GridSeed 5-chip USB miner voltage mod

[vabchgent]

A soldering gun probably wont work here. Your going to need a pretty fine pencil tip and a steady hand.

Something like this may work but I'm waiting a week to see how things go before modding my 10.

http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Lenk-L25K-Watt-Soldering/dp/B000M2UXTE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395424899&sr=8-1

I have my soldering station and some communications wire ready. Just waiting to see what the outcome is in a week or so also.

[flounderella]

By the way, did anyone try mining nscrypt or scrypt-jane with these. Are they really ASIC-proof at the level of "N" today?

Why can't KnC stuff in 16GB of memory on their ASIC board and wire it to the chips?

[wolfey2014]

I am so happy to get rid of the controllers.  I had digital timers turning the power off every 2 hours for 1 minute to reset all the miners.  CGminer has been flawless so far.  Time to start soldering.

I'm starting to like CGminer more and more
I'm holding off on the over-volt / over-current mods for a while yet to see what happens to the ones who do.
Getting positive results on the profit end is a good thing but, is it temporary or is it permanent? Will the uP's take it indefinitely or will they fail prematurely at some point? Only time will tell.
Wolfey2014

Oh cmon stop being so melodramatic. I say lets UP the voltage more and see what happens

heh heh! Well, I only need consider the source of that comment....(pic) what a pencil neck geek!
Anyway, I did actually mod one of my miners last night. Soldered the first 2 jumpers with a nice clean solder blob, being the old pro solderer I am Been soldering electronics etc. since I was a kid. Done it professionally for years too.

So far, I'm clocking it at 900MHz and I've only seen the red nonce's a couple of times. Pool side says 400 to 454 or so on average. Never drops below 300 now where it used to before. Miner is running a bit warmer too. 112*F instead of *105. So I know it's hashing more hashes. So far, so good!
Mo money mo money mo money mo money!

Cool!
Wolfey2014

[wolfey2014]

I'm chillin and seeing what others do in the long run with these volt mods. The only thing I'm doing is disconnecting the fans but I'm running in scrypt only so they are running just fine.

I'm with ya Wolfey.

Don't wait too long though; else the gridseeds will already become obsolete when the next model (1M+) comes out... I'd say in 3 months

Again, thanks.

Starting a new rumor eh? Oh, what the heck, right?   

Wolfey2014

[wolfey2014]

I'm a pro of decades of experience at soldering pcb's including micro form factors like the GS5s.
If anyone wants to ship their pods to me for modification, let me know via PM.
We'll work out something fair for both of us.
All I want is my time and materials covered.
If I accidentally brick it though, it's dead and I ain't paying to replace it!
Do not send me any weak performing miners that may already be damaged.
I'll check their performance before I mod them anyway and of course, after.
You get to pay me for that too
Odds of my bricking your pod though are 1,000,000,000 to 1 against
I have all the necessary commercial grade stuff. Soldering station etc.

Let me know.
Wolfey2014

[flounderella]

For scrypt only: so what did you do with your fans. Just unscrew down to the chip and pluck them out?

Or

Just use a wirecutter and for now insulate the wires ... in case need to add them back?

[smracer]

The 10 I modded yesterday seem to be rock solid at 938Mhz.  I have pushed the non-modded ones as far as I can without too many HW errors.  I will solder the rest if these are stable through the weekend.

I also used the --usb :50 command to break them up into 2 groups of 50 miners so I can see them all.

[wolfey2014]

For scrypt only: so what did you do with your fans. Just unscrew down to the chip and pluck them out?

Or

Just use a wirecutter and for now insulate the wires ... in case need to add them back?

Yep, just de-soldered the fans from the pcb terminals. Piece of pizza!

They can all be cooled via one fan just blowing air generally around them if needs be.
Mine are cooking at 98* to 115* F with no problems.
Some rumor that they feel their miners produce slightly higher hash rates running warm rather than cool.
I'm noticing the same thing, interestingly enough but I won't state it is fact until some serious bench marking has been completed.

Wolfey2014

[flounderella]

For scrypt only: so what did you do with your fans. Just unscrew down to the chip and pluck them out?

Or

Just use a wirecutter and for now insulate the wires ... in case need to add them back?

