Topic: Bounty[PAID OUT] : a bitstream for better utilizing the Cairnsmore1 157-294.5btc - page 8. (Read 21997 times)

Yes thanks,

it eases my mind to know that you still have tricks up your sleeve to work around FPGA3 issues

spiccioli

Just flashed the Controller 1.3 update and the Makomk bitstream. I didn't try other bitstreams than twin_test so i cant compare. At the moment it seems very good, the one board i have delivers 2000 share (40 rejected) and cgminer reports u=10.0. BUT, i have had problems during flashing the controller file. With original cable it fails multiple times  (verify error on different positions), but replacing cable without removing power! helped. Xilinx cable was available too but not needed . Board number is 015X.

Why does the icarus bitstream uses 2 coms on cairnsmore and not as expected only one?  Thought only one pair has crossed TX/RX.
Does makomk uses comx for P0 and P1 and comy for P3 and P2? Still miss public documentation about the cairnmore board itself.

I don't know exactly why, no...

But from the looks of it as I've said before, there is inductive noise on the comm/clock lines.

This noise (and it's severity) is different for each FPGA position, due to the routing of the wires, and proximity to other FPGAs, and so on. Position 3 seems to be the worst, so it is the least stable.

As for why the sub50 boards are bad, from what I understand, they added additional line termination to reduce noise/ringing and so on on the 50+ boards. So potentially the sub-50 boards suffer even worse from these problems.

Though most of this is conjecture, from observations, and the odd speculative chat back and forth with Yohan, so I won't say for certain that these are the problems. And there are still plenty of "tricks" that can be used to work around these problems. I still think the hardware is good, a few bugs sure, but I don't think these problems are killers.

I'm still hoping to get ahold of mokomk to find out exactly what he did to get it to work as stable as he did, from what he said to me on IRC only 2 minor tweaks to the raw icarus source code, which is to be frank, SHOCKING since I tried a standard build of icarus (with the appropriate pin swap and such) and it failed miserably. And I've been tweaking, and trying various builds for months now. So if he made specific changes for a reason, then I'd love to know his reasoning (might help identify the root cause of the problems). But if he just tried some random fixes and lucked into a solution that's fine too (either way it could help us narrow down the root cause).

Does that help?

Glasswalker,

can you give us some details about the problems with FPGA3 and/or (I don't know if they're related) boards with serial number less than 50?

Do you exactly know what's wrong on the hardware side and why FPGA3 does not work with your bitstream?

spiccioli

Just a quick touch-base.

A few things:

Makomk: Wow, excellent work, and fast! I'm impressed!

Second: It's not my call, but does the bounty not call for "Stable for 48hours" (which I would imagine would mean "Stable for everyone" not just "stable for some"). ie: does makomk's bitstream qualify yet? If it does, I'm glad for him, and the community, awesome work! But if not, the "race" is still on

Third: May I make a "suggestion" for a possible addition to the bounty rules? That would be "If one person achieves the required qualifications to earn the bounty, they must "hold" the position for 7 days in order for it to be awarded, and if during that 7 days, the majority agrees that another submission exceeds the qualifications of the first, then the 7 days resets for that new submission"

Yes I'm saying this because I still hope to claim the bounty but also from the communities perspective, this would promote some strong competition to keep driving performance up and up very quickly (potentially). Thoughts?

Lastly:

A small update, my UART code failed. I ended up tearing it apart completely and re-writing it. I've now got that UART code tested and verified working well. It also now has centering (samples the center of the waveform), oversampling, and filtering/smoothing for noise. In addition, I'm re-writing the serial protocol completely, to be a bit more flexible, and more importantly, include error detection and correction. I still need a bit of work to get that done, and then slide the new protocol into an Icarus based miner. But it should solve most of the communications problems we've been having (and we'll see if there are still other problems remaining).

In order to achieve this, I've also re-written my own controller bitstream. My board is running it now. It still lacks usb flash capabilities, so this isn't for the general public just yet, but once I get that working, and the miner mining, I'll release them together, as well as the source code for the new controller, making it a full opensource solution for the cairnsmore.

This new setup will allow the controller to act as a "communications hub" as it was intended. You communicate with it over a single usb channel, and it relays data to the chips behind it OR up and down the up/down interface ports to neighboring cairnsmore boards (that last feature isn't fully done yet, I'll worry about that once I get it mining stable).

Anyway, this also acts as an enabler to let me finish my 100% custom bitstream. So who knows, we might see all kinds of new advancements in the next little while

Anyway, I'm getting back to work, that's my update for now.

Yeah, this is honestly a mystery to me. I have no idea why it wouldn't work on cgminer. What error messages did cgminer give exactly?

xc3sprog –c cm1 –p 0 –Ixc6lx150.bit bitstream.bit

                                 ^  without space

ok...*.bit file is copied to root directory

xc3sprog -c cm1 -p X *.bit   ---> works as I get the correct DNA repsonse successfully

BUT next steps fails..the write to the FPGA

I am using

xc3sprog -c cm1 -p 0 -l *.bit  ----> the VM just bashes out a page plus of command options but does not write to the FPGA...

HELP PLEASE...is -l correct as the new command (as per enterpoint guide)

Crank4u,

you can use "." to mean current directory, like in


spiccioli

 I am learning

cp /mnt/*bit /root

this got a copy into the root dir for sc3sprog

now cmd is missing destination operand

cp /mnt/*bit

this is the cmd line in the book but it asks for a destination - the later cmd to DL to CM1 is "xc3sprog -c cm1 -p 0 *.bt" so I assume the cp cmd copies teh file to the root...is this correct? if so how can I cp to the root directory as desitnation

finally mounted the fkn thing and now the cp cmd wants a destination...fkn manual is shitting me

Cranky4u,

in #cm1 someone said there is no need to transfer the data via USB-drive, just use wget and download it directly. Not tried myself, though.

Good Luck!

What serial number is the board you are testing on?

try this

mount -t auto /dev/sdb1 /mnt

help!!!!!...trying to install new bitstream on VM virtual box and having a problem

on step 3 of the carinsmore guide from enterpoint..I am unable to mount the USB drive (Fat32 then NTFS formats tried)

so far I can get it to be found as [sdb] or [sdf] but my mnt commands just giving me grief. so far I have tried

mount -t auto /dev/sdb /mnt    (as per book...error ="mount: you must specify the filesystem tpe"))
mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb /mnt     (error =  "mount: special device dev/sdf/ does not exist")
mount -t auto /dev/sdf /mnt      (more errors as per above)

and a few permetations on this...

I am not a linux guru but can navigate the usual help files and can get around a system ok

any help from the floor?

But is it stable?

To install this bitstream you can take the information from the twin_test.bit bitstream. You need the VirtualMaschine from Enterpoint and flash is like the twin_test.bit bitstream. There is nothing special.

thnx...trolled the records and found it
http://www.makomk.com/~aidan/shortfin_icarus_cm1_20120729.zip
link added for others...read me is about switch settings not "how to" install..which i think is on enterpoint

Hmm, ok here is it -> https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1064960. I just clicked the name "makomk" in the thread and so you can see his last posts.

eb