Ultra Under-overclock image for A2 Innosilicon by Emdje - V5.0

[BakSAj]

Thanks for nice description, will try that. By the way, did you find any way how to increase voltage that goes to the chip? And any success with new cgminer binary?

[emdje]

Thanks for nice description, will try that. By the way, did you find any way how to increase voltage that goes to the chip? And any success with new cgminer binary?

You are welcome. Regarding your questions, both a no 
My A2's are running nicely so I am not turning them off to take the blade apart to look how to adjust voltage. And I can't find any decent high quality pictures of them. Maybe, when you take yours apart you can make good photo's from the front and back and post them?

[pictsidhe]

I've got an a2 mini from some months back and I just bought a piece of shit 'working' a2box from minereu.

anyway, my mini runs at 0.83v, the a2box cards run at ~0.865v.  as I've got two dead cards fro the a2box already, it's now a hybrid. If you want to chnage the volkatge, you need to change a smd resistor. my mini cards have one marked 04C that is 10.7k, my box cards have an 05C (11k) in the same place. It's voltage setting divider from a 2v reference. The actual voltage will be slightly lower than calculated using resistor voltage, so there's some current drain on it. Higher value resistor for more volts, lower for less volts. give it  a month and I'll be undervolting mine. There are 4 voltage regulator controllers per blade. if you aren't really good at smd soldering, I'd not recommend you even try this. I'm thinking that as you need to ask, you should probably just forget it.

I ran emdjes image for a day but then it barfed, it seems that I have a THIRD blade from the A2 box going flaky, in 3 days.
I tried reburning the image but it still not playing. I get this at the top of the screen:

[2014-08-29 03:40:46] Started cgminer 3.9.0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] Run Reset=0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] SPI Speed 4000 kHz [2014-08-29 03:40:46] ST MCU - Disable [2014-08-29 03:40:46] GPIO CS is OFF [2014-08-29 03:40:47] Failure(cs0)(20): missing ACK for cmd 0x04 [2014-08-29 03:40:47] ACK(cs0) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-1.1678s [2014-08-29 03:40:47] No any A1 board


minereu scripta image that's been running the mini for months is still ok, it sometimes see a blade has stopped working

Re Emjde's question about the new minis

I'd be amazed if it was new silicon. There are now 10 chips per blade. My scripta firmware thinks it has 54 cores per chip, the datasheet I found suggests 27.


I would love to know how to disable voltage regulators, they have a shutdown input, but I can't work out what the chip is or find a schematic. I've got one blade that eats double it's power ration (290W at the wall), I'm hoping that by shutting a core or four down, I can get some use from it.

Gimme money! I promise to do something completely irresponsible with it: 151vBLqdvQFCGHZB86ybq5RQXVy9VuaLxQ

[BakSAj]

I have no problem with soldering and have some basic knowledge of how such electronics works. I will start doing irresponsible things after I will not have decent income from this. I had an impression that voltage can be adjusted without changing the resistor by simply adjusting the pin settings as manual A2 states. Good luck on you experiments and keep us informed.

[pictsidhe]

I have no problem with soldering and have some basic knowledge of how such electronics works. I will start doing irresponsible things after I will not have decent income from this. I had an impression that voltage can be adjusted without changing the resistor by simply adjusting the pin settings as manual A2 states. Good luck on you experiments and keep us informed.

I'd kill for a schematic...

[BakSAj]

I have no problem with soldering and have some basic knowledge of how such electronics works. I will start doing irresponsible things after I will not have decent income from this. I had an impression that voltage can be adjusted without changing the resistor by simply adjusting the pin settings as manual A2 states. Good luck on you experiments and keep us informed.

I'd kill for a schematic...

This is what Innosilicon released: http://www.usbminers.nl/Innosilicon_A2_PG_v120140424.pdf

[pictsidhe]

where does it say you can play with pin settings?
 

[BakSAj]

where does it say you can play with pin settings?
 

Page 25 - Table 6 Pin description. But who knows what does it mean... 0.93V is the target.

