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

[happydaze]

thevictimofuktyranny - to answer some of your questions:

The instructions on Crypto Mining Blog work well.
I'm not sure what the BTC=16 instruction is, my guess is it is the difficulty.  Most pools seem to automatically adjust anyway soon after you start mining.
1 instance of cgminer can run many Gridseeds.  --hotplug=10 (seconds or more) seems to be necessary - unplug the usb, start cgminer, plug the usb in and cgminer will find the gridseeds.

This post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=482352.msg5650273#msg5650273 is very useful.  You can use it to disable gridseed usb, then start cgminer, then enable usb.  It's like unplugging without actually unplugging them.

I clocked them up to 900 in SHA-256 mode. They may not all be capable of that.  750 seems to the max in dual mode.  

Do you want multiple instances of cgminer to mine different SHA coins?  I haven't tried that.

I find it easier to just run cgminer.exe with no instructions and let it read cgminer.conf
The last two lines of my conf file look like this: (to limit it to 5 gridseeds for example)

"usb" : "GSD:5",
"gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"

open a cmd window, get to the dir where cgminer is located and run cgminer --help
Lots of options there to choose from like rotate from one pool to the next based on time.

I don't think many people are dual mining or SHA only mining with these so you will probably have to go through a lot of trial and error on your own getting it to work as you want. I'm switching over to scrypt only myself.

[poopypants]

HappyDaze you are now famous for your Operation CAMO... congrats on winning.

[Lanski]

Hi there!
Uh... reading the post looks like I might have gotten into something bigger than what I can handle but I still want to be part of this.

I'm in UBUNTU 13.10 and I don't seem to be able to get past the building cgminer step:

Build cgminer:

Code:

cd ~/usb-miner/software/cgminer
./autogen.sh
CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -march=native" ./configure --enable-gridseed
make
cd

whenever I type ./autogen.sh it prompts:
bash: ./autogen.sh: no such file or directory

Any ideas why this happens?

ok hers what i did



ok heres what i did
make sure you are sudo su to root
cd   
apt-get install build-essential libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev libudev-dev autoconf automake screen
wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.34.0.tar.bz2
wget http://www.digip.org/jansson/releases/jansson-2.5.tar.bz2
tar -xvf curl-7.34.0.tar.bz2
cd curl-7.34.0
./configure
make
make install
cd ..

tar -xvf jansson-2.5.tar.bz2
cd jansson-2.5
./configure
make
make install
wget http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/ubuntu/pool/main/a/automake1.11/automake1.11_1.11.6-2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i automake1.11_1.11.6-2_all.deb
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libjansson.* /usr/lib/
cd ..
git clone https://github.com/jmordica/cgminer-gc3355
if you have a problem with git then use  'apt-get install git'
cd cgminer-gc3355/
./configure --enable-scrypt --enable-gridseed
make

Thats it your done
./cgminer --gridseed-options=baud=115200,freq=800,chips=40,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=0 --hotplug=0


this works on Ubuntu 13.10  and the new version 14 Ubuntu

Hope this helps you out.

Hey! Thanks a lot mate! Worked perfectly!

[pjcltd]

Hey! Thanks a lot mate! Worked perfectly!

no problem at all mate

[happydaze]

HappyDaze you are now famous for your Operation CAMO... congrats on winning.

Thanks poopypants pretty exciting to win a  5 chip Gridseed from GawMiners & Crypto Mining Blog!

[thevictimofuktyranny]

thevictimofuktyranny - to answer some of your questions:

The instructions on Crypto Mining Blog work well.
I'm not sure what the BTC=16 instruction is, my guess is it is the difficulty.  Most pools seem to automatically adjust anyway soon after you start mining.
1 instance of cgminer can run many Gridseeds.  --hotplug=10 (seconds or more) seems to be necessary - unplug the usb, start cgminer, plug the usb in and cgminer will find the gridseeds.

This post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=482352.msg5650273#msg5650273 is very useful.  You can use it to disable gridseed usb, then start cgminer, then enable usb.  It's like unplugging without actually unplugging them.

I clocked them up to 900 in SHA-256 mode. They may not all be capable of that.  750 seems to the max in dual mode.  

Do you want multiple instances of cgminer to mine different SHA coins?  I haven't tried that.

I find it easier to just run cgminer.exe with no instructions and let it read cgminer.conf
The last two lines of my conf file look like this: (to limit it to 5 gridseeds for example)

"usb" : "GSD:5",
"gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"

open a cmd window, get to the dir where cgminer is located and run cgminer --help
Lots of options there to choose from like rotate from one pool to the next based on time.

I don't think many people are dual mining or SHA only mining with these so you will probably have to go through a lot of trial and error on your own getting it to work as you want. I'm switching over to scrypt only myself.

Thanks   for the help, HOTPLUG 10 has sorted it out with manually adding 1 at a time, secondly "--usb  GSD:4" works perfectly (you confused me by leaving of the -- and adding an extra ).

