BFL "EasyMiner" Released. Reviews?

[rjk]

Not saying it has happened, but how difficult would it be to make a chip spit out bogus info? Purely from a technical standpoint, ignoring other clues such as package and pin layout.

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[SgtSpike]

Makes sense catfish - sounds like a lot of little things add up to make BFL not worthwhile.  Long delivery times, require Windows to reflash, import tax, high electric usage compared to other FPGA's, etc.  Anyway, thanks for the lengthy explanation. 

[ice_chill]

Import tax is only VAT at 20% in UK, however Enterpoint quote a price without VAT, and unless you are VAT registered you will still pay VAT on the product, so it makes no difference, BFL or Enterpoint, you just pay a bit more to Enterpoint for better efficiency and faster ship times.

[Unacceptable]

Got my Single today  

But.....Easy miner says its mining but the places to put in my wallet addy or paypal addy are "greyed" out (all options are greyed out,even run a test & install drivers) ),so I shut it down.I did go back & update the firmware thinking that may be the prob & ran a test from the second window,say's it works fine.I also made an account at Eclispe in the hopes that something might "work" somehow,but noooo

Then tried CGminer,I'm software stupid so can't make a .bat file,so no mining there.Also have no idea how to --enable-bitforce,where do you put this command?? I never used cmd before,except for tracert runs.I just build PC's & hotrods  

DL'd Ufasoft,this has got to work,it keeps shutting down when I fire it up........first windows said it was a virus,I know better so I allowed it in the popup.....ran it again.......now windows wants to send a report,yeah that'll fix it  

I'm running Win7 64bit,how did you guys get this thing to work with any of these miners Windows saw the bitforce & installed FTDI,so I don't think thats the prob.But in device manager,under ports it just says com3 (the usb port),not bitforce.

Yes I surfed the forum,for about 4 hrs last nite,no luck.................  

I read the HeavyB posts,I'm still lost.

Thanks for any help   If this was posted in the wrong place,just give it a shove to the right place  

[jddebug]

Got my Single today  

But.....Easy miner says its mining but the places to put in my wallet addy or paypal addy are "greyed" out (all options are greyed out,even run a test & install drivers) ),so I shut it down.I did go back & update the firmware thinking that may be the prob & ran a test from the second window,say's it works fine.I also made an account at Eclispe in the hopes that something might "work" somehow,but noooo

Then tried CGminer,I'm software stupid so can't make a .bat file,so no mining there.Also have no idea how to --enable-bitforce,where do you put this command?? I never used cmd before,except for tracert runs.I just build PC's & hotrods  

DL'd Ufasoft,this has got to work,it keeps shutting down when I fire it up........first windows said it was a virus,I know better so I allowed it in the popup.....ran it again.......now windows wants to send a report,yeah that'll fix it  

I'm running Win7 64bit,how did you guys get this thing to work with any of these miners Windows saw the bitforce & installed FTDI,so I don't think thats the prob.But in device manager,under ports it just says com3 (the usb port),not bitforce.

Yes I surfed the forum,for about 4 hrs last nite,no luck.................  

I read the HeavyB posts,I'm still lost.

Thanks for any help   If this was posted in the wrong place,just give it a shove to the right place  

For now you might try bitminter just to get going. I'm off to bed and have to get up early so can't go through the whole .bat thing right now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg877772#msg877772

[Cablez]

Here is a semi blank batch file for cgminer 2.4.1. 
1)Copy the text to notepad and modify what you need then save it as cgminer.bat.
2)Put it in your cgminer folder and run it.

If you have gpus as well you just need to add the relevant commands found in the first post of the cgminer thread.

cgminer -o http://poolurl:port -u user -p pass -S COM3 --failover-only

[jddebug]

Here is a semi blank batch file for cgminer 2.4.1. 
1)Copy the text to notepad and modify what you need then save it as cgminer.bat.
2)Put it in your cgminer folder and run it.

