GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[sidehack]

S1 and S3 I believe are directly compatible but I could be wrong. We have S1 and Prisma to experiment on. I figured folks would have Prisma chassis running around from having stripped the boards for refund.

Also, my cheapo hub I ran Block Erupters on looks like a 16mm center-to-center.

Also, CrazyGuy - thanks. Novak did a bit of scrutinizing on a board picture from a Dogie thread and, between that and poking a U2 and the BM1384 datasheet and some small advice from Bitmain we probably have enough info. But then again it never hurts to have an actual thing in hand and see how it operates. One thing I want to poke on is the voltage setting for the U3 (does it also have cgminer-based fan control?), see if we can use the same driver protocol for stuff other than setting the clock speed. But the U3's regulator controller is some proprietary thing you can't even get a datasheet for without a big fat NDA, so it may not even matter.

[philipma1957]

One of the biggest issues with U2's came from the size of the heat sink. It was appropriately matched for the performance but became a big obstacle when plugging into a hub. So making them with a female end would allow the user to add short 6-7 inch usb leads to the hub would be nice. The other issue was power sourcing. Simple screwdown connectors would allow the user to quickly tap power from an ATX PSU but as we all know by now, most have shifted the output too 12volts the buck convertor would need to be o.k. with that over the longhaul. This setup would allow for the use of inexpensive unpowered hubs.

So what you're saying is, you don't want a stick miner. You want a USB-tethered desk miner that runs off 12V power. You should probably wait until the TypeZero board is up and going then.

Yeah Phil, you know we like hacking hardware so if the thing isn't software-voltable it needs to be hardware-voltable.

Good I kept 2 of these stud hubs so I am ready for some nice sticks.

[Unacceptable]

Wow,you keep that price range & they'll fly off the website!!!!

Looking forward to seeing how this develops 

[sidehack]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

[philipma1957]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

the big key is the dial down to dial up range.

 Looking forward to this.

[Unacceptable]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

Absolutely!!!!!!  No more dealing with China for RMA or technical issue's too 

Maybe the US can FINALLY have a decent miner company !!!!!!! 

[ezeminer]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

Absolutely!!!!!!  No more dealing with China for RMA or technical issue's too 

Maybe the US can FINALLY have a decent miner company !!!!!!! 

What about spondoolies?
But it would be pretty awesome to have more choice for residential mining

[Unacceptable]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

Absolutely!!!!!!  No more dealing with China for RMA or technical issue's too  

Maybe the US can FINALLY have a decent miner company !!!!!!!  

What about spondoolies?
But it would be pretty awesome to have more choice for residential mining

#1 Spoondolies is based in Israel,shipping is higher than from here in the US,not just for purchase but for RMA too..........

#2 Spoondolies is not making a home miner ever again...they said so.Just large datacenter miners sold in bulk only  

We MAY get to buy em thru a Group Buy,but don't count on it  

Not sure where Bitmain is going with their S6/S7 miners yet,gotta wait & see.

"Help me sidehack, you my only hope"  

[ezeminer]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

Absolutely!!!!!!  No more dealing with China for RMA or technical issue's too  

Maybe the US can FINALLY have a decent miner company !!!!!!!  

What about spondoolies?
But it would be pretty awesome to have more choice for residential mining

#1 Spoondolies is based in Israel,shipping is higher than from here in the US,not just for purchase but for RMA too..........

#2 Spoondolies is not making a home miner ever again...they said so.Just large datacenter miners sold in bulk only  

We MAY get to buy em thru a Group Buy,but don't count on it  

Not sure where Bitmain is going with their S6/S7 miners yet,gotta wait & see.

"Help me sidehack maybe you my only hope"  

Sometimes I feel really stupid, for some reason I thought they were based in texas.

[Unacceptable]

It's going to depend heavily on chip prices from Bitmain. That'll be the dominant factor. If we end up in the same price neighborhood as an S5 it's still sort of a win because the top-end hashrate is actually higher and the bottom-end is actually attainable without rocket surgery and the shipping costs will be less.

Absolutely!!!!!!  No more dealing with China for RMA or technical issue's too  

Maybe the US can FINALLY have a decent miner company !!!!!!!  

What about spondoolies?
But it would be pretty awesome to have more choice for residential mining

#1 Spoondolies is based in Israel,shipping is higher than from here in the US,not just for purchase but for RMA too..........

