FPGA development board "Icarus" - DisContinued/ important announcement

[kano]

So ... no Accepted or Rejected shares for 2 days?
(That code is used to generate the actual share displayed, the "00000000.xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx" bit that is also used to determine if you generated a block)

I'm not explaining myself too well. I disabled (i.e. commented out) the call to that function and everything works great. The block gerenation detection is only there for logging purposes and doesn't prevent normal functioning.

Yeah I know - I wrote and added it ...

OK you changed the code to not display that - well that's different

Either way, if there is a problem yes I do want to know, it's just that that function is called every time a share is generated (Accepted or Rejected) so I was wondering why it wasn't being called for 2 days
(as you have answered)

[1713892961]

1713892961

[1713892961]

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[1713892961]

1713892961

[makomk]

Because xiangfu tested and found no issues I'm pretty sure nothing's wrong with the code itself. It's probably my toolchain or something with the device, I just mentioned the code because without calling that function my openwrt cgminer has been running for 2 days now and as soon as it gets called, segfault.

I suspect from looking at the code that you might be running into an alignment issue. The code in regeneratehash assumes that it can take a pointer to an array of type "unsigned char", cast it to a pointer to uint32_t, and access the contents of the array as though it contained 32-bit integers. This works fine on normal x86 machines which have very lax alignment requirements, but ARM requires memory that's accessed in this way to be aligned on 4-byte boundaries in RAM and it probably won't be because the compiler wasn't told that the data needed to be accessed in this way. So cgminer is going to crash.

[xiangfu]

make sense.

Because xiangfu tested and found no issues I'm pretty sure nothing's wrong with the code itself. It's probably my toolchain or something with the device, I just mentioned the code because without calling that function my openwrt cgminer has been running for 2 days now and as soon as it gets called, segfault.

I suspect from looking at the code that you might be running into an alignment issue. The code in regeneratehash assumes that it can take a pointer to an array of type "unsigned char", cast it to a pointer to uint32_t, and access the contents of the array as though it contained 32-bit integers. This works fine on normal x86 machines which have very lax alignment requirements, but ARM requires memory that's accessed in this way to be aligned on 4-byte boundaries in RAM and it probably won't be because the compiler wasn't told that the data needed to be accessed in this way. So cgminer is going to crash.

[chungenhung]

does anyone sell power cords to connect from ATX power supply to Icarus?
Or if you want to make it and sell it. PM me.

[twmz]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

Code:

2012-03-30 06:30:39.812854 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.813580 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.853994 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:40.198653 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:40.202807 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014)
2012-03-30 06:30:40.319497 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014): Unknown reason
2012-03-30 06:30:42.819884 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.820828 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.823446 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000afe089209862ec0ac0038b7e62fda7528d9c7d44f9aeb8b50502539f06248ddc4f7598c01a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:42.921271 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:42.938696 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879)
2012-03-30 06:30:43.057058 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879): Unknown reason

I tried this with cgminer also and it doesn't list any errors about duplicates (perhaps because it is quietly detecting the duplicates and ignoring them?).  However, that board has a Utility stat of only 2.5 instead of being close to 5.2.  So perhaps it is still happening and the extra round trips are reducing the effective hashrate.

Note, this does not happen on my other icarus board.  The other one is working normally.  In fact the board that is currently acting up was working fine for a day or two before this started happening.

I thought it might be a heat problem, so I stopped it for an hour to let it cool completely down, but the problem persisted right away after rebooting my host computer and starting mining.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

[TheSeven]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

Code:

2012-03-30 06:30:39.812854 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.813580 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.853994 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:40.198653 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:40.202807 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014)
2012-03-30 06:30:40.319497 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014): Unknown reason
2012-03-30 06:30:42.819884 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.820828 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.823446 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000afe089209862ec0ac0038b7e62fda7528d9c7d44f9aeb8b50502539f06248ddc4f7598c01a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:42.921271 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:42.938696 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879)
2012-03-30 06:30:43.057058 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879): Unknown reason

I tried this with cgminer also and it doesn't list any errors about duplicates (perhaps because it is quietly detecting the duplicates and ignoring them?).  However, that board has a Utility stat of only 2.5 instead of being close to 5.2.  So perhaps it is still happening and the extra round trips are reducing the effective hashrate.

Note, this does not happen on my other icarus board.  The other one is working normally.  In fact the board that is currently acting up was working fine for a day or two before this started happening.

I thought it might be a heat problem, so I stopped it for an hour to let it cool completely down, but the problem persisted right away after rebooting my host computer and starting mining.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

This looks like both FPGAs are probably processing the same nonces, instead of splitting the range properly, i.e. one of the FPGAs thinks it would actually be the other one.
I'm not sure how exactly an FPGA determines which one it is, but the presence of dip switches near each FPGA that are set to different values makes me suspect that these might be controlling it.

