GekkoScience NewPac / Terminus R606 (BM1387) Official Support Thread

[vh]

Sounds like the text UI library is not installed by default in Ubuntu 18.

Code:

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

clone and build again afterwards.

I'll update the first post accordingly.

Linux update?

Yes, linux only.
Windows support has recently been discontinued upstream.   
I'll continue to post a link to the binary so long as it's still build-able.

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[House Xylander]

Thank you, both yours and Sidehacks help and patience are greatly appreciated

Will get this done as soon I can get out of the office, I miss 4 day weeks...

[rockmoney]

What sort of cooling did you use to get them running at that speed and stable?

Personally, I use a nice 6" fan I picked up at my local ACE Hardware store, and this fan on Amazon is almost just like mine: http://a.co/d/hD9RkyR. It wasn't the least expensive fan, but you get what you pay for I guess. Occasionally, I also use a 120mm PC case fan that I wired to work with most HP server PSU's (or anything that will accept a 6-pin PCI-e cable connection). That fan moves air with some very serious force at full power, hence the 5A rating, and can be purchased here: http://a.co/d/g9pJzEV.

Yea, and what kind of temps are you seeing with said cooling. What are your ambient, pcb, chips and post air temps?

You could get 1Ths for under 150 watts on 8 sticks at 500MHz, lol. It's about 300MHz higher and hotter for sure than I would feel comfortable leaving alone in the house.

I have no idea what any of the temps are, but they are just barely warm to the touch. As others have already mentioned, all of my NewPac sticks run MUCH cooler than any of my 2PAC sticks ever did (even when the NewPac sticks are running at 500Mhz).

[Morlok8k]

I have:
1 Compac
1 2pac
4 2pac Seconds
1 Newpac

All currently running at 150 mhz.

They are on stands with active cooling and the normal USB 5V is bypassed to use a separate 60A 5V power supply.  (I have no power issues from crappy hubs - they get all the juice they need)

Two of my 2pac Seconds are flaky (the good one just zombies often, and the bad one has a solid white light but still hashes about 75% as good as normal and also zombies often), so i would like to run them at a lower speed - they tend to run longer before crapping out at lower mhz.  aside from just running those on a separate pi, is there a good way to target it's serial number or something?

i know there is the --USB command, but as far as i can tell that just picks up whichever one happens to be listed first?

[gt_addict]

Personally, I use a nice 6" fan I picked up at my local ACE Hardware store, and this fan on Amazon is almost just like mine: http://a.co/d/hD9RkyR. It wasn't the least expensive fan, but you get what you pay for I guess. Occasionally, I also use a 120mm PC case fan that I wired to work with most HP server PSU's (or anything that will accept a 6-pin PCI-e cable connection). That fan moves air with some very serious force at full power, hence the 5A rating, and can be purchased here: http://a.co/d/g9pJzEV.

[...]

Ive got an Iltra kaze 120x38mm fan somewhere and a duct from an old server, ill have to get it hooked up somehow and see how goes. Cheers for the info though, given me some hope of getting them above 275freq and bumping up my lotto chances  

[House Xylander]

ok I have installed libcurses5-dev and rebuilt cgminer. restarted just in case

I have kicked it off with:

Code:

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://btc.viabtc.com:3333 -u xxxxxxx.xxxxxx -p x --gekko-newpac-freq 200 --suggest-diff 1280

I am still only seeing accepted and detected new block. The average of all the sticks is popping up at the bottom.

was there a flag/switch (not sure what they are called) that needs to be in my launch string?

https://i68.tinypic.com/mcvsy9.jpg

Should I try downgrading to U 16.04 LTS?

Or start over and rerun this whole code:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git autoconf automake libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev libudev-dev
     
mkdir -p git/vthoang; cd git/vthoang
git clone https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer.git
cd cgminer

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
make -j 2

[gcanelson]

I agree that the culprit isn't the NewPacs or Sidehack, as I have running a restart script since the days of .333 G/h USB miners.  I still have my old .bat restart script for Windows archived. If anyone wants me to post it, I will.
Restarting loses only seconds, where if it goes offline you may lose minutes or hours.

