Instead of using a dedicated USB-SPI chip, it would be a lot easier to use a small USB microcontroller. Price and area would be the same, and all the hardware specific details of the bitfury design would be in the firmware, rather than on the PC.
That's what we're doing for our 2-chip bi*fury USB design, but it would be easy to replace the 2 ASICs with a H-CARD socket.
Topic: [ANN] Bitfury is looking for alpha-testers of first chips! FREE MONEY HERE! - page 26. (Read 176728 times)
August 28, 2013, 12:06:56 AM
August 27, 2013, 11:55:24 PM
We're using an MCP2210 for USB-SPI communication. Indeed the reset sequence was tricky and we're using a MUX plus two GPIOs from the mcp2210. The available open source code (linux) for the mcp2210 needs re-writing as well...quite the pain in the ass.
August 27, 2013, 11:41:58 PM
Yes it's the bitbanging reset that I have no way to emulate so far. I can easily talk SPI to the chip via libusb and have done so, but cannot get the chip reset and talking. I pinged bitfury about this but got no response. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears and eyes. If I can get it working via libusb, it will work everywhere.
Possibly an endianess issue? Have you hooked up a logic analyzer to it?
August 27, 2013, 11:40:31 PM
Yes it's the bitbanging reset that I have no way to emulate so far. I can easily talk SPI to the chip via libusb and have done so, but cannot get the chip reset and talking. I pinged bitfury about this but got no response. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears and eyes. If I can get it working via libusb, it will work everywhere.
Possibly an endianess issue? Have you hooked up a logic analyzer to it?
August 27, 2013, 11:31:22 PM
Yes it's the bitbanging reset that I have no way to emulate so far. I can easily talk SPI to the chip via libusb and have done so, but cannot get the chip reset and talking. I pinged bitfury about this but got no response. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears and eyes. If I can get it working via libusb, it will work everywhere.
August 27, 2013, 11:05:58 PM
Thanks VS3, this is a simple interface but my real question is what will it take to get CG, BFG or any other miner talking to the ASICs? In this configuration there can only be 1 "H" card (16 chips) so the processing power is not really a factor but since I DO NOT do the software thing I need one of you programming gods to chime in so I can get an alpha PCB on order. If I am wasting my time just let me know.
Thanks
Randy
Thanks
Randy
Randy - I'm currently messing with the PCB design and as soon as I send it for production (hopefully before Friday) I'll move onto cgminer. I know exactly what needs to change but I haven't used that set of compiler(s) and building environment, so it may take me a bit to figure out the details. I suspect I may ask ckolivas (that's cgminer's author who's also keeping an eye on this thread) or any of the other gurus for help if I get totally stuck.
edit: I'm basically going to expand legkodymov's fork so that it runs on Windows.
edit2: here is an example of a windows fork of cgminer - it's just the 3 bitfury-related files: (as translated by google)
August 27, 2013, 09:56:02 PM
Thanks VS3, this is a simple interface but my real question is what will it take to get CG, BFG or any other miner talking to the ASICs? In this configuration there can only be 1 "H" card (16 chips) so the processing power is not really a factor but since I DO NOT do the software thing I need one of you programming gods to chime in so I can get an alpha PCB on order. If I am wasting my time just let me know.
Thanks
Randy
Thanks
Randy
August 27, 2013, 08:36:37 PM
Power circuit built and tested using load resistors. 12V ATX to 0.84V +- 5mV @90A with 92% efficiency. Going to run it for a bit collecting data while powered by an AX1200i then will rerun it at 0.835V. Here's part of the DSO output plotted.
Nice! What DC/DC converter chip are you using?
Or is is it fully handcrafted?
intron
LTC3829 controller, everything else is custom design. Uses Infineon FETs and I'm testing two different coils.
August 27, 2013, 08:22:51 PM
Power circuit built and tested using load resistors. 12V ATX to 0.84V +- 5mV @90A with 92% efficiency. Going to run it for a bit collecting data while powered by an AX1200i then will rerun it at 0.835V. Here's part of the DSO output plotted.
