Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board

[punin]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

[MrTeal]

You want this part for the 6 pin.
http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Molex/45559-0002/?qs=%2fFAXCdFYqP5%252b9357MWKI9g%3d%3d
You can get an 8pin, bu I prefer to make them 6+2. More versatile that way.

[norulezapply]

Eb when you did this did you use the twin_test.bit programing switches?

I followed what you did Ebereon I'm still unable to get hashing at over 100, I did have 1 ICA hashing for a few minutes but they always die after a little bit. I also tried the 190M_V3 bitstream but was unsuccessful on that as well.

In most cases when it will not work is the frequency/noise problem. See my post here -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78239.msg992167#msg992167

I use the programming switches for the shipping bitstream. But i got it also work with the switch settings for the twin_test.bit.

190M_V3.bit is running @ 401Mh/s  (1 hour average) on p2pool stats, so far so good.

I will post an update tomorrow.

Im about to get my boards later this week and it seems like your the who's reporting in with best numbers. Could you please specify what bitstream you are runnin running with what miner and what versions ?

Thank you in advance.

I use:
Original Icarus bitstream "190M_V3.bit"
MPBM latest git with some changes on Win7 32bit
Worker setting in MPBM 115200 baud, jobinterval 11.34

Standard unit switch settings:
SW1 1234 on
SW6 1 off, 234 on
SW2 1234 on
SW3 2 off, 134 on
SW4 2 off, 134 on
SW5 1234 on

Programming switch settings:
SW1 3 off, 124 on
SW6 1234 on
SW2 - SW5 same as Standard

I can programm only in the temporary mode, if i turn off the unit then it have the shipping bitstream again.

I hope this helps a bit  

greets,
eb

I followed these instructions, except I'm using the latest cgminer, which ive been using with the twin_test and shipping_test bitstreams.

I'm running the icarus v3 one at the moment, and on the board i can see it flashing green to say its found shares, but cgminer never reports it. Any idea why?

EDIT: after 10 minutes it has actually submitted 1 share, even though i've been watching the green lights flashing on the cairnsmore1 quite a few times now...

[ebereon]

I followed these instructions, except I'm using the latest cgminer, which ive been using with the twin_test and shipping_test bitstreams.

I'm running the icarus v3 one at the moment, and on the board i can see it flashing green to say its found shares, but cgminer never reports it. Any idea why?

EDIT: after 10 minutes it has actually submitted 1 share, even though i've been watching the green lights flashing on the cairnsmore1 quite a few times now...

cgminer don't show you invalids, if you use mpbm then you will see much invalids. Every green flash means found share or invalid with this bitstream.

My board is now running ~20 hours and was working without invalids 14 hours, but now hashrate is down to 20Mh/s and much much invalids (80% both fpga's)). So the frequency/noise problem take it's place again after running correcly 14 hours.

That's realy anoying. I have tested everything now to get the unit working better as with the shipping bitstream, but nothing working longer than 14 hours.
All what we can do is, waiting for a better bitstream from enterpoint.

[daemonic]

My board is now running ~20 hours and was working without invalids 14 hours, but now hashrate is down to 20Mh/s and much much invalids (80% both fpga's)). So the frequency/noise problem take it's place again after running correcly 14 hours.

That's realy anoying. I have tested everything now to get the unit working better as with the shipping bitstream, but nothing working longer than 14 hours.
All what we can do is, waiting for a better bitstream from enterpoint.

You're doing better than me, i cant even get cgminer/mpbm to connect with the twin_test or 190M_V3 bitstreams now, yet it will with the shipping config

[spiccioli]

I followed these instructions, except I'm using the latest cgminer, which ive been using with the twin_test and shipping_test bitstreams.

I'm running the icarus v3 one at the moment, and on the board i can see it flashing green to say its found shares, but cgminer never reports it. Any idea why?

EDIT: after 10 minutes it has actually submitted 1 share, even though i've been watching the green lights flashing on the cairnsmore1 quite a few times now...

cgminer don't show you invalids, if you use mpbm then you will see much invalids. Every green flash means found share or invalid with this bitstream.