Can you compare the dip switch settings of a working board with the misbehaving one? If they are different between boards (especially if both FPGAs on the misbehaving board set to the same value) that could explain this issue.

[twmz]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

Can you compare the dip switch settings of a working board with the misbehaving one? If they are different between boards (especially if both FPGAs on the misbehaving board set to the same value) that could explain this issue.

Ah, good idea.  I'll check when I get home.  Note, this started happening at about the same time that I physically reorganized my rigs and moved these boards to a different location, so maybe I bumped something.

[allinvain]

does anyone sell power cords to connect from ATX power supply to Icarus?
Or if you want to make it and sell it. PM me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74397.0

[ngzhang]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

Code:

2012-03-30 06:30:39.812854 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.813580 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000f8e7cdd443fb0bc6d2d933fddd7dfd8f08e21a12ef6d45751ea616c54dd5327a4f7598b41a0a507e:96729b3a
2012-03-30 06:30:39.853994 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:40.198653 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:40.202807 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014)
2012-03-30 06:30:40.319497 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share 96729b3a (difficulty 1.34014): Unknown reason
2012-03-30 06:30:42.819884 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.820828 [350]: Icarus 0 found share: BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a00000872000000007147b19ecba613c5b68fbddc0777343cfc65f3dae2a4f28fcd058d18fd0c06034f7598b91a0a507e:c08f8021
2012-03-30 06:30:42.823446 [400]: Mining BTCProxy:0000000163abd0bd61fa5d7d42cab7eb3be533512f782aa3f2608e3a0000087200000000afe089209862ec0ac0038b7e62fda7528d9c7d44f9aeb8b50502539f06248ddc4f7598c01a0a507e on Icarus 0
2012-03-30 06:30:42.921271 [500]: BTCProxy: Got 1 jobs
2012-03-30 06:30:42.938696 [250]: BTCProxy accepted share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879)
2012-03-30 06:30:43.057058 [200]: BTCProxy rejected share c08f8021 (difficulty 1.18879): Unknown reason

I tried this with cgminer also and it doesn't list any errors about duplicates (perhaps because it is quietly detecting the duplicates and ignoring them?).  However, that board has a Utility stat of only 2.5 instead of being close to 5.2.  So perhaps it is still happening and the extra round trips are reducing the effective hashrate.

Note, this does not happen on my other icarus board.  The other one is working normally.  In fact the board that is currently acting up was working fine for a day or two before this started happening.

I thought it might be a heat problem, so I stopped it for an hour to let it cool completely down, but the problem persisted right away after rebooting my host computer and starting mining.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

this behavior usually happen when set the FPGA ID to the same value. this  variable is set by S2-2 and S3-2 switches.
please  notice if they set to a same value, or cause by something like switch internal poorconnection.

a solution is change the S2-2 and S3-2 value to opposite.

[twmz]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

this behavior usually happen when set the FPGA ID to the same value. this  variable is set by S2-2 and S3-2 switches.
please  notice if they set to a same value, or cause by something like switch internal poorconnection.

a solution is change the S2-2 and S3-2 value to opposite.

Well, I looked at the board and they looked correct.  However, just to be sure, I flipped both dip switches and then flipped them back.  Now it is working again.  So maybe it was just not entirely flipped.

[kano]

I'm getting some odd behavior from one of my icarus boards.  The symptom seems to be that every time it finds a share, the miner sees it as two shares that are the same.  Of course the second one gets rejected as a duplicate.  Here is example from MPBM:

this behavior usually happen when set the FPGA ID to the same value. this  variable is set by S2-2 and S3-2 switches.
please  notice if they set to a same value, or cause by something like switch internal poorconnection.

a solution is change the S2-2 and S3-2 value to opposite.

Well, I looked at the board and they looked correct.  However, just to be sure, I flipped both dip switches and then flipped them back.  Now it is working again.  So maybe it was just not entirely flipped.

ngzhang's answer and you being able to fix it is really good to know!
(for possible future reference )

[tgmarks]

Just jumping in to hear about lancelot...

[Turbor]

I compiled Windows binaries from 2.3.2 sources, with --enable-icarus, I'm getting the following
error:

[2012-04-03 00:21:01] Started cgminer 2.3.2
[2012-04-03 00:21:09] Icarus Read: No data in 8 seconds
[2012-04-03 00:21:10] Icarus Detect: Test failed at com3: get 00000000, should: 063c5e0

I've tried all 5 cards, one at the time.  I get the above error for all 5 cards.

Has anyone got cgminer to work with icarus cards on Windows 7?

I'm using 1.5.2 prolific installer for the usb-com driver.
(Same result with 1.5.0 installer)

Tried different USB cables, no luck. Power supply provides 12.2V open.  

