I finally got my BitForce Single running with BitMinter on a linuxcoin system.
Running just fine, it almost doubled my hash rate.
I ordered a mini rig today, let's see how fast they will get it to me.
Is Bitminter ready for such a device? shure hope so, otherwise I think we will make it work somehow.
Ready for testing...
Topic: Bitminter client (Windows/Linux/Mac) - page 41. (Read 654946 times)
So far, everything's working great! Love the minimal view too! I'm only keeping 4 of my 10 BFL's, but hey, even 4 with the full spread view is a bit much, so it helps.
I'll have 10 of them come Monday... with how much space each one takes up on the screen, a more condensed overview option would be nice!
Here's v1.2.0 beta 9. You can click the green arrows to switch between full and compact display for each device.
New since beta 8:
- Scan devices one by one to circumvent concurrency bugs in serial port library
- Raise priority of serial port I/O threads to improve performance during high CPU load. This should fix "command timed out" and "extranous data" errors. If the program is starved of CPU time you can still run out of work, see hash rate drop due to slow work dispatch and stales rise due to slow reaction time. Note if you are CPU-mining: run the CPU miner at low priority and/or not on all CPU cores.
- The start button of the "total" device display now starts only the visible devices instead of all devices the first time you click it. The next time you use it to start devices it will resume those you stopped with it, like it always did. The start button on the status bar is the same.
- Added minimize/maximize buttons on each device. The compact display is handy if you have a long list of devices. Remembered across restarts.
- Adjusted expected hash rate (green zone) for AMD Juniper GPU
- Fixed miner GUI bugs
I'll have 10 of them come Monday... with how much space each one takes up on the screen, a more condensed overview option would be nice!
Thanks for testing it, SgtSpike. Glad you like it! The experience you are talking about is exactly the reason I made this.
Like you, many are now getting quite a few BFL singles. Also, I'm not sure whether the rig box will show up as a whole heap of devices. I will look into making an alternative display mode so it is easier to manage that many units. Coming in the next beta, hopefully the last before 1.2.0 goes out.
Like you, many are now getting quite a few BFL singles. Also, I'm not sure whether the rig box will show up as a whole heap of devices. I will look into making an alternative display mode so it is easier to manage that many units. Coming in the next beta, hopefully the last before 1.2.0 goes out.
I've been hashing on Bitminter with 2/10 of my BFL's for the past several hours... no issues at all! Getting about 850 MH/s on the 864 MH/s firmware.
Quite honestly, this was the easiest to set up. I tried BFL's EasyMiner, and it wouldn't let me select the "mine" option on the home screen.
Tried ufasoft and cgminer, but didn't spend the time to figure out how to set it up properly, as I was trying to hurry. Downloaded BitMinter, and it worked perfectly right out of the box.
Thanks!
Quite honestly, this was the easiest to set up. I tried BFL's EasyMiner, and it wouldn't let me select the "mine" option on the home screen.
Tried ufasoft and cgminer, but didn't spend the time to figure out how to set it up properly, as I was trying to hurry. Downloaded BitMinter, and it worked perfectly right out of the box.Thanks!
v1.2.0 beta 8 is ready. Finishing up the BFL features.
Added an identify button which will cause the BFL unit to blink its light. Will not work on the earliest BFL units. Someone let me know if the light actually blinks - I'm programming this remotely.
Added an awesome looking temperature display. If you'd rather have Fahrenheit than Celsius you can toggle that in the menu: View -> Use Fahrenheit. It will change the next time it checks the temp. There's a new setting in tune & tweak that lets you select at which point the temperature bar should go red and the little light (in the GUI) start to blink. Defaults: blink at 62 C, shutdown at 75 C. Not sure how good those settings are, but I read somewhere that the BFL singles throttle at 65 C, so they should be ok.
This should make BFL support feature complete and take care of all known bugs.
Added an identify button which will cause the BFL unit to blink its light. Will not work on the earliest BFL units. Someone let me know if the light actually blinks - I'm programming this remotely.
