[Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive RockMiner R-Box Setup [HD]

[dogie]

Thanks for the in-depth guise! I'll be receiving a R-Box in the next week or so, so I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on this thread. Also, I assume it wouldn't affect anything by having a non-12V power supply, correct? I'm quite confident it would work perfectly fine but figured I'd double check with you guys. I'd be using a 19V 65W laptop power brick to power the unit.

12V ONLY, its like trying to run your car on liquid cat otherwise.

[Langly]

I can not get BFGminer 4.4.0 to see my rockminer r-box trying to run it on the same system as a fury. I have the fury working in it's miner, with the fury disconnected cgminer runs the rbox just fine, with the fury connected that cgminer starts complaining about a device it cant access and craps up. I cant use CGminer for the fury and BFGMiner for the rbox because it wont detect it, the rbox has been tried both with normal and zadig drivers.

[guitarplinker]

Thanks for the in-depth guise! I'll be receiving a R-Box in the next week or so, so I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on this thread. Also, I assume it wouldn't affect anything by having a non-12V power supply, correct? I'm quite confident it would work perfectly fine but figured I'd double check with you guys. I'd be using a 19V 65W laptop power brick to power the unit.

12V ONLY, its like trying to run your car on liquid cat otherwise.

Ok thanks. I'll be sure to grab a 12V power brick instead then, probably just a 65W unit.

[silverthornne]

I can not get BFGminer 4.4.0 to see my rockminer r-box trying to run it on the same system as a fury. I have the fury working in it's miner, with the fury disconnected cgminer runs the rbox just fine, with the fury connected that cgminer starts complaining about a device it cant access and craps up. I cant use CGminer for the fury and BFGMiner for the rbox because it wont detect it, the rbox has been tried both with normal and zadig drivers.

From my own experience, the R-Boxes are temperamental little critters that don't like to play along with other devices. I could never get mine to work in Windows, Zadiq drivers or not, and just ended up having to set up a Raspberry Pi for them and even then, I have to pray there are no power spikes because if the thing is forced to reboot I'll likely spend the next 15 to 30 minutes shifting the 4 R-Boxes that I have around the USB hub until the Raspberry Pi is finally able to see all 4 of them and they work fine. I hate those things...

[Omarko]

I was reading the guide how to setup Rockminer R-Box on the site where I ordered mine from and noticed they are recommending this :

cgminer.exe --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --rmu-freq 290

Questions :

1. what is the icarus options for ?

2. I thought with the cgminer app, setting the frequency on the Rbox is achieved with --rock-freq 290 and not with --rmu-freq 290

cheers

can someone reply to my questions please? thanks

[dogie]

I was reading the guide how to setup Rockminer R-Box on the site where I ordered mine from and noticed they are recommending this :

cgminer.exe --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --rmu-freq 290

Questions :

1. what is the icarus options for ?

2. I thought with the cgminer app, setting the frequency on the Rbox is achieved with --rock-freq 290 and not with --rmu-freq 290

cheers

can someone reply to my questions please? thanks

Its rock-freq 290 on cgminer. They're using an older, custom version of cgminer which hijacks an old icarus driver to try and do what they want. Use the instructions as in my OP and you'll bypass all of this. (and then add your --rock-freq 290 on.)

[Omarko]

Thanks for that. So just download the cgminer (currently version 4.4.1) from that link and it will work straight away with the R-Box?

Also, question re: Zadig, the link you provided in first post does not seem to have latest zadig version, does that matter or are they all the same pretty much ? The seller where I pre-ordered my R-boxes provides link to newer zadig. Which one should I get?

[dogie]

Thanks for that. So just download the cgminer (currently version 4.4.1) from that link and it will work straight away with the R-Box?

Also, question re: Zadig, the link you provided in first post does not seem to have latest zadig version, does that matter or are they all the same pretty much ? The seller where I pre-ordered my R-boxes provides link to newer zadig. Which one should I get?

Newest you can find. Newest cgminer and newest Zadig.

[GolfCabalist]

bfgminer is supporting rbox already?

Not that I know of. Was a stray line, sorry.

Oh, no!

I really dont want to use WinUSB.  I'm successfully running about 60 other devices without WinUSB, using native drivers like STMicroelectronics Virtual COM Port or Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge.  I dont want to risk my whole setup for this one R-Box...  no options besides WinUSB?

[dogie]

bfgminer is supporting rbox already?

Not that I know of. Was a stray line, sorry.

Oh, no!

I really dont want to use WinUSB.  I'm successfully running about 60 other devices without WinUSB, using native drivers like STMicroelectronics Virtual COM Port or Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge.  I dont want to risk my whole setup for this one R-Box...  no options besides WinUSB?

It should only attach onto your R-Box unless someone else is similar. You can always immediately remove the driver again (using zadig).

[Omarko]

so I got my little r-boxes, nice little things and work beautifully hashing away happily !

question, is there a website where I can put in my api token and it will display key stats about my mining progress? Especially over time it would be nice to see that kind of info. Or some software on  PC? Or windows 7 gadget that shows some key stats?

