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Author Topic: Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board  (Read 286362 times)
Glasswalker
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August 15, 2012, 01:54:33 PM
 #1921

you mean the ribbon cable between the UP/DOWN ports on the board? Of course that would be required for this to work.

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Lethos
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August 15, 2012, 02:04:21 PM
 #1922

Is it just me or is some piece of the puzzle missing, I mean ductaping two boards together and tossing out one usb-cable wont be likeley to work.

Well that Ribbon cable as glasswalker just mention is part of it yes, they do need to be connected to each other.
Think of it abit like how multiple hard drives used to configured back in the day of IDE, where you specifically had to setup a master or slave for them, each of the 2 drives on the cable. Auto didn't work all that well for quiet a while.
But with this they are physically connected to your pc, down a single cable to the first one (master), then with another cable between each other (slave).

Personally I didn't opt for this, I figured it was overcomplicating it. I only had 2 CM1's and have way more than 2 usb ports available.
If their is more to it than 1.4, like improved stability, I'll give it an update.

yohan (OP)
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August 15, 2012, 02:53:23 PM
 #1923

Is it just me or is some piece of the puzzle missing, I mean ductaping two boards together and tossing out one usb-cable wont be likeley to work.

Well that Ribbon cable as glasswalker just mention is part of it yes, they do need to be connected to each other.
Think of it abit like how multiple hard drives used to configured back in the day of IDE, where you specifically had to setup a master or slave for them, each of the 2 drives on the cable. Auto didn't work all that well for quiet a while.
But with this they are physically connected to your pc, down a single cable to the first one (master), then with another cable between each other (slave).

Personally I didn't opt for this, I figured it was overcomplicating it. I only had 2 CM1's and have way more than 2 usb ports available.
If their is more to it than 1.4, like improved stability, I'll give it an update.

This one is really for bigger rigs at the moment. It's main benefit is a reduction in the number of USB ports used and hence hubs needed to get all of this going. It does not reduce the number of com ports.

The next stage is basically an extension of Icarus pairs and we might look at say having 16 FPGAs work together over 4 boards on a single com. That reduces both the number of com ports and USB leads and will probably make life more simple for rig setup. It's possible that some performance may be gained this way as well but we will have to see on that.
ebereon
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August 15, 2012, 03:20:29 PM
 #1924

Controller rev. 1.4 is working. Nothing changed about stability or other unexpected things. Everything work as it should.

Here is a photo of my rig now with UP/DOWN Ribbon cables hashing away with 8,1Gh/s and only 5 USB cables:



More photos here


Thank you Yohan, that was really needed! =D

eb

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August 16, 2012, 02:03:45 PM
 #1925

OK, that was weird. I just had to power down the machine I had the CM1 connected to to upgrade its RAM, and once I powered everything up again it kept failing the MPBM test job in strange ways until I connected the USB connector before the power connector. Power-cycling the entire board several times but connecting them in the opposite order didn't help. Power-cycling just the array FPGAs using switch 1 also didn't help.

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August 16, 2012, 02:12:57 PM
 #1926

Something strange with controller Rev 1.4:

- Actually I can't revert back to controller Rev 1.3 from Rev. 1.4 with SPIprog.exe via USB.
- I can't flash array FPGA's with xc3sprog via USB.

Have someone else this problem? As far as I know, I need only SWITCH6 off, all others on. I tested with ribbon cable disconnected also. The board I want to flash is MASTER.

eb
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August 16, 2012, 02:22:52 PM
 #1927

Anyone who is looking to load Rev 1.4 of the Controller please don't currently. It looks like we have somehow broken the programmer with this version. I will update you all when we know more.
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August 16, 2012, 02:24:57 PM
 #1928

Anyone who is looking to load Rev 1.4 of the Controller please don't currently. It looks like we have somehow broken the programmer with this version. I will update you all when we know more.

Oh dear...