Added an awesome looking temperature display. If you'd rather have Fahrenheit than Celsius you can toggle that in the menu: View -> Use Fahrenheit. It will change the next time it checks the temp. There's a new setting in tune & tweak that lets you select at which point the temperature bar should go red and the little light (in the GUI) start to blink. Defaults: blink at 62 C, shutdown at 75 C. Not sure how good those settings are, but I read somewhere that the BFL singles throttle at 65 C, so they should be ok.
This should make BFL support feature complete and take care of all known bugs.
Blinking works, and the temp gauge looks Great!
v1.2.0 beta 8 is ready. Finishing up the BFL features.
Added an identify button which will cause the BFL unit to blink its light. Will not work on the earliest BFL units. Someone let me know if the light actually blinks - I'm programming this remotely.
Added an awesome looking temperature display. If you'd rather have Fahrenheit than Celsius you can toggle that in the menu: View -> Use Fahrenheit. It will change the next time it checks the temp. There's a new setting in tune & tweak that lets you select at which point the temperature bar should go red and the little light (in the GUI) start to blink. Defaults: blink at 62 C, shutdown at 75 C. Not sure how good those settings are, but I read somewhere that the BFL singles throttle at 65 C, so they should be ok.
This should make BFL support feature complete and take care of all known bugs.
Added an identify button which will cause the BFL unit to blink its light. Will not work on the earliest BFL units. Someone let me know if the light actually blinks - I'm programming this remotely.
Added an awesome looking temperature display. If you'd rather have Fahrenheit than Celsius you can toggle that in the menu: View -> Use Fahrenheit. It will change the next time it checks the temp. There's a new setting in tune & tweak that lets you select at which point the temperature bar should go red and the little light (in the GUI) start to blink. Defaults: blink at 62 C, shutdown at 75 C. Not sure how good those settings are, but I read somewhere that the BFL singles throttle at 65 C, so they should be ok.
This should make BFL support feature complete and take care of all known bugs.
Beta 7 is out. I have rewritten serial port reading to work around yet another bug in the serial port library. It was causing timeouts on Mac OS X. If you were having timeouts, please try this version. Getting close to finished now. 
Waiting for the singles 
Trying to finish miner support before you get them
Version 1.2.0 Beta 6:
- Always show devices you connect while the miner is running. Still hide devices you hid during the previous session if they are there at startup.
- Limit which serial devices get scanned on Macs. Hopefully takes care of the last crashes.
- Improved error recovery and error messages on BFL units.
- Small tweaks in serial communication.
Waiting for the singles
Beta 5 is out.
Changes: able to recover from more error situations. Also changed the communication with BFL devices a little and the error messages.
If you had timeouts before then it may run better, or at least give some useful messages in the log. Please let me know if it runs better now or if you get errors please cut and paste them in a message to me.
Please try it out:
Changes: able to recover from more error situations. Also changed the communication with BFL devices a little and the error messages.
If you had timeouts before then it may run better, or at least give some useful messages in the log. Please let me know if it runs better now or if you get errors please cut and paste them in a message to me.
Please try it out:
I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?
No
Multi-pool support, at least back-up pools, is on my TODO list. But it's a very long list.
Beta4 is out. It can retry commands if they fail or time out. Click the wrench to modify the timeout and the max number of retries. Please try it out if you had problems with timeouts before. This change should make the miner much more robust.
I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?
No
I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?
Beta3 is out. Restart the beta miner to get the new one.
New in beta3:
Testing status for beta2: successful BFL mining on Windows, Mac, Linux. One success with BFLs connected through USB hub and one failure with USB hub. Two reports of BFL units timing out (with low temperature). Not sure yet what this might be.
New in beta3:
- In options, automation tab, added "other devices". If you check this then new devices you connect will automatically be among the "automated devices".
- In options, automation tab, added "when new devices connect". Allows you to decide whether to automatically start new devices that are plugged in.
- In options, FPGA tab, disabled "rescan for added/removed FPGAs". Unfortunately a bug in nrjavaserial (the serial port library) causes the miner to fail (too many file handles) after a while with this on. Had to be disabled for now. To detect new devices use the Devices pulldown menu.
- Fixed bug with hashrate sometimes showing too high around block changes. Note that the hash rate can drop a bit when there is a block change (long poll). This is because the current work unit is aborted (it is stale) and the work that was done on it isn't counted. Not sure if other miners show this, but it is a real loss that can't be avoided due to the way the BFL units work.