The "BTC=16" is meant to set share difficulty under 16 level. It does not work when you have more then 1 Gridseed running in dual mode on the same Windows CGminer compiled for us by Crypto Mining Blog.

Therefore, when share difficulty goes above 16 HW errors explode, Gridseeds get super hot and eventually shut down or CGminer crashes (or a mix of these).

Essentially, it is a bug in the dual mode version that shared settings is not carried over onto multiple Gridseeds!

The only workaround I've found is to run four Windows CGminers for my 4 Gridseeds, each stay working at Low difficulty shares and this way and I can overclock them 750mhz-700mhz! However, this is to mine BTC, when I want to mine the newer SHA coins.

Anyway, I've sent an email to Crypto Mining Blog to see if the have some answers for me!

[happydaze]

I have them running dual mode 750 MHz 8.5 to 8.75 Gh/s SHA-256 and 300kh/s Scrypt.  Those are poolside numbers.

The example I showed was in the cgminer.conf file not cmd line or batch file.  I just run cgminer with no options - it reads everything from the cgminer.conf file.

If your gridseeds are getting too hot then make sure your power supply and wiring are able to deliver the full 5 amps at 12 volts. That's 60 watts per gridseed in dual mode.  Mine run warm.
The oldest pod I have runs much warmer than newer pods and gives an occasional error at 750 MHz in dual mode.

Also, I don't set the frequency for cpuminer in the batch file.  I've found it makes no difference in dual mode.  cpuminer just takes the 750 MHz set in cgminer.conf.  I've run it like this for weeks.

I have run one at 850 MHz dual mode 10 Gh/s, 350 kH/s for 12hrs but that required a volt mod and the watts went up to 64 watts  which I think is too much for long term life of the pod so I stopped trying that.

From the GC3355 chip docs I see a "half" mode that I can't figure out how to do.

BTC mode up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate, with 2.4W/GHash
LTC mode up to 60K/s LTC Hash Rate
Dual-Coin mode up to 1.75G/s BTC Hash Rate + 60K/s LTC Hash Rate,
or up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate + 38K LTC Hash Rate

The 1.75G/s BTC Hash Rate + 60K/s LTC Hash Rate per chip is what I get now at 750 Mhz (8.75 Gh/s SHA-256 and 300kh/s Scrypt).
The 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate + 38K LTC Hash Rate per chip is what I refer to as half mode.  (11.25 Gh/s SHA-256 and 200kh/s Scrypt) I don't know how to do that.  Going to 900 MHz works for cgminer SHA but results in nothing but errors in cpuminer Scrypt.  I tried 900MHz cgminer, 450 MHz cpuminer but that didn't work.

I'm just about done experimenting with dual mode though.  It uses a lot of power and generates a lot of heat compared to Scrypt only.

[sandor111]

I would suggest to drop SHA mining, and go with Scrypt only, the Gridseeds are clearly not made for that. There are far better alternatives to SHA mining.

[thevictimofuktyranny]

I have them running dual mode 750 MHz 8.5 to 8.75 Gh/s SHA-256 and 300kh/s Scrypt.  Those are poolside numbers.

The example I showed was in the cgminer.conf file not cmd line or batch file.  I just run cgminer with no options - it reads everything from the cgminer.conf file.

If your gridseeds are getting too hot then make sure your power supply and wiring are able to deliver the full 5 amps at 12 volts. That's 60 watts per gridseed in dual mode.  Mine run warm.
The oldest pod I have runs much warmer than newer pods and gives an occasional error at 750 MHz in dual mode.

Also, I don't set the frequency for cpuminer in the batch file.  I've found it makes no difference in dual mode.  cpuminer just takes the 750 MHz set in cgminer.conf.  I've run it like this for weeks.

I have run one at 850 MHz dual mode 10 Gh/s, 350 kH/s for 12hrs but that required a volt mod and the watts went up to 64 watts  which I think is too much for long term life of the pod so I stopped trying that.

From the GC3355 chip docs I see a "half" mode that I can't figure out how to do.

BTC mode up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate, with 2.4W/GHash
LTC mode up to 60K/s LTC Hash Rate
Dual-Coin mode up to 1.75G/s BTC Hash Rate + 60K/s LTC Hash Rate,
or up to 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate + 38K LTC Hash Rate

The 1.75G/s BTC Hash Rate + 60K/s LTC Hash Rate per chip is what I get now at 750 Mhz (8.75 Gh/s SHA-256 and 300kh/s Scrypt).
The 2.25G/s BTC Hash Rate + 38K LTC Hash Rate per chip is what I refer to as half mode.  (11.25 Gh/s SHA-256 and 200kh/s Scrypt) I don't know how to do that.  Going to 900 MHz works for cgminer SHA but results in nothing but errors in cpuminer Scrypt.  I tried 900MHz cgminer, 450 MHz cpuminer but that didn't work.

I'm just about done experimenting with dual mode though.  It uses a lot of power and generates a lot of heat compared to Scrypt only.