#2 Spoondolies is not making a home miner ever again...they said so.Just large datacenter miners sold in bulk only  

We MAY get to buy em thru a Group Buy,but don't count on it  

Not sure where Bitmain is going with their S6/S7 miners yet,gotta wait & see.

"Help me sidehack maybe you my only hope"  

Sometimes I feel really stupid, for some reason I thought they were based in texas.

LOL,no biggie 

Your thinking of failed miner companies-Hashfast & Cointerra 

[TheRealSteve]

#2 Spoondolies is not making a home miner ever again...they said so.

That's not quite what they said - though in reality that might be what it comes down to.
They have repeatedly stated that if there is a market for smaller miners that is attractive  to them, they will certainly build them[1][2][3][4][5]
The problem is that most of their sales (read:profit) is in bulk sales to large mining operations.[6], even group buys hardly count[7]
While that could be solved by making chips available - as they have done in the past - "The 3 months lead time on the ASICs kill most of those deals"[8]
All of which means the road for the small miner leads to cloud mining, with 'managed mines'[9] and miners taking a share of that mine[10]
They're not particularly fond of having to take that road[11][12], but in the end they're a business.

Though that's still preferable to some of the companies out there that have outright told their prior customers "so long and thanks for all the fish" and buggered off doing their own mining, keeping their new tech purely in-house, etc.  In that respect it'll be interesting if 21 comes out with a miner, or just auxiliary hardware.

[ManeBjorn]

 I want some as well. They would be lots of fun.

I always replaced the power traces on my hubs with decent wire star'd to a Molex connector. Also had a decent prototype interface board for a 5V30A standalone supply to power one of those 49-port hubs but I really only made two of 'em.

Also, the cost of 10 of the USB sticks is probably going to be more than the cost of one TypeZero board, basic heatsinking and a quiet 120mm fan. And also about a third of the possible hashrate.

What type of spacing are you seeing on your hubs? If I can get an idea of possible thickness I can spec a heatsink better. The interesting thing is going to be that the BM1384 is a top-cooler so parts arrangement will have to be a bit particular unless we want a two-sided board with chips on the bottom, but for a USB miner that's probably more headache than it's worth.

[buysolar]

Looks like a great project. Will be so much fun rebuilding my S1's with your kits when they become available.

[novak@gekkoscience]

With regards to Hammer stickminers:

I got the datasheet for the Hammer ASIC.  It does not contain power info at 0.55V but indicates that the bottom end power efficiency is 0.55W/GH although that is also the rated power at 0.6V and 430MHz (this is at the typical corner).  This would be 3.5W which is too high, but even taking 0.55W/GH as your best power consumption estimate you could probably run off USB down at about 4GH or so including VRM losses.

Would anyone look at a Hammer stickminer (~2.5W, ~4GH) with interest or is that just too low of a hashrate?  You could clock it at double that easily (with sufficient USB power) assuming we build the power supply capable of handling that.  It would be a fair amount more work for us to do an additional board including serial protocol for the Hammer but it would keep us away from bitmain's (potential) price hikes.

Let me know if this is something you would consider worth picking up, the attraction for us is that we would likely be able to get some old Hammers a little cheaper than bitmain might sell us chips.  The downside is that the result would probably not compare particularly well to a BM1384 stickminer, which would not be much extra work for us to produce.

--
novak

[Bicknellski]

With regards to Hammer stickminers:

I got the datasheet for the Hammer ASIC.  It does not contain power info at 0.55V but indicates that the bottom end power efficiency is 0.55W/GH although that is also the rated power at 0.6V and 430MHz (this is at the typical corner).  This would be 3.5W which is too high, but even taking 0.55W/GH as your best power consumption estimate you could probably run off USB down at about 4GH or so including VRM losses.

Would anyone look at a Hammer stickminer (~2.5W, ~4GH) with interest or is that just too low of a hashrate?  You could clock it at double that easily (with sufficient USB power) assuming we build the power supply capable of handling that.  It would be a fair amount more work for us to do an additional board including serial protocol for the Hammer but it would keep us away from bitmain's (potential) price hikes.