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August 16, 2012, 02:25:17 PM
 #1929

Oh well, thanks God I have a JTAG cable!  Wink
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August 16, 2012, 02:28:27 PM
 #1930

OK, that was weird. I just had to power down the machine I had the CM1 connected to to upgrade its RAM, and once I powered everything up again it kept failing the MPBM test job in strange ways until I connected the USB connector before the power connector. Power-cycling the entire board several times but connecting them in the opposite order didn't help. Power-cycling just the array FPGAs using switch 1 also didn't help.

makomk,

it happened to me a few times, while testing various bitstreams, I'd say it always happened to me just after flashing a new bitstream, the board enters a "strange" state where it is slooow, I can see cgminer sending the test job, and the green led lighting up, but it take several seconds before lighting and cgminer fails its test job with "get 0x0000 instead of 0x.....".

I've always solved this issue with a full power off of the board (even unplugging its usb cable) and leaving it off for several seconds (I wait for the fan to stop spinning) before restarting it.

Restarting host pc and/or usb hub does not solve this problem.

spiccioli
ebereon
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August 16, 2012, 02:49:35 PM
 #1931

@Yohan:
The same happend with glasswalker2 controller version!

See here -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78239.msg1054425#msg1054425

eb
yohan (OP)
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August 16, 2012, 03:18:15 PM
 #1932

@Yohan:
The same happend with glasswalker2 controller version!

See here -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78239.msg1054425#msg1054425

eb

We just checked and we can do a Controller update, using SPIprog here from the Controller for Glasswalker2 but it does need very specific DIP switch settings. The main ones to have are SWITCH3 = off, SWITCH6 = on. I think some switch settings changed around about when we did this one and that might be part of the problem here. It is different to what we did in Rev 1.3.

There is definately is a problem for Rev 1.4 so don't use it.
testconpastas2
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August 16, 2012, 04:21:49 PM
Last edit: August 16, 2012, 04:49:14 PM by testconpastas2
 #1933

Thank's God I only updated one of my boards, to see how it worked. And seeing i couldnt change bitstream using "the seven" windows-fast method, and getting more errors in that board i decided to stop upgrading controllers.

But now It seems I'll have to buy one of those JTAG cables ( what i tryed to not to do).

Yohan now i hope enterpoint begin to support officialy those cables and give us a little tutorial about upgrade controller.

Of course I'm following this thread closely and know recently one user give us a paralel port cable but what I need, if i have to spend 30€, is to be sure what i'll have to buy. (i need an usb one)

and please before to release an official update please be sure at least you can  downgrade it .

Regards.
 
PS: ebereon Do you have an usb jtag cable??? dont you?  did you buy it on ebay?

are they "plug and play" or you have to check pines or whatever to be able of use the x3sprog.exe or spiprog.exe ??

Thank you.

Bitmessage: BM-2DAetLWJBKWHZoPbNCgg5z8jwaPpDYWwd4
gpg key id:C6EF5CE3
yohan (OP)
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August 16, 2012, 04:49:39 PM
 #1934

Thank's God I only updated one of my boards, to see how it worked and seeing i couldnt change bitstream using "the seven" windows-fast method, and getting more errors in that board i decided to stop upgrading controllers.

But now It seems I'll have to buy one of those JTAG cables ( what i tryed to not to do).

Yohan now i hope enterpoint begin to support officialy those cables and give us info about those.

Of course I'm following this thread closely and know recently one user give us a paralel port cable but what I need, if i have to spend 30€, is to be sure what i'll have to buy.

and please before to release an official update please be sure at least you can  downgrade it .

Regards.
 
PS: ebereon Do you have an usb jtag cable???

are they "plug and play" or you have to check pines or whatever to be able of use the x3sprog.exe ??

Thank you.

Apologies for the inconvenience and we will try and not make the same mistake again. We do know now what the issue is simple 2 '1's instead of 'z' in a logic function that drives i/os back to the FT4232.

There are a range of cables available to program with. Parallel port types are very cheap but obviously have a problem that not many people have a parallel port. We do one at £15 (+vat if applies) called Prog2 but there are many other others. For a USB solution we offer out Prog3 at £50. Cheaper solutions at one of our competitors http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,395&Cat=5 and Chinese clones as well. You can generally find the Chinese clones in Ebay.

