Topic: GridSeed 5-chip USB miner voltage mod - page 53. (Read 156991 times)

Go Jamie go!

Heh heh! Good job! Pencil irons rule! 

Nice job. I ordered a rework station but grew impatient. I actually got the station in the mail today but just decided to finish the last 18 by hand because I already had a good system down. You have your work cut out for you. I did 50, can't imagine doing double that 

Modded 50 seeds with the 47k resistor swap over the last few days (only had spare time in the evenings) with a pencil tip soldering iron. Towards the end I had a good enough system down to where I did 18 seeds in just a couple of hours.

Things that helped me along the way:
- cheap-o soldering flux from radio shack. I put a dab on each resistor before I removed the old one. The flux will help the resistor snap into place. It's amazing.
- Pencil tip for the soldering iron
- This 0402 resistor youtube video. I mainly used his trick to remove the resistor. Practice on some old electronics you don't care about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M5tGf9bY6A
- Fine tip tweezers - used these to hold the resistor in place while I tapped one end into position with residual solder on the iron
- This magnifying headset so I could examine my soldering points
http://www.amazon.com/SE-MH1047L-Illuminated-Multipower-Magnifier/dp/B003UCODIA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397090169&sr=8-1&keywords=magnifying+headset
- An old printer that I took apart to practice on some 0402 components before working on the seeds.

I also screwed up a couple of them along the way just by not having a good enough connection to the resistor. No fear, nothing damaged they all work fine after fixing the resistor:
- On one of the seeds the lights started tweaking as soon as I plugged in the usb. I actually had to completely replace the resistor. I may have destroyed it. The seed is working fine with a new resistor.
- On another one I must have not soldered one end of the resistor, so there wasn't an electrical connection. It turned on fine and I even had cgminer running on it for about half an hour waiting for some shares to be accepted. I waited, and waited, nothing. Then finally I took a closer look with the headset and noticed one end looked a little light on solder. I added a bit and that was all it needed. Works fine now.

Overall it was a cool experience. I have never soldered 0402 before. This was pretty fun. Now everything is hashing away at 1150mhz. Oh, I also left the fans in place. These things get warm to the touch with this mod so a bit of airflow can only help.

Then you must really suck with a pencil iron! 
I can beat any hot air gunner with my pencil iron on this mod....anyone! 

Can you set individual frequencies in BFGminer as well on windows?

I have ran CPUminer for a few hours and now BFGminer, and somehow hasrate seems to be better on the pool side with BFGminer

I don't want to put the Zadig drivers on here, real easy plug and play with both CPUminer and BFGminer.

Only I don't know if I should add extra settings in BFGminer, right now I'm using this type of command line ( xxx is just to hide usernames )

should there be a difficulty setting or I don't know, BFG has alot of options that I don't understand.

example :


bfgminer.exe --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://gld.hashfaster.com:3336 -u xxx.xxx -p x -d gridseed -S gridseed:all --set-device gridseed:clock=850

Yes.   Seen that.

I only have 7 of these, but, just about every single quirk someone has reported in this thread I have encountered on one or more of these.  These things are workhorses in some ways but can be really finicky.    

At this point I am almost regretting removing VMOD2 (2 jumpers) on the 4 I had done it to to go to VMOD3 (replace r52 with higher resistance).  Even with only 46k it seems the power usage is so much more for little benefit over VMOD2.    The one I put 49k on only now gets to 1163.    

I have definitely seen one of them seemingly hash for a long time and only report a few or no shares actually accepted.  Lowering the speed helped.    Also seen ones that seem to do better at lower speeds than higher, even though they never report a HW error.   Of course you fall into the trap of variance when watching them over any short period, but some of these were 12 hour runs(still short) on the same pi, same pool and same cgminer instance.    

I like to run per chip stats, it seems to usually be only 1-3 chips on each pod that throws HW errors, guess it depends on if the other chips produce more valid work or not by going higher whether it is worth it. 

Dude, you either have amazing units or your cgminer is wrong. Even at stock freq I get rejects. Either or, nice setup. I tried running my grids of my raspbery but no luck.

I got this one. It's amazing! http://www.amazon.com/ALL-ONE-X-TRONIC-SOLDERING-PREHEATING/dp/B00DRHRZ3S?&linkCode=wsw&tag=dv07-20

I am curious, what rework station do you other electronic hobbyists recommend? (not just for something like this mod)

BTW: I have changed mods on my pair and will see how far they can go now. Will update after I have some solid numbers.

from my cgminer config file.  Just set each GS by it's serial number.  The first freq=850 is the base frequency.

"gridseed-options" : "baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5",
"gridseed-freq" : "6D9522AC5455=1150,6D9808795455=1150,6D95229C5455=1150,6D9108885455=1150,6D90216C5455=1150,6D94217F5455=1150,6D94218F5455=1150,6D9025AE5455=1150,6D9A0F7E5455=1150, etc..."
}

How are you running different Gs at different frequencies? I've been trying to figure this out with no avail. I have 14 GS now and they aren't all stable at the same frequencies thanks in advance!

Also my resistors will be here tomorrow ! can't wait!

80/100 Modded.  I had one GS that was bad pre-mod and I just never noticed until I modded it.  There is a small bump on one of the chips and it just freezes after about a minute.  It is getting replaced.

Tomorrow once I get the rest modded I will start fine tuning them and see how fast each one will go.

The rework station is 50 times easier than using a soldering iron.  I kept blowing the chips off until I started using flux.  I can mod one of these in less than 2 minutes now.  The hardest part is removing the screws.

I've already explained what the point is. I read up on FIFO buffers, stack overflow etc.
I decided they may be causing the intermittent comm failures causing the miners to quit.
I had been using fifo buffer adjustments to compensate with some success but all it did was lengthen the time between comm port failures.
Given the way 16550 UART comm port fifo buffers work, I theorized that I may not need them given the high speed upstream/downstram nature of the miners. I tried it and they work better if not perfectly. NO more comm port failures!
That's the point!

Is there a summary of guide so that I can get the delicious 1200 kh/s on my gridseed? I got lost in the changes of mods and cant figure out the last good one.

Thanks!

Whats the point of disabling FIFO buffer? Mine is enabled for all miners (From COM1 to COM9)

Thanks wolfey. Yes, there was some expense to get started. But it was equipment I wanted to buy anyways. This was just the nudge I needed to make it happen.

I use CGminer and a different driver than you. There is no COM port number assigned. I do not believe there is a FIFO buffer to disable because of this. But thanks for that bit.

Just had a chance to plug it in and start hashing. Overclocked her to 1200MHz and away she goes. I know it just started, but since shares are being accepted we are off to a good start. I'll let it run for 24 hours and watch for hardware errors.

After a couple hours I'll post a screenshot of the pool hash rate.

Hey! Nice work there Volder!
Still, I don't see the need for going to all that expense, risk and trouble for just a simple resistor replacement.
Axials work perfectly and don't require such hassles and expense, as you've no doubt seen.
But you have proven that you have the skills to mod your own pods.
very well done!

By the way, here is a screen shot of some recent hashing being done by my 6 miners.
Very consistent! And my having turned off FIFO buffers all together via Device Manager in Win 7 32bit is working perfectly. Days of ZERO downtime! ZERO restarts! 100% 24/7 hashing! Just the way I want it!
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Oh, and if you folks want to see my handy work, check out this link -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6098563
And if you can't mod your pods yourself, send me a PM and Ill be happy to mod your pods for you!

I saw that too after I posted it. I went back and fixed it again just to be sure.