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Topic: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial - page 14. (Read 56761 times)

hero member
Activity: 808
Merit: 502
Thanks JoseSan I will give those a try tomorrow. Do you have a complete list of all the Cointerra commands by any chance? 
member
Activity: 117
Merit: 10

Since I left the beaglebone with power connection I will plug in ethernet tommorrow and see if I can still see the cointerra interface so that I can hopefully change settings as cgminer does not offer any cointerra setting commands.


Actually it does, just use command line arguments:

--cta-load
"Set load for CTA devices, 0-255 range"),
--ps-load
"Set power supply load for CTA devices, 0-100 range"
hero member
Activity: 808
Merit: 502
I did everything you guys said and it worked perfectly. I will provide the steps for this surprisingly simple process. This way when the beaglebones start dying people can breath life back into their terraminers.

Downloaded cgminer get version 4.3.4 into my laptop.
Configured the batch file to point to my pool. No special cointerra commands needed.
Opened the top lid of the miner and disconnected the two usb cables from the cointerra boards.
Connected my two usb printer type cables from my laptop into the miner.
Cut two slots into the lid so I could feed cables out to the pc.
Loaded zadig usb driver loader software into my laptop so that I could change the usb driver to WinUSB
With the laptop already on I then powered up the Terraminer.
The PC recognized the Goldstrike boards.
After they were properly recognized I ran Zadig and changed the USB drivers to WinUSB.
I started cgminer and amazingly the miner began to mine almost instantly.

Since I left the beaglebone with power connection I will plug in ethernet tommorrow and see if I can still see the cointerra interface so that I can hopefully change settings as cgminer does not offer any cointerra setting commands.

Thanks again for your help. I hope this procedure helps other people with Beaglebone problems.

hero member
Activity: 808
Merit: 502
Thank you guys! I appreciate the help. I have one more question. Should I pull out the beaglebone completely and then do the USB connection? Wow this is going to be great if it works. This controller card has never worked right since day one. Thanks again for the help.
newbie
Activity: 60
Merit: 0
I have a bad beagleboner lol. I would like to hook the miner to usb and control from a pc. Has anyone successfully done this? Thanks for the help.

Yes, it's quite straightforward. There's a printer-style USB plug on each board. Just plug that in to a PC and run cgminer (I'm simplifying a little).

Yes, I did this last week.  Make sure you get version 4.3.4 or earlier of cgminer.  Later versions have a checksum error. 

Also, you need to install the WinUSB driver for the goldstrike boards.  See a prior post in this thread about it. 
member
Activity: 117
Merit: 10
I have a bad beagleboner lol. I would like to hook the miner to usb and control from a pc. Has anyone successfully done this? Thanks for the help.

Yes, it's quite straightforward. There's a printer-style USB plug on each board. Just plug that in to a PC and run cgminer (I'm simplifying a little).
hero member
Activity: 808
Merit: 502
I have a bad beagleboner lol. I would like to hook the miner to usb and control from a pc. Has anyone successfully done this? Thanks for the help.
member
Activity: 76
Merit: 10
Great. My Terraminer IV is falling apart. 1 core already died and am not sure how to fix it. I want to get some thermal paste and see if that fixes anything but I dare not touch it. The remaining 3 temps are getting higher slowly each day. I hope someone starts a class lawsuit action against them.

The core you have that's down was probably shut down do to it overheating. I have had two cores go down do to overheating. As for the other three slowly getting hotter, well, they are going to continue getting hotter. Replacing the thermal compound is the only way to fix this issue. It will most likely bring back the dead core if it was shut down do to overheating. The question is which one to use? The best thing to do is read through this thread to see what others have done and make your decision then which way to go.


I have a few "1 dead core" miners, and have found the problem and solution.  I have tried redoing the paste, no help.  I am pretty sure it's the pump problem, probably pump dead.  My solution is to replace the water block with a new one: (something like this: http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/seidon/seidon-120v/)

They way how you can see which pump is dead is, to remove the 3-pin of each pump one by one, and run the machines with only 3 pumps hooked up.  You will see which one is good and which one is not actually responding.


