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Topic: Block Erupter USB - Overclocking/ hacking ? (Read 168713 times)

hero member
Activity: 686
Merit: 500
FUN > ROI
Old thread is exactly 1 year old (congrats), so just in case any of you tinkerers missed it:
Block Erupter USB mod contest 2015 - 0.3/0.15/0.05 BTC prizes
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
Hello

Old topic now. But I have few of these. And I like to build things like this.

Upgrade todo:

Heat, polishing, bigger heatsink both side (bigger, both side is all ready, about 0.3% hw error long run. but make better build)
oscillator, maybe 14Mhz, not maybe necessarily to chance resistor for upper volts
Good 5V to "test" pins directly (+5 upped, ground lower), cut usb power.

Get to run about 400Mhs with real cheap usb hubs (power to "test" pins)?

Where to get those oscillators?-) cheap, posted in finland..


-Sysostar

full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
If anyone happens to need some resistors/oscillators, I have a some kits up for sale on ebay. 
1.5k resistors and 16MHz crystals.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251438263496
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
Be kind man, don't be mankind
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
December 29, 2013, 04:27:45 PM
just want to check: if the usb is modded to draw more than 500mA will a hub allow that (assuming you have it connected to sufficient power supply)?

I have tested it on a power supply which could go up to 5A, still the same thing. the BE100 chip gets hot and led doesnt blink and  pc wont detect it.

Any help please ??

It does get hot.
Hotter than normal? Could be a short circuit then. Measure the resistance between VCC and GND.

I have tested a good working one and between the VCC and GND there is 7.3ohms and on the non working one it 0.5ohms

Where could the short circuit be ?
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
December 28, 2013, 04:23:42 PM
It does get hot.
Hotter than normal? Could be a short circuit then. Measure the resistance between VCC and GND.

between the VCC and GND on those gold contacts under the text "Rev. 3.00" it does read 0.5ohms

What does that mean ?
just want to check: if the usb is modded to draw more than 500mA will a hub allow that (assuming you have it connected to sufficient power supply)?

I have only tested on the motherboard USB, Ill try with a transformer later today
sr. member
Activity: 301
Merit: 250
December 28, 2013, 03:21:02 PM
I just changed the setting in my cgiminer to
Quote
icarus-options 115200:2:2 --icarus-timing 2.0=25
Do I need to do any hardware modification to the usb miners? I have a USB fan blowing on them.
Says I am getting 500-575Mhs.  I have 3-4 on a usb hub with a fan on each hub.

I just want to make sure it is safe to run them at that speed and they wont burn up.
newbie
Activity: 38
Merit: 0
December 28, 2013, 02:44:36 PM
It does get hot.
Hotter than normal? Could be a short circuit then. Measure the resistance between VCC and GND.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1005
ASIC Wannabe
December 28, 2013, 01:10:30 PM
just want to check: if the usb is modded to draw more than 500mA will a hub allow that (assuming you have it connected to sufficient power supply)?
newbie
Activity: 9
Merit: 0
December 28, 2013, 11:42:39 AM
Hi, I have just overclocked one of my usb asic miner v3 and when I connect it to the usb, the led does not light up or recognized by the pc. It does get hot.

Im using a 16 mhz oszillator and 1.2K on R1


I re soldered the crystal and checked for the direction and it was good. I also re soldered another resistor just to be sure, but its still not working.

What could the problem be ?
newbie
Activity: 41
Merit: 0
December 19, 2013, 05:04:53 PM
Quote
The unit 858D+ Hot Air Gun Rework Station Solder Soldering LED Display w/ 3 Nozzles
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009PPRJHS/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Just caught on FIRE.

You get what you pay for!

Picked up a better rework station and have done a bunch of 16MHz upgrades. It has been challenging to work with the tiny parts and I have learned a lot (with only minor casualties in the BE department).

