GekkoScience NewPac / Terminus R606 (BM1387) Official Support Thread

Nexus9090

member

Activity: 259

Merit: 85

So many numbers and so little time

Quote from: CHRS-One on September 18, 2024, 09:34:37 AM

This might be a extremely dumb question but would be maybe be possible for me to install a version of Linux on the mini pocket PC to try and overcome this issue? Or will the same thing happen even if it's running the version of Linux it needs or can use. Where the hardware cannot support the R909s. Or could I even perhaps boot from a USB thumb and use that running a version of Linux. I have been having bad luck with the Pi's or it might be more because of how bad Mars Landers are built/assembled. I have had countless of these units go out and I am a bit adverse to them now and would rather stay away. Unless that's the only option I have. I appreciate all the help and information.

Its worth a try, just install the latest Ubuntu and give that a go. I suspect however due to the design of the mini PC its likely you'll run into similar problems.

I'm really happy with all of the PI boards I've ever run, I have at least 4 in operation presently and they're all good. 3B, 3B+, Zero 2W. No problems at all.

Anyway, give Ubuntu a shot and see how you get on. There's no harm in trying.

Good luck.

os2sam

legendary

Activity: 3583

Merit: 1094

Think for yourself

By all means, try Linux on that Winbloze box. I had really good luck with my Pi 4 and the R606's, btw.

Windoze is usually the issue with the USB communications. There is not a thing that M$ has touched and made better.

My $0.02 worth,
Sam

CHRS-One

newbie

Activity: 3

Merit: 0

Quote from: Nexus9090 on September 17, 2024, 03:22:45 PM

Quote from: CHRS-One on September 17, 2024, 02:47:50 PM

-SNIP-

Okay so I think I may have figured out what part of the issue is. I don't think the computers CPU is able to run more than one at a time. I tried running one by itself and it is running fine. The Windows computer I am using is like a little pocket PC, where it almost looks like a pack of lemon heads with a screen. It has 4 usb ports in which I used all four of them having a cord going to the R909s. Is there a way you know that allows you to "trick" them into using all one hub. I have tried a hub that was usb 2.0 and it won't recognize it and none of the R909s show up. If I use a USB 3.0 hub I can get them all to show but then I am running into the same occurrence where they will plateau and they keep resetting within 5 to 10 seconds. Should I keep trying hubs or am I running into a wall because the CPU will never be able to support what it's trying to accomplish. I have tried to power the hub also to make sure that wasn't the issue and the plateaus continue to happen. I was using a raspberry PI that had a gekko stick miner on it and it was working well enough but the power supply to it broke or the rasp Pi itself did. I will try different ports with the hub and see if I can convince it to start working.

Sounds like you're running into some hardware limitations on the mini-PC you're using, chances are all of the USB ports are 2 or 3 devices downstream of the root hub. A lot of mini-PC designs use USB hubs to add peripherals, Wi-Fi, Network, SSD etc etc, so what you end up with is a bottlenecked system that's incapable of running low latency devices.

Here's what I would do in your position

Buy yourself a Raspberry PI 3B, 3B+ or 4, they're not expensive $30-40 ish (https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus), probably less if you can find one on Ebay. Make sure you get a compatible power brick for it as well.

Don't go for the PI 5 while it has more horse power the OS is not stable yet.

Buy a good quality microSD card and Install the Raspberry 32bit PI OS Lite which is a Debian Linux port without the graphical front end. This is really easy using the Raspberry PI installer, plenty of online support and instruction for that. (dont use the 64bit OS as that requires extra work to get the USB stable)

Learn how to connect to it over SSH terminal, its not difficult.

It sounds more scary than it is. If you're running windows use something like Putty to connect over SSH https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Get a copy of Kano's CGMiner installed https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/

Follow the build instructions to the letter dont skip anything, make sure to include the gekko drivers when you build.

That should give you a working binary for CGMiner.

Plug your devices into the USB ports on the RaspberryPI, set-up the command line to point to your pool and away you go.

The hardest part will be building CGMiner and getting the build environment set-up correctly. However, if you follow the instructions carefully it should work fine.

Good luck!

This might be a extremely dumb question but would be maybe be possible for me to install a version of Linux on the mini pocket PC to try and overcome this issue? Or will the same thing happen even if it's running the version of Linux it needs or can use. Where the hardware cannot support the R909s. Or could I even perhaps boot from a USB thumb and use that running a version of Linux. I have been having bad luck with the Pi's or it might be more because of how bad Mars Landers are built/assembled. I have had countless of these units go out and I am a bit adverse to them now and would rather stay away. Unless that's the only option I have. I appreciate all the help and information.

