Topic: Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board - page 101. (Read 286370 times)

We will try and do some pictures of inital stack options maybe today and that will given some ideas to people of what is possible. We are still working on things like brackets for side blow fans and other stacking heights but these will probably take a few weeks to sort out and to have a full range available. Again this is an evolving area and a little patience is needed whilst we come up with the best solutions. It's not the highest priority on our list to do but we will get there and make something that works for customers.

I think almost everyone will be requesting support for the tricone mining bitstream, I believe eldentryell just needs the pinouts which I'm assuming will be in the coming documentation. I'm also guessing I should send an email to preorder for the stacking accessories? I'm thinking I should order 3 cables for every 4 boards, which then would hook up through usb at the end and be recognized as one device? Maybe I'll just wait for more details on stacking. Thanks for the updates.

Ok I will try and do a "state of the nation" outline:

USB- Drivers for the USB will hopefully be in place today. Basically we have are tidying up drivers that we have working so not really a risk but some time required. The FT4232 chip is very versatile and we have notionally one of the 4 channels that it supports allocated to JTAG, one to SPI driving, and two for coms. The FT4232 has internal micro-engines to support JTAG and SPI functions. At the moment the JTAG can be used to program the main array FPGAs and Flash memories that store bitstreams and we have this working for Linux and Windows. We may extend the SPI functions to directly program array Flash memories but that isn't working as yet. That's a nice to have and actually more of use to us in production maybe than anyone else.

Programmer- In-built programmer is working. See above USB description. Just needs board powered and the standard supplied USB lead wih some software.

Bitstreams - We have a twin,or even triple, approach here. The first of these is these is building the standard VHDL/Verilog dersigns that are arround for our pinout and all of the units shipped have a 50MHz version that is working and can earn Bitcoins. With this approach we can run Icarus style pairs directly wired or "patched" through the controller. We have a range of options on I/O that we can use. Building these bitstreams takes typically 1-2 days to attempt a build and they don't always complete so it is a slow process. We are trying a few things here to stabilise the standard design which is highly sensitive to build variation. This is our initial way of providing a bitstream.

Seperately we are looking at better, original design, bitstreams. This will deliver a much better solution both in stability and probably performance. It's going to take a few weeks and maybe a bit more to get these solutions to a useful level but these will be our long term offering.

When requested we are also supporting any 3rd party bitsream development.

Documentation- This with be very patchy for the first couple of weeks but it will start to appear soon. As we are evolving bitstreams and software it may also not be totally up to date for the first few weeks, or even complete, but we will do our best to make it useful and keep it on track.

Software- We have some initial CGminer extensions that hopefully will be available today. As we evolve controller and array FPGA designs there will be updates and variations so it will be a changing item over the next few weeks.

Stacking Kits- We are starting to get elements of these together but more will appear over the next few weeks. Basic stacking pillars are available now and up/down ribbon cables hopefully from today. Power linkages we are looking at to see what works best and that is tied a bit to development of a power distribution board that will allow a high effiency ATX power supply o/p to be used in a cost effective way to power a stack of boards.

Power Supplies- Because of the weight and hence shipping cost we decided not offer as standard a power supply. Given the wide range of ways that a Cairnsmore1 can be powered we think it's better for customers to source locally. We hope to run some tests on specific units an make a recomended list and some of this will be linked to what we do as power distribution boards. Some way down the line we might offer a turnkey rack that incorporates a power supply but that is more likely to be Cairnsmore2 than Cairnsmore1.

Production- We are moving into a stable manufacturing phase now. The hardware side of the product is locked down and the in-built programmer covers firmware updates in the field. The general target is to have the major part of the "development" over by the end of June. It's not an exact science predicting development cycles so that might vary a little. That's also our general target to achieve performance levels of about 200MH/s per array FPGA. More advanced things will come beyond that.

In terms of unit delivery times we will try and pull forward delivery dates if possible but we won't promise that. I do expect that to start improving for new orders in the next few weeks as we catch up on the initial demand and eventually units will become a stocked item for next day delivery into Europe / US and maybe 3-5 working days for those unlucky Australians on the other end of planet.

Ok so hopefully I have covered most questions in that lot and at the point of sounding boring I will say it's still a development product. Hopefully by now that doesn't surprise anyone. It's still very rough and ready as a product but that will improve over the next few weeks and longer.

+1 for enterpoint
+1 for DHL
+1 for TRICONE MINING (how do we get the specs of the board to eldentyrell
+1 for CGminer "cairnsmore"mod download, even if it hashes slow

Well you have looked at the pictures so you can see the 6 pin PCI-e and molex connector that will take power from a standard computer power supply and from my looking at it looks like there is a your typical wall wart power supply connector there as well beside them connectors.

Hi,

Very nice and nice pictures too thanks, but I don't see any kind of Power Supply.
How does it get the power to run?

ChiangYay

And you too. I'm sure it will be I have faith in Enterpoint and don't mind waiting a couple of days extra for a basic stream.

Im happy for you!  By October hopefully everything will be up to par and hashing at full speed.. in the mean time I got my gpus and a a few ztex hashing right now to keep me happy until then.

Atleast I have my board set up and waiting now. A working bitstream will be ready in a couple of days. Have fun waiting til October for shipping...

I couldnt agree more!

Today, I received my first pre-order unit after accepting the offer of getting one of the first 50 boards. I received a board that is loaded with initial firmware - this is apparently no dev board. I suppose there is no need to use jtag cable for upgrading firmware on the first 50 boards (as announced by John), as long as you can wait for the official firmware release.

I am very pleased with the board I received. Good packaging and the board looks nice. Right now I am looking for a case, perhaps I'll put the board into the case of a very old, oversized AT psu.

Have fun.

edit:
@yohan: Thanks to you and your colleagues. I suppose there will be documentation for the board at some later time, describing all the connectors and dip switches in detail?

A good investor knows how to spot euphoria. This is a perfect sign that supply of Bitcoin is about to tighten while demand stays relatively the same. We might be in for another bubble, which would indicate a wiser investment would be to buy coin right now.

I love how all these noobs are ordering these things and trying to mine when there is no bitstream available.. YET!

EDIT: on a side note.. cant wait till there is a stream avail.. will def be ordering

no I want not a dev board.

Just received my cairnsmore1 - first impression is simply awesome!!!

I'am already amazed from the cooling and fan design. Fan noise is almost non-existing compared to Ztex stock fan or really noisy BFL Single.

Really looking forward for upcomming bitstream release

No need to be elitist man...

Maybe he is comfortable and just doesn't know where to start? I contacted them and they said they were releasing the cgminer extensions and other software either tonight or tomorrow to get things going.

Then you missed the part where they said the early boards were for people comfortable with doing exactly what you need to do to get it working right now.

But i'm a newbie at all this, so i don't know if that will work and how ;P

No and no ;P

I just preordered and being asked by enterpoint if I want 1 board. They only got 50 to ship. So.. I said - sure I want 1 board. That's all.
Now, I have 1 board and at the moment it's a better paperweight for me =oD

But installing ISE atm and then i will try to get the icarus bitstream at it..

No, I just pre-ordered really early.

And no because the USB programmer should be working now, just no software is available yet by the looks of things.