Topic: Bitmain AntMiner U1 Tips & Tricks - page 19. (Read 106810 times)

That "hub" is fine.  I have a bunch of them.  You can see one with 7 U1's in my earlier post ( https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4403171 ).  The power supply that comes with it, on the other hand, is crap.  I do NOT recommend those hubs unless you are comfortable upgrading the power supply.  I run mine from a PC power supply.

You should budget 1 amp at 5 volts for a U1 if you are going for a moderate overclock.  So, in theory, you could run two U1's with the power supply that comes with it.

The bmsc-options specify the data rate for the uart in the usb to serial chip and the timeout.  You absolutely need it with the original version of cgminer.  You don't need it if you are running the code from my branch.

In case anyone is interested, the rig shown in that link has been running for 11days 14h 33m 30s and the 9 AMU's and 7 ANT's are averaging 16,941.51 GHash under Ubuntu.  I have two more U1's on order to fill out that hub (I only run 9 per hub as I don't like that end plug).

Hi all,

Mega n00b here with a couple questions and a lot of thanks.

Up until about a week ago i didn't really even know what a BTC was. After a lot of research (and a ton of reading on this forum) I decided to purchase an Antminer U1 and give mining a shot. I ordered it last wednesday so that i would get it friday following surgery to repair my dislocated wrist. After a little headache or two, I finally got it working on CGminer on friday night. I am an Engineer and am doing this mainly for fun and to learn, I dont have any background in computer programming really but i like to learn new things. My antminer has been hashing away since friday, and i started overclocking (1.8 gH/S) last night.

Couple questions:
1. Is BFGminer really that much better at reducing the HW errors i see when overclocking?

2. Can someone give a basic description of what a HW error is and how its percent is calculated?

3. Is one of the cheap USB hubs off Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00475WJEY/ref=s9_simh_gw_p147_d0_i2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0E9GSW5WG9DG06AW26TX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846)  sufficient to run a couple of these? or is it worth it to get a nicer one?

4. what does this piece of code (--bmsc-options 115200:20) do in everyones .bat files do? I dont have it. Should i?

Im sure i have more questions, but thats all i can remember to ask right now. Sorry for the bad typing, I only have 1 hand currently. Thanks again for all the people who have posted help so far.

C13

hah... I am tring to  lol

I think, it is possible but I dont know how... will work on it during february

If someone  manages to  overclock Antmineru1 to  stable 4GHS, please let us know:)

Yay, thanks

I will mine with them with old laptop (underclocked to 0,7Ghz, internal gk etc) = 19W + miners +fan
As I counting it - I could mine around 60 - 70$/month

Not quite as:

Although I strongly recommend avoiding acetone!!

The best is colourless baby oil, which is quite cheap (I guess!) and clean it with mineral tupertine (also cheap) which is quite harsh with the oil and very soft with all the circuit and components. (Big thanks, Trillian!).
After cleaning, just put them half an hour under a fan and they'll be good as new!!

Ok, I will test the oil cooling with that 333MH/s miner I have... 
Thanks

No worries, it is common procedure to clean PCB's with  those chemicals.

Are you sure that it won't damage miners?
Thanks for advice anyway.

Canadian outdoor mining in winter................they could be used to melt the permafrost.

After getting my third antminer and inventing an amusing way to plug it in my netbook's third USB port and have it close to the fan on the far side, I found out why I couldn't get them running at 2.2Ghs before. And turns out I was overenthusiastic first time.

EDIT: they also went a bit faster after I cleaned them. A week of use half an inch from a fan had left two a little dusty.

Guess what: All I had to do was plug them in slowly, one by one, letting cgminer time each of them in turn.
That's it. didn't even update cgminer (bitmaintech version).

Now I've got this wiretangled abomination of awesome mining away under my desk...

(that's two antminers on L-shaped USB 'elbows' in front of the fan, and one antminer on 2 small usb extensions behind the fan)




Here's how I did it:

echo -n "{\"command\":\"switchpool\",\"parameter\":\"2\"}" |nc localhost 4089

You can  remove oil with acetone or isopropanol very easily.

Wel, it could work...

But oil would stay on device, I think...

I will do some research about it today...

How about non-scented baby oil?
Read somewhere in this forum that it works great!!

Well, the issue is that the metal parts of miner have to be in oil (it will not work without it, lol).

Meaby putting just the heat sink to oil or connect it somehow with the bowl with oil (some extention form heat sink to oil meaby?).

And I found that you in fact can overclock U1 to mine 3 - 4GH/s but you need proper cooling(like water or oil...or if you live in Canada, you can simply place it behind your window ) or error rate will be 90 - 100%

http://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc.php   <<  this site addresses the heat issues (explains how to make sure the heat dissipates well) as well as issues 2 and 3 (they look neat and kind of beautiful) and if sealed properly they are as safe as a fishtank around pets/children..   As for issue 1, yeah, I wouldnt buy an oily miner lol   however, maybe there is a way to safely  seal them prior to immersion and still retain most of the heat transfer? some kind of simple to remove airtight shrinkwrap that also conducts heat well? I dunno lol that one has me stumped.

Well the oil fishtank wouldnt be too hot with only 4ants and 1 normal asic inside...
Around 50-60C (temperture of water in shower).
But I just guessing it...

And I see a few problems:
1/ you cant sell them after this (noone will buy miners with oil-mess on them)
2/ It would look terrible
3/ you would have to have it on place, which cant be accested by children and/or animals (they could touch oil etc)


But technicaly speaking - It could work and It would be better than best fans.


E: sorry for my english & I am going to bed so I will answer everything tomorow

mineral oil cooling has crossed my mind for asics before actually, and it would look cool in a fishtank. the biggest problem I foresee, is at this stage, there tends to be alot of plugging and unplugging involved with some mining setups for ants. so you would need to consider how stable a mining setup you will have (ie will you need to unplug and hotplug them back in etc) otherwise, it certainly would be less electricity than tons of fans if you scaled up to a ton of ants.

THX for advice...
I will test all possible methods to improve hash and lower errors.

What do you think about oil cooling?
It could work and it wouldnt damage miners I guess.

I saw some youtube video about USB ASIC oil cooling (only 333MH/s) - link below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTGti0CbQlw


I got one 333MH/s miner so I can test it