[emdje]

In about half an hour the pc will finish compressing an image for the A2MINI Terminator (based on the assumption of 10 chips and 54 cores per chip). Then I will upload it and post the link.

Cgminer does start on my A2, but the log shows some weirdness (character wise).
Miningrig rentals showed normal hashing.
Testing will be at you own risk. Make sure you have adequate cooling and a stable power source.
When someone test the image, please report either the successful or failed attempt. And please post logs of that attempt if possible.

Good luck I hope it works  Grin
And if it does, feel free to send me some btc: 1FiHCFcP4ovbV89nGhYEMWXSZsWnGUASSe

[emdje]

Image is posted, see first post for the link.
And let me know if it works for the guys/girls with the A2MINI Terminator

[pictsidhe]

where does it say you can play with pin settings?
 

Page 25 - Table 6 Pin description. But who knows what does it mean... 0.93V is the target.

That's the chip specs, the voltage regulators are external to the chips.

In fact, why don't I get the iron hot and see what I can do with a dud blade right now!

[pictsidhe]

Image is posted, see first post for the link.
And let me know if it works for the guys/girls with the A2MINI Terminator

v2.0 worked fine on my 16 chip mini.
it worked for a day on a 48 chip a2box, then barfed with:

[2014-08-29 03:40:46] Started cgminer 3.9.0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] Run Reset=0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] SPI Speed 4000 kHz [2014-08-29 03:40:46] ST MCU - Disable [2014-08-29 03:40:46] GPIO CS is OFF [2014-08-29 03:40:47] Failure(cs0)(20): missing ACK for cmd 0x04 [2014-08-29 03:40:47] ACK(cs0) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-1.1678s [2014-08-29 03:40:47] No any A1 board

I'd really like a working version for the 48 chip a2box as it has several blades with very high hw errors that get reasonable if the frequency is dropped  a little, 1180 and it's a helluva lot better, though down to 14mh per blade at the pool.

that box has a flaky blade which could be messing with your image, but it doesn't crash the scripta one.

Minereu scripta seems able to cope with it, the dodgy blade sometimes goes down, but the rest keep on hashing.

reflashing didn't help.

I'll try your new version.

[emdje]

Tat is weird because in the image the reset is turned on as well as the mcu and the gpio. But your log states different. Maybe tge new image works.  You might try the original one as well. The only other explanation could be the amount of hardware errors or non working cores.  This might trigger a turnoff.  I have to look it up when this is triggered.

Let me know if a different version works.

[pictsidhe]

Image is posted, see first post for the link.
And let me know if it works for the guys/girls with the A2MINI Terminator

v2.0 worked fine on my 16 chip mini.
it worked for a day on a 48 chip a2box, then barfed with:

[2014-08-29 03:40:46] Started cgminer 3.9.0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] Run Reset=0 [2014-08-29 03:40:46] SPI Speed 4000 kHz [2014-08-29 03:40:46] ST MCU - Disable [2014-08-29 03:40:46] GPIO CS is OFF [2014-08-29 03:40:47] Failure(cs0)(20): missing ACK for cmd 0x04 [2014-08-29 03:40:47] ACK(cs0) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-1.1678s [2014-08-29 03:40:47] No any A1 board

I'd really like a working version for the 48 chip a2box as it has several blades with very high hw errors that get reasonable if the frequency is dropped  a little, 1180 and it's a helluva lot better, though down to 14mh per blade at the pool.

that box has a flaky blade which could be messing with your image, but it doesn't crash the scripta one.

Minereu scripta seems able to cope with it, the dodgy blade sometimes goes down, but the rest keep on hashing.

reflashing didn't help.

I'll try your new version.