Nexus9090

member

Activity: 259

Merit: 85

So many numbers and so little time

Quote from: CHRS-One on September 17, 2024, 02:47:50 PM

-SNIP-

Okay so I think I may have figured out what part of the issue is. I don't think the computers CPU is able to run more than one at a time. I tried running one by itself and it is running fine. The Windows computer I am using is like a little pocket PC, where it almost looks like a pack of lemon heads with a screen. It has 4 usb ports in which I used all four of them having a cord going to the R909s. Is there a way you know that allows you to "trick" them into using all one hub. I have tried a hub that was usb 2.0 and it won't recognize it and none of the R909s show up. If I use a USB 3.0 hub I can get them all to show but then I am running into the same occurrence where they will plateau and they keep resetting within 5 to 10 seconds. Should I keep trying hubs or am I running into a wall because the CPU will never be able to support what it's trying to accomplish. I have tried to power the hub also to make sure that wasn't the issue and the plateaus continue to happen. I was using a raspberry PI that had a gekko stick miner on it and it was working well enough but the power supply to it broke or the rasp Pi itself did. I will try different ports with the hub and see if I can convince it to start working.

Sounds like you're running into some hardware limitations on the mini-PC you're using, chances are all of the USB ports are 2 or 3 devices downstream of the root hub. A lot of mini-PC designs use USB hubs to add peripherals, Wi-Fi, Network, SSD etc etc, so what you end up with is a bottlenecked system that's incapable of running low latency devices.

Here's what I would do in your position

Buy yourself a Raspberry PI 3B, 3B+ or 4, they're not expensive $30-40 ish (https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus), probably less if you can find one on Ebay. Make sure you get a compatible power brick for it as well.

Don't go for the PI 5 while it has more horse power the OS is not stable yet.

Buy a good quality microSD card and Install the Raspberry 32bit PI OS Lite which is a Debian Linux port without the graphical front end. This is really easy using the Raspberry PI installer, plenty of online support and instruction for that. (dont use the 64bit OS as that requires extra work to get the USB stable)

Learn how to connect to it over SSH terminal, its not difficult.

It sounds more scary than it is. If you're running windows use something like Putty to connect over SSH https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Get a copy of Kano's CGMiner installed https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/

Follow the build instructions to the letter dont skip anything, make sure to include the gekko drivers when you build.

That should give you a working binary for CGMiner.

Plug your devices into the USB ports on the RaspberryPI, set-up the command line to point to your pool and away you go.

The hardest part will be building CGMiner and getting the build environment set-up correctly. However, if you follow the instructions carefully it should work fine.

Good luck!

CHRS-One

newbie

Activity: 3

Merit: 0

Quote from: Nexus9090 on September 17, 2024, 03:36:14 AM

Quote from: CHRS-One on September 16, 2024, 08:28:49 PM

Sorry everyone I have no idea if this is the right place to post this and I did some searching and am having a ton of trouble finding out what I need. So I had to move four R909 pod miners to a little handheld PC that is running Windows 11. I can get all the R909s to start with the .bat file but I find they won't run at full pace or anything near that. It also keeps telling me one of the units is "plateau" and it is seemingly resets the and tries again. The 4 units together have only reached 2 THs total and then they die and start back up from 0. I am. Not using barrel plus and have moved them all to a PSU. The voltage knob is turned almost all the way up and the frequency is set to 400 or even under that at times to see if I can get it stable. I have NO idea what I am doing wrong as I easily connect to viabtc and it starts to hash only for me to continue to run into the "plateau" issue. Could this be something going on with one R909 that isn't working well or do I have something not correct in the settings. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Every time I've run into "Plateau" issues its been because of dodgy USB set-up. Win 7, Win 10 etc have been notoriously bad for that. I can't comment on Win11 since I've never used it and will likely never use it, but I'd expect it to follow the same.

If I were you I'd ditch windows as I did and set-up a Linux machine or even a Raspberry PI to run it on.

However, if that's not something you can or want to do try making sure that each device is connected to a root hub on your PC, not all PC USB ports are the same some are a hub or two downstream from a root hub which can introduce problems with timing and latency.

If you're using an external USB hub, again make sure its plugged into a root hub on your PC. Or try a different external USB hub.

Bottom line, Windows can be a pain in the butt getting reliable USB comms.

I run all of my rigs on Rasberry PI's these days along with Kano's CGMiner and a few command line tweeks to get the USB stable. I currently have 16 GSF's running on one Raspberry PI 3B and its doing that without so much as breaking a sweat.