While I might not use your restart script this weekend, it would be good to have in my back pocket... So I for one would appreciate it being posted here. Thanks - G


For me, a half dozen NewPacs arrived today from minefarmbuy. (Thanks for the good pricing and great service). So now there's a total of 9 NewPacs on my Eyeboot USB3.0 powered hub - all are running at 400MHz (a step down for the original 3). They are running in two sessions of cgminer so one has 5 NewPacs and the other one has 4... All have been running solid for the first 5 hours - Expected hashrate each is 91.20 and 8 are running within 1% of that. One of the new arrivals is running at 70.98. But it has the lowest number of Hardware Errors...! I use a third cgminer instance for 2Pacs on the same hub. My Windoze10 gets wonky if I use a fourth instance, so there's no way I can --usb :1

I'm waiting on a couple of USB2.0 Hubs to add in, so the only thing I'll be doing this weekend is trying to push these NewPacs a little harder... The original three had been running well for the last 3 days after I had bumped them from 450 to 475 and two additional fans arrived today as well... All 9 NewPacs are running cool at 400MHz... ambient temperature is about 68F. I can hold any of them without any fear of burnt digits... For my 2Pacs, I can touch them but wouldn't want to hold them. They are running at 225MHz.

Thanks to GekkoScience and sidehack, vh and -ck, and all of you, for getting me to my first night of pushing over the 1 Th/s mark! It feels pretty good... and that will have to be a good enough excuse for me to test a few sips of Scotch... so to all a good night...
If you listen closely, you can hear the next block solve!

[House Xylander]

Sidehack quick question, What is the max supported speed on the NewPacs?

I am seeing these advertised by yourself and others for 28, 100, and 135gh/s. I know that you said before that you tested them at 200MHz for 45gh/s.

It would seem that you have established or are still working on a higher stability rate with proper cooling and sufficient power. There is also the powered Hub your working on that I suspect for running these at faster speeds.

Update: running the latest build and finally able to connect to Kano.is but still unable to connect to pool.ckpool.org for some reason.

[gt_addict]

Cant seem to get mine to run nicelt past 300mhz the hashrate drops to 5gh then back up to 50gh ish with an average of just 30gh at 350mhz. Using a plugable 7port hub. Maybe i havent tweaked the voltage enough. The pot flat spot is roughly at the 10 o’clock position if you hold it with the heatsink at the top and usb connector at the bottom.

[vh]

Cant seem to get mine to run nicelt past 300mhz the hashrate drops to 5gh then back up to 50gh ish with an average of just 30gh at 350mhz. Using a plugable 7port hub. Maybe i havent tweaked the voltage enough. The pot flat spot is roughly at the 10 o’clock position if you hold it with the heatsink at the top and usb connector at the bottom.

Tweaking the voltage should be done with some measuring tools available to properly undo.

The stock value should provide the chips enough voltage to handle up to 600MHz.

The plugable are noted to provide 1.5A per port or 7.5W.
7.5W can get you in the range of 275MHz without asicboost.

Pulling more power than the hub can provide will be one cause of the symptom you are seeing.

Adjusting the pot/vcore higher will increase amp/watt usage, effectively lowering your max achievable MHz instead.

[House Xylander]

Save this code as mine.sh, edit the line starting with lxterminal with the full path to your cgminer folder and then put in the commands you usually use for your pool, mark as an executing program and run.  It goes in a loop so to exit, just use control C.

Code:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Restarting cgminer every 6 hours"
while true
do
 lxterminal -e "/home/USERNAME/cgminer/cgminer -o POOL_URL -u USER -p PW --suggest-diff 128"
 sleep 21600
 pkill -f cgminer
 echo "Restarting cgminer..."
 sleep 4
done

Can I run cgminer from separate directories to get 2 sessions to restart every 6 hours or is there different code for doing this?

[rockmoney]

Ive got an Iltra kaze 120x38mm fan somewhere and a duct from an old server, ill have to get it hooked up somehow and see how goes. Cheers for the info though, given me some hope of getting them above 275freq and bumping up my lotto chances  

No problem, I enjoy carefully "playing" with/tuning these sticks. I have also become very familiar with how to use them over the years, which definitely helps with overclocking. Keep in mind I am using two separate USB hubs, with x2 sticks in each hub (if I attempt to add a 5th stick at high frequencies, everything begins to fail). Also, I am using the Plugable USB3.0 7-port 60 Watt Hub, and have experienced better results using USB3.0 than USB2.0 or lower. Lastly, I have found that voltage adjustments on the NewPac sticks do not make big differences like they do on 2PAC and COMPAC sticks.

Sidehack quick question, What is the max supported speed on the NewPacs?

I am seeing these advertised by yourself and others for 28, 100, and 135gh/s. I know that you said before that you tested them at 200MHz for 45gh/s.

It would seem that you have established or are still working on a higher stability rate with proper cooling and sufficient power. There is also the powered Hub your working on that I suspect for running these at faster speeds.