Nice! What DC/DC converter chip are you using?
Or is is it fully handcrafted?
intron
August 27, 2013, 07:34:52 PM
Power circuit built and tested using load resistors. 12V ATX to 0.84V +- 5mV @90A with 92% efficiency. Going to run it for a bit collecting data while powered by an AX1200i then will rerun it at 0.835V. Here's part of the DSO output plotted.
August 27, 2013, 06:48:43 PM
(...) I was also looking at 101BTC's stick earlier but I think the chip they used may not (easily) do some of the required functions - specifically the "reset" sequence (...)
The standard SPI stuff shouldn't be hard... it's mostly the reset sequence, which is bitbanged using GPIO.
Yup - and I didn't see an easy way to switch that chip's IO to bitbanged mode (which is why I initially gave up on it .. and then saw it on 101BTC and reread the documentation and still didn't find an (easy) way ... unless I've overlooked that part of the PDF.. not to mention that this is a waaaaay overlycomplicated chip)
August 27, 2013, 06:44:15 PM
Hi and thanks for your excellent feedback, the chip can be and is configured to operate using 1V8 so no level shifter should be required (one of the reasons I selected it) also it is very configurable with the utility. Just a few of the specs are;
Single-channel configurable SPI interface ❐ Master/slave up to 3 MHz ❐ Data width: 4 bits to 16 bits ❐ 256 bytes for each transmit and receive buffer ❐ Supports Motorola, TI, and National SPI modes
Configuration utility (Windows) to configure the following: ❐ Vendor ID (VID), Product ID (PID), and Product and Manufacturer descriptors ❐ UART/I2C/SPI ❐ CapSense ❐ Charger detection ❐ GPIO
The link for the full spec sheet is here; http://www.krw.net/cy7c65211.pdf
Also please keep in mind that this is simply an interface to allow a computer to provide the processing power not the UART.
Thanks again
Single-channel configurable SPI interface ❐ Master/slave up to 3 MHz ❐ Data width: 4 bits to 16 bits ❐ 256 bytes for each transmit and receive buffer ❐ Supports Motorola, TI, and National SPI modes
Configuration utility (Windows) to configure the following: ❐ Vendor ID (VID), Product ID (PID), and Product and Manufacturer descriptors ❐ UART/I2C/SPI ❐ CapSense ❐ Charger detection ❐ GPIO
The link for the full spec sheet is here; http://www.krw.net/cy7c65211.pdf
Also please keep in mind that this is simply an interface to allow a computer to provide the processing power not the UART.
Thanks again
PWRMAD - that's exactly the chip I am working with
It should be able to do all that you need for driving BF chips. (with some processing power from the PC/host).
August 27, 2013, 06:43:00 PM
I'm very happy to see support for the BeagleBone!
Full disclosure: the current cgminer is very RPi specific. Some code hacking is necessary before BB will work!
Oh and it's not "the current cgminer", it's the forked code based on an older version. I received a bitfury USB stick from 101BTC and I've spent a lot of time trying to get it working on a PC instead of an RPi and it's proving far from trivial... Some of the memory and hardware hacks just don't even exist outside of the RPi and some I haven't remotely figured out what they do.Con - I've looked at the source code in quite a detail and (I think) I have a pretty good understanding of what's going on. I was also looking at 101BTC's stick earlier but I think the chip they used may not (easily) do some of the required functions - specifically the "reset" sequence. If you want PM me and we can discuss details. I am going to (try to) convert portions of that code next week so that I can run it under Windows with another usb-to-serial chip. Basically the RPi code has a mix of bitfutry-specific stuff plus RPi-specific stuff which I'm going to split into separate files. The bitfury-specific will remain the same and I'll add an option to replace the hardware-specific part with what I need for my chip (mostly how to do "Reset" and "TxRx").
The standard SPI stuff shouldn't be hard... it's mostly the reset sequence, which is bitbanged using GPIO.