Okay so I think I may have figured out what part of the issue is. I don't think the computers CPU is able to run more than one at a time. I tried running one by itself and it is running fine. The Windows computer I am using is like a little pocket PC, where it almost looks like a pack of lemon heads with a screen. It has 4 usb ports in which I used all four of them having a cord going to the R909s. Is there a way you know that allows you to "trick" them into using all one hub. I have tried a hub that was usb 2.0 and it won't recognize it and none of the R909s show up. If I use a USB 3.0 hub I can get them all to show but then I am running into the same occurrence where they will plateau and they keep resetting within 5 to 10 seconds. Should I keep trying hubs or am I running into a wall because the CPU will never be able to support what it's trying to accomplish. I have tried to power the hub also to make sure that wasn't the issue and the plateaus continue to happen. I was using a raspberry PI that had a gekko stick miner on it and it was working well enough but the power supply to it broke or the rasp Pi itself did. I will try different ports with the hub and see if I can convince it to start working.

Nexus9090

member

Activity: 259

Merit: 85

So many numbers and so little time

Quote from: CHRS-One on September 16, 2024, 08:28:49 PM

Sorry everyone I have no idea if this is the right place to post this and I did some searching and am having a ton of trouble finding out what I need. So I had to move four R909 pod miners to a little handheld PC that is running Windows 11. I can get all the R909s to start with the .bat file but I find they won't run at full pace or anything near that. It also keeps telling me one of the units is "plateau" and it is seemingly resets the and tries again. The 4 units together have only reached 2 THs total and then they die and start back up from 0. I am. Not using barrel plus and have moved them all to a PSU. The voltage knob is turned almost all the way up and the frequency is set to 400 or even under that at times to see if I can get it stable. I have NO idea what I am doing wrong as I easily connect to viabtc and it starts to hash only for me to continue to run into the "plateau" issue. Could this be something going on with one R909 that isn't working well or do I have something not correct in the settings. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Every time I've run into "Plateau" issues its been because of dodgy USB set-up. Win 7, Win 10 etc have been notoriously bad for that. I can't comment on Win11 since I've never used it and will likely never use it, but I'd expect it to follow the same.

If I were you I'd ditch windows as I did and set-up a Linux machine or even a Raspberry PI to run it on.

However, if that's not something you can or want to do try making sure that each device is connected to a root hub on your PC, not all PC USB ports are the same some are a hub or two downstream from a root hub which can introduce problems with timing and latency.

If you're using an external USB hub, again make sure its plugged into a root hub on your PC. Or try a different external USB hub.

Bottom line, Windows can be a pain in the butt getting reliable USB comms.

I run all of my rigs on Rasberry PI's these days along with Kano's CGMiner and a few command line tweeks to get the USB stable. I currently have 16 GSF's running on one Raspberry PI 3B and its doing that without so much as breaking a sweat.

CHRS-One

newbie

Activity: 3

Merit: 0

Sorry everyone I have no idea if this is the right place to post this and I did some searching and am having a ton of trouble finding out what I need. So I had to move four R909 pod miners to a little handheld PC that is running Windows 11. I can get all the R909s to start with the .bat file but I find they won't run at full pace or anything near that. It also keeps telling me one of the units is "plateau" and it is seemingly resets the and tries again. The 4 units together have only reached 2 THs total and then they die and start back up from 0. I am. Not using barrel plus and have moved them all to a PSU. The voltage knob is turned almost all the way up and the frequency is set to 400 or even under that at times to see if I can get it stable. I have NO idea what I am doing wrong as I easily connect to viabtc and it starts to hash only for me to continue to run into the "plateau" issue. Could this be something going on with one R909 that isn't working well or do I have something not correct in the settings. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

slurfius

jr. member

Activity: 107

Merit: 7

I have old newpacs that I learned with laying around and a MacBook I travel with. I like that I don’t have to actively cool the newpac and can run it without a hub. I don’t think any other small portable device can run directly from the MacBook usb port. Free hotel power and WiFi gives me a very small chance but it’s a chance so I’ll point to ck and take it. I had previously been pointing it at the pool. At home I have a few Apollo a few compac F an A1 a bitaxe a nano 3 and an s19xp mining to braiinspool for lightning payouts, heat and ideological reasons because it’s impossible to turn a profit as a home miner since the halving.

NotFuzzyWarm

legendary

Activity: 3822

Merit: 2703

Evil beware: We have waffles!

Quote from: slurfius on August 13, 2024, 07:56:30 PM

Is it possible to solo mine a block with a single newpac?

Technically - yes.
Realistically - bloody unlikely even over several lifetimes. Should you buy 1 with the hopes it will find a block? Maybe if it cost say $20 or so, sure. That said, considering they cost next to nothing to run and if you have a computer that can be on 24x7x365 for it to be plugged into, go for it.