My board is now running ~20 hours and was working without invalids 14 hours, but now hashrate is down to 20Mh/s and much much invalids (80% both fpga's)). So the frequency/noise problem take it's place again after running correcly 14 hours.

That's realy anoying. I have tested everything now to get the unit working better as with the shipping bitstream, but nothing working longer than 14 hours.
All what we can do is, waiting for a better bitstream from enterpoint.

ebereon,

while it's true that cgminer doesn't show you invalids, if your hashing speed, as seen by the pool, remains more or less the same it means that there are not invalids.

I don't have invalids, my hashing speed is more or less constant even after a couple of days (with both mpbm and cgminer).

I've found that using --icarus-timing short or long makes no difference, so I've left cgminer think it is attached to an icarus board and it hashes happily with yellow leds on active FPGAs almost always off and ABC pool that tells me I'm at 680-780 MH/s using two boards with twin_test.bit.

So it is something different, IMHO, which is creating problems to you.

You're on a netbook with windows 7, if I'm not wrong, could it be that your netbook usb ports don't deliver enough power? Could it be that  power management/power saving functions of your netbook create problems in the long run?

Can you try to attach your board to a PC (not a netbook) and/or a PC with linux?

I don't want to start a flame war on windows vs linux, I use both when I have to, but I'm on linux and neither I have problems with cgminer nor I had problems with mpbm while I used it.

I went back to cgminer because Mpbm was not giving enough work to my FPGAs which had the yellow leds on even for 10 seconds in a row every now and then.

spiccioli.

[yohan]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

We have had a conversation but it does need some work from our side that would take from our bitstream progression. So it's not likely to get us there much faster that our own approach. so for the moment we continue as we are.

You want this part for the 6 pin.

http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Molex/45559-0002/?qs=%2fFAXCdFYqP5%252b9357MWKI9g%3d%3d
You can get an 8pin, bu I prefer to make them 6+2. More versatile that way.

That's the wrong sex for what we are trying to find for the PDB. We have gone with the 3x2 that we already have on the Cairnsmore1 already so we know where to get it and we have stock anyway. A small update on the PDB is that we hope to have the first bare boards a bit earlier now on Friday and we will build one up quickly to test and show the real thing. If that's all ok we will have production quantities a couple of days later.

[MrTeal]

You want this part for the 6 pin.

http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Molex/45559-0002/?qs=%2fFAXCdFYqP5%252b9357MWKI9g%3d%3d
You can get an 8pin, bu I prefer to make them 6+2. More versatile that way.

That's the wrong sex for what we are trying to find for the PDB. We have gone with the 3x2 that we already have on the Cairnsmore1 already so we know where to get it and we have stock anyway. A small update on the PDB is that we hope to have the first bare boards a bit earlier now on Friday and we will build one up quickly to test and show the real thing. If that's all ok we will have production quantities a couple of days later.

My mistake, I thought someone was looking for the female end to make cables from a large 12V supply.

[punin]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

We have had a conversation but it does need some work from our side that would take from our bitstream progression. So it's not likely to get us there much faster that our own approach. so for the moment we continue as we are.

I will be very surprised if you will be able to produce a bitstream of 220MHs+ performance in a reasonable timeframe (1-2 weeks). From what I've heard, it's a pain in the neck to work with Spartan-6 in such high performance application. I believe TML would be much faster to implement.

[Gomeler]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

We have had a conversation but it does need some work from our side that would take from our bitstream progression. So it's not likely to get us there much faster that our own approach. so for the moment we continue as we are.

I will be very surprised if you will be able to produce a bitstream of 220MHs+ performance in a reasonable timeframe (1-2 weeks). From what I've heard, it's a pain in the neck to work with Spartan-6 in such high performance application. I believe TML would be much faster to implement.

I personally would just prefer a 750-800 MH/s firmware to get my boards running. After all that's what I was sold on (double Icarus performance for $640). Any additional work would be icing on the cake.

[ebereon]

I personally would just prefer a 750-800 MH/s firmware to get my boards running. After all that's what I was sold on (double Icarus performance for $640). Any additional work would be icing on the cake.

+1 

[ebereon]

Can you try to attach your board to a PC (not a netbook) and/or a PC with linux?

