Efudd Z-Series Fuddware 2.3 -Z11/Z11e/Z11j/Z9/Mini

[efudd]

Z Series Unlocked Fuddware v2.3 (All Models) is now available!

Z11/Z11e/Z11j details start in post#740

Dev fee model change: reduced from 3.5 to 3.1%; now runs once a day.

Join me and other Equihash users on the Equihash Discord server: https://discord.gg/CNmehnN

--> Z11/Z11e/Z11j 2.3 Fuddware <--

--> Z11/Z11e/Z11j 2.3.1 Fuddware for NiceHash <--

--> Z9 2.3 Fuddware <--

--> Z9-Mini 2.3 Fuddware <--

Change log for version 2.3.1nh:

• Corrects an error in voltage control implementation.

Change log for version 2.3nh:

• NiceHash works again on Z11.

Change log for version 2.3:

• All models: Z11, Z9, Z9-Mini
• Adds support for No Dev Fees on Luxor: http://mining.luxor.tech
• Z11
• Adds support for Z11
• Adds support for voltage controls per hashboard
• Z9 mini
• Malware protection added
• Please note: NH support is not including in this 2.3 Mini release.
• MD5SUM: dcaba5458537da6c8ce7e14b5f7795bc Z11_2.3.tar.gz
• SHA256: fe7cf284d6811f97f7f826e30bd780b987b697220e1ba9597b087f14b8371252 Z11_2.3.tar.gz
• MD5SUM: 0921fee88fb8b57f34282016a553b798  Z9_2.3.tar.gz
• SHA256: 03ee82add15c7ca4e887e6685706adba369ae6cbe3316f4e03c8abd558f698b7  Z9_2.3.tar.gz
• MD5SUM: d392774f125a07fead3fb77cd54d21b0  Z9Mini_2.3.tar.gz
• SHA256: 157484c0915b9964a8a54bf883dda430e32919ee74a60ed41e446cdabc1d5263  Z9Mini_2.3.tar.gz

Change log for version 2.2:

• Adds Support for Nicehash (yay!) This is broken again as of 05/22/19. :/
• Adds proper #xnsub support
• Adds protection against known antminer malware.
• NOTE: If you are a paid user, you will need to re-apply your license after upgrade.
• SHA256: f77310d7d0cb7ea42ed84c8c5f91749767faf18af04cabab332caea26e308356  Z9_2.2.tar.gz
• MD5SUM: 35c7a7c9bbfb321ed8603657fa36710d  Z9_2.2.tar.gz

Change log for version 2.1c and d:

• Corrects a condition where the wrong pool was sometimes being returned to after the dev-fee cycle.
• Added frequency tuning guide to "Miner Configuration -> Advanced Settings" page; If you do not see this, please clear your browser cache.
• Updated the frequency selection list up to 850; this corrects an oversight for the Mini releases and allows you wild and crazy kids to try extreme (but not recommended by me!) frequencies.
• Resolved a race condition where multiple cgminer processes could start running after setting new frequencies; I'm 99% confident this is resolved now.
• Corrects an issue where certificates expired after 30 days resulting in a failure to mine properly; paid license users will need to re-apply their license after upgrading. This is a mandatory upgrade as 2.1(c) and earlier will stop working because of the early expiration mistake.

The majority of issues seen are related to stale cache in webbrowsers. I will fix this in my next release. If you are not seeing what you expect after upgrading, please clear your browser cache and try again. This will be true if you upgrade or downgrade.

If your browser automatically uncompresses archives, you will get a 'tar: short file read' error on upload. Please disable automatic uncompress in your browser. You should be uploading a ".tar.gz" file to your miner, not a ".tar" when flashing the firmware image.

Paid users - please use your normal download link for instructions.

Additional details at https://releases.broked.net

I am proud to announce the release of version 2.1, built on top of the reliable 1.x releases which have a proven track record of success and is installed on more than a thousand+ machines! This has taken me a lot longer than I expected to prepare and release, but I am confident in the development, testing, and the resulting product. I welcome feedback and will address responses, questions, etc. as quickly as I can.

This includes all of the functionality of the previous release (stable overclock, fully unlocked, proper temperature/sensor measurements, etc.) and brings a framework for adding additional features and a much requested feature to control the frequency of each hash board separately. In addition, the frequency selections have been updated to support the broadest range of frequencies.

