Topic: Just purchased a ModMiner QUAD... (Read 13816 times)

I have seen reports that certain FPGA bitstreams (TML and/or bitfury) allow higher clock speeds and/or higher hashrates coming out, in the range of a 20% increase.

can anyone point me in the right direction or confirm this? For whatever reason my FPGA cards report:

44.6 C   212MHz   211.6Mh/s
31.4 C   216MHz   214.9Mh/s
43.0 C   208MHz   206.5Mh/s

the middle card's heatsink feels the warmest, so im not sure if the temperature reading is a bit low, or if the heatsink is seated really well. In either case, why is cgminer not setting a higher clock on this card? The total hashrate is 630 average over 24hrs, so perhaps that is a limit set in the bitsteam?

1) LED on the card (in slot 2) stays on after programming
2) issue is with the card and not the position (i moved to slot 4)
3) power is not the issue - i removed 2 other cards

CGminer reports only 3/4 cards or 1/2 cards, and the led stays on, so the issue is definitely the card. As mentioned, it visually looks fine, fan spins up alright and no resistors are chipped or missing.

If