I don't want to start a flame war on windows vs linux, I use both when I have to, but I'm on linux and neither I have problems with cgminer nor I had problems with mpbm while I used it.

I went back to cgminer because Mpbm was not giving enough work to my FPGAs which had the yellow leds on even for 10 seconds in a row every now and then.

spiccioli.

I will try that and use cgminer for it on win7 64. Let's hope something changes for me, but i have to wait to tomorrow evening, need my notebook workstation for daily work. I must say the flashing part looks "faster" on my workstation notebook as on my netbook (lesser tries). hmm... but can be luck 

[punin]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

We have had a conversation but it does need some work from our side that would take from our bitstream progression. So it's not likely to get us there much faster that our own approach. so for the moment we continue as we are.

I will be very surprised if you will be able to produce a bitstream of 220MHs+ performance in a reasonable timeframe (1-2 weeks). From what I've heard, it's a pain in the neck to work with Spartan-6 in such high performance application. I believe TML would be much faster to implement.

I personally would just prefer a 750-800 MH/s firmware to get my boards running. After all that's what I was sold on (double Icarus performance for $640). Any additional work would be icing on the cake.

You'd have to be quite a ninja to write a bitstream even of that performance in 2 weeks.

[Gomeler]

Are you planning on contacting TMC (eldentyrell) and providing him with stuff he needs to make his bitstream compatible with Cairnsmore1?

We have had a conversation but it does need some work from our side that would take from our bitstream progression. So it's not likely to get us there much faster that our own approach. so for the moment we continue as we are.

I will be very surprised if you will be able to produce a bitstream of 220MHs+ performance in a reasonable timeframe (1-2 weeks). From what I've heard, it's a pain in the neck to work with Spartan-6 in such high performance application. I believe TML would be much faster to implement.

I personally would just prefer a 750-800 MH/s firmware to get my boards running. After all that's what I was sold on (double Icarus performance for $640). Any additional work would be icing on the cake.

You'd have to be quite a ninja to write a bitstream even of that performance in 2 weeks.

Isn't the ZTEX firmware open-sourced? I believe ZTEX's quad is treated as 4 individual FPGAs, which if I understand, Cairnsmore1 supports besides the inter-FPGA link to mimic Icarus. I could be wrong, but I don't think you'd need to be a ninja.

[BCbitcoin]

Aren't all the bitstreams from ztex to icarus to x6500 to modminer all based on code that was previously published by someone else for free? Hence the exact same performance of those devices. They just made hardware designed to use available code.The only person to do his own work was ET.

[DILLIGAF]

Aren't all the bitstreams from ztex to icarus to x6500 to modminer all based on code that was previously published by someone else for free? Hence the exact same performance of those devices. They just made hardware designed to use available code.The only person to do his own work was ET.

I believe that should be did his own work on top of that freely provided work.

[sadpandatech]

Aren't all the bitstreams from ztex to icarus to x6500 to modminer all based on code that was previously published by someone else for free? Hence the exact same performance of those devices. They just made hardware designed to use available code.The only person to do his own work was ET.

I believe that should be did his own work on top of that freely provided work.

Could you repeat that statement in english please? ;p

[DILLIGAF]

Aren't all the bitstreams from ztex to icarus to x6500 to modminer all based on code that was previously published by someone else for free? Hence the exact same performance of those devices. They just made hardware designed to use available code.The only person to do his own work was ET.

I believe that should be did his own work on top of that freely provided work.

Could you repeat that statement in english please? ;p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxmUKVrT0iI

[Coinoisseur]

Quite understandable, "Only one to build upon the original, freely provided code."

[yohan]

I think the Icarus design is built off the Ztex one but I might be wrong on that. If anyone happens to have the NCD files for either these and wants to supply them I will try a couple of modifications to see if they will work seperately of the main team on our original bitstream. It's a process not guaranteed to work but sometimes it does but most importantly these sorts of hack can be done in 30 mins not 2 days of a rebuild. I know you all are keen to see the performance side of this and I don't think we will have any major problems getting to about the 800MH/s mark it's more a case of how long to get there.