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

[pjcltd]

hey thanks for the great guide just have a couple of questions
1. why do you need that lightning asic router thingy cant you just use the usb hub alone?
2. where can i get one if i need one?

thanks alot

You need something to run the mining software, the controller or a windows/linux/pi box.  Not sure who sells the controllers by themselves they come with the 10 packs (LA3M)

I have 4 units on my windows 7 PC running the CPU miner
and I have to say they have not missed a beat
I have 6 more on order that I should get on Monday

I will try the PI later in the week

[richmke]

Anyone know where to source the 12v power plugs from the miner? I would like to buy the plug already connected to the wire (like the ones from jack). I can wire them myself to a molex connector. I can buy the plugs from radio shack, but I would rather already have them connected to the wire. One less thing to have to solder.

I am going to use some old 200 watt PSU's to power the miners and raspberry pi. The old PSU's have molex, not pci-e connectors. The PSU can also supply the 5v for the rasp pi and hubs.

Never mind. I found this post for the cables I need:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74397.0

[worldlybedouin]

Question for the electricially inclined folks who are following this thread:

I was consdering what to do about the "jet engine" fans on the miners.

I thought perhaps I could clip the "red" wire (not both) on the fan...and in-line one of these male/female connectors:  https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104016

This way I can easily enable/disable the fan and not have to put connectors on both black & red wires on these...but by simply disconnecting the connector or reconnecting it as needed.

Is this a good idea?  Assuming I'm only going to ever scrypt mine...but I think this approach could help me to reconnect the fans quickly should I be inclined to use the SHA256 chips for mining some magic new coin which may pop up and be worth it...very doubtful but...who knows?

Thoughts?

[wolfey2014]

Question for the electricially inclined folks who are following this thread:

I was consdering what to do about the "jet engine" fans on the miners.

I thought perhaps I could clip the "red" wire (not both) on the fan...and in-line one of these male/female connectors:  https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104016

This way I can easily enable/disable the fan and not have to put connectors on both black & red wires on these...but by simply disconnecting the connector or reconnecting it as needed.

Is this a good idea?  Assuming I'm only going to ever scrypt mine...but I think this approach could help me to reconnect the fans quickly should I be inclined to use the SHA256 chips for mining some magic new coin which may pop up and be worth it...very doubtful but...who knows?

Thoughts?

As long as either end of the + doesn't short out on the body of the miner, you should be fine.
I'd do the ground wire (black), myself because it's negative and if it does short to the body, nothing bad should happen. If the fan end of the black wire shorts out on the body, the fan should simply run.
As usual, do this at your own risk!
Wolfey2014

[worldlybedouin]

Question for the electricially inclined folks who are following this thread:

I was consdering what to do about the "jet engine" fans on the miners.

I thought perhaps I could clip the "red" wire (not both) on the fan...and in-line one of these male/female connectors:  https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104016

This way I can easily enable/disable the fan and not have to put connectors on both black & red wires on these...but by simply disconnecting the connector or reconnecting it as needed.

Is this a good idea?  Assuming I'm only going to ever scrypt mine...but I think this approach could help me to reconnect the fans quickly should I be inclined to use the SHA256 chips for mining some magic new coin which may pop up and be worth it...very doubtful but...who knows?

Thoughts?

As long as either end of the + doesn't short out on the body of the miner, you should be fine.
I'd do the ground wire (black), myself because it's negative and if it does short to the body, nothing bad should happen. If the fan end of the black wire shorts out on the body, the fan should simply run.
As usual, do this at your own risk!
Wolfey2014

Thanks for the response Wolfey2014...

I'll try this out on 1 miner using the black wire instead.  The connectors are insulated so I don't think it should be an issue of shorting out...that is unless I do a crap job on crimping the wires into the terminals...I'll also put a bit of electrical tape across the open ends of the terminals just in case so it should be fine.

Let's see how this goes...wish me luck!

[miaviator]

NOOOO  Cut the blue wire, it's always the blue wire

[bhai]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

[chanberg]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

how much you pay?

[Blueman666]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

I just removed the fans completely, no need for them with LTC and I wont be using BTC mode.