- Fixed bug: FPGAs can now auto start when the program is started, just like other devices.
- + some small tweaks
Testing status for beta2: successful BFL mining on Windows, Mac, Linux. One success with BFLs connected through USB hub and one failure with USB hub. Two reports of BFL units timing out (with low temperature). Not sure yet what this might be.
Good find, Phraust.
Quick update on the ongoing work for FPGA support.
Serial port access in Java is in a sorry state. The latest release of the rxtx library is a few years old and full of bugs. It often causes the entire app to crash. Apparently they have bug fixes but can't be bothered to make a new release. RXTX was in beta1 of the miner and it was no good. Beta2 contains nrjavaserial which is a fork of rxtx with many improvements.
Unfortunately nrjavaserial has a few bugs too. One is that if you are mining on X serial ports and rescan the ports, then it will leak X file handles. After a while you hit the max number of file handles and networking ceases to work in the app. Therefore I will have to disable the "rescan" feature, at least for now. So it will be "click in the menu to detect FPGAs." An automatic solution may appear in the future.
Other than that the necessary features are implemented and all known bugs fixed. I'll be releasing beta3 soon which hopefully will be the last before 1.2.0 final.
This took more work than I thought it would. But now it's done and adding support for more FPGA devices is pretty easy. At least if they run off of serial ports. Any suggestions?
Quick update on the ongoing work for FPGA support.
Serial port access in Java is in a sorry state. The latest release of the rxtx library is a few years old and full of bugs. It often causes the entire app to crash. Apparently they have bug fixes but can't be bothered to make a new release. RXTX was in beta1 of the miner and it was no good. Beta2 contains nrjavaserial which is a fork of rxtx with many improvements.
Unfortunately nrjavaserial has a few bugs too. One is that if you are mining on X serial ports and rescan the ports, then it will leak X file handles. After a while you hit the max number of file handles and networking ceases to work in the app. Therefore I will have to disable the "rescan" feature, at least for now. So it will be "click in the menu to detect FPGAs." An automatic solution may appear in the future.
Other than that the necessary features are implemented and all known bugs fixed. I'll be releasing beta3 soon which hopefully will be the last before 1.2.0 final.
This took more work than I thought it would. But now it's done and adding support for more FPGA devices is pretty easy. At least if they run off of serial ports. Any suggestions?
I'll try it out on one of the MacBooks when I get a chance, see if it gets recognized or not.
Turns out I did need a driver. Was googling on a wild hunch, and came across these: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm
Installed, rebooted, and they got recognized. Currently churning away with three bitforces at about 2,472 Mhps using the BitMinter beta2!
Let me know if there is anything other information I can give you to help with.
I just pushed out beta2. This fixes the crashes on Windows, you can go crazy disconnecting and reconnecting devices if you want.
Could you try it on Mac and see if works now? (Same URL/beta button above)
And yes, thanks for the crash log, it was very helpful.
Did the crash report I sent help any? I don't understand how OSX binds a USB device to a serial port without a driver, so it could be crashing because the only assigned tty's that are available to be scanned dont respond (the tty.Bluetooth.modem and TTY.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync, it normally crashes after the PDA sync crashes).
I've been able to get ufasofts miner compiled in the Ubuntu vm, and even though the BitForce is shared and available (/dev/ttyUSB0), it doesn't get recognized by either ufasoft or cgminer. Figured I'd try running windows 7 next and trying the precompiled ufasoft binaries, but short of booting up the Mac mini in Ubuntu instead of osx, I'm at a loss.
I'll try running the bitmint application from Ubuntu and see if that does anything, and will update.
Let me know if there is anything other information I can give you to help with.
I've been able to get ufasofts miner compiled in the Ubuntu vm, and even though the BitForce is shared and available (/dev/ttyUSB0), it doesn't get recognized by either ufasoft or cgminer. Figured I'd try running windows 7 next and trying the precompiled ufasoft binaries, but short of booting up the Mac mini in Ubuntu instead of osx, I'm at a loss.
I'll try running the bitmint application from Ubuntu and see if that does anything, and will update.
Let me know if there is anything other information I can give you to help with.
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