To tune for best frequency

1) Set global frequency to 650. Set each other frequency to "Use Global".
2) Observe your boards for at least 10 minutes, if any drop out, on the next cycle decrease their frequency by 1 step in the pulldown.
3) Repeat this cycle until you have a stable minimum frequency for your boards.
4) To start the 'upwards tuning', choose one board (#1 for example) and increase it's frequency by 1 step.
5) Observe the board for at least 10 minutes to see if it is stable. If it is, repeat #4. If it is not, drop down 1 step and move to the next board.

Going through this process (which hopefully makes sense), you should be able to tune your units for your individual system maximums. It's best to do this with the fans set to 100% so you can remove thermals from the equation -- after which, set the fans back however you want them and see if your boards stay stable. If they do, good, of they don't, eithee decrease freqeuncy by 1 step or increase fan.

Please do note that sometimes a lower frequency produces a higher hash rate, so be mindful of that as you select for your environment.

Version History:

• Version 2.0 - Initial release with individual hashboard overclocking
• Version 2.0b - Corrected a minor issue with the reporting of frequencies in the web interface after a reboot.
• Version 2.0c - Corrected an issue with the "dev fee" running too often. This is a recommended upgrade for all users.
• Version 2.0d - Corrected an issue where if pool 0 was dead, the dev fee would not return to the previous pool. I believe this is now completely resolved.
• Version 2.1 - First release available for Z9 and Mini users as well as paid and dev-fee users.
• Version 2.1c - Expands frequency options, resolved cgminer restart race condition, adds tuning guide, corrects issue where the wrong pool was selected after the dev cycle in certain conditions.
• Version 2.1d - Corrects an issue where certificates expired after 30 days resulting in a failure to mine properly; paid license users will need to re-apply their license after upgrading. This is a mandatory upgrade as 2.1(c) and earlier will stop working because of the early expiration mistake.
  

Winner History
* 1 ZEC / Week 1 December: Winner has been selected and details are in post#520 in this thread.
* December PS4 Giveaway:  Winner has been identified (see post# 553).

System Overview Page


System Upgrade and License page


Frequency Selection Page


Example of 3 boards running at 3 separate frequencies.

In the near future I will be adding support for  fan/temperature control curves, voltage management(TBD), automatic overclocking capabilities through heuristics to evaluate your individual board performance, and much more. I have a pipeline full of ideas that can be applied to the Z series and other miners alike.

Please note that this firmware is "free", but does include a small developer fee consisting of 10 minutes of developer mining time for every 280 minutes of regular mining. The exception to this is when the miner is first started, it will mine for the user for 10 minutes, and then developer for 10, at which point it will cycle 280minutes user, 10 minutes developer.

This has been changed to 3% dev fee -- 10 minutes for dev, 320 minutes for you as of 12/7/2018 00:00:00 GMT.

The first time the software is started, the hashboard frequency page will not have any items selected. Choose "Use Global" or any other frequency and apply; the selection will stay for future changes.

This is not a source-based modification, but instead was performed using an ARM disassembly, some sweat, tears, an oscilloscope, and other misc. equipment.

If anyone cares, here is a summary of the kind of work that has gone into this. Not all of this is original code, but a significant portion of it is.

Code:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                               30            541            519           3600
Bourne Shell                     6            183             33           1569
HTML                             2            177             12            929
C/C++ Header                     8             50            117            226
make                             5             42              3            141
Assembly                         3             47             52             83
Teamcenter def                   1              0              0              6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            55           1040            736           6554
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To install the firmware:

1) Download the firmware from the link above, do not uncompress it, leave it as is.
2) On your Z series unit go to System -> Upgrade -> "Flash new firmware image"
3) Use the "Choose file" dialogue and select the file you downloaded in #1.
4) Select the "Flash image" button. You can use or disable "Keep Settings" at your own preference.
5) You will see the image upload and apply, and then the notification to wait 90 seconds. In my experience, after 60 seconds, if I select "System" from the top left, the miner is generally up and running.
6) Go to "Miner Configuration', "Advanced Settings", and select 575Mhz and then apply.
NOTE: If you have previous had your miner set to 550Mhz before applying this update, the frequency selection box will be empty by default, and will populate when you select the pulldown.