Thanks to all the contributors in this thread that did all the testing and experimenting.
This has been a fun project.  Cool
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
December 18, 2013, 03:32:47 AM
Unfortunately, it looks like Trillian was right.  The pool is giving me credit for only 1Gh/s.  I guess it's time to do some modding.  I just need to decide between 14mhz and 16mhz crystals.
legendary
Activity: 3318
Merit: 1848
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
December 17, 2013, 04:38:26 PM
ICA 0: | 926.4M/11.94Ph/s | A: 106695 R:54 HW:1067 U:6.32/m

Pool 24-hour average, 435.91MH/s

By-the-hardware hashrate, 458.7MH/s
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
December 17, 2013, 04:25:32 PM
I tried settings like that for a week or two to get plenty of stable data. Not only did the submitted work from the miner not increase (shares/min), but the pool's speed reports were exactly the same. The speed data reported in cgminer was erroneous.

Just started testing this.  In 15 min, cgminer reports that it has submitted 39 and 1 hardware error.
My pool is showing that I'm doing almost exactly 2x more submits than cgminer shows (80).
I may need to test it with more than 1 miner...
legendary
Activity: 3318
Merit: 1848
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
December 17, 2013, 11:54:04 AM
I tried settings like that for a week or two to get plenty of stable data. Not only did the submitted work from the miner not increase (shares/min), but the pool's speed reports were exactly the same. The speed data reported in cgminer was erroneous.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
December 17, 2013, 09:02:32 AM
I've got a wrench to throw at you guys.  Is it necessary to do any mods whatsoever?

I've got 3 STOCK BEs running at 500-550 Mh/s by just altering the timings:
Code:
--icarus-options 115200:2:2 --icarus-timing 2.0=25

The idea was inspired by this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/block-eruptor-usb-overclocked-357684


Makes me wonder what would happen if you just messed with some settings on your already OCed BEs.

Your software has mislead you. The number of operations (SHA256 operations) that are completed per cycle are known. The frequency of the chip is also known and it is a fixed value too (based on the oscillators in the circuit). As a result, changing timing options does not result in a real improvement. I suspect your mining software is giving you a false measurement of their performance.

My pool reports .5 Gh/s for one of them.  The others are on pools I can't see live stats for.  It's real enough.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
December 17, 2013, 07:57:26 AM
I've got a wrench to throw at you guys.  Is it necessary to do any mods whatsoever?

I've got 3 STOCK BEs running at 500-550 Mh/s by just altering the timings:
Code:
--icarus-options 115200:2:2 --icarus-timing 2.0=25

The idea was inspired by this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/block-eruptor-usb-overclocked-357684


Makes me wonder what would happen if you just messed with some settings on your already OCed BEs.

Your software has mislead you. The number of operations (SHA256 operations) that are completed per cycle are known. The frequency of the chip is also known and it is a fixed value too (based on the oscillators in the circuit). As a result, changing timing options does not result in a real improvement. I suspect your mining software is giving you a false measurement of their performance.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
December 17, 2013, 07:12:21 AM
I've got a wrench to throw at you guys.  Is it necessary to do any mods whatsoever?

I've got 3 STOCK BEs running at 500-550 Mh/s by just altering the timings:
Code:
--icarus-options 115200:2:2 --icarus-timing 2.0=25

The idea was inspired by this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/block-eruptor-usb-overclocked-357684


Makes me wonder what would happen if you just messed with some settings on your already OCed BEs.
legendary
Activity: 3318
Merit: 1848
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
November 23, 2013, 12:02:39 AM
All of mine worked with just --icarus-timing short, but that was on cgminer 3.1.1 - not sure if the auto timing routines are different between the two versions.

I never ran with a config file, just a comically long command line in a batch file. You might see about putting it in the config file, in case cgminer ignores/overrules that command line flag when it sees options in a config.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 501
November 22, 2013, 11:49:35 PM
Hi again. I swapped the crystal to 14.75MHz and added --icarus-timing short to the command but the BE still mines at an average of 365MH/s It is supposed to reach about 410MH/s.
This is my command in Linux
screen sudo ./cgminer-3.4.2/cgminer --icarus-timing short --config /home/luke/cgminer.conf
Is it OK or should I right it after the config?

Can any one help me please?
Use --icarus-timing short=90 instead of --icarus-timing short.
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