It looks like cgminer is not communicating with the card.  Same error as when the power is off.

I use my Icarus with "enable-icarus" : true, and "scan-serial" : "COMX", in the conf file. Works well. I had to pull the usb cable one time because cgminer and mpbm did not recognize the board. Restarting the board did not help. Perhaps you can try with scan serial option or get cons ready to use version.

Do you have all the other files from ngzhangs git ?

[chungenhung]

I compiled Windows binaries from 2.3.2 sources, with --enable-icarus, I'm getting the following
error:

[2012-04-03 00:21:01] Started cgminer 2.3.2
[2012-04-03 00:21:09] Icarus Read: No data in 8 seconds
[2012-04-03 00:21:10] Icarus Detect: Test failed at com3: get 00000000, should: 063c5e0

I've tried all 5 cards, one at the time.  I get the above error for all 5 cards.

Has anyone got cgminer to work with icarus cards on Windows 7?

I'm using 1.5.2 prolific installer for the usb-com driver.
(Same result with 1.5.0 installer)

Tried different USB cables, no luck. Power supply provides 12.2V open.  

It looks like cgminer is not communicating with the card.  Same error as when the power is off.

I use my Icarus with "enable-icarus" : true, and "scan-serial" : "COMX", in the conf file. Works well. I had to pull the usb cable one time because cgminer and mpbm did not recognize the board. Restarting the board did not help. Perhaps you can try with scan serial option or get cons ready to use version.

Do you have all the other files from ngzhangs git ?

Tubor, can you post your cgminer config file? I am having trouble running cgminer 2.3.2 on Win7 as well.
When I start, it says "OpenCL.dll" is missing. This is a Icarus only machine. NO GPUS. Do I still need the OpenCL?

[TheSeven]

Tubor, can you post your cgminer config file? I am having trouble running cgminer 2.3.2 on Win7 as well.
When I start, it says "OpenCL.dll" is missing. This is a Icarus only machine. NO GPUS. Do I still need the OpenCL?

At least for MPBM you don't.
No idea about cgminer however. Might be that you need a special GPU-less cgminer build.

[twmz]

Tubor, can you post your cgminer config file? I am having trouble running cgminer 2.3.2 on Win7 as well.
When I start, it says "OpenCL.dll" is missing. This is a Icarus only machine. NO GPUS. Do I still need the OpenCL?

At least for MPBM you don't.
No idea about cgminer however. Might be that you need a special GPU-less cgminer build.

You don't need it to actually mine, but if you are using a pre-built binary that includes OpenCL support you might need to have it on the machine (although it won't actually get used).  If you don't want to install OpenCL, then you'll need to recompile cgminer with the --disable-opencl flag.

[chungenhung]

Tubor, can you post your cgminer config file? I am having trouble running cgminer 2.3.2 on Win7 as well.
When I start, it says "OpenCL.dll" is missing. This is a Icarus only machine. NO GPUS. Do I still need the OpenCL?

At least for MPBM you don't.
No idea about cgminer however. Might be that you need a special GPU-less cgminer build.

You don't need it to actually mine, but if you are using a pre-built binary that includes OpenCL support you might need to have it on the machine (although it won't actually get used).  If you don't want to install OpenCL, then you'll need to recompile cgminer with the --disable-opencl flag.

Not sure how to compile it manually....
I guess it would be easier for me to install OpenCL. Where would I download just the OpenCL? I know it is included in the AMD stream SDK or the AMD driver package.

[twmz]

Not sure how to compile it manually....
I guess it would be easier for me to install OpenCL. Where would I download just the OpenCL? I know it is included in the AMD stream SDK or the AMD driver package.

If you have an AMD/ATI graphics card, just install the latest driver.  If you don't, then you'll have to research how to get an OpenCL driver for whatever you do have.

[chungenhung]

Not sure how to compile it manually....
I guess it would be easier for me to install OpenCL. Where would I download just the OpenCL? I know it is included in the AMD stream SDK or the AMD driver package.

If you have an AMD/ATI graphics card, just install the latest driver.  If you don't, then you'll have to research how to get an OpenCL driver for whatever you do have.

It is a laptop. It has an old Intel integrated graphics. Not sure if there is support for it.

[kano]

Not sure how to compile it manually....
I guess it would be easier for me to install OpenCL. Where would I download just the OpenCL? I know it is included in the AMD stream SDK or the AMD driver package.

If you have an AMD/ATI graphics card, just install the latest driver.  If you don't, then you'll have to research how to get an OpenCL driver for whatever you do have.

It is a laptop. It has an old Intel integrated graphics. Not sure if there is support for it.

I've got both (GPU and Icarus) and also use Linux (not windows) so I'm not sure, but ...

If it isn't a runtime/windows error starting cgminer maybe "-G" will stop the error?