of girnyau but am still undecided on doing static freq's or increments of 25. If I could figure out how to code increments of 5 that would be great. If static then there is not much benefit over just using girnyau's fork.

My miners are all over the map supporting freq's of 850 - 900+. Most of them do 863.

Are you basing your results on the pool reported hashrates? Contrary to what that one poster spams all over various threads the hashrate reported by pools are inaccurate and should not be used as a basis of your miners performance.

Edit: I'm not using a Pi. I found it too unreliable and like you mentioned about 10% lower hashrate.

[Ferris419]

Hey guys I didn't know where else to ask this question so I'll ask here and sorry if it's already been answered.
I have 3 gridseed modules 2 of them are stable at 900mhz and the third on is stable at 850mhz is it possible to run different modules at different frequencies? If so how can I manually set each frequency in cgminer? I'm not using a controller I just have them plugged into my computer windows 7 thanks in advance!

Yes if some one could point to the fork that this has been working on best that be awesome. im running them on linux./

I found this online --gridseed-freq 6D9426984857=988,6D9656774857=975,6D8956965251=975
But when I put that in my .bat and launch cgminer just crashes (Of coarse after I put my serial numbers there lol)

Are you using the one linked from this page? There are many different versions floating around, defining specific unit freqs is an option that has to be compiled into the build. Links for source (linux) and a pre-compiled (win) here:
http://cryptomining-blog.com/1688-alternative-cgminer-3-7-2-for-scrypt-mining-on-gridseed-5-chip-gc3355-asics/

yeah this is the one I'm using.

[tc61]

Anyone know a place to get replacement thermal pads From?

[jamieb81]

Anyone know a place to get replacement thermal pads From?

Ebay for sure.

[Ranma13]

https://i.imgur.com/wbdUUuA.png
I think you will find the HUB dose not have enough power to run 24 gridseeds

what size is the PSU?

This is the Monoprice 24-port USB hub. I don't have it in front of me right now, but I think the power adapter for it is 12V at 4A = 48W. The Gridseeds are powered using 12V at 7A = 84W power bricks. Each one powers 8 Gridseeds each, and the Gridseeds run in scrypt only mode. I purchased the 20x Gridseed kit from Zoomhash, 4 of them.

i'm not sure but i dint think thats enough power on the 5v Line to power all the gridseeds.

I've tried 4 different USB hubs and it looks like the max number of Gridseeds I can get running at the same time is around 7-9. This is using the Raspberry Pi across 3 different distros (Hashra, Scripta, Zoomhash). The hubs were:

4-port USB hub - 5V @ 1 A adapter, all 4 Gridseeds working
10-port USB hub - 5V @ 1 A adapter, 8 Gridseeds working
10-port USB hub - 5V @ 2.5A adapter, 8 Gridseeds working in Scripta, 9 Gridseeds working in Hashra.
Monoprice 24-port USB hub - 5V @ 4A adapter, 7 Gridseeds working in Scripta.

So I don't think it's related to the power.

[wolfey2014]

If anyone is interested.
I have been running my GS5's with FIFO buffers turned OFF for days now without any interruptions or weird failures or crashes! ZERO!
I'm running Windows 7 32 bit version.
This has also helped increase pool side hash rates and profits.
Peace!

[sandor111]

This version supports "Per device frequency setting by serial number ":

https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

this version gives me around 10% lesser hashrate then the orginal cgminer .... I did a test with 20 miners ....

I asked for it ... with PM no answer ... so far ...

Sorry to bother you.

I just used your https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

which was compiled in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5763819#msg5763819 for the raspberry.

Somehow I'm getting around 10% less kh with the same setup .... then with the orginal cgminer from andreed from here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477709.msg5539257#msg5539257

... Why does this happen ....?

Interesting. I started using the girnyau version recently but have not noticed this. Will take a closer look. The two versions are not much different from comparing the source code. The dtbartle version went away from setting static freq's and now support increments of 25. The version you referenced is an earlier build of dtbartle that had static freq.

I have considered forking the current dtbartle version with the per miner freq part of girnyau but am still undecided on doing static freq's or increments of 25. If I could figure out how to code increments of 5 that would be great. If static then there is not much benefit over just using girnyau's fork.

My miners are all over the map supporting freq's of 850 - 900+. Most of them do 863.

Are you basing your results on the pool reported hashrates? Contrary to what that one poster spams all over various threads the hashrate reported by pools are inaccurate and should not be used as a basis of your miners performance.

Edit: I'm not using a Pi. I found it too unreliable and like you mentioned about 10% lower hashrate.

IMO 25 MHz increments work the best, one of my miners runs stable at 925 MHz, but throws HW errors at 856 MHz. The 25 MHz increments have the lowest PLL frequency and other PLL dividers set at 0. I have also found that the cgminer forks does not take in account the hashing time lost when finding an invalid nonce (HW error).

[suchmoon]

I think you will find the HUB dose not have enough power to run 24 gridseeds

what size is the PSU?

This is the Monoprice 24-port USB hub. I don't have it in front of me right now, but I think the power adapter for it is 12V at 4A = 48W. The Gridseeds are powered using 12V at 7A = 84W power bricks. Each one powers 8 Gridseeds each, and the Gridseeds run in scrypt only mode. I purchased the 20x Gridseed kit from Zoomhash, 4 of them.

i'm not sure but i dint think thats enough power on the 5v Line to power all the gridseeds.

I've tried 4 different USB hubs and it looks like the max number of Gridseeds I can get running at the same time is around 7-9. This is using the Raspberry Pi across 3 different distros (Hashra, Scripta, Zoomhash). The hubs were:

4-port USB hub - 5V @ 1 A adapter, all 4 Gridseeds working
10-port USB hub - 5V @ 1 A adapter, 8 Gridseeds working
10-port USB hub - 5V @ 2.5A adapter, 8 Gridseeds working in Scripta, 9 Gridseeds working in Hashra.
Monoprice 24-port USB hub - 5V @ 4A adapter, 7 Gridseeds working in Scripta.

So I don't think it's related to the power.

I've had 20 working for about a month on two 10-port hubs, each with a 5A adapter.

I also had 26 working for a few days on two 13-port hubs, which came with 2.5A (I think) adapters, but I used an ATX PSU to feed 5V to them, so not sure how many amps that was.

I couldn't get the Monoprice hub to work either, at most I think I got 18 Gridseeds on it.

I also found that USB cables matter too. Cheap thin cables wasted me a lot of time with random drop outs and freezes.

[orenjuice5]

Anyone can let me know if what I am experiencing is normal

I connected my gridseed and using CGminer 3.7.2 with windows everything in CGminer looks like its working well ( no HW or rejects after 20 min) but the Gridseed fan seems like changing the speed of the fan from slow to fast every few seconds, it is not consistent.

the fan never stop rotating but you clearly hear the noise level go up and down.

is this normal or there is something wrong with my gridseed

Thanks in advance for your help