If you have gpus as well you just need to add the relevant commands found in the first post of the cgminer thread.

cgminer -o http://poolurl:port -u user -p pass -S COM3 --failover-only

Additionally, COM3 may not be your COM port. Look in Device Manager to determine the actual COM port.

[Cablez]

I left it as COM3 because he had mentioned it but definitely make sure that is the correct port or cgminer will not find the BFL.

[Unacceptable]

Here is a semi blank batch file for cgminer 2.4.1.  
1)Copy the text to notepad and modify what you need then save it as cgminer.bat.
2)Put it in your cgminer folder and run it.

If you have gpus as well you just need to add the relevant commands found in the first post of the cgminer thread.

cgminer -o http://poolurl:port -u user -p pass -S COM3 --failover-only

Thanks !!!!!!! That did it  

I was sooo tired after doing a landscape job yesterday,I must not have been thinking right

I made about 10 .bat files & none of them worked,I was mislabeling them,duh

My hashrate is half though any thoughts??



Maybe I flashed the wrong firmware version,I DL'ed the 832 version & flashed it instead of a higher one just in case of throttling like I had read about.

Is the temp correct in CGminer??

[BFL-Engineer]

Here is a semi blank batch file for cgminer 2.4.1. 
1)Copy the text to notepad and modify what you need then save it as cgminer.bat.
2)Put it in your cgminer folder and run it.

If you have gpus as well you just need to add the relevant commands found in the first post of the cgminer thread.

cgminer -o http://poolurl:port -u user -p pass -S COM3 --failover-only

Thanks !!!!!!! That did it 

I was sooo tired after doing a landscape job yesterday,I must not have been thinking right

I made about 10 .bat files & none of them worked,I was mislabeling them,duh

My hashrate is half though any thoughts??



Maybe I flashed the wrong firmware version,I DL'ed the 832 version & flashed it instead of a higher one just in case of throttling like I had read about.

Is the temp correct in CGminer??

Is there any chance you can test 824 and see what happens? Also, does the front LED occasionally blink
for around 15 seconds while you're hashing?


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[Unacceptable]

Thanks for responding BFL

The light only seemed to flash for reject shares or in between work.

Ok,I flashed the 824 firmware & ran a diag :



My room temp is 78 f.

That flash dropped the hashrate to 125. Now it doesen't flash at all

EDIT: Duh...again........I didn't restart it

[BFL-Engineer]

Can you right click on the unit, and click on Device Information and let us know what it reads?


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[BFL-Engineer]

Thanks for responding BFL

The light only seemed to flash for reject shares or in between work.

Ok,I flashed the 824 firmware & ran a diag :



My room temp is 78 f.

That flash dropped the hashrate to 125. Now it doesen't flash at all

EDIT: Duh...again........I didn't restart it

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[Unacceptable]

Also, the test run shows Total Throttles = 1, this means the unit is throttling.
What is the In-Take temperature of the unit, not necessarily the room temperature?
These units are tested at 72F not 78F. Are these units placed close together? Is a GPU
exhausting hot air into the units Intake? Is the Unit in a closed space where it cannot
ventilate efficiently? Is something blocking either the sides or the top side of the unit?

Please let us know.



Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[/quote]

I only have one unit & it's sitting on an open shelf away from any sources of heat,other PC's or electronic devices are at least 3 feet away & nothing is exhuasting anywhere near it.I'll setup another PC in another room later & move it there & see how it goes.

I went ahead & tried the 864 firmware just to see how it goes:



Yep,throttling is occuring

I'll try flashing the hot environment firmware & post the results,before moving it to another location.

Thanks for the help BFL-Engineer  

[Unacceptable]

Well,I flashed the 768 firmware & viola,it's mining @ 750mh/s

I expected a learning curve,so I'm not disappointed in the issues I've run into  

It's a great little device & I'm very pleased with it.I'll be getting more soon!!!