Be aware that fed directly from a PC there is zero chance of over clocking it because a PC's USB ports cannot feed it enough power. To OC at all will require a hub that can supply at least 3a per-port.

slurfius

jr. member

Activity: 107

Merit: 7

Is it possible to solo mine a block with a single newpac?

Nexus9090

member

Activity: 259

Merit: 85

So many numbers and so little time

Quote from: AsYouWishForMe on July 07, 2024, 04:17:46 PM

Hello everybody, I know this thread hasn’t been used for a while…

Anyway, I bought two used NewPacs. One is working perfectly, the other one not.
I found out that it presents a wrong device id (0000:0002) instead of 0403:6015.

The seller claimed he got it new and couldn’t get it to work, which is likely because of the wrong id, and I couldn’t get it to work, too, trying ed if n different Laptops, PCs, Macs with win 10, win 11, Raspbian, Lubuntu, …).

Do you know whether it is possible to (re-)flash the NewPac‘s firmware, so it presents itself properly? I already searched here and a while on google, but found no way.

Appreciate the help!

Alex

Sounds like the USB-UART Chip has been mis-configured. Goto https://ftdichip.com/utilities/#ft_prog and find their programming application FT_Prog, this should allow you to view and adjust the VID and PID device for the USB interface as well as the device ID manufacturer and description strings.

Have a look at the working one first, you should be able to download a copy of the working one's settings as a template. Once you have that saved, disconnect it and then connect the one with the bad device ID and you should be able to use the template to reprogram it.

Make sure you only have one device connected at a time and no other USB devices connected to your computer.

Hopefully that'll fix your problem.

AsYouWishForMe

newbie

Activity: 1

Merit: 0

Hello everybody, I know this thread hasn’t been used for a while…

Anyway, I bought two used NewPacs. One is working perfectly, the other one not.
I found out that it presents a wrong device id (0000:0002) instead of 0403:6015.

The seller claimed he got it new and couldn’t get it to work, which is likely because of the wrong id, and I couldn’t get it to work, too, trying ed if n different Laptops, PCs, Macs with win 10, win 11, Raspbian, Lubuntu, …).

Do you know whether it is possible to (re-)flash the NewPac‘s firmware, so it presents itself properly? I already searched here and a while on google, but found no way.

Appreciate the help!

Alex

NotFuzzyWarm

legendary

Activity: 3822

Merit: 2703

Evil beware: We have waffles!

This is what I did for my Compacs. Works with original Compac, 2Pac, Newpac & F.
Running on a Pi-3B & Raspian. I'd think that should work with a RiPii-0 as well..

Code:

Nov 2, 2021
Installation and running cgminer on Raspi or other `UX
My Solo Account on Kano.is is  somename (fake) To break down per-worker add .
For CompacF it's  somename.CompacF
Newpacs are  somename.OldNewpacs
Highly suggested to run he F's and any pods on a seperate instance from slower sticks like the Newpacs, 2Pacs, Compac, etc.

Main Forum page for the F's  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470.msg58200639#msg58200639
- Speeds -
--gekko-compac-freq 305 --gekko-2pac-freq 200 --gekko-newpac-freq 225 --gekko-compacf-freq 425

-- Running CGMiner -
linux:
./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.kano.is:3333 -u somename. -p x --suggest-diff 442 

eg for the Ferarri's 
./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.kano.is:3333 -u somename.CompacF -p x --suggest-diff 442 --gekko-compacf-freq 425

-------------
Installation info
- CGMiner Git -
The master git for cgminer is https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer

CGMiner README https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/blob/master/README
That includes linux compile steps, but to repeat, on linux:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential autoconf automake libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev git

cd
git clone https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer.git
cd cgminer

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -fcommon" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko --enable-icarus

make

-----------
-Tweaks -
To run it at a higher frequency, add on to the commands above e.g.
 --gekko-compacf-freq 400

The latest version of the gekko driver (as of 2021-10-17) has a new mining option:
--gekko-mine2

This uses a slightly different mining loop that also reports all frequency changes to the screen,
and why they change if it stepped down.

