Topic: Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board - page 2. (Read 286370 times)

thanks man!

i can flash the bitstream... but it seams like i cant flash the controller


D:\App Download\cm1\cm1\Cairnsmore Bitstreams>xc3sprog.exe -c cm1 -p2 -Ixc6lx150
.bit shortfin_dcmwd4e_ed_test_220_overclock.bit
XC3SPROG (c) 2004-2011 xc3sprog project $Rev: 724 $ OS: Windows
Free software: If you contribute nothing, expect nothing!
Feedback on success/failure/enhancement requests:
        http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=170565
Check Sourceforge for updates:
        http://sourceforge.net/projects/xc3sprog/develop

Using Libftdi,
DNA is 0x9991f13d8d73e5f8
JEDEC: 20 20 0x18 0x00
Found Numonyx M25P Device, Device ID 0x2018
256 bytes/page, 65536 pages = 16777216 bytes total
Verify: Success!


will have to fight some more with the controller

edit:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1073047

this worked for me... but the 5th blinking light does not go away :S


edit2:

seems like i had to go back to hashvoodoo bitstream and controller... no cgminer for me with this board craptastic hahahaha

Take a look here -> http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/cairnsmore/cairnsmore1_support_materials.html

If you have 1.5 controller, scroll to the bottom on this page. The switches are named Switch1 to Switch8. Make sure Switch6 is on when mining or off (+Switch3 off) when programming SPI. I can remember that in one controller version they messed up the Switch settings, so you can also play with Switch 5, 6 and 7. If you have only one cm1 with version 1.5 make sure Switch 4 is on (Master).

The red led on the controller have to flashing to be able to mine, permanetly on means clock is set to 0Mhz and you can program the controller or the 4 fpga's depends on Switch settings.

I hope it helps a bit. Can't remember correctly because i don't have a cm1 anymore.

Greets,
ebereon

hi again.
well i was fooling around with my cm1 trying to make it work in cm1 (i want it there hahaha hardheaded me). so i did
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1073047

to update the bitstream using shortfin_dcmwd4e_ed_test_220_overclock.bit found here https://www.wuala.com/ebereon/Shared/bitcoin/bitstreams/

the thing is everything went kinda ok (at some point i think i flashed the controller onto the bitstream) but then i reflashed the above mentioned bit following the steps.

now i have a red blinking light permanetly on and it doesnt mine

my dip switches are SW6-1 off and in SW1 are all on


any ideas?

edit:
for the record i tried upgrading to controller 1.5 putting the dip switches as described in cm1quickstart and when i do SPIProg.exe CAIRNSMORE1_CONTROLLER_REV_1_5.bit
all i get is:
SPIProg V1.0 Copyright Enterpoint Ltd ⌐ 2012
Cairnsmore Control FPGA Loader

Bitfile OK
NumPages: 207

I think you and kakobrekla are talking about two completely different measures of quality.

kakobrekla is talking about the signal integrity dimension of the overall quality.

norulezapply is talking about the manufacturing and reliability dimension of the overall quality.

Those two dimensions are nearly ortogonal and incommesurate.

This thread is proof for both: it took the longest time from the delivery of assembled hardware to the delivery of correctly and efficiently operating bitstream. Apparently CM1 has some sort of ringing/standing wave problem in the clock distribution networks and the USB interface on the PCB.

But once working CM1 proved themselves much more reliable than the majority of the consumer grade GPU boards used for mining. Those GPU boards had almost no problems with statrting up minning but became a real challenge to operate continuously because of the component failures.

I'm just an observer here but there is one striking thing about all the Enterpoint PCBs: they are all very symmetric geometrically. On the other hand I know that the PCB designers often intentionally make their designs geometrically asymmetric as a simplest and cheapest way to reduce the Q-factor of the possible parasitic resonators made of the PCB traces.

yohan had mentioned several times that the CM1 product was not developed using the full human resources of Enterpoint. It makes me wonder if Enterpoint even has a full time analog signal integrity specialist. I certainly have seen several organizations where the signal integrity issues were resolved purely by trial-and-error process.

I'm just contrasting Enterpoint's approach with bitfury's approach: he seem to be the only one who made the analog simulations of the signal and power distribution when designing his ASIC. Professionally I have only experience with the methodology very much like bitfury's which results in the software (bitstream) being delivered ahead of the hardware (PCB).

This seems a bit unfair on Enterpoint/yohan.