Yep, just de-soldered the fans from the pcb terminals. Piece of pizza!

They can all be cooled via one fan just blowing air generally around them if needs be.
Mine are cooking at 98* to 115* F with no problems.
Some rumor that they feel their miners produce slightly higher hash rates running warm rather than cool.
I'm noticing the same thing, interestingly enough but I won't state it is fact until some serious bench marking has been completed.

Wolfey2014

Hehe nice

Did anyone try adding using a higher resistance wire to slow the darn things down ... the fans i.e. :p

[wolfey2014]

For scrypt only: so what did you do with your fans. Just unscrew down to the chip and pluck them out?

Or

Just use a wirecutter and for now insulate the wires ... in case need to add them back?

Yep, just de-soldered the fans from the pcb terminals. Piece of pizza!

They can all be cooled via one fan just blowing air generally around them if needs be.
Mine are cooking at 98* to 115* F with no problems.
Some rumor that they feel their miners produce slightly higher hash rates running warm rather than cool.
I'm noticing the same thing, interestingly enough but I won't state it is fact until some serious bench marking has been completed.

Wolfey2014

Hehe nice

Did anyone try adding using a higher resistance wire to slow the darn things down ... the fans i.e. :p

Not a good idea. Probably not possible.The fans are electronically controlled 'brushless' induction motor driven. The electronic driver circuitry runs off of 12V and is pwm controlled 'I think'. The only way to slow it down is control the pwm output and doing that will require micro surgery on it's internal driver electronics requiring complete dis assembly and re-assembly of each fan.

The wires that came on them was longer, probably at least 8 to 10 inches but was cut short when installed at the factory. The fan power wire is tucked up inside of the pod's fins to keep them from being sucked into the fan blades and also to keep the wire casings from melting by direct contact with the heat sink.

If they were brush type motors, you could slow them down via voltage reduction and or PWM easily.
No resistor or Zener diode will work dependably if at all before making magic black smoke ;
Your results may vary.
And as usual, anything you do with this info' is strictly at your own risk!

Wolfey2014

[flounderella]

For scrypt only: so what did you do with your fans. Just unscrew down to the chip and pluck them out?

Or

Just use a wirecutter and for now insulate the wires ... in case need to add them back?

Yep, just de-soldered the fans from the pcb terminals. Piece of pizza!

They can all be cooled via one fan just blowing air generally around them if needs be.
Mine are cooking at 98* to 115* F with no problems.
Some rumor that they feel their miners produce slightly higher hash rates running warm rather than cool.
I'm noticing the same thing, interestingly enough but I won't state it is fact until some serious bench marking has been completed.

Wolfey2014

Hehe nice

Did anyone try adding using a higher resistance wire to slow the darn things down ... the fans i.e. :p

Not a good idea. Probably not possible.The fans are electronically controlled 'brushless' induction motor driven. The electronic driver circuitry runs off of 12V and is pwm controlled 'I think'. The only way to slow it down is control the pwm output and doing that will require micro surgery on it's internal driver electronics requiring complete dis assembly and re-assembly of each fan.

The wires that came on them was longer, probably at least 8 to 10 inches but was cut short when installed at the factory. The fan power wire is tucked up inside of the pod's fins to keep them from being sucked into the fan blades and also to keep the wire casings from melting by direct contact with the heat sink.

If they were brush type motors, you could slow them down via voltage reduction and or PWM easily.
No resistor or Zener diode will work dependably if at all before making magic black smoke ;
Your results may vary.
And as usual, anything you do with this info' is strictly at your own risk!

Wolfey2014

Oh well, picking up my faithful stanley screwdriver... off they go

[Andareed]

GridSeed docs are actually wrong, pll_BS is bit 31, and pll_BP is probably bit 30. If you look at the frequency tables in cgminer, you'll see that for frequencies >= 500 MHz, the highest bit is set.

Actually the gridseed version of cgminer sets bit30 low for 250/400/450mhz, and high for 500mhz and above just as they specified it in the docs.

