High Efficiency FPGA & ASIC Bitcoin Mining Devices https://BTCFPGA.com

[cablepair]

If anyone is still having technical issues please email stephen@btcfpga.com

or join us in #btcfpga on freenode IRC

also I am going to be sending Luke-JR a ModMiner Quad as soon as one is available so we can further the development and compatibility with cgminer

[filharvey]

I redid the firm ware update, and have the single board in slot 1 (slot 4 does not get reconised). Now I'm getting work accepted.

Thanks

Phil

[matthewh3]

Would it be OK to run a ModMiner farm off a RaspberryPi 24/7 with a USB hubs. 

[nandika]

Mine was not shipped since 20/5
Sent an email for a refund, and expected shipping date.
Made another order on Jun/11 but that's not showing up in my account even though my card was already charged at google checkout.
Hope you can resolve these problems..

[cablepair]

Mine was not shipped since 20/5
Sent an email for a refund, and expected shipping date.
Made another order on Jun/11 but that's not showing up in my account even though my card was already charged at google checkout.
Hope you can resolve these problems..

Thanks for contacting me I also see your email and will contact you to resolve that

The only problem we are having is our engineer who is the designer and builder of these units has gotten a little over-wealmed with orders and we have decided to outsource manufacturing of our devices to an outside company which will greatly expedite things.

We are expecting this move to happen within the next week and production to continue as usual
Currently we are only able to produce 3-4 units per day approximately 5 days per week which is not enough to keep up with the current demand

do not worry though I will issue your deserved 9% refund immediately and I will contact you over email about your unit delivery, which in your case will be this week.


for further inquiries please contact the following:

for business / financial inquiries: tom@btcfpga.com
for technical support / technical inquiries: stephen@btcfpga.com

tech support IRC channel #btcfpga (Freenode irc)


Thank you for your patience

[mu50stang]

Has anyone been able to get cgminer to work with their modminer cards.  I'm able to get 2.4.2 to work but only loads 3 of the 4 fpgas.  After running for about 3 hours they shut down.  Any help would be appreciated.

[cablepair]

Has anyone been able to get cgminer to work with their modminer cards.  I'm able to get 2.4.2 to work but only loads 3 of the 4 fpgas.  After running for about 3 hours they shut down.  Any help would be appreciated.

as far as I know everyone has gotten their units working, im not sure where stephen is, he may be busy tonight

I would email stephen@btcfpga.com directly and I will also email him and let him know you are a top priority

also ask openly for help in #btcfpga, or if you want to try out MPBM go to #mpbm and ask TheSeven for help with his miner
which also works fully with the ModMiner Quad

[filharvey]

1 Thing I have seen with the card. Is that after it has been running for some time, the clock is being reduced gradually. After what 36 hours, the clock is down from 210 to 202.

Phil

[cablepair]

ModMiner / CGMINER compatibility needs some work and its actually being worked on as we speak

The clock should only lower it self if there is some problem , like overload / overheat detected

I thank everyone for bearing with us through these little growing pains but believe me we are addressing all of these issues and you will all have a better product in the long run for reporting little things like this.

Stcupp was too busy yesterday to really do any work but I have re-hired Luke-JR to do additional coding on  CGMINER and I am hoping stcupp will be back to work today , we are in the process of moving all production operations to a professional level manufacturing facility and have a huge order of Spartan-6 LX150 Chips being delivered there this coming week.

co-incidentally I hear from individuals who have been able to get MPBM working, it apparently works 100% with no problems with the latest ModMiner Quad model.

[cablepair]

Just wanted to give an update

Much time, money and effort is being put into making sure CGMINER is compatible for all of your units

to save a big headache I am sending Luke-JR a ModMiner Quad via Express Overnight so he can work on this over the weekend and make sure CGMINER is working 100% for all of you.

We are still continuing to crank out ModMiner Quads at our slow by hand pace , we are shiping four units out on friday (those who are getting them already know who they are) and will continue to ship (what we can build over the weekend) again on monday, but as you know we are also in the process of migrating to a professional level assembly house and should be finalizing it this week. Once that transition has taken place it will be very easy to get caught up on orders, every order will be fulfilled soon and it will be no problem.

We will not be doing much over the weekend, if you need tech support go to #btcfpga on freenode, or email stephen@btcfpga.com

if you have business / financial issues please email tom@btcfpga.com - I would discourage posting in the forum thread with shipping issues ,  yes it does annoy me and get my attention but it is not the venue I handle these issues and it does nothing other than annoy me and if you know me and my customer service reputation you do not need to annoy me to get my attention I try to handle everything in a timely manner. , please save this thread for general questions/ comments about the product itself

I will be on the road traveling all weekend and will not be very much available until monday.

Thank you to all the great customers for your patience and for helping us to develop top grade FPGA Bitcoin mining hardware.

Have a great weekend and I will talk to you on monday.

