Fury/Blizzard tuning and mods

[nst6563]

Improving the cooling should be helpful.  Get some air flowing through the chamber would be the least intrusive.  "Blade" style like the guys here did.
Adding heatsinks help but now you're making visible changes.

J4bberwock & nst6563 would know for sure if a "pencil mod" would be beneficial or too risky.  Maybe it could help reduce HW errors at slight overclock speeds.  The results would not be precise though.  If you reduce the resistance too much the voltage will get too high and you could see smoke    There's no way to put the smoke back in once you let it out. 

The volt mod so far is replacing one small resistor.  I actually paralleled a resistor using what I had on hand.  You need a steady hand and a very fine tip on a soldering iron.  Cooling comes first.  They're mini heaters.

Definately do the cooling mods.  I was able to go from 333 to 350Mhz with just that alone. 
As for a 'pencil mod'....I suppose you could do it across the resistor that we're replacing.  The problem is that it's not a decent reliable method.  You would have to draw a line, plug in and test the voltage point, then redo the process until you got to the voltage you're looking for.  Total pain in the ass in my opinion...if you're experienced in soldering, it would actually take you less time to just swap the resistor than to attempt a functional pencil mod.  I replaced mine with a trim pot so I could make small adjustments without having to swap out resistors again. 

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[odyssey]

I have been running a blizzard with my laptop for about a week with no issues other than some errors which are tolerable.  I got two more in this week and tried to run all 3 on a USB hub and could never get all 3 to work at the same time.  The hash rate either falls significantly or #2 and #3 die altogether.  Thought I read somewhere here about running multiple instances of the miner?  For three, how do you distinquish one from the other if they are all on one hub?  Would love to know what the batch file or command line needs to look like to run more than one.....

[nst6563]

I have been running a blizzard with my laptop for about a week with no issues other than some errors which are tolerable.  I got two more in this week and tried to run all 3 on a USB hub and could never get all 3 to work at the same time.  The hash rate either falls significantly or #2 and #3 die altogether.  Thought I read somewhere here about running multiple instances of the miner?  For three, how do you distinquish one from the other if they are all on one hub?  Would love to know what the batch file or command line needs to look like to run more than one.....

What miner are you using?  cgminer or bfgminer (and if bfgminer is it from Darkwinde or is it Nwoolls preliminary support)?
I haven't run mine on windows, I've been running them on a rpi with starminer.  One thing you can try is running separate mining instances -one per miner.  As for distinguishing them, they should all show up as com ports in windows if you have the drivers installed, so it would be as simple as just specifying the corresponding com port.  In linux based OS they will show up in /dev/ttyUSBx (where x is an integer). 

[LongAndShort]

Batch two miners seem to have a FT232R USB FTDI chip on them which mean they can be overclocked right? Kramble this is your area of expertise amirite

[kramble]

Batch two miners seem to have a FT232R USB FTDI chip on them which mean they can be overclocked right? Kramble this is your area of expertise amirite

Not unless they have done a respin and changed the chip design. The 381MHz limit is a feature of the ASIC, not the USB-UART bridge (though if they changed the clock crystal, then perhaps?).

That said, we still don't have a proper functional datasheet for the chip. It could be that one of the MODESEL/BYPASS pins changes the clocking scheme (as suggested by J4bberwock above), or the baud rate (thus allowing a different clock crystal).  Or they may even have some cunning scheme involving unspecified clock configuration values that allows the clock to go higher (though their published documentation says otherwise).

I wouldn't get your hopes up too high, but then again I could be wrong here. Just keep pushing at Terry to find out some more details (I'm not going to do so myself as I don't have any skin in this game, I stayed out of the pre-order ASIC race).

[LongAndShort]

Batch two miners seem to have a FT232R USB FTDI chip on them which mean they can be overclocked right? Kramble this is your area of expertise amirite

Not unless they have done a respin and changed the chip design. The 381MHz limit is a feature of the ASIC, not the USB-UART bridge (though if they changed the clock crystal, then perhaps?).

That said, we still don't have a proper functional datasheet for the chip. It could be that one of the MODESEL/BYPASS pins changes the clocking scheme (as suggested by J4bberwock above), or the baud rate (thus allowing a different clock crystal).  Or they may even have some cunning scheme involving unspecified clock configuration values that allows the clock to go higher (though their published documentation says otherwise).

I wouldn't get your hopes up too high, but then again I could be wrong here. Just keep pushing at Terry to find out some more details (I'm not going to do so myself as I don't have any skin in this game, I stayed out of the pre-order ASIC race).