August 27, 2013, 06:29:05 PM
I'm very happy to see support for the BeagleBone!
Full disclosure: the current cgminer is very RPi specific. Some code hacking is necessary before BB will work!
Oh and it's not "the current cgminer", it's the forked code based on an older version. I received a bitfury USB stick from 101BTC and I've spent a lot of time trying to get it working on a PC instead of an RPi and it's proving far from trivial... Some of the memory and hardware hacks just don't even exist outside of the RPi and some I haven't remotely figured out what they do.Con - I've looked at the source code in quite a detail and (I think) I have a pretty good understanding of what's going on. I was also looking at 101BTC's stick earlier but I think the chip they used may not (easily) do some of the required functions - specifically the "reset" sequence. If you want PM me and we can discuss details. I am going to (try to) convert portions of that code next week so that I can run it under Windows with another usb-to-serial chip. Basically the RPi code has a mix of bitfutry-specific stuff plus RPi-specific stuff which I'm going to split into separate files. The bitfury-specific will remain the same and I'll add an option to replace the hardware-specific part with what I need for my chip (mostly how to do "Reset" and "TxRx").
August 27, 2013, 06:24:32 PM
I'm very happy to see support for the BeagleBone!
Full disclosure: the current cgminer is very RPi specific. Some code hacking is necessary before BB will work!
Oh and it's not "the current cgminer", it's the forked code based on an older version. I received a bitfury USB stick from 101BTC and I've spent a lot of time trying to get it working on a PC instead of an RPi and it's proving far from trivial... Some of the memory and hardware hacks just don't even exist outside of the RPi and some I haven't remotely figured out what they do.This is exciting, looking forward to your results.
I intend to sit down and try to get it ported over to BBB soon; I need to set aside a single chip to place for testing purposes.
August 27, 2013, 05:22:19 PM
I'm very happy to see support for the BeagleBone!
Full disclosure: the current cgminer is very RPi specific. Some code hacking is necessary before BB will work!
Oh and it's not "the current cgminer", it's the forked code based on an older version. I received a bitfury USB stick from 101BTC and I've spent a lot of time trying to get it working on a PC instead of an RPi and it's proving far from trivial... Some of the memory and hardware hacks just don't even exist outside of the RPi and some I haven't remotely figured out what they do.This is exciting, looking forward to your results.
August 27, 2013, 04:58:37 PM
Hi and thanks for your excellent feedback, the chip can be and is configured to operate using 1V8 so no level shifter should be required (one of the reasons I selected it) also it is very configurable with the utility. Just a few of the specs are;
Single-channel configurable SPI interface ❐ Master/slave up to 3 MHz ❐ Data width: 4 bits to 16 bits ❐ 256 bytes for each transmit and receive buffer ❐ Supports Motorola, TI, and National SPI modes
Configuration utility (Windows) to configure the following: ❐ Vendor ID (VID), Product ID (PID), and Product and Manufacturer descriptors ❐ UART/I2C/SPI ❐ CapSense ❐ Charger detection ❐ GPIO
The link for the full spec sheet is here; http://www.krw.net/cy7c65211.pdf
Also please keep in mind that this is simply an interface to allow a computer to provide the processing power not the UART.
Thanks again
Single-channel configurable SPI interface ❐ Master/slave up to 3 MHz ❐ Data width: 4 bits to 16 bits ❐ 256 bytes for each transmit and receive buffer ❐ Supports Motorola, TI, and National SPI modes
Configuration utility (Windows) to configure the following: ❐ Vendor ID (VID), Product ID (PID), and Product and Manufacturer descriptors ❐ UART/I2C/SPI ❐ CapSense ❐ Charger detection ❐ GPIO
The link for the full spec sheet is here; http://www.krw.net/cy7c65211.pdf
Also please keep in mind that this is simply an interface to allow a computer to provide the processing power not the UART.