Let me know if this is something you would consider worth picking up, the attraction for us is that we would likely be able to get some old Hammers a little cheaper than bitmain might sell us chips.  The downside is that the result would probably not compare particularly well to a BM1384 stickminer, which would not be much extra work for us to produce.

--
novak

Put a usb style nitelight on it and you got a few sales.

Solar powered option might be interesting for some people.

[vs3]

(...)
I'm also pretty sure we're gonna go ahead and try to build a USB stick miner. (...)

Also, and just because it's a thing we've been discussing for all of one day, would anyone buy a USB stick miner with a Spondoolies Hammer ASIC on it? I don't know that it'd get more than about 4GH from stock USB power, but it might still be interesting to play with. This one would take some extra dev time because the chips don't seem to use a standard protocol, and it'll require some NDAs to know exactly what that nonstandard protocol is, but if anyone wants more variety in non-garbaginous stick miners we can look into feasibility.

I was actually thinking of going in that direction about 6 months ago. After playing tag with the guys from Spondoolies for several months I got one spreadsheet and not yet a fully executed NDA. And no chips availability or pricing information so far. No samples either. That's where I sort of gave up.

Investing in a new design is quite an enterprise. I've already been burned with a design for which there were no chips (or suddenly they became more expensive).

The Hammer one seemed on specs like an interesting idea for a simple USB hasher. But if you're gonna give that a shot I'd recommend that you at least have a promise to be given chips (at a reasonable price).

[novak@gekkoscience]

I was actually thinking of going in that direction about 6 months ago. After playing tag with the guys from Spondoolies for several months I got one spreadsheet and not yet a fully executed NDA. And no chips availability or pricing information so far. No samples either. That's where I sort of gave up.

Investing in a new design is quite an enterprise. I've already been burned with a design for which there were no chips (or suddenly they became more expensive).

The Hammer one seemed on specs like an interesting idea for a simple USB hasher. But if you're gonna give that a shot I'd recommend that you at least have a promise to be given chips (at a reasonable price).

Thanks for the input, I understand you have fairly extensive experience in building miners so, any advice you have to offer is welcome.  As it turns out we could probably get some Hammers from the Wasp project which is how the idea came up- they have enough for a least a single decent batch.  They did wind up paying a pretty high price per chip though as I understand it, though that was some time ago so hopefully the price has dropped.  I just started talking to Spondoolies proper.

--
novak

[xkeyscore89]

Interesting project. Watching

[Bicknellski]

Ya those hammers were priced when the SP10 was just dropping in the marketplace. So they were premium priced chips at that time. Obviously they are not worth that now have to look at the current chip costs, price per gh/s etc and find a good price range that allows you guys some flexibility to get a USB miner to market. A USB miner is about the only possible use for them at this point.

[philipma1957]

With regards to Hammer stickminers:

I got the datasheet for the Hammer ASIC.  It does not contain power info at 0.55V but indicates that the bottom end power efficiency is 0.55W/GH although that is also the rated power at 0.6V and 430MHz (this is at the typical corner).  This would be 3.5W which is too high, but even taking 0.55W/GH as your best power consumption estimate you could probably run off USB down at about 4GH or so including VRM losses.

Would anyone look at a Hammer stickminer (~2.5W, ~4GH) with interest or is that just too low of a hashrate?  You could clock it at double that easily (with sufficient USB power) assuming we build the power supply capable of handling that.  It would be a fair amount more work for us to do an additional board including serial protocol for the Hammer but it would keep us away from bitmain's (potential) price hikes.

Let me know if this is something you would consider worth picking up, the attraction for us is that we would likely be able to get some old Hammers a little cheaper than bitmain might sell us chips.  The downside is that the result would probably not compare particularly well to a BM1384 stickminer, which would not be much extra work for us to produce.

--
novak

don't make them.  the bm1384  would be much better.

having had sticks of all types having sold sticks of all types on ebay.  your specs mentioned on  the bm1384  were a lot better.

If the bm1384 dial under .4 watts/gh that is a big seller.

  the hammer at 2.5/4 = .625 w per gh  it is substandard efficiency .

If I run 4 sticks at .4 watts or less (BM1384)  Balance them  with a solo pool and a pair of pps pools Positive roi is possible due to the low watts per gh.

If I do it with 4 sticks at .625 watts (Hammer)  Positive roi is not going to happen.