There's a second option if you have enabled the mine2 option:
--gekko-tune2 60

that allows the miner to recover lost frequencies if it was unable to match the frequency requested due to the environment, but it later improves e.g. gets cooler.
The '60' means check once per hour - default is don't do it.
The miner may just end up stepping up and down once per check if it can't do better, so there's a lower limit of once per 30 minutes, range is 30-9999

TheTeddybear

newbie

Activity: 2

Merit: 0

Quote from: paid2 on May 24, 2023, 09:21:42 AM

Quote from: TheTeddybear on May 23, 2023, 07:08:57 PM

Ok trying to setup a rpi zero w (cant find another decent use for it) as a lotto miner. Using a Newpac. I used to have it run on a win10 machine fine but I cant seem to get it to recognize in the pi. followed the steps but I am running into problems with the CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native" ./autogen.sh -enable-gekko make -j 2 command and then it wont see the newpac and since it wont see the newpac im up a creek. I am running the piOS lite 64. Im elevated to root. Im loosing what little mind I actually have. If anyone has ideas please feel free to drop them on me like a sack of hammers.

I am not sure that I totally understood your issue to be honest, I mean in which step the problem appeared.

But, in case it could be useful for you, I want to mention that I needed to use the following commands to make it work on my Pi 0w :

Code:

cd cgminer
CFLAGS="-O2 -fcommon" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
make

Without the -fcommon option, I never managed to make it work properly. Hope it will help.

Its not recognizing the newpac for some reason, any chance someone would be willing to copy/ paste all commands I need to put in for the shell to get this working (minus wallet address). Im about to reflash and start over.

paid2

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 1065

Crypto Swap Exchange

Quote from: TheTeddybear on May 23, 2023, 07:08:57 PM

Ok trying to setup a rpi zero w (cant find another decent use for it) as a lotto miner. Using a Newpac. I used to have it run on a win10 machine fine but I cant seem to get it to recognize in the pi. followed the steps but I am running into problems with the CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native" ./autogen.sh -enable-gekko make -j 2 command and then it wont see the newpac and since it wont see the newpac im up a creek. I am running the piOS lite 64. Im elevated to root. Im loosing what little mind I actually have. If anyone has ideas please feel free to drop them on me like a sack of hammers.

I am not sure that I totally understood your issue to be honest, I mean in which step the problem appeared.

But, in case it could be useful for you, I want to mention that I needed to use the following commands to make it work on my Pi 0w :

Code:

cd cgminer
CFLAGS="-O2 -fcommon" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
make

Without the -fcommon option, I never managed to make it work properly. Hope it will help.

sidehack

legendary

Activity: 3416

Merit: 1865

Curmudgeonly hardware guy

That step you mentioned is a couple steps which compile the cgminer. What error are you getting? Without knowing what is failing and where, there's not much to help with. Are you doing "dash oh two" or "dash zero two"? Because it's a capital O, not a zero. That's a common/easy mistake that causes the compiler check to fail.

TheTeddybear

newbie

Activity: 2

Merit: 0

Ok trying to setup a rpi zero w (cant find another decent use for it) as a lotto miner. Using a Newpac. I used to have it run on a win10 machine fine but I cant seem to get it to recognize in the pi. followed the steps but I am running into problems with the CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native" ./autogen.sh -enable-gekko make -j 2 command and then it wont see the newpac and since it wont see the newpac im up a creek. I am running the piOS lite 64. Im elevated to root. Im loosing what little mind I actually have. If anyone has ideas please feel free to drop them on me like a sack of hammers.

sidehack

legendary

Activity: 3416

Merit: 1865

Curmudgeonly hardware guy

Standard boost is 4 midstate, lowboost is 2 midstate. Changes the packet size and timings and I forget why exactly but it worked a bit better on whatever janky USB subsystem Windows uses.

paid2

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 1065

Crypto Swap Exchange

Quote from: mrbryceguy on February 19, 2023, 02:01:26 PM

sudo cgminer -o stratum+tcp://us-east.stratum.braiins.com:3333 -u miningpeon.gekko --gekko-compac-freq 175 --gekko-2pac-freq 200 --gekko-newpac-freq 300 --gekko-compacf-freq 350 -p x --suggest-diff 128 --gekko-lowboost --gekko-start-freq 155 --gekko-tune-up 85 --gekko-mine2 --gekko-tune2 60

May I ask what is the goal of "gekko-lowboost" ?

The readme only says :

Quote

--gekko-lowboost GekkoScience NewPac/R606 AsicBoost - 2 midstate

I understand the usage of "--gekko-noboost " but I don't understand what is doing lowboost concretly

mrbryceguy

newbie

Activity: 6

Merit: 1

Hey thanks man- I did pull the repository from https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer.git - I think that there is a voltage thing going on with a few of them, I am going to toy around with the coupe that don't work when I get back Stateside from a business trip- again, thanks for all the time you put in on this- have a fantastic day!

Topic: GekkoScience NewPac / Terminus R606 (BM1387) Official Support Thread (Read 61982 times)