Thanks again
August 27, 2013, 03:57:47 PM
Hi
I am interested in developing the Bitfury “H” board into a standalone (computer driven) miner, I am primarily a hardware engineer and do very little with software so I need some real help. I would like to propose a single chip interface (CY7C65211) as the USB to SPI adapter. This UART is very flexible and from everything I have read in the forums just may work. I am fully aware power brick will be required and I have omitted the “H” board power connections from the drawing. I really am interested in your comments as to if this is even possible and if so what software would recognize it. I am inserting a rough drawing for your review and comment. This drawing is basically direct from the app note.
Thanks and please be kind.
I am interested in developing the Bitfury “H” board into a standalone (computer driven) miner, I am primarily a hardware engineer and do very little with software so I need some real help. I would like to propose a single chip interface (CY7C65211) as the USB to SPI adapter. This UART is very flexible and from everything I have read in the forums just may work. I am fully aware power brick will be required and I have omitted the “H” board power connections from the drawing. I really am interested in your comments as to if this is even possible and if so what software would recognize it. I am inserting a rough drawing for your review and comment. This drawing is basically direct from the app note.
Thanks and please be kind.
You need a bit of processing power to get the bitfury ASICs
to do useful work. Can this CY7C65211 execute user defined
code or is it just an USB transceiver chip? If the latter is
the case, you could add a processor for that. We use an
ARM Cortex M3, fast and cheap.
Also the ASICs have 1V8 IO signals, so there should be
level shifters somewhere in the SPI path. Coming from the
processor it could be just resistor dividers (SCK and MOSI),
coming from the ASICs it can be a small chip (MISO).
intron
August 27, 2013, 02:16:37 PM
Hi
I am interested in developing the Bitfury “H” board into a standalone (computer driven) miner, I am primarily a hardware engineer and do very little with software so I need some real help. I would like to propose a single chip interface (CY7C65211) as the USB to SPI adapter. This UART is very flexible and from everything I have read in the forums just may work. I am fully aware power brick will be required and I have omitted the “H” board power connections from the drawing. I really am interested in your comments as to if this is even possible and if so what software would recognize it. I am inserting a rough drawing for your review and comment. This drawing is basically direct from the app note.
Thanks and please be kind.
http://www.krw.net/sch2.jpg
I am interested in developing the Bitfury “H” board into a standalone (computer driven) miner, I am primarily a hardware engineer and do very little with software so I need some real help. I would like to propose a single chip interface (CY7C65211) as the USB to SPI adapter. This UART is very flexible and from everything I have read in the forums just may work. I am fully aware power brick will be required and I have omitted the “H” board power connections from the drawing. I really am interested in your comments as to if this is even possible and if so what software would recognize it. I am inserting a rough drawing for your review and comment. This drawing is basically direct from the app note.
Thanks and please be kind.
http://www.krw.net/sch2.jpg
August 27, 2013, 10:13:18 AM
My first DIY bitfury solar miner.
The box under panel contains RasPi and custom single chip mining board (its heatsink is sticking out of the box).
The chip's core powered directly from the panel (Uoc=1.15V, Isc=5.5A, Ucore=0.87V), and RasPi powered from the cord.
Аfter the first half hour of mining I observed unusual high hashrate (>3Gh/s) of single bitfury chip.
Just to mention I was unable to get more than 2.9Gh/s from this chip when it was powered from buck converter (0.85-0.9V).
You can follow hashrate graph of my solar miner at http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/15YLSMUNxNZpWjjkego2fNJw78BgigZiiu
The box under panel contains RasPi and custom single chip mining board (its heatsink is sticking out of the box).
The chip's core powered directly from the panel (Uoc=1.15V, Isc=5.5A, Ucore=0.87V), and RasPi powered from the cord.
Аfter the first half hour of mining I observed unusual high hashrate (>3Gh/s) of single bitfury chip.
Just to mention I was unable to get more than 2.9Gh/s from this chip when it was powered from buck converter (0.85-0.9V).
You can follow hashrate graph of my solar miner at http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/15YLSMUNxNZpWjjkego2fNJw78BgigZiiu
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