Ok thanks, i meant the serial port speed can be increased right? if we can reflash the firmware on it or control it

By the way i made a live document here http://bit.ly/1iaKQVg that Terry is monitoring. I think he said yesterday he will talk to his tech team about it but they seem to be building the hosting as of now and will prolly be busy for some time doing that. So to be honest i don't think he knows what you mean by wanting a complete data sheet. He seems to be of the mind that its up already. Is there anything here you could use? https://github.com/zeusminer ..Probably not

[nst6563]

Batch two miners seem to have a FT232R USB FTDI chip on them which mean they can be overclocked right? Kramble this is your area of expertise amirite

Not unless they have done a respin and changed the chip design. The 381MHz limit is a feature of the ASIC, not the USB-UART bridge (though if they changed the clock crystal, then perhaps?).

Both USB to UART bridges have their own internal oscillator - the FTDI chip can use an external 12Mhz source if it's programmed that way.  So unless they changed that part of the design around then the onboard crystal shouldn't have any effect on the USB communications for either batch. 

[kramble]

Ok thanks, i meant the serial port speed can be increased right? if we can reflash the firmware on it or control it

The silicon labs 2102-9 USB-UART bridge is flashable, but that's really just for configuring what identity it reports to the host PC (for custom driver installation). The baud speed is configured at run time by the mining software (cgminer/bfgminer) and does not need to be flashed. I'm guessing the FT232 chip is pretty similar (I'm not going to delve into the datasheet right now to confirm it).

The actual problem is that Zeus's ASIC chip communicates at a fixed baud rate (115200) with the USB UART bridge. Unless there is some way to reconfigure the baud rate (eg one of those undocumented pins), then changing the clock crystal to increase the chip speed will break the communications. I went into this in some detail in a post few pages back. It's not a game-stopper, but it does make hacking the boards a bit more complicated.

Anyway, this is by-the-by. I don't expect many users to go swapping the crystal and overvolting the PSU. It would almost certainly void Zeus's warranty. I'm just hanging out on this thread because I'm curious about these Zeus chips (seeing as they have used my FPGA comms protocol, I'm kind-of interested in what else I can find out about their design).

[LongAndShort]

Ok well there has to be some reason why they upgraded their USB engine to a substantially better one, or is it just supported by os better then the silicon labs thus removing the complication of setup

who knows but we will try get more info for you guys ok. But please monitor and use that doc because he is updating it and watching it so its one of our best conduit to him

Batch two miners seem to have a FT232R USB FTDI chip on them which mean they can be overclocked right? Kramble this is your area of expertise amirite

Not unless they have done a respin and changed the chip design. The 381MHz limit is a feature of the ASIC, not the USB-UART bridge (though if they changed the clock crystal, then perhaps?).

Both USB to UART bridges have their own internal oscillator - the FTDI chip can use an external 12Mhz source if it's programmed that way.  So unless they changed that part of the design around then the onboard crystal shouldn't have any effect on the USB communications for either batch. 

So yeah it can use 6MHz, 12MHz, 24MHz, and 48MHz so there might be something in that.

[kramble]

Don't get too hung up on the USB chip. They may have changed it for cost or supplier reasons. Or even just so as to be fully compatible with the Lancelot FPGA (the Icarus FPGA used a different USB-UART bridge, a PL-2303HXD I don't recall which one, and it will take a while to find the schematic, but it was changed to the FT232R for the Lancelot, supposedly since it was more reliable). Or perhaps the FT232 was the first chip (weren't the 32 chip boards the originals, for their founder partners?) and the 2102 was a later change (so the X3's are just a throwback). Anyway I don't think it really matters.

Just waiting to see what J4bberwock comes up with on changing the ASIC crystal. Hopefully he's got a logic analyzer on his test bench, so can look at the data being sent from the ASIC TxD pins and see how the crystal frequency affects the baud rate (this rather assumes the chips will actually send some golden nonce data while idle, as they won't be receiving valid command packets if they are listening at the wrong baud rate). This is why we need the full chip spec, just working in the dark without it.

[Ghostdoge]

Just joined up for this topic alone, brilliant info so far.

I'm having issues with hashra, its showing my blizzard hashrate at 650 Kh/s, the pool reports 1,698.01 KH/s

How do I distinguish which of these values is correct? 650 appears far too low however 1.6 must but too high?

I'm a newbie in the mining world so sorry if i'm way off on something.

[happydaze]

Does hashra allow you to enter the number of chips?

[Ghostdoge]

Yes, i've set the chip count at 6

[happydaze]

nst6563  - I saw this on Litecointalk.  The zeus version of cgminer base on cgminer 3.11 https://github.com/zeusminer/cgminer_zeus

[nst6563]

nst6563  - I saw this on Litecointalk.  The zeus version of cgminer base on cgminer 3.11 https://github.com/zeusminer/cgminer_zeus

Thanks, updated

[odyssey]

I have been running a blizzard with my laptop for about a week with no issues other than some errors which are tolerable.  I got two more in this week and tried to run all 3 on a USB hub and could never get all 3 to work at the same time.  The hash rate either falls significantly or #2 and #3 die altogether.  Thought I read somewhere here about running multiple instances of the miner?  For three, how do you distinquish one from the other if they are all on one hub?  Would love to know what the batch file or command line needs to look like to run more than one.....