-Tom

[Qoheleth]

So I went ahead and emailed Stephen on Wednesday, and have been asking around in IRC since Thursday. So far, the only actual response I've received has been from Luke in IRC, who suggested that I upgrade my kernel even though he suspected it wouldn't solve the problem. Stephen has never made any contact with me.

I understand that you guys are busy, but this lack of communication is making me antsy. Is there anything I can do to help you debug? Is any progress being made?

[David_Benz]

Guess these things are pretty much worthless now, since BFL and asic.

[matthewh3]

Guess these things are pretty much worthless now, since BFL and asic.

Why do you own a BFL ASIC or know any one that does?  Or have you pre-ordered a BFL ASIC or know anyone who has.  Knowing there shipping lead times too!

[rjk]

Guess these things are pretty much worthless now, since BFL and asic.

Actually, the are probably the only ones that might be worth something, since the FPGA modules could be swapped out for something faster.

[David_Benz]

Guess these things are pretty much worthless now, since BFL and asic.

Why do you own a BFL ASIC or know any one that does?  Or have you pre-ordered a BFL ASIC or know anyone who has.  Knowing there shipping lead times too!

Well, I guess I was wrong.  Not worthless YET!

[Qoheleth]

Guess these things are pretty much worthless now, since BFL and asic.

Here's how I see it.

ASICs represent the ability to put a particular logic layout into silicon and run it at unparalleled speed. But their downside is that they can never be modified.

Sooner or later - it's a matter of when, not if - weaknesses will be discovered in SHA-256, and there will be an algorithm better than brute force. At that time, FPGAs and GPUs will be able to take advantage of that algorithm, and ASICs will not. At that time, all previously extant ASIC mining equipment will lose its advantage. And if 2SHA256 ever becomes weak enough to no longer serve as the hash function for Bitcoin (for instance, if a partial preimage attack is discovered), FPGAs and GPUs will be able to switch to a new hash algorighm, but ASICs will become worthless.

Thus, regardless of the great advantages of ASIC chips in the mid-term, and the necessity for them to be on the network in order to compete with a moneyed attacker with a fabrication plant, they aren't the "end game" of mining, and by definition cannot be, because they can't respond to the state of the art and the changing conditions of the real world.

[allinvain]

Time to lower the price? I mean how much are people willing to pay for this "flexibility" and how long will the payoff period be when a similarly priced unit outputs 47 x the hashing power.

[Luke-Jr]

http://fs07n5.sendspace.com/dl/56045c81d8dc87863633a93d98caa90a/4fe0dd5d18e34a41/0ixpqy/MMQ.zip

Reset button is on the left
ISP button is on the right

To do the update:

Hold BOTH the Reset and ISP buttons
Release the Reset button while still holding the ISP button
Release the ISP button
Unplug USB and plug it back in, the board will now show up as a mass storage device
Open the MSD and you should see one file named firmware.bin
Delete firmware.bin and copy the new firmware file to the device
If running linux make sure you sync/unmount the drive first
Unplug USB, hit the Reset button, and plug USB back in
The firmware is now updated.

For Linux, it isn't quite that simple. Apparently the MCU has a buggy implementation of USB Mass Storage and/or VFAT, and goes crazy with Linux's vfat driver. But it's still possible to do, using GNU Mtools (package "mtools" under Debian,Ubuntu,Gentoo):

Code:

mdel -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC134X_IFLASH_ISP000000000-0:0 ::/firmware.bin
mcopy -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC134X_IFLASH_ISP000000000-0:0 MCU.bin ::/

[Qoheleth]

http://fs07n5.sendspace.com/dl/56045c81d8dc87863633a93d98caa90a/4fe0dd5d18e34a41/0ixpqy/MMQ.zip

Reset button is on the left
ISP button is on the right

To do the update:

Hold BOTH the Reset and ISP buttons
Release the Reset button while still holding the ISP button
Release the ISP button
Unplug USB and plug it back in, the board will now show up as a mass storage device
Open the MSD and you should see one file named firmware.bin
Delete firmware.bin and copy the new firmware file to the device
If running linux make sure you sync/unmount the drive first
Unplug USB, hit the Reset button, and plug USB back in
The firmware is now updated.

For Linux, it isn't quite that simple. Apparently the MCU has a buggy implementation of USB Mass Storage and/or VFAT, and goes crazy with Linux's vfat driver. But it's still possible to do, using GNU Mtools (package "mtools" under Debian,Ubuntu,Gentoo):

Code:

mdel -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC134X_IFLASH_ISP000000000-0:0 ::/firmware.bin
mcopy -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC134X_IFLASH_ISP000000000-0:0 MCU.bin ::/

Hooboy. This... might explain the issues I've been having. Gonna try it.

[Qoheleth]

Good news: kernel recognizes the card and the "cdc_acm" driver creates a USB serial device file (/dev/ttyACM0).
Bad news: MPBM doesn't see the card. Neither does BFGMiner.

What worker module should I be using? Do I need to download any FPGA firmware?

Edit: Again, thanks to Luke I was able to sort it out. Now to see if it'll program properly.