My CM1 boards are still running strong after about a year of continuous usage

Yeah I wouldn't touch anything you do with a 10ft pole. I had my hands on all fpga from all manufacturers that were available, yours were clearly far worst.

Good luck anyway.

No plans for a trade-in on CM1. Our original margin was so small that it isn't practical to do that. The difficult part for Litecoin is just having people to do the IP work but we can make the memory module available fairly easily. It will just be a derivative of our XC6SLX150 X1 Coprocessor and that makes the design time easy to find. It can offer up to 1GB of memory. The weakest part of this will be data link that will use the up/down connectors to pass data.

We are not fully sorted out on Goliath and still looking for replacement people to take on some of the work. That doesn't mean the project is stopped dead. It is just much slower than we would have been originally so no promises on timescales.

Yes, I am very aware of potential losses and profits from Bitcoin gambling with diff and price.
So, litecoin mining may be possible on CM1 modded. Hmm, that is very interesting...

May there will be some trade-in for CM1 customers in next months, or not an option?
If your project 500Ghash/25k euros is still an option, I am looking for loans to make it happen. Of course, if august is still deadline for shipping.

I am open for all kind of ideas, here or in pm.

Did you mean the discount structure or when Bitcoin return falls to zero?

Discount structure is still in place.

If you mean Bitcoin return then that depends on your electricity cost and the Bitcoin exchange rate if you are measuring your return in flat currency, Bitcoin currency, or social gain. On the CM1s that I am running personally I estimate on my electricity cost and current exchange rate I will remain profitable until the network reaches to about 1500 TH/s if indeed it reaches that number. What will happen to the network size and exchange rates are a pure guess. I think we might hit an equlibrium or plateau on network size after August/September whilst people take stock of the expected market changes. That might last for 6 months. I expect at that some of the quick buck crowd, and any remaining GPU based miners, will dissappear from the network and it will settle down to something a little more normal. It is going to be interesting at that point as well because transaction processing could be very quick and that will further increase the use of Bitcoin maybe. I expect a period of gentle oscillation between usage growth and network growth.

We are going to offer a memory add-on to CM1 to help a potential Litecoin implementation running on CM1 and I expect if we do that and then either us or someone else does the Litecoin IP profit lifetime could be extended. It is only an well educated guess that the memory add-on will help a Litecoin mining implementation so don't use that fact for any financial analysis.

Yohan, is there a cut-off price for Cairnsmore1 ?

hmmm that the rpc calls of BFG dont have the current hashrate.
a friend of mine is currently using cgminer with CM1 so i dont know whats up. i currently run 3.3.1
my cm1 is second hand.

before running do i necessarily need to run modprobe? (i run it on boot)


edit:
duh!! its right there... testing 3.3.1 and not 3.1 lol... as soon as i get home i'll try it out.

That won't help, its not a firmware issue.  One of the cgminer devs called kano has included some new USB direct code in cgminer as of 3.2 onwards IIRC - I don't fully understand why, but it means that the CM1s won't work any longer.

Either go for cgminer 3.1.x which uses the old USB serial drivers, or stick with BFGMiner.  BFG works well for me and I haven't noticed much difference.

where can i find stock firmware for quad?
makomk? this one works with cgminer right?

i'm asking because bfgminer detects it but cgminer doesnt

My Cairnsmores are 0x8350. Do you still want me test something?

Thanks again. modprobe; sleep 60 works a treat

Yep. 'User error' is surely 80% of the problems of life.  

hi!
had to reinstall on my pi due to a user password error...
did all the steps i supposedly did... but i get the following error on all cm1

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pi/Modular-Python-Bitcoin-Miner-testing/modules/theseven/icarus/icarusworker.py", line 203, in main
    if not self.checksuccess: raise Exception("Timeout waiting for validation job to finish")
Exception: Timeout waiting for validation job to finish

any ideas?



edit.
no worries wrong dip switch settings 

I think the time you need to sleep depends on how many units you have. With 6 units, they don't all settle in completely even in 10 seconds. It takes more like 30....

ps. I too do a modprobe followed by a sleep 10 in the mining script that I run from init.d.....

It did! Based on what you told me, I have all 9 fpga's working! Yay!

So the essence of my working solution is that I power everything up, let it all settle, then last of all I physically plug in the Pi and let it boot up. Lo and behold, my mining software finds the cards correctly.....

For some reason, a soft power cycle on the Pi via "shutdown -r now", with everything else running, doesn't work; I only get 7 or 8 of the 9 cards mining. But whatever, for now, I'm celebrating the whole rig doing its stuff