What miner are you using?  cgminer or bfgminer (and if bfgminer is it from Darkwinde or is it Nwoolls preliminary support)?
I haven't run mine on windows, I've been running them on a rpi with starminer.  One thing you can try is running separate mining instances -one per miner.  As for distinguishing them, they should all show up as com ports in windows if you have the drivers installed, so it would be as simple as just specifying the corresponding com port.  In linux based OS they will show up in /dev/ttyUSBx (where x is an integer).  

I am using cgminer_tag16, that Zeusminer recommended and provided.  If I plug all 3 into a hub, will they show up as three ports on my laptop control panel?  and if so, how do I run 3 instances of them?  Three separate command lines - one for each separate port in the batch file?    Eventually, I will switch to a Rpi, but just trying to get them working with the laptop to start with.

[emanzer0]

This thread is getting confusing. Would someone mind putting together a small tutorial on what which resistor they replaced and the best clk with the least hardware errors there seems to be a mix of replacing one or the other or a mix of both? Then there's discussion about the crystal!?

Can I replace the resistor with the larger resistors or does it have to be a surface mounted resistor? what clock speeds are best with the blizzard with no mods and least hardware errors? Can I run a stock blizzard at clk 342 with no mods? Is BFG miner better or cgminer? I'm seeing mixed reviews on which produces less hw errors?

Thanks! Looking to order some more of these i like the style reminds me of a mini looking g blade.

[nst6563]

I have been running a blizzard with my laptop for about a week with no issues other than some errors which are tolerable.  I got two more in this week and tried to run all 3 on a USB hub and could never get all 3 to work at the same time.  The hash rate either falls significantly or #2 and #3 die altogether.  Thought I read somewhere here about running multiple instances of the miner?  For three, how do you distinquish one from the other if they are all on one hub?  Would love to know what the batch file or command line needs to look like to run more than one.....

What miner are you using?  cgminer or bfgminer (and if bfgminer is it from Darkwinde or is it Nwoolls preliminary support)?
I haven't run mine on windows, I've been running them on a rpi with starminer.  One thing you can try is running separate mining instances -one per miner.  As for distinguishing them, they should all show up as com ports in windows if you have the drivers installed, so it would be as simple as just specifying the corresponding com port.  In linux based OS they will show up in /dev/ttyUSBx (where x is an integer).  

I am using cgminer_tag16, that Zeusminer recommended and provided.  If I plug all 3 into a hub, will they show up as three ports on my laptop control panel?  and if so, how do I run 3 instances of them?  Three separate command lines - one for each separate port in the batch file?    Eventually, I will switch to a Rpi, but just trying to get them working with the laptop to start with.

Yes - each miner should show up as an individual com port.  To run three separate mining processes, you'd have to execute three separate command lines (one per com port).

[happydaze]

This thread is getting confusing. Would someone mind putting together a small tutorial on what which resistor they replaced and the best clk with the least hardware errors there seems to be a mix of replacing one or the other or a mix of both? Then there's discussion about the crystal!?

Can I replace the resistor with the larger resistors or does it have to be a surface mounted resistor? what clock speeds are best with the blizzard with no mods and least hardware errors? Can I run a stock blizzard at clk 342 with no mods? Is BFG miner better or cgminer? I'm seeing mixed reviews on which produces less hw errors?

Thanks! Looking to order some more of these i like the style reminds me of a mini looking g blade.

We're replacing one resistor. It is in the R10 location on the board schematics. The photo in this post shows the resistor. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=644921.msg7297522#msg7297522

7.5k seems to be the best resistor choice. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=644921.msg7379971#msg7379971

I ran 340 clk unmodified. You might be ok with 342.  I had more errors.

I run 381 clock now with extra cooling and 1.4 volt mod using approx 7.67k resistor value.  I didn't have many resistors at home to choose from so I had to parallel a 47.5k axial resistor with the stock 9.1k resistor to get approx 7.67k.  I used what I had.  One of mine shows 3.2% HW errors after 22 hours.  The other, after 8 hours, doesn't show a % yet.  It'll be less than 5%.

We're limited to 381 clock because of software.  We can't go any higher.  

BFGMiner works great for me. Averaging 3,100 kH/s on the pool with two Fury's.

[happydaze]

Just joined up for this topic alone, brilliant info so far.

I'm having issues with hashra, its showing my blizzard hashrate at 650 Kh/s, the pool reports 1,698.01 KH/s

How do I distinguish which of these values is correct? 650 appears far too low however 1.6 must but too high?

I'm a newbie in the mining world so sorry if i'm way off on something.

Pool hashrate will vary constantly unless your pool shows hashrate for specific time interval.  The pool I'm on shows current and 24 hour avg.  I watch the 24 hr avg because current hashrate jumps around too much.  Also, sometimes it takes a while for the miner hashrate to stabilize.  Up to an hour for me.