Using different ASICs with the same cgminer instance

[baldpope]

I wanted to start this short thread/tutorial because I like to share documentation when I can.

First, a quick shout-out to the following

• give-me-coins mining pool - always good people and willing to help - visit them on #give-me-coins on irc.freenode.net
• cryptomining-blog.com - I can't tell you how many times I've used their site as reference for finding updates - keep up the good work folks

special thanks to the following - everyone should know these guys

• ckolivas - original author of cgminer - yea it's BTC only but without him (and I'm sure others) mining would still be near impossible for most of us
• dmaxl - one of the many contributors who have picked up the code for those of us mining altcoins

Recently, I was fortunate enough to pick up some good deals on a couple of Fury and Black Widow miners.  I knew that I didn't want to maintain another 2 hosts trying to manage them independently from the other rigs I have so I attached them to my existing GPU rig.  The following is a brief step-by-step (with some large assumptions for the reader - but please feel free to ask any questions)...

First, we'll need to download, configure and compile the cgminer instance from dmaxl

mkdir /opt/zues_miner
cd /opt/zues_miner
git clone https://github.com/dmax1/cgminer.git
cd cgminer
./autogen.sh

before proceeding, it's very possible someone will get stuck at this step - you CANNOT proceed until this autogen.sh completes cleanly.  I won't go into detail here, but make sure any dependencies are satisfied before proceeding.

./configure --enable-scrypt --enable-zeus
make

Once the above completes, you'll be left with your very own instance of cgminer, targeted for use with the Zeus chipset ASICs, in my case the Fury and Black Widow ASIC miners from Gawminers.

Before proceeding, I recommend taking a moment to understand how to identify the correct ASIC miner from another.  I did the following in a control environment so that I knew which device was which. 

• Make sure only one of the desired ASICs are plugged in and run cgminer --ndev

./cgminer --ndevs
 [2014-09-30 14:34:51] USB all: found 22 devices - listing known devices
USB dev 0: Bus 2 Device 36 ID: 10c4:ea60
  Manufacturer: 'Silicon Labs'
  Product: 'CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller'

• Take note of the Bus and Device values.  In this case, I plugged in the Black Widow and identified it as Bus 2 and Device 36 (this is relevant for later)
• Also take note of the vendor ID, in this case 10c4:ea60 - useful for later
• Now, plug in a second USB device and run cgminer --ndevs again

./cgminer --ndevs
 [2014-09-30 14:34:51] USB all: found 22 devices - listing known devices
.USB dev 0: Bus 2 Device 36 ID: 10c4:ea60
  Manufacturer: 'Silicon Labs'
  Product: 'CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller'
.USB dev 1: Bus 1 Device 48 ID: 10c4:ea60
  Manufacturer: 'Silicon Labs'

You'll notice now that two devices are listed - but the first device still has the same bus and device enumeration.  The second device is located at Bus 1 and Device 48.  I recommend adding each device and taking note of which physical device is plugged into which bus.  Alternatively, if you only have 1 odd device, you can just identify it and move on

When complete, you should be able to run the following:

mint ~ # lsusb -d 10c4:ea60
Bus 002 Device 036: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 048: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 049: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 054: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 051: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 052: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 053: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light
Bus 001 Device 055: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x UART Bridge / myAVR mySmartUSB light

Now with the devices identified, you'll need to launch cgminer with the correct options to address each miner.  As noted above I have both the Fury and Black Widow miners, specifically 10 and 1 of each.

I want to set the global chip count and clock speed for all Zeus Fury miners and then a specific chip count and clock speed for the Black Widow.  I accomplish this by adding the --zeus-options to the cgminer line, along with the Bus and Device ID and with the relevant miner options.

./cgminer --scrypt --zeus-chips 6 --zeus-clock 340 --zeus-options 2:36,64,328

In the above example, the --zeus-chips and --zeus-clock options are global and apply to any device device not explicitly identified.  Here we are saying that all Zeus chipset ASICs will have 6 chips and operate at a clock speed of 340.  Additionally, we are specifically referencing the miner at Bus 2, Device 36 which will override the defaults and use 64 chips and a clock speed of 328.  In this way, we can run a mix of equipment from the same miner interface.

The resulting cgminer instance shows the devices individually addressed:

cgminer version 4.3.5 - Started: [2014-09-30 14:42:35]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):378.4M (1m):399.0M (5m):96.68M (15m):33.28M (avg):25.32Mh/s
 A:5120  R:0  HW:3  WU:19227.0/m
 Connected to ltc_pool diff 1.02K with stratum as user baldpope
 Block: df0ce453...  Diff:35.3K  Started: [14:42:34]  Best share: 147K
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 0: ZUS 2:36: Hurricane X3   328 MHz   | 14.68M / 15.49Mh/s WU: 7690.8/m
 1: ZUS 1:48: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.327M / 1.397Mh/s WU:    0.0/m
 2: ZUS 1:49: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.417M / 1.475Mh/s WU: 3845.4/m
 3: ZUS 1:54: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.327M / 1.397Mh/s WU:    0.0/m
 4: ZUS 1:51: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.327M / 1.397Mh/s WU:    0.0/m
 5: ZUS 1:52: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.403M / 1.451Mh/s WU: 3845.4/m
 6: ZUS 1:53: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.327M / 1.398Mh/s WU:    0.0/m
 7: ZUS 1:55: Blizzard       340 MHz   | 1.402M / 1.454Mh/s WU: 3845.4/m

As a quick side note - take caution when assigning the clock speeds.  I found that these work for me, but your results will likely vary.[/list]

[1715424461]

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[1715424461]

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[baldpope]

reserved

[btcjoin14]

post it here
Mining support
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=40.0

[bitillionaire]

Awesome, very helpful.

txid: 1bf2dd0b096e045dd668fb0b4af248a6e84d8866e8f2339145e578aba1d50b1b

[Stcgold]

Nice guide
appreciated it

[baldpope]

Someone asked if I could update this with Gridseed information, here is what I have.  I no longer have the 5chip orbs, I only have the blades, but this is what I previously used.

Similarly to the zeus-options mentioned above, the Gridseed devices (and cgminer with compiled in support) has this:

Code:

--gridseed-freq # which accepts a frequency override per unit (identified by device serial number)
--gridseed-options
--gridseed-override

which accept the following

• baud=

# i believe this should always be set to 115200

• freq=

# list of supported values are here: http://cryptomining-blog.com/1828-updated-cgminer-3-7-2-and-cpuminer-for-overclocking-gridseed-5-chip-gc3355-asics/

• chips=

# this is the number of chips per device, which is 1 for the single usb miner, 5 for the orb, and 80 for the blade

so in theory, you'd start cgminer like so:

# this will set all connected gridseed miners to a frequency of 850mhz (stable stock speed) with a chip count of 5
cgminer --gridseed-options=baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5

# further, you can address individual gridseed devices by their serial number (only tested with 5 chip devices)
cgminer --gridseed-options=baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5 --gridseed-freq serial1=888,serial2=875

# and lastly, you can set the global option for any connected device, and then an option per unit like so
cgminer --gridseed-options=baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5 --gridseed-override serial1=baud=115200,freq=850,chips=1;serial2=baud=115200,freq=800,chips=80


I hope this helps someone.