There is also a possibility of reprogramming a Cairnsmore1 Controller from another Cairnsmore1 (suitable updated) and by connecting headers up to up and down to down using standard up/down ribbons. We will have a look at that. If it is viable it might take us a couple of days to sort that out. An extension of this technique might allow us to a cheap recovery module for the Controller and we are looking at that as well but that will take a few weeks to design and make.
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August 16, 2012, 04:58:51 PM
 #1935

PS: ebereon Do you have an usb jtag cable??? dont you?  did you buy it on ebay?

are they "plug and play" or you have to check pines or whatever to be able of use the x3sprog.exe or spiprog.exe ??

Thank you.

I have the prog3 from enterpoint. You need to install ISE and with that the drivers will install too for it. No drivers from enterpoint.

It's simple plug&play.

How i do a recover:
- connect the JTAG cable to the JTAG port of the conrtoller
- start IMPACT (from ISE)
- flash the bitstream to the controller
- repower the board
- done

SPIprog.exe is only working with the ftdi usb, but this is not working when you have the 1.4 controller.
With xc3sprog you have to give the correct option for the cable you use. Prog3 cable is the option -c xpc instead of -c cm1 with the usb cable.

eb

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August 16, 2012, 05:13:11 PM
 #1936

dcmwd4c_200 @ fpga0, fpga1, fpga2
dcmwd2_190 @ fpga3

=> this didn't improve stability, but lowered the average hashrate a little bit.

I'll try dcmwd4c_200@fpga0,fpga1,fpga3 and dcmwd2_190@fpga2, if this doesn't help either, I'll just have to try other bitstreams until I find the best combination.

running for ca. 22h:

the lows in the graph (from 7:30am on) are probably caused by pool maintenance.

Code:
cgminer version 2.6.4 - Started: [2012-08-15 21:35:01]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):695.9 (avg):780.6 Mh/s | Q:3517  A:10272  R:55  HW:0  E:292%  U:8.0/m
 TQ: 0  ST: 4  SS: 3  DW: 660  NB: 140  LW: 21717  GF: 2  RF: 4
 Block: 0000058675654a71631b3f58d0ec40db...  Started: [18:59:54]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 ICA 0:                | 401.6/399.5Mh/s | A:6780 R:41 HW:0 U: 5.26/m
 ICA 1:                | 379.8/381.1Mh/s | A:3492 R:14 HW:0 U: 2.71/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
testconpastas2
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August 16, 2012, 05:19:51 PM
Last edit: August 16, 2012, 05:37:45 PM by testconpastas2
 #1937

Thank's God I only updated one of my boards, to see how it worked and seeing i couldnt change bitstream using "the seven" windows-fast method, and getting more errors in that board i decided to stop upgrading controllers.

But now It seems I'll have to buy one of those JTAG cables ( what i tryed to not to do).

Yohan now i hope enterpoint begin to support officialy those cables and give us info about those.

Of course I'm following this thread closely and know recently one user give us a paralel port cable but what I need, if i have to spend 30€, is to be sure what i'll have to buy.

and please before to release an official update please be sure at least you can  downgrade it .

Regards.
 
PS: ebereon Do you have an usb jtag cable???

are they "plug and play" or you have to check pines or whatever to be able of use the x3sprog.exe ??

Thank you.

Apologies for the inconvenience and we will try and not make the same mistake again. We do know now what the issue is simple 2 '1's instead of 'z' in a logic function that drives i/os back to the FT4232.

There are a range of cables available to program with. Parallel port types are very cheap but obviously have a problem that not many people have a parallel port. We do one at £15 (+vat if applies) called Prog2 but there are many other others. For a USB solution we offer out Prog3 at £50. Cheaper solutions at one of our competitors http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,395&Cat=5 and Chinese clones as well. You can generally find the Chinese clones in Ebay.