Update: running the latest build and finally able to connect to Kano.is but still unable to connect to pool.ckpool.org for some reason.

I am able to get over 100Gh/s per stick, as seen posted earlier in this thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5053833.msg48500637#msg48500637. There are so many variables, and this will make actual achievable speeds a bit different for everyone. With the latest cgminer vh/gekko build released yesterday here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5053833.msg48503019#msg48503019, I am getting better results than ever before!

[House Xylander]

I am in the process of repurposing an L3+ frame and fans to cool the Sipolar and 7 sticks (will be 8 when I get one repaired/replaced). If the higher rates are recommended as safe then this would be a better cooling setup.

Would it be worth trying to reprogram the L3 controller?
Not sure if I could use it to control the fan speed as needed or just hard wire them into a limiter type switch.

[rockmoney]

Your idea regarding the L3+ frame seems a bit complicated and unneeded in my personal opinion. I doubt there is any easy way to use the L3+ control board for fan speed control either, but you can definitely buy one on Amazon or eBay (and/or use a voltage regulator) if controlling the fan speed is that important to you. Like the design philosophy behind the stick miners themselves, keeping it simple is the best route IMO. Running 7-8 NewPac sticks at higher frequencies all on one USB hub does not sound like the safest idea to me, regardless of your cooling setup (overloading the USB hub would be my biggest fear). If you're trying to build an Antminer S15, you'd be better off just buying one!

[zsmith]

While I might not use your restart script this weekend, it would be good to have in my back pocket... So I for one would appreciate it being posted here. Thanks - G

Save this as mine.bat in the same folder as the cgminer.exe you are trying to run.   You will need to edit the part on the cgminer line with your pool and user info and also add any options you usually run, like asicboost.  Once you see that it is working, you can add a shortcut to the .bat to your startup folder.

Code:

@echo off
:start
start cmd.exe @cmd /c "cgminer -o stratum+tcp://solo.ckpool.org:3333 -u 1zsmithbYtyrcZ2jAAYwZHyAy28zv7pUY -p x"
timeout 21600
taskkill /F /IM cgminer.exe /T
timeout 2
goto start

Can I run cgminer from separate directories to get 2 sessions to restart every 6 hours or is there different code for doing this?

If you have two versions installed that you can already run from the command line separately then yes.  Just copy the line starting with 'gnome-terminal...' and paste it right after the first one, then edit the second line with your other second session command parameters.  The pkill in the script should kill all child processes with that name.

[House Xylander]

If you have two versions installed that you can already run from the command line separately then yes.  Just copy the line starting with 'gnome-terminal...' and paste it right after the first one, then edit the second line with your other second session command parameters.  The pkill in the script should kill all child processes with that name.

In regards to "versions" they would both be the same version just in different folders with different parameters.

[419mining]

If anyone's interested, I'm finalizing a 3D printed frame for dual 70mm fans. its a direct download push over the hub and will fit the SiPolar A300 and the new hub SideHack is finishing. Ill post it to thingiverse.com shortly, just working out a connector to make the legs removable.
 


https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3270261

[minefarmbuy]

I've looking at cheap tablet stand to support the fan above but this might be interesting to play with. I'm using two 140mm fan now. one above and one from the side.

Edit to add:

my desktop is modular with bays. I've been thinking of trying to set a hub inside a bay with two fans from and back since the newpacs for me have have close to zero issues or "zombies". Sidehacks hub has a six pin and might try to find a way to use a sata cable if that possible. Or maybe just a pipe dream.

[House Xylander]

I am still only seeing accepted and detected new block. The average of all the sticks is popping up at the bottom.

was there a flag/switch (not sure what they are called) that needs to be in my launch string?

https://i68.tinypic.com/mcvsy9.jpg

It would be nice to find out what I'm doing wrong with my cgminer setup.

[gcanelson]

Save this as mine.bat in the same folder as the cgminer.exe you are trying to run.   You will need to edit the part on the cgminer line with your pool and user info and also add any options you usually run, like asicboost.  Once you see that it is working, you can add a shortcut to the .bat to your startup folder.

Code:

@echo off
:start
start cmd.exe @cmd /c "cgminer -o stratum+tcp://solo.ckpool.org:3333 -u 1zsmithbYtyrcZ2jAAYwZHyAy28zv7pUY -p x"
timeout 21600
taskkill /F /IM cgminer.exe /T
timeout 2
goto start

Thanks for this. I've updated it and saved it in my Tools folder for another day... that's more of a reminder to me than for you!
Old and Forgetful G