I found out why 2.0 was throwing errors and not mining:
I'm using nicehash as my main pool, for the password, I have d=4096;p=0.41 which sets the initial difficulty (essential) and the profit above which it will use that pool. The semicolon is breaking something.
The flaky blade just stops working without crashing the rest of the system. I'll try adding a reboot into cron

2.1 didn't like my old a2s

[emdje]

I found out why 2.0 was throwing errors and not mining:
I'm using nicehash as my main pool, for the password, I have d=4096;p=0.41 which sets the initial difficulty (essential) and the profit above which it will use that pool. The semicolon is breaking something.
The flaky blade just stops working without crashing the rest of the system. I'll try adding a reboot into cron

2.1 didn't like my old a2s

No it didn't 'like' my old A2 as well. It worked and it hashed with the same speed according to miningrigrentals, but weird logs.

You can set your initial difficulty using the image as well (and you can go up to 4096), so there should be no need to put that in the password field.

[pictsidhe]

yep, setting initial difficulty appears to work for west/nicehash

I'm probably going to try editing the main page for more main pools, I'm going away for 2 1/2 months soon...

I'm also going to try having some sort of reset going, probably a 4 hourly cron reboot. I'd prefer something that detects when that dodgy blade goes down and reboots/restarts then, but my coding skills are not great...

The really annoying thing is that the dodgy blade is the only one that runs significantly quicker than stock, the rest are 1160-1220, the dodgy one usually runs 1300, until it stops... It does that at stock speed too.


Would you liase with Michelle who does minera? I've got 38 undervolted gridseeds blades doing 20% more mh/J than A2s running on minera, less Mh, but higher profit .
I'll be happy to try out anything you two cook up. I'm currently running a 48 chip A2box, but can also test a 16 chip a2mini. I had 2 dead blades in the A2box so the mini donated its blades.

A2 probably getting undervolted soon.

[emdje]

yep, setting initial difficulty appears to work for west/nicehash

good 

I'm probably going to try editing the main page for more main pools, I'm going away for 2 1/2 months soon...

What I did is registering my miner on miningrigrentals and set up 5 pools there. You can put you miner on unavailable when you don't want to rent it out. Mine is available most of the time for a price I am willing to rent it for (higher than what I can mine), so when it gets rented it is profit.
Then I set 1 or 2 pools on the 'main page' for when miningrigrentals goes down.

 

Would you liase with Michelle who does minera? I've got 38 undervolted gridseeds blades doing 20% more mh/J than A2s running on minera, less Mh, but higher profit .
I'll be happy to try out anything you two cook up. I'm currently running a 48 chip A2box, but can also test a 16 chip a2mini. I had 2 dead blades in the A2box so the mini donated its blades.

A2 probably getting undervolted soon.

I don't know Michelle (you got info?). And I am not sure if I am able to undervolt the A2's. There are some suggestions that it can be done throught the software, I haven't found out how yet. When it must be done by hardware I will not be of any help, because I have not much experience in that field.

[emdje]

Anyone tried the image on the new A2's?

[forzendiablo]

Anyone tried the image on the new A2's?

nope - sold mine

[Elphamyto]

I can't get the v2.1-MiniTerminator image working with my new A2 Mini Terminator. Here a debug from run.sh:

Code:

 [2014-10-11 18:33:24] Started cgminer 3.9.0
 [2014-10-11 18:33:24] Run Reset=1
 [2014-10-11 18:33:24] ST MCU hardware reset start
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] SPI Speed 4000 kHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] ST MCU - Enable (Pre-header)
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 = 1200,10
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] A1 PLL Clock = 1200MHz
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] AUTO GPIO CS
 [2014-10-11 18:33:28] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] Failure(cs0)(20): missing ACK for cmd 0x04
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] ACK(cs0) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-1.5556s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI(cs1) no device
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] ACK(cs1) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-0.2142s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI(cs2) no device
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] ACK(cs2) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-0.2165s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI(cs3) no device
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] ACK(cs3) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-0.2161s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:29] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] Failure(cs4)(20): missing ACK for cmd 0x04
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] ACK(cs4) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-1.3649s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] SPI '/dev/spidev0.0': mode=1, bits=8, speed=4000000
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] SPI(cs5) no device
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] ACK(cs5) timeout:cmd_RESET_BCAST-0.2177s
 [2014-10-11 18:33:30] No any A1 board

No any A1 board
: Inappropriate ioctl for device