Hi,

Could you copy and paste your configuration file (just delete out pools names and passwords)?

I've got all four connect to 650 watt PSU, I'm moving them to cooler location!

I've finished with the Scrypt only mode and decided to experiment with the SHA side - running individual instances of CPUminer fork by sandor111 (non-TUI) is amazing, hashes about 5%-10% higher then even a cgminer installation on a Raspberry PI!

Unfortunately, I haven't got good enough eyesight to attempt those voltage mods (needed a magnifying glass just to discern the solder brigdes required) - so decided to experiment with SHA instead!

Thanks

[happydaze]

This cgminer.conf example uses 3 pools and will rotate from one pool to the next every two hours: "rotate" : "120",
cgminer will only look for up to 5 gridseeds: "usb" : "GSD:5",
gridseed options are set as: "gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"

Code:

{
"pools" : [
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	},
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	},
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	}
]
,
"api-listen" : true,
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"hotplug" : "10",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"shares" : "0",
"rotate" : "120",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin",
"api-allow" : "W:127.0.0.1",
"usb" : "GSD:5",
"gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"
}

You don't have to use rotate.  There are other options in cgminer help.
cgminer will "write" a conf file for you and then you can edit it.

[thevictimofuktyranny]

This cgminer.conf example uses 3 pools and will rotate from one pool to the next every two hours: "rotate" : "120",
cgminer will only look for up to 5 gridseeds: "usb" : "GSD:5",
gridseed options are set as: "gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"

Code:

{
"pools" : [
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	},
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	},
	{
		"url" : "stratum+tcp://zzz.zzzz.zzz:5678",
		"user" : "username",
		"pass" : "x"
	}
]
,
"api-listen" : true,
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"hotplug" : "10",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"shares" : "0",
"rotate" : "120",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin",
"api-allow" : "W:127.0.0.1",
"usb" : "GSD:5",
"gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=750,chips=5,modules=1,usefifo=0,btc=16"
}

You don't have to use rotate.  There are other options in cgminer help.
cgminer will "write" a conf file for you and then you can edit it.

Thank you for all your help, it has been very much appreciated - I'll try that configuration file out on many non-BTC pools.

I currently have all of them hashing at 10-8GH BTC respectively and 320kh respectively on Dnotes coins.   

Hopefully, I be able to mine some of the newer SHA coins with your configuration file without getting share difficulties outside these Gridseed's tolerances.

Thank You, once again.

[WheresWaldo]

One great guide

[ksolomon]

I just got my first gridseed yesterday, and so far I'm loving it.  I do have a question though...is it possible to dual mine (yeah, I know) on Windows with something other than the cpuminer and cgminer combo?

[nev_dull]

2 gridseed questions related to scrypt only hashing:

1) What is the maximum people have clocked the 5 chip gridseeds up to with acceptable results?
I normally run mine at 900 (381K)  although they appear to run at 950 (402K/s) with few hardware errors (at least in my limited testing).
At 975 they do about 412/413K.
At 1000 they do 423K.

2) What is an "acceptable" amount of hardware errors?   1 a minute?  5? 10?

3) Is there a way with cgminer to specify a frequency for each specific gridseed without using a separate instance of cgminer?

[edit:  I see now with this version of cgminer you can specify per device speeds:  https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355, for example
--gridseed-options freq=888 --gridseed-freq 8D74488A4949=900,8D96227B5449=900,8D7357785355=875
I found this on an earlier post by Girhes ]


I'm using cgminer.

[happydaze]

I just got my first gridseed yesterday, and so far I'm loving it.  I do have a question though...is it possible to dual mine (yeah, I know) on Windows with something other than the cpuminer and cgminer combo?

No other way that I know of. 

[favelle75]

Got a weird problem with a batch of 10 Gridseeds now. They simply won't hash. One will, but the rest sit there with no WU and no accepteds:



http://imageshack.com/a/img834/8238/n5ilt.jpg

Thoughts?

[CartmanSPC]

Had a couple that have done that and ended up returning them for replacement. To have that many though is suspicious.

[dyland]

Has anyone encountered the following problem?:

I am running 20 grid seeds off a pi running hashra controlla (BFG). These are recently volt-modded 47.7k resistor to go about 510khsh.
Controller shows very little hw rejects at 1200.


PROBLEM: They are showing 510khsh on the controller, but poolside they only report about half that.

When I take I clock it back down to 800 from 1200, controller and poolside are aligned at about 340 per unit.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[favelle75]

Had a couple that have done that and ended up returning them for replacement. To have that many though is suspicious.

Found out the problem man. Power supply issues. Fixed it and all 10 are back to hashing perfectly!

[CartmanSPC]

Had a couple that have done that and ended up returning them for replacement. To have that many though is suspicious.

Found out the problem man. Power supply issues. Fixed it and all 10 are back to hashing perfectly!

Good to hear! Replacement is a bitch. Mine were not a power supply problem though :/