However, although the dead core was brought back to life once I have replaced the water block, they can't run as fast as the original ones.  I have tested with both Cooler Master Sedion 120 and Silverstone TD03, and they only provide 1000 ~ 1200 RPM for the pump speed. 

As a result, I can only run the machine to Power Step 6 with the replacement pump.  As soon as I step up to Step 7 or higher, the core with the replacement pump register errors and do not function properly. --- I am still using only normal thermal paste (i.e. Artic Silver 5) though.  I will try liquid pro on my Silverstone replacement pump sometime tomorrow, and see if I can put it beyond Power Step 6.

newbie
Activity: 60
Merit: 0
Think I got it.  Needed version 4.3.4.

Will let it run for a bit and see what I get.
newbie
Activity: 60
Merit: 0
My beaglebone shorted out on me so I am trying a method to get my Terraminer back up.

Making some progress with the Terraminer. I hooked up both boards directly to my PC, installed WinUSB, and then started up version 4.3.5 using the --ps-load 80 parameter since I used to run it at power step 8.

Cgminer recognizes the boards and they get an initial hash rate of about 200g for a second on each board and the over about a minute it goes down to 0.

I get a constant output of checksum bad for each board.

The miner registers on my pool for about 2 minutes and then nothing

The fans spin up like they do when the miner gets ready to hash and then spin right back down.

Is there a parameter I am missing?

Any suggestions?
full member
Activity: 169
Merit: 100
Great. My Terraminer IV is falling apart. 1 core already died and am not sure how to fix it. I want to get some thermal paste and see if that fixes anything but I dare not touch it. The remaining 3 temps are getting higher slowly each day. I hope someone starts a class lawsuit action against them.

The core you have that's down was probably shut down do to it overheating. I have had two cores go down do to overheating. As for the other three slowly getting hotter, well, they are going to continue getting hotter. Replacing the thermal compound is the only way to fix this issue. It will most likely bring back the dead core if it was shut down do to overheating. The question is which one to use? The best thing to do is read through this thread to see what others have done and make your decision then which way to go.
newbie
Activity: 47
Merit: 0
Great. My Terraminer IV is falling apart. 1 core already died and am not sure how to fix it. I want to get some thermal paste and see if that fixes anything but I dare not touch it. The remaining 3 temps are getting higher slowly each day. I hope someone starts a class lawsuit action against them.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100

Stuff is like (and likely contains quite a bit of) liquid mercury.

It's actually mostly gallium, the other element that is liquid close to room temperature:

http://www.coollaboratory.com/pdf/safetydatasheet_liquid_pro_englisch.pdf

Given that spec sheet, Liquid Pro it is most certainly Galinstan, or a slight modification of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

That's actually quite cool.  Good find.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Is Liquid Pro "removable"Huh

I have heard people saying that applying these kind of liquid metal paste will join the block and chips so hard that it will become very difficult to remove later.

So, if need to do maintenance later, how to?

That is a potential issue I think as well.  I have noticed, however, that you can still remove LP after a day or two.  So if you don't see the gains you like, you can always fall back to a regular paste.

Ironically, my board is now running fine (minus a die) using some CoolerMaster paste that came with a CPU cooler I had.  I think that some of the issues people may be having are application related?  Go get some chopsticks, cut them down to about 3" and sharpen one end.  Stick them in the holding screw holes (they will screw slightly in) and use them as guides.  Or ... go get some longish m3 screws.  Make sure not to apply too much TIM.  I also have a hunch that the screws do not necessarily need to get torqued all the way down.  Tightish, yes, but perhaps not fully in.  I wonder if full torque might damage the very delicate goldstrikes, esp. if they don't sit properly flush with the surrounding metal square.
member
Activity: 117
Merit: 10

Stuff is like (and likely contains quite a bit of) liquid mercury.

It's actually mostly gallium, another element that is liquid close to room temperature:

http://www.coollaboratory.com/pdf/safetydatasheet_liquid_pro_englisch.pdf

Given that spec sheet, Liquid Pro it is most certainly Galinstan, or a slight modification of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan
member
Activity: 76
Merit: 10
Is Liquid Pro "removable"Huh

I have heard people saying that applying these kind of liquid metal paste will join the block and chips so hard that it will become very difficult to remove later.