I welcome any feedback on this firmware and how it is performing.


DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility for your miner catching on fire, bricking itself, running out and marrying someone else, or any other catastrophe. These miners can be fully recovered in the event of a failure in flashing using a microSD card and the "V9 recovery" instructions, followed by flashing the original firmware back. I have successfully done this numerous times to test recovery scenarios.

The factory firmware is available from bitmain at https://service.bitmain.com/support/download?product=Antminer%20Z9
Batch1 factory firmware is available at the bottom of https://releases.broked.net

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[efudd]

Update from Post#299 duplicated here:

Folk,

I know I have not provided a lot of update here recently, and I apologize. The reason is simple, I didn't have any news worth reporting.
I am now confident the release is imminent (a couple of more evenings) although I will scale it out slowly to ensure the infrastructure and miners are working properly.

The current status is this:

* Almost done with the infrastructure
* Testing various positive and negative infrastructure conditions such as server down, not found, license not found, etc.
* Licenses can be upgraded on the fly and clients will "magically" pick up the updates (have a license for 2, need 4, can do it on the fly, no need to change firmware)
* the dev fee version will be updated along with this one and will bring them to feature parity.
* and more...

I still have a reasonable amount of work to do, but the hard parts are behind me (I think....). I'm still in the process of updating the webUI with support for providing a messages to the user (for example "upgrade available") in the dashboard, displaying the licensing information and current counts,

per hashboard feature: This will be enabled in all next releases, both paid and developer fee supported.

For dev-fee users, I am working with a couple of the pools to optimize how the underlying aspects work -- the benefit there is that I will be able to greatly reduce the impact of a dev-fee on hash rate (should be close to 0 when all is said and done). It may be that this functionality will be pool specific in the near-term; I'll provide more detail here as it is available.

NiceHash: I've generated the traces requested by nicehash and submitted them for analysis. My eye does not see anything obvious as to the failure reasons, so I am reliant on them to provide information in order to try to add in support.

Fan Control: Hardware aspects like fan/voltage are the next items on my list. I've done a lot of pre-work on this and honestly things don't look great, but I am not out of ideas just yet.
Voltage Control: see fan control.

Mini: This will follow on the footsteps of the next release. I've been testing. I will likely have a lower dev fee rate for the mini.

Dev-fee: I am strongly considering lowering the dev-fee over time; I will be able to handle this with the infrastucture I've been building. What this means is the longer a node runs, the lower the dev-fee goes to some minimum amount.

Other: I'm sure I'm forgetting something(s)... more soon.

Thank you,

Jason

[fccs]

I can vouch this works and is legit.  The amount of time and effort into this build that efudd has done should not go unnoticed.

[zacocity]

All fine, good Job!

[ezeiza]

Brilliant Job, works 100%. Running on 2 Z9's for more than an hour. 50K/sol, perfect. Good work  
From brasco

[rackserver]

here also I just want to say thanks for developing this:)

[wsopft]

here also I just want to say thanks for developing this:)

What fan speed noise?

[efudd]

here also I just want to say thanks for developing this:)

What fan speed noise?

I run my fans at 100%, so I cannot speak to fan noise.

[crypto_buffa]

Just tested this, working perfectly. My compliments efudd, I was watching your posts closely on the other topic and want to thank you for the hard work and attention to detail you've put into making this a flashable firmware, along with the consistent progress updates you've been providing.

I have no issue with you charging 1% for it. Realistically, by "jail-breaking" my Z9 from 550 to 575 you've increased my efficiency by just over 4.5% alone! That being said, would love to see more/higher options

For those interested, I have everything set to auto and my stats are:

-Room ambient temperature 29 degrees Celsius.
https://imgur.com/a/IEvG6T6

[efudd]

Just tested this, working perfectly. My compliments efudd, I was watching your posts closely on the other topic and want to thank you for the hard work and attention to detail you've put into making this a flashable firmware, along with the consistent progress updates you've been providing.