There is also a possibility of reprogramming a Cairnsmore1 Controller from another Cairnsmore1 (suitable updated) and by connecting headers up to up and down to down using standard up/down ribbons. We will have a look at that. If it is viable it might take us a couple of days to sort that out. An extension of this technique might allow us to a cheap recovery module for the Controller and we are looking at that as well but that will take a few weeks to design and make.


 Apologies accepted mate.

What i want is an easy and effortless and cheap ,  as it could be, method to fix that .if you are selling one of those cables it sounds good to me. but I have some noob questions:

1.Is it fully compatible with the spiprog.exe and xc3sprog.exe programs?? or you have to use other xilinx programs?
2.If it is 1.  Are they w7 64bits compatible?.
3. has it some kind of basic instruction about installing driver in w7? for instance if they need some extra steps like create conf files or change registry entries...     

I'll wait some days to see if that up/down ribbon method works.

Thank you in advance.

Bitmessage: BM-2DAetLWJBKWHZoPbNCgg5z8jwaPpDYWwd4
gpg key id:C6EF5CE3
testconpastas2
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August 16, 2012, 05:27:55 PM
Last edit: August 16, 2012, 07:46:43 PM by testconpastas2
 #1938

PS: ebereon Do you have an usb jtag cable??? dont you?  did you buy it on ebay?

are they "plug and play" or you have to check pines or whatever to be able of use the x3sprog.exe or spiprog.exe ??

Thank you.

I have the prog3 from enterpoint. You need to install ISE and with that the drivers will install too for it. No drivers from enterpoint.

It's simple plug&play.

How i do a recover:
- connect the JTAG cable to the JTAG port of the conrtoller
- start IMPACT (from ISE)
- flash the bitstream to the controller
- repower the board
- done

SPIprog.exe is only working with the ftdi usb, but this is not working when you have the 1.4 controller.
With xc3sprog you have to give the correct option for the cable you use. Prog3 cable is the option -c xpc instead of -c cm1 with the usb cable.

eb



Thank you .   you answered lots of questions i did in the next post Wink you are faster than light !!!

Then it seems prog3 cable is the easy solution i was looking for ,if ribbon cables fails.

you chill me out alot i was scared about  had to discover for my self methods like "the seven" one.  

Bitmessage: BM-2DAetLWJBKWHZoPbNCgg5z8jwaPpDYWwd4
gpg key id:C6EF5CE3
yohan (OP)
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August 16, 2012, 07:14:48 PM
 #1939


2.If it is 1.  Are they w7 64bits compatible?.


Windows7 isn't usually a problem. We run it here on most machines and that is what we using in the main. I think Webpack version is restriced to 32bit install but that should be ok under 64bit with compatibility settings. I'll try an install on a clean machine if I can find one.
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August 16, 2012, 07:39:05 PM
 #1940

Ok, I have an official release here Smiley
https://github.com/pmumby/hashvoodoo-fpga-bitcoin-miner/downloads
(you want the Aug 16th release)

That's the first officially "useful" release of the HashVoodoo bitstream for the CM1 boards.

It includes instructions, dipswitch diagrams, it's own controller (required), and files for flashing both via USB and via jtag/impact.

This one runs at 175Mhz, and is overclocked a bit. It's been tested fairly heavily at this point and is stable on both the current boards, and the pre-50 boards.

It does throw invalids (under 5%) on a couple chips at random, this is due to the overclock.

I should have a much improved clockrate bitstream very soon.

And yes we have thuroughly tested USB flashing of both the controller and the array fpgas. It works fine with this new controller, so you can downgrade just fine. It's been tested on several boards.

Here is the readme from the zip, please read it when you download it:
Code:
This bistream is now mining stable on all 4 slots on both the old (pre-50) and newer CM1 boards.
It should reach 175Mhash, with relatively low invalids. It is an overclock, so it does see some invalids, on the odd chip, but seems to behave exactly the
same on both old and new boards.
Right now this bitstream built with timing to meet 150Mhz, and I'm running it at 175Mhz, so it's a 25Mhz overclock.
My hope is to release another version very soon which meets much higher timing (at least 175Mhz - 180Mhz or maybe even higher) meaning 200+ should
be achievable with this soon.

