Topic: GridSeed 5-chip USB miner voltage mod - page 42. (Read 156988 times)

That button is labeled as RESET in the schematics.  I'm not sure what effect it would have that unplugging the power and plugging it back in would do...must have done something good though.  Glad it worked for you.

Update:

I removed the 47K and replaced it with a 33k on one of my bad units.
Still no luck. It wasn't accepting anything.

But I did notice that the PCB has a button on it.
Anyone know what it is for?

Anyway. I pressed it while it was plugged in to the PC.
It seems to have reset it.
It went offline, so I then unplugged it, plugged it back in and............

BAM....it's working again!

Gonna have to try this on my other dead soldier....

This is what my cmdline.txt file looks like:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 $
dwc_otg.fiq_enable=1 dwc_otg.fiq_fsm_enable=1 dwc_otg.fiq_fsm_mask=0x3
dwc_otg.nak_holdoff=32

Is that what you have?

I have tried this, but when i add "dwc_otg.fiq_enable=1 dwc_otg.fiq_fsm_enable=1 dwc_otg.fiq_fsm_mask=0x3" to cmdline.txt my pi no longer responds.

Any suggestions?

I don't have the units yet since I paid someone to mod them. But I will look at the damaged one to see how it looks when it arrives. So far I never opened a unit, all that I said is taken from the person doing the mods for me. However I will look around at the broken one to see if I can spot anything.

I had noticed this as well with mine.  I had thought it was just mine, but apparently not.  I noticed these are VERY temperamental with regard to how tightly they are put back together.  Mine also seems picky on how even the tightness is.  The tighter the heatsink was clamped, it seemed the more hw errors I would get and it was more unstable.

Have you tried re-doing the solder connections to see if that helps the one pod?

It sounds like you may have moved on from the Pi, but I had the same problems with it while running scripta. I followed the directions in this thread - http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=70437 and have been running since the 8th without any problems. Let me know if you decide to give it another go and I might be able to help if you run into any other problems.

Just a small note to all of you modding your units. I had 6 of mine not working and it seems they were not working because the screws were too tight and some solders snapped off. So be VERY careful when you put your pods back together! Right now, from 30 modded units it seems I only ended up with 1 paperweight (seems like one pod is too damaged ) with the other 5 being recovered, which is good enough for me

Yeah. These have been nothing but trouble so far. If my blood pressure goes up any more, I'm gonna have a heart attack, and finally be at peace...lol

So far I have modded 2. 1 of them has quit working all together, at any freq. The other seems to be working at a higher freq, if I put it on it's own PC, because I can't figure out how to adjust it as part of a group.
Another one has stopped working as well. I didn't mod that one.
No single software seems to be able to handle these properly. Nothing works.
Before I bought them, All the posts made them sound so great. I guess I am doing things all wrong, because they are NOT.

Lol I thought I was the only one getting pissed at these stupid gridseeds.... Right now only 11 of 14 are working after the mod they were all working then a couple stopped submitting shares resoldered the resistor those started working again then a few more stopped resoldered those now 3 more aren't submitting shares. Smdh ..... Guess that's what happens when I mess with shit.

I don't understand. You have some devices listed as COM ports and on others you use serial numbers. Do you need to use both? or just one or the other? Also, how do get this to work with CGWatcher? It couldn't find my ASICs.
where can I find BFGminer PR3?

Yeah, Gridseed and Dualminers are PITA...  You should put Your serial numbers instead. BFGminer versions are still experimental, BTW pr3 is more stable for me than clean-version. I'm using CGwatcher for running BFGminer because of crashing and unsuccessfull starts You are experiencing too. Here is my command line with my serial numbers and my serial ports, so You can't just copy/paste the line:
I'm using also standard bfgminer.conf with pools definitions.

I am just about at my wits end with these stupid gridseeds.
Nothing I do works properly. I am just about to throw these in the trash and try to find peace in my life.

The only software that seems to work for me is bfgminer.
I have tried cpuminer (works I think, but who knows)
cgminer with zadig drivers (can't even find the devices)
The raspberry pi that came with them (wouldn't even boot with the provided SD card, had to load a copy of scripta)
The pi will boot, but goes down after about 10 minutes.

So I am basically back to BFGminer. It's the only one I can get to work, if I modify the bat file that was included with my info.

So, here I am, back to bfgminer, I have modded 2 of 10 gridseeds, but I can't figure out how to run 8 of them at thr stock 850 and increase the clock of the 2 modded units.
When I add "--set-device gridseed@XX72117B5XXX:clock=950" nothing works at all, the command window opens then closes right away.

Can someone post a working COMPLETE command line so I can see how I SHOULD be doing this that will allow me to control the freq of all the gridseeds? I would really appreciate it.