Here's the frequency table from cpuminer (https://github.com/gridseed/cpuminer/blob/master/gc3355.h#L51):

Code:

static const char *cmd_frequency[] = {
	"55AAEF0005002001",
	"55AAEF000500E001",
	"55AAEF0005002002",
	"55AAEF0005006082",
	"55AAEF000500A082",
	"55AAEF000500E082",
	"55AAEF0005002083",
	"55AAEF0005006083",
	"55AAEF000500A083",
	"55AAEF000500E083",
	"55AAEF0005002084",
	"55AAEF0005006084",
	NULL
};

Note the 8 in the 2nd-last column, which corresponds to bit 31 (i.e. the high bit).

[flounderella]

The 10 I modded yesterday seem to be rock solid at 938Mhz.  I have pushed the non-modded ones as far as I can without too many HW errors.  I will solder the rest if these are stable through the weekend.

I also used the --usb :50 command to break them up into 2 groups of 50 miners so I can see them all.

If I may ask, where are you mining at?

[wolfey2014]

The 10 I modded yesterday seem to be rock solid at 938Mhz.  I have pushed the non-modded ones as far as I can without too many HW errors.  I will solder the rest if these are stable through the weekend.

I also used the --usb :50 command to break them up into 2 groups of 50 miners so I can see them all.

Okay, cool! Nice work!

I modded one of mine last night. Solder bridged 2 of the resistor blanks as shown earlier by the original modder. This increases core voltage a tad, I believe. And I think that's all you can safely increase it to.

I haven't tried replacing the resistor with a 38K or the pencil track mod trick yet.
That's for PLL voltage adjustment as I understand it, without delving into the schematic etc. myself.

Is this what you did too?

As for your fine tuning to an odd step of 938Mhz, how did you accomplish this?
I'd like to do the same thing.
Mine is rock steady at 900MHz but at 950Mhz being the next allowed step in cpuminer throws enough HW errors to turn me off to it. So for now. it's 900Mhz which is giving positive results at the pool. $$$

Wolfey2014

[amix]

A soldering gun probably wont work here. Your going to need a pretty fine pencil tip and a steady hand.

Something like this may work but I'm waiting a week to see how things go before modding my 10.

http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Lenk-L25K-Watt-Soldering/dp/B000M2UXTE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395424899&sr=8-1

I have my soldering station and some communications wire ready. Just waiting to see what the outcome is in a week or so also.

something like this.
http://www.aoyue.com/en/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=465
soldering station will work but if your gonna do a resistor swap highly recommend the hot air re work station.

[jamieb81]

A soldering gun probably wont work here. Your going to need a pretty fine pencil tip and a steady hand.

Something like this may work but I'm waiting a week to see how things go before modding my 10.

http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Lenk-L25K-Watt-Soldering/dp/B000M2UXTE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395424899&sr=8-1

I have my soldering station and some communications wire ready. Just waiting to see what the outcome is in a week or so also.

something like this.
http://www.aoyue.com/en/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=465
soldering station will work but if your gonna do a resistor swap highly recommend the hot air re work station.

Yes it will just be for the bridge, I've got a soldering iron just like the one next to the hot air station of the picture

[maranello1561]

What are y'all using the gridseeds for anyways? Multipools?

[jamieb81]

What are y'all using the gridseeds for anyways? Multipools?

for mining, doesn't matter if it's single or multi pool.

[Xer0]

A soldering gun probably wont work here. Your going to need a pretty fine pencil tip and a steady hand.

Something like this may work but I'm waiting a week to see how things go before modding my 10.

http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Lenk-L25K-Watt-Soldering/dp/B000M2UXTE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395424899&sr=8-1

please get ERSA or Weller or Aoyue at least - you wont have fun long with the cheap chinese crap

[wolfey2014]

What are y'all using the gridseeds for anyways? Multipools?

Yes, I believe most of us are.
Hardly anyone is running dual mode as it's just not really worth mining SHA anymore unless you can mine in the TH/s ranges.

I'm certainly considering my options differently now but it's still cool to be able to make money this way even though the daily income is less than $10 mining only LTC.

I tried ScryptGuild multipool but they didn't impress me as I was making less per day where I should have been making 30% to 40% more per the site owner.
It would be great if my 6 GS5's made me at least $2+ per day!

Wolfey2014