This controller is new, and generates a 25Mhz comm clock, and a 25Mhz LVDS source clock, which is then stepped up. We'll be cleaning that up in a
future release, which may improve stability a little more due to less noise.

The LEDs on the array FPGAs work slightly differently on this bitstream:
RED: Heartbeat (clock blinker) blinks on a divider of the hashing clock
GREEN: Found Nonce (lights up and fades out)
BLUE: Serial Activity LED (lights on RX or TX)
AMBER: Idle, lights when the FPGA is not currently busy hashing.
The heartbeat will also light SOLID if the DCM has lost it's lock or the clock is somehow "invalid"

This release should work on any miner compatible with Icarus, you need to add all 4 serial ports as workers, at 115200 baud. Each worker should
independently pull 175MHash.
I do have my own fork of MPBM which has a customized Cairnsmore module, this module will report valid hash rates and statistics.
If you mine with another miner, you may not get valid hash rates (likely it will report exactly double)
My fork can be found here:
https://github.com/pmumby/Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner
(be sure to get the "testing" branch)
And use the glasswalker-cairnsmore module for your workers.

For Flashing:
I have included both the normal bit and the MCS file (for flashing the SPI in Impact) in this release.
Only the bit is included for the controller, as an MCS is not needed for it.

To flash via USB use the instructions provided by enterpoint. Attached is a JPG with the dip switch diagram, and here is a table of what the dip switches do:
SWITCH1 - Manual Reset when OFF (default is ON)
SWITCH2 - Override Fan Speed Sense when OFF (default is ON)
SWITCH3 - USB Programming Enable when OFF (default is ON)
SWITCH4 - MUST BE ON ALWAYS!
SWITCH5 - MUST BE ON ALWAYS!
SWITCH6 - Controller USB SPI Flash Enable when OFF (default is ON)
SWITCH7 - NOT USED CURRENTLY
SWITCH8 - JTAG Select (ON=Internal USB) (OFF=External JTAG)

For mining all switches should be in the ON state.

To flash via Xilinx ISE Impact with a supported JTAG cable:
Flash the controller first:
- Plug into controller jtag
- Let impact create a new file, and scan the jtag.
- It will identify the Spartan3, and prompt if you wish to pick a configuration file
- Choose the controller bit file.
- In the actions menu choose the option to program FLASH and FPGA.

Then do the array FPGAs:
- Plug into array jtag
- Let impact create a new file and scan the jtag
- when prompted, choose the hashvoodoo bit file for configuration file
- When prompted to add an SPI flash, say yes
- Choose the MCS file provided
- When prompted for the type of SPI PROM choose the M25P128
- Repeat for the other 3 chips
- When done a dialog with some settings will pop up, accept the defaults.
- Select one of the SPI Flash chips in the graphical display. It will turn green
- In the action menu choose Program.
- Repeat for the other chips. (no need to do the FPGAs themselves they program from the SPI on power cycle)
- Power cycle the board

Note, when flashing, there seems to be a stability benefit (not in hashing, but in flashing itself, to improve success rate) if you flash them in reverse order
(start with the 4th chip and work back to the first). Not sure why that is.

When done programming, please do a FULL power cycle of the board before mining with it.

Please share your results with this bitstream on the forums.

Upcoming features:
- Faster clock
- Less invalids
- Dynamic Clock Tuning (software can auto-adjust clock for best speed with minimal invalids)

Let me know how it works for you. I know this one isn't faster than the makomk 200, but it should be more stable on all boards (so your problem boards
should run this one just fine).

Expect a much faster version (200+) "Soon (tm)".

Please report any issues to the issue tracker on github and/or on IRC in #cm1 on freenode.

BattleDrome: Blockchain based Gladiator Combat for fun and profit!
http://www.battledrome.io/
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