Also, so far my gridseeds seem to be junk. I got them from zoomhash and they all appear to be used.
Each one is very dirty, the fans look like they came out of an old PC. They are full of dirt in the fans and in the cooling fins. I sure thought I was buying NEW units, but they sent me used ones with a corrupted SD and nothing is working properly. In fact, so far 1q gridseed that I have not modded or even opened, has yet to accept 1 hash. This one must be defective. Anyway, this whole experience has been nothing but trouble. If I can't get something working soon, they all go in the dumpster......

This is my command line now (This is the only way I can get them working)

bfgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://us.clevermining.com:3333 -u 1Prwhxq4hkKeBpyZpDD2AbLiz11cDnoHp6 -p x -d gridseed -S gridseed:all --set-device gridseed:clock=850

When I change it to this the command windows just opens and closes very quickly:

bfgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://us.clevermining.com:3333 -u 1Prwhxq4hkKeBpyZpDD2AbLiz11cDnoHp6 -p x -d gridseed --set-device -set gridseed@XXXX4267XXXX:clock=1150

Exactly...

First is the bottom...with the golden pads...it IS MORE important... the chips are designed for proper cooling from the bottom...made like a metal heatsink ...soldered to the printed circuit board...Thermal paste is probably enough @ bottom...

Next is the top... Here using Pads ( and/or shims ) as needed...to compensate for the higher components...

Pics and results are greatly appreciated...

Cheers,

ZiG

Yea, I saw that as well, but wanted to focus on the "value-add" for the mod specfifically.
It's that value which im using to help decide if further mods are worth it and how it affects the ROI.
Since everybody is getting pods for different prices and deals, the ROI is variable and depends on your specific situation, but it's good to know that you can get about a 1/3 increase in coins mined for that mod.

I had to drop my pod back to 1175Mhz.  It seems that the mod and pushing them "as far as they can go" does in fact have adverse effects.  I had been running it at 1225Mhz for 2 days straight, then all of a sudden it picked up 3 hardware errors.  I checked it later and it had 10 more.  So I dropped it back to 1200Mhz and let it run, and in 12 hours it had 8 hw errors.  I checked the power supply and found it was actually delivering 13.6V to the pod and not 12.  I'm sure that's probably where part of the problems have come from.  I moved it to another power supply (550w Seasonic that was a spare) that is reading right at 12.01v.  We'll see how it does now that it has a more stable power source. 

While I was at it, I also swapped out that resistor for a 50K potentiometer so that the value could be adjusted if required (I like to have options open).

Shame too....I had switched to manicminer.in and it had reported I was actually getting around 530kh/s from it at 1225Mhz.  Now that it's at 1175Mhz it's showing right at 502Kh/s.  so not a huge loss.

Thanks for the response ZiG, I will be more than happy to take some screenshots of cgminer before and after to post and let everyone know the results I was able to achieve with this mod.

Just so I'm clear, you remove the existing thermal pads/paste, clean the unit with alcohol and then apply paste to the chip and bottom of the heatsink with the copper shim or new pad sandwiched between?

Thank you, very interesting.

BTW the increase of 34.6% in return nearly equals the hashrate increase of 35.3%.

Nice to see such comparison, thanks for that!

Hey all, I promised a side-by-side pool-side comparason of GSD mods vs unmodded units.
I didn't get as long a run as I would have liked, but the numbers I measured after 2 hours were almost exactly where I was 48 hours later, so I didn't see the need to continue the test longer.

I ran the test using the following configuration:
2 sets of 10 GSD pods each, one modded (1150Mhz) and the other unmodded (850Mhz).

The mods were done by Wolfey2014. I examined his work after it was returned to me and it looked just like his photos, very neat and clean.
Excellent professional work and much better than the hack-job I would have done had I tried it myself.

Both sets were run using cpuminer on W7 hosts.
I  ran both sets at the same pool (dogechain.info) for 48 hours.
The start/stop times for each set of GSD's was within a few seconds of each other.

My goal was to ignore the hash-rate and look at pool-side returns.
To do that, I created 2 seperate accounts and mined each set of GSD devices to a different account.
Both accounts started at 0 balance.
After the tests, I waited for all the work to flush-out and get paid.

The results were as follows:
Un-modded pods: 16718.4 DOGE (48 hours)
Modded pods: 22506.9 DOGE (48 hours)
The difference is 5788.5 DOGE over 48 hours.
That represents a 34.6% increase in return (not hashrate) based on the mods.

Thus, the additional 5788.5 DOGE represents a daily value of 2894.25 DOGE/day increase in value of the modded pods over the unmodded pods.
At current pricing, that's about (2894.25 DOGE * 0.00000130 BTC/DOGE * 500 $/BTC) = $1.88 USD per day.
In other words, you get an additional $1.88 (at today's prices) for each pod-mod
Pretty good deal in the long run.

Again, I wanted to thank Wolfey for performing the mods quickly and professionally, im very happy with his work and results.