Hope you guy's at BFL can get these to work a little better in a hotter enviroment,like 80 degrees.I'm in florida & to get to 72 degrees is very costly.

Thanks again for all the help guys !!!!!

[BFL-Engineer]

Well,I flashed the 768 firmware & viola,it's mining @ 750mh/s

I expected a learning curve,so I'm not disappointed in the issues I've run into  

It's a great little device & I'm very pleased with it.I'll be getting more soon!!!

Hope you guy's at BFL can get these to work a little better in a hotter enviroment,like 80 degrees.I'm in florida & to get to 72 degrees is very costly.

Thanks again for all the help guys !!!!!

OK, now you can test with 792, 800 and 808. Increase firmware version one by one to find
the sweet spot. Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[Unacceptable]

Well,I flashed the 768 firmware & viola,it's mining @ 750mh/s

I expected a learning curve,so I'm not disappointed in the issues I've run into  

It's a great little device & I'm very pleased with it.I'll be getting more soon!!!

Hope you guy's at BFL can get these to work a little better in a hotter enviroment,like 80 degrees.I'm in florida & to get to 72 degrees is very costly.

Thanks again for all the help guys !!!!!

OK, now you can test with 792, 800 and 808. Increase firmware version one by one to find
the sweet spot. Please let us know how it goes.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Sure will

Thanks for responding so quickly 

[Phraust]

I've noticed out of my 10 BFL units, two seem to throttle themselves.  I've done some testing between the 872 and 864, at 100 units, and they all pass (using windows 7 in Parallels on OSX).

They only seem to throttle after I power cycle them.  I had them all mining for about a day, and I decided to stop cgminer and let them cool down.  I shut down cgminer, and powered them all off for about 15 minutes, so they could get back to about 21 C.  When they came back up, they all reported a good hashrate, till I checked them again about 8 hours later. 8 of the units acted as expected (about 850 mhps), while one was at 752 (47 C) and the other at 663 (51 C).  I've been running the a/c through the hottest part of the day, and none of them get hotter than 58 C.

When I noticed this a few days ago, I read that there might have been an issue with thermal paste, so I took the worst of the units apart and cleaned off the "lumpy" paste and reseated the heatsink and pipe.  After reassembling it and bringing it back up, it reported an increase of about 10 mhps (bringing it in line with the others).  Sadly, after running yesterday and most of today and being power cycled and cooled this afternoon, it's fallen back to previous levels after about 4 hours (664 @ 51.6C).

At this point I may just clean and reapply thermal paste on the two "bad" ones, as this is about all I can think of trying.  It appeared that the "lumpy" thermal paste may have been applied, then allowed to sit for some time until it got seated on the chips (my best guess), so it wasn't getting 100% of it's surface touching between the heat sinks and chips.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to simply clean all of them really well, and use a higher quality thermal paste.

[Garr255]

I'd do that. Just get them all running how they should be then you won't have to watch them all day

[Unacceptable]

Update:

I tried flashing the 792 & 800 firmware & the unit still throttles (room temp 76 degrees f) & won't get over 300 mh/s.

However with the 768 firmware I can mine with room temps of up to 84 degress f @ 760 mh/s,I opened my windows just to see if the higher temps would make it throttle & no throttleing.

Next step is to turn down the A/C to 70 degrees f & keep flashing firmware,higher each time & see what happens.


Before I do,is there any limit to flashing?? I already flashed 4 times so far............don't think so,but its better to ask


Also,if after all this & I still can't run anything but the 768 FW,I may try reapplying the H/S compound.Those that have done this,what compound are you using??

I always use Ceramique on CPU's & GPU's,but it's pretty thick stuff & I'm thinking it may be too thick for this application.

I've been keeping up with rkozola's issues to maybe be enlightened as my problem is similiar.

BTW,I know USB 2.0 works,but is there anything to gain with using USB 3.0 ??