Topic: GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread - page 6. (Read 267691 times)

Gotta calculate timings based on how fast the chip goes through the nonce range at given clock speed, then feed new work into the buffer before it runs out.

55 cores per chip means 55 million nonces per MHz. So for a full 32-bit nonce range, 2^32/55*F seconds. Might want to double-check that for units but that's the idea.

Wow, neat, I didn't know you could do that.  Sounds right up my alley.  I don't have an answer to your question though.

Hi~
I have a question.

I bought this product to study the block chain.
So I deployed serial communication directly without using cgminer.
First, finding nonce was successful. (Ref. bm1385 datasheet document)
But there are no results when searching for a block without nonce.
So I don't know when to send a signal to find the next nonce.

How do i know that the work of finding nonce is finished? (without timeout)

One of the things you've missed is that for the last 2 years I've been working toward being able to build new boards with current-gen chips to mount on S1, S3 and S5 chassis. Those models were before Bitmain decided to basically only support industrial customers who didn't really care as much about noise or, apparently, reliability.

Take some time to sniff around here, run a few keyword searches and you'll find good detailed discussion over most everything you're talking about. I'm not gonna get into it all here. If you look at threads I've started, or anything with GekkoScience in the title, you'll see the kinds of things I'm working on. And no I'm not doing chip design, to do anything competitive requires probably a team of experts and a seven-figure budget minimum.

I honestly don't really mind that my website is out of date. Means the only customers I have to bother with are the ones who try a little harder to find what they're looking for, which weeds out a lot of idiots. Not dealing with idiots all day means I have more time to do the actual job.

I skipped from something like page 10 of this to 2 pages before the end because I didn't want to spend a week reading.  So are you involved in chip design?  I read once somewhere that all it takes is the cash to place a certain size minimum order.  Efficiency seems to always be behind getting CPUs at least to market.  I like the current generation of ARM chips like what's in this Pi 3B.  Way back in the 70s/80s I used to read Electronic Engineering Times, before they decided I didn't warrant a free subscription.  Bingo cards and free samples.

Interesting industry that's pushing itself to extinction.  But old web pages are as bad as obsolete documentation in Linux stuff.  And something 2 years old can't hash fast enough anymore. You're not just facing competition but the increasing difficulty.  You almost need to standardize the boards and make just those replaceable by themselves so you could pop in new boards every year, keep the old case and heat sink.  Stick miners all have about the same form factor, an Antminer T9 is about the same physically as my G-Blade from 4 years ago.  The chips change.  Make it like replacing motherboards in computers.  That way you could also switch algorithms according to what was profitable that year.  Be more like Asus and Tyan than Dell and Compaq.

I know this is out of context to the original subject..

if you did a finger test to see if the heatsink is colder to say its running cooler, you have done it wrong.

paining a heatsink puts a layer of insulation on the thermal conductive material. you are not "Black bodying" the heatsink. the hotter the heatsink, the better it is conduction the heat away from the source.

you need convection of the heat to the air, not radiate it, its not in vacuum.

now if you google black body radiator, there is plenty of people talking about black painting heatsinks for radiating heat..

To tell the truth, the website hasn't been updated in about three years. Most things are discussed here on the forum. I've reasoned extensively about not using BM1385 or BM1387 for new projects and am actively working on <100W miners.

You mean at gekkoscience.com?  Yeah, I was there this morning on my phone.  I've still got a couple Eico VTVMs but my scope is a Tektronix (analog).   I don't know who's who really, but I've been looking at this deal: http://holybitcoin.com/product/gekkoscience-2pac-dual-bm1384-stickminer/  I also found some Avalon Nano3s for $10.26 at http://www.bitmainminer.com/avalon-asic/11-avalon-nano-3-newest-usb-36gh-s-asic-bitcoin-miner.html

I have an itch to get into Bitcoin mining, sort of.  I've been into Litecoin for a couple weeks.  Did CPU mining for a week, bought one of these Gridseed G-Blades: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Free-shipping-Gridseed-G-Blade-ASIC-Scrypt-Blade-Miner-5-2-6MH-S-100W-Scrypt-Blade/227686_1834929913.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000023.13.6fYgra  The gc3355 chip was designed to do either Scrypt or SHA256 but first I saw a rumor that they run hot doing SHA, then I find it marketed for doing only Scrypt then finally in the gc3355 datasheet it says the power consumption is 10 times as high doing SHA.  Looking at the way it's built, there's no heatsinking on the tops of the chips, only on the underside of the board.  I've got enough 1/8 inch aluminum sheet to make a heat sink cover for them, goop them up with heat sink compound and have the chips sandwiched between heat sinks.  But it would still eat a lot of power and run slow.

I'll turn 63 in a few months, my eyesight is barely good enough for DIP packages, let alone surface mount.  I used to be an electronics technician for 20 years, then got more into software.  So if working on tiny stuff didn't kill my eyes enough I stared at monitors since about 1990.  I've got a resume at http://devio.us/~ab1jx/files/resume.pdf.  My main web site is http://ab1jx.1apps.com/

I should have started at least CPU mining Bitcoin back when I first heard about it, it didn't sink in at the time that it gets harder.  If my extrapolations are right I should have 1 Litecoin finished in 50 days and who knows what they'll be worth then.  Bitcoin seems like more of a sure thing, even if it takes longer.  I could maybe supplement my Social Security more reliably trying to sell prints of my photographs but I decided photography was too unreliable when I was about 18.  https://images.nikonians.org/galleries/showgallery.php/ppuser/535619/cat/500

I'm gonna do some playing around with anodize one of these days.

Have you looked at any of my other projects?

Because silver is the bare aluminum, it's cheaper to make them slightly bigger than go through a painting step.  Actually anodizing would probably be better since it's thinner.  I built this power supply about 40 years ago, it mostly ran hot until I painted the heat sinks black.  Nothing else I built 40 years ago is still running.



Anyway it's too bad there isn't a BM1387 stickminer, or something in the < 100 watt range.

black is excellent in heat disipation when it is like the sun not a heatsink like his... if this was the case why are every computer heatsink out there from factory to the aftermarket coolers silver...

reason is cause the metal is the sinking of heat via direct contact color is just to make it look good and personally i like the green but i also like the black like on my futurebit moonlanders

(1) No there isn't

(2) Because I wanted it to be

Fairly new here.  I haven't read all 129 pages of this thread but I have 2 questions.  (1) is there a BM1387 version of this project in the works? and (2) why is the heatsink green instead of black?  Black is a much more efficient radiator of heat, even just a quick coat from a spray can.

Lol, best asicboost post yet

Can we use ASICBOOST on these?

Good that side hack could replace the ASIC

That was a compac. I had 25 compacs I think two died over a two year period.

I am down to 1 compac and 1 2pac.

alright yea mine for some reason i had it die on me and it would not run on my 2 computers but then again i brought that one gridseed to you and you touched it and it worked lol... i will try to get that way sometime soon

Phil's I replaced the ASIC. Yours I saw no issues with, ran it for a week with no errors.

excellent sir thank you so much did you remember what was wrong with the 2 i had... the one with paint over the led was mine and the other one was the one that phil sent me... he was wondering what killed it

Done. Come and get 'em.