So, if need to do maintenance later, how to?
hero member
Activity: 686
Merit: 500
Has anyone here replace the Beaglebone in their Terraminer?
Thanks.

If you want to completely duplicate the setup Cointerra put on there, you'd need to image the beaglebone exactly as they did. If you really, really want to have it back as-is, you might be able to get an image dump from someone. Otherwise I'd just load on some default embedded linux version for the beaglebone, compile a version of cgminer, and just run that.


Quote
What firmware version are you running?  I've tried them all, from 0.6.x through 0.8.8.  Makes no difference.

Where are you getting version 0.8.8?

Seriously.. wtf is this 0.8.8 shit? sounds like you got infected. Smiley

Lol ... no.  This was all discussed at great length on the CT forums before they put them down.  Believe it or not.  I'm not sure what advantages 0.8.8 has.  But the LED lights seem to respond a bit more.  IE., pwr LED stays green and/or turns red if the machine hangs.  It also has an option for more extensive debug output.

I have no reason to make this up ... and no my machines are not infected.  ;-)

6.4.8 best version I have found unless you have the machine in a very cool environment. 6.4.8 actually shuts down 1, not all 4 per chip. Try it. Rollit back to 636, then set stepping to 7, and let it run a bit, then upgrade to 6.4.8 and step it slowly.
member
Activity: 76
Merit: 10
room temp at 34C, pretty marginal, notice CT is only designed to operate below 35C

ill give LP a try tonight
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
OK so I have got myself a Silverstone Tundra TD3 water pump and replaced my faulty pump.

Unfortunately it is not much better than the cheap Cooler Master Seidon 120 that I've tried a few days ago...


Both could solve my problem, partially.  With the replacement pump I can now mine with all 16 cores, but only if set to Power Step 6.  many chips shuts as soon as I step up to Power Step 7.  Probably the pump is not strong enough to remove the heat???

The pump speed only reads 1200 RPM for TD3, while it's ~1000 RPM for Seidon 120.  Noticed that the original cointerra pumps are 3000 RPM ...


Any idea on how I could boost the replacement pumps so that I could fully utilize my miner to Step 9 again?  Maybe Liquid Pro could help?  I am using Artic Silver 5 for thermal paste now.

LP will likely drop your temps a few more degrees.  But be very careful when applying the stuff.  Unlike AS5 it's electrically conductive.  So it can short out your board if it gets in the wrong place.  

Stuff is like (and likely contains quite a bit of) liquid mercury.  This thread has lots of good info on how to go about applying.

Also, your chips shouldn't shut down at PL7 unless they're getting above 120C.

Lastly, when you applied AS5 did you also apply it to the square "ring" that surrounds the chips.  I'm pretty sure you do not need to apply there.  My hunch is that doing so "lifts" the cooling block ever so slightly off the chips.

Several have speculated that the chips suffer from some misalignment in the horizontal plane ... which makes for tricky cooling issues and thermal paste application that lots have been experiencing.

But it sounds more like you need better pumps.  Also, what's your intake air temp?  IE., the temp in the room.  I've found if it's above 80F everything starts to overheat.  Below that and things are fine.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Has anyone here replace the Beaglebone in their Terraminer?
Thanks.

If you want to completely duplicate the setup Cointerra put on there, you'd need to image the beaglebone exactly as they did. If you really, really want to have it back as-is, you might be able to get an image dump from someone. Otherwise I'd just load on some default embedded linux version for the beaglebone, compile a version of cgminer, and just run that.


Quote
What firmware version are you running?  I've tried them all, from 0.6.x through 0.8.8.  Makes no difference.

Where are you getting version 0.8.8?

Seriously.. wtf is this 0.8.8 shit? sounds like you got infected. Smiley

Lol ... no.  This was all discussed at great length on the CT forums before they put them down.  Believe it or not.  I'm not sure what advantages 0.8.8 has.  But the LED lights seem to respond a bit more.  IE., pwr LED stays green and/or turns red if the machine hangs.  It also has an option for more extensive debug output.

I have no reason to make this up ... and no my machines are not infected.  ;-)
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