[misc2012-de]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

[chanberg]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

not bad at all... has that been consistent? My hashrate graphs are like jagged shark teeth, even with the RPi

[worldlybedouin]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

not bad at all... has that been consistent? My hashrate graphs are like jagged shark teeth, even with the RPi

Sounds right...I've only got 10 and I hit 3.61 which is 1/2 of what you're getting so it seems good.

Here's what my Scripta+RasPi+Andareed's cgminer looked like when I tested it Friday:  http://imgur.com/38OUKz5

I've stopped that setup for today as I'm trying to spend some time to isloate why that 1 miner in the dashboard seems to throw way more HW errors than the rest.  Maybe a bad cable, port, or something else...

[worldlybedouin]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

I just removed the fans completely, no need for them with LTC and I wont be using BTC mode.

Is there any chance the BTC core can be come "active" and start hashing?  Lets say some kind of cgminer bug or something?  Worried about that at all?

[suchmoon]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

Keep in mind that cgminer will report the hashrate blindly without regard to actual accepted shares. You can overlock to 1000 MHz and it will show you're hashing at 420 Kh/s, but if you check pool stats it's nowhere near that. The sweet spot seems to be 800 or 850. If your pool shows ~7 Mh/s for the 20 miners you're doing good.

[misc2012-de]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

not bad at all... has that been consistent? My hashrate graphs are like jagged shark teeth, even with the RPi

Sounds right...I've only got 10 and I hit 3.61 which is 1/2 of what you're getting so it seems good.

Here's what my Scripta+RasPi+Andareed's cgminer looked like when I tested it Friday:  http://imgur.com/38OUKz5

I've stopped that setup for today as I'm trying to spend some time to isloate why that 1 miner in the dashboard seems to throw way more HW errors than the rest.  Maybe a bad cable, port, or something else...

Got the same issue with one miner, seems to be normal. Either there's a problem with the cable, or it's really a problem with the miner. I don't think this is an issue with scripta or cgminer, but you never know.
Do u have an autostart feature ?

[misc2012-de]

This is, what i got with 20 miners @ 850mhz, Scripta & RaspPi. Not that bad i think.

Keep in mind that cgminer will report the hashrate blindly without regard to actual accepted shares. You can overlock to 1000 MHz and it will show you're hashing at 420 Kh/s, but if you check pool stats it's nowhere near that. The sweet spot seems to be 800 or 850. If your pool shows ~7 Mh/s for the 20 miners you're doing good.

Pool shows between 7 to 7.2.

[wolfey2014]

Question for the electricially inclined folks who are following this thread:

I was consdering what to do about the "jet engine" fans on the miners.

I thought perhaps I could clip the "red" wire (not both) on the fan...and in-line one of these male/female connectors:  https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104016

This way I can easily enable/disable the fan and not have to put connectors on both black & red wires on these...but by simply disconnecting the connector or reconnecting it as needed.

Is this a good idea?  Assuming I'm only going to ever scrypt mine...but I think this approach could help me to reconnect the fans quickly should I be inclined to use the SHA256 chips for mining some magic new coin which may pop up and be worth it...very doubtful but...who knows?

Thoughts?

As long as either end of the + doesn't short out on the body of the miner, you should be fine.
I'd do the ground wire (black), myself because it's negative and if it does short to the body, nothing bad should happen. If the fan end of the black wire shorts out on the body, the fan should simply run.
As usual, do this at your own risk!
Wolfey2014

Thanks for the response Wolfey2014...

I'll try this out on 1 miner using the black wire instead.  The connectors are insulated so I don't think it should be an issue of shorting out...that is unless I do a crap job on crimping the wires into the terminals...I'll also put a bit of electrical tape across the open ends of the terminals just in case so it should be fine.

Let's see how this goes...wish me luck!

You are welcome.