[Nurichbin]

So when i run my R-Box on CGminer without changing the MHz i have a reject ratio of about 1%. But when I try to get it up to 290MHz it is about 10%. Is it even possible to run them over 270MHz? Because i have seen some people run it on this configurations without all these fails.

Well these aren´t really rejects but duplicates. I guess thats also not very good.

[dogie]

So when i run my R-Box on CGminer without changing the MHz i have a reject ratio of about 1%. But when I try to get it up to 290MHz it is about 10%. Is it even possible to run them over 270MHz? Because i have seen some people run it on this configurations without all these fails.

Well these aren´t really rejects but duplicates. I guess thats also not very good.

Duplicates are fine for the miner, it just means the pool has to do more work.

[usao]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

[dogie]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

[usao]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

Both running off a 350W brick (from old Gridseed setup).
Both showing the red light, but only one at a time showing the blinking blue light.
Tried swapping USB cables, changing ports.
What's interesting is that I got the second unit going, but then the first unit didn't work.
So, basically, I think both units are good, but for some reason only 1 at a time is working.
Both show-up in device manager, and I put the driver details side-by-side and verified they are using the same driver.

[dogie]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

Both running off a 350W brick (from old Gridseed setup).
Both showing the red light, but only one at a time showing the blinking blue light.
Tried swapping USB cables, changing ports.
What's interesting is that I got the second unit going, but then the first unit didn't work.
So, basically, I think both units are good, but for some reason only 1 at a time is working.
Both show-up in device manager, and I put the driver details side-by-side and verified they are using the same driver.

Don't gridseeds use a 2.1mm power connector, rather than 2.5mm? 1 at a time could indeed be power related. Remember power is 4-5x that of a gridseed.

[usao]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

Both running off a 350W brick (from old Gridseed setup).
Both showing the red light, but only one at a time showing the blinking blue light.
Tried swapping USB cables, changing ports.
What's interesting is that I got the second unit going, but then the first unit didn't work.
So, basically, I think both units are good, but for some reason only 1 at a time is working.
Both show-up in device manager, and I put the driver details side-by-side and verified they are using the same driver.

Don't gridseeds use a 2.1mm power connector, rather than 2.5mm? 1 at a time could indeed be power related. Remember power is 4-5x that of a gridseed.

Each rBox is suposto pull max 50W, so a total of 100W for both. The psu im using is a 350W unit, so it shouldn't be a problem.
As for the size of the plug, it seems to fit fine, and both of the red-lights come on and fans spin-up when I plug in...

[dogie]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

Both running off a 350W brick (from old Gridseed setup).
Both showing the red light, but only one at a time showing the blinking blue light.
Tried swapping USB cables, changing ports.
What's interesting is that I got the second unit going, but then the first unit didn't work.
So, basically, I think both units are good, but for some reason only 1 at a time is working.
Both show-up in device manager, and I put the driver details side-by-side and verified they are using the same driver.

Don't gridseeds use a 2.1mm power connector, rather than 2.5mm? 1 at a time could indeed be power related. Remember power is 4-5x that of a gridseed.

Each rBox is suposto pull max 50W, so a total of 100W for both. The psu im using is a 350W unit, so it shouldn't be a problem.
As for the size of the plug, it seems to fit fine, and both of the red-lights come on and fans spin-up when I plug in...

Ok. 2.1mm will sort of fit in a 2.5mm but the contact on the live pin might not be good enough to carry a sizeable load (which 30-40W is for this style of connector).

In relation to the software side, do you have a 2nd machine you could test things on? Again come in with Zadig, plug both in, latest cgminer with no additional strings.

[usao]

Ok, got 2x of the 32Gb Rockminers.
Running cgminer 4.4.1 with Zadig drivers loaded to both miners.
However, only one miner showsup in cgminer. Ive tried swapping the USB plugs and re-installing the drivers.
No luck.
What else can I do?

What LEDs do you get on the units? Tried swapping the power?

Both running off a 350W brick (from old Gridseed setup).
Both showing the red light, but only one at a time showing the blinking blue light.
Tried swapping USB cables, changing ports.
What's interesting is that I got the second unit going, but then the first unit didn't work.
So, basically, I think both units are good, but for some reason only 1 at a time is working.
Both show-up in device manager, and I put the driver details side-by-side and verified they are using the same driver.

Don't gridseeds use a 2.1mm power connector, rather than 2.5mm? 1 at a time could indeed be power related. Remember power is 4-5x that of a gridseed.

Each rBox is suposto pull max 50W, so a total of 100W for both. The psu im using is a 350W unit, so it shouldn't be a problem.
As for the size of the plug, it seems to fit fine, and both of the red-lights come on and fans spin-up when I plug in...

Ok. 2.1mm will sort of fit in a 2.5mm but the contact on the live pin might not be good enough to carry a sizeable load (which 30-40W is for this style of connector).

In relation to the software side, do you have a 2nd machine you could test things on? Again come in with Zadig, plug both in, latest cgminer with no additional strings.

Give me a bit to do some testing. I do have a power brick with the 2.5mm connectors, and I do have a second machine I could test on.
"Ill be back!"