I have no issue with you charging 1% for it. Realistically, by "jail-breaking" my Z9 from 550 to 575 you've increased my efficiency by just over 4.5% alone! That being said, would love to see more/higher options

For those interested, I have everything set to auto and my stats are:

-Room ambient temperature 29 degrees Celsius.
https://imgur.com/a/IEvG6T6

If you can handle the sound, you might want to try fans to 100% (or maybe force 75 or something?) and just see how it impacts your temps. I try not to let my miners go over 75C, personally... but that's based on nothing other than a number I pulled out of my opinion hole.

-j

[Kahooli]

Efudd - Do you know if the Z9 has the same micro on the hash board as the z9 mini? Does it use the same 4(6) phase VRM? Would you be willing to give up some of that data So I don't have to go through the same disassembly process (I was about to do this then I saw your post)?
( the 2/3 batch z9 minis are current-limiting the hash boards)

[efudd]

Efudd - Do you know if the Z9 has the same micro on the hash board as the z9 mini? Does it use the same 4(6) phase VRM? Would you be willing to give up some of that data So I don't have to go through the same disassembly process (I was about to do this then I saw your post)?
( the 2/3 batch z9 minis are current-limiting the hash boards)

Z9 is also current/voltage limiting.  I know it kicks in around 700Mhz, I'm unsure where the cut-line is, however.
I'm 95%+ sure they are the same -- my last mini went out the door Saturday, so I cannot confirm at the moment.

Voltage finagling is on my TODO list for the near future (depending on interest).
I also expect what I've done here will work for the mini (mind you, the binary patching would be different, but...).

On my TODO list after/with the "Voltage finagling" was to work on the mini -- with the intention of creating a "unified firmware" that works on both (assuming I can properly identify the hardware).

-j

[gimel12]

Hi,

I have downloaded the file and do all the steps but when I am flashing my z9 is saying: tar : invalid magic tar: short read

Please, can you help me with this?

[efudd]

Hi,

I have downloaded the file and do all the steps but when I am flashing my z9 is saying: tar : invalid magic tar: short read

Please, can you help me with this?

Are you sure you have a complete download? It should be 12506987 bytes.

'md5sum' against the file should be:

4b152ea287c9cd6cddafd450831caafe  Z9XL_OC_575_demo.tar.gz

(md5sum is a common unix/linux command, if you are on windows, there is probably some readily available software for calculating md5 checksums you can try).

-j

[crypto_buffa]

Just tested this, working perfectly. My compliments efudd, I was watching your posts closely on the other topic and want to thank you for the hard work and attention to detail you've put into making this a flashable firmware, along with the consistent progress updates you've been providing.

I have no issue with you charging 1% for it. Realistically, by "jail-breaking" my Z9 from 550 to 575 you've increased my efficiency by just over 4.5% alone! That being said, would love to see more/higher options

For those interested, I have everything set to auto and my stats are:

-Room ambient temperature 29 degrees Celsius.
https://imgur.com/a/IEvG6T6

If you can handle the sound, you might want to try fans to 100% (or maybe force 75 or something?) and just see how it impacts your temps. I try not to let my miners go over 75C, personally... but that's based on nothing other than a number I pulled out of my opinion hole.

-j

Thanks for the suggestion. Set fans to 85% and that dropped the temps to 75-76 across the 3 chains.

[vmozara]

I don't have any asics,i am gpu miner, bit i appreciate your good will to share especially in this harsh time where it is all about profit and scamming, here have some merit from me

[efudd]

Doing some more testing and it looks like the higher frequencies may be a challenge. 650 is stable on numerous machines, but beyond that "it depends". It's going to take me some more time to dig into the higher frequencies and voltage/current limiting that may be impacting those attempts.

The 650 Mhz version is currently being tested by a number of individuals. Once it has passed the "smoke test", it is available for a one-time fee/donation. PM/DM me to discuss details.

Thank you.

-j

[zidrimas]

hi
and can you enable at the 650 Version also  625 600 575  Steps?

i like to buy the new firmware when its ready

thanks for your work

[cmiles7888]

Hello, I tried to send you a message about purchase but it says you do not allow messages from newbies. Will you enable this please so I can send message please.

[crypto_buffa]

Hello, I tried to send you a message about purchase but it says you do not allow messages from newbies. Will you enable this please so I can send message please.

Same problem here. Interested in the firmware, could you PM me or enable that feature?