You may be wasting your time because the wire between the fan and the PCB - first - isn't exposed to the outside world as it's snugged up inside of the pod fins - second - the wires are not long enough to add plugs to and have enough to do any crimping on much less plugging of.
I simply disassembled mine (4 screws for the fan and 4 screws for the heat sink) and de-soldered the fan wired from the PCB. They are completely removed and there's just a nice little golden pod sitting there now with no fans on it. Make sure you put a little bit of torque on the screws when you tighten them back up. I found several of mine were lose. On one of them, you could tell that the heat sink wan't snugged up against 2 of the ASIC chips which would allow them to fail due to overheating if I were mining SHA with them. Gridseed definitely needs to improve their quality control!
Also, I left the fan mounting bracket on each pod and used the 4 screws that held the fan in place to act as a stand off so there is some room for air to circulate from the bottom up through the fins and out the top via 'convective' air flow.
So if they get warmer than room temp, they'll self cool to some degree. Certainly enough to prevent any overheating problems while running Scrypt.
It's too bad that the engineers didn't incorporate temperature sensors to not only monitor the unit but also to act as overheating protection.
I'm running mine now with no fans at all. OH! THE PEACEFUL SOUND OF NO FANS!
The only fan running now is the one in my 25 Amp Radio Shack switch mode power supply which is very quiet. I'm cool with that.
As usual, do any of this stuff at your own risk!
Wolfey2014

[Blueman666]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

I just removed the fans completely, no need for them with LTC and I wont be using BTC mode.

Is there any chance the BTC core can be come "active" and start hashing?  Lets say some kind of cgminer bug or something?  Worried about that at all?

I hope it never does but I have only got a 100W power supply driving 10 of them so I expect the supply would just die if BTC mode turned on.

[worldlybedouin]

You are welcome.

You may be wasting your time because the wire between the fan and the PCB - first - isn't exposed to the outside world as it's snugged up inside of the pod finds - second - the wires are not long enough to add plugs to and have enough to do any crimping on much less plugging of.
I simply disassembled mine (4 screws for the fan and 4 screws for the heat sink) and de-soldered the fan wired from the PCB. They are completely removed and there's just a nice little golden pod sitting there now with no fans on it. Make sure you put a little bit of torque on the screws when you tighten them back up. I found several of mine were lose. On one of them, you could tell that the heat sink wan't snugged up against 2 of the ASIC chips which would allow them to fail due to overheating if I were mining SHA with them. Gridseed definitely needs to improve their quality control!
Also, I left the fan mounting bracket on each pod and used the 4 screws that held the fan in place to act as a stand off so there is some room for air to circulate from the bottom up through the fins and out the top via 'convective' air flow.
So if they get warmer than room temp, they'll self cool to some degree. Certainly enough to prevent any overheating problems while running Scrypt.
It's too bad that the engineers didn't incorporate temperature sensors to not only monitor the unit but also to act as overheating protection.
I'm running mine now with no fans at all. OH! THE PEACEFUL SOUND OF NO FANS!
The only fan running now is the one in my 25 Amp Radio Shack switch mode power supply which is very quiet. I'm cool with that.
As usual, do any of this stuff at your own risk!
Wolfey2014

Yep...you're right again!!!  I pulled apart the heatsink on one of these and the wires are just too small to try and crimp on the connectors.  

So since I have ZERO skills with a soldering iron -- let alone d-soldering (which requires even more skill from what I understand)...I guess my only option is to clip the wires and tape them over.  Not sure I like this idea...

I bought a replacement PSU from Amazon and the fan on that has a temp sensor, so it only turns on when needed...so I'm going to run all 10 off of these and keep the other one as a backup should I need it....thus no fans and the quieter PSU should give me some sound relief in my bedroom.

[worldlybedouin]

I replaced the fans the day I got them with these http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/product.php?pid=136&area=en

4 of them running and almost no sound.

rgdz,
bhai

I just removed the fans completely, no need for them with LTC and I wont be using BTC mode.

Is there any chance the BTC core can be come "active" and start hashing?  Lets say some kind of cgminer bug or something?  Worried about that at all?

I hope it never does but I have only got a 100W power supply driving 10 of them so I expect the supply would just die if BTC mode turned on.

The reason I asked is because I know earlier versions of cgminer were keeping the BTC core powered up (but not hashing) and so I saw > 500 watts being pulled...at the time I had all 10 of my miners running off of 1 PSU so it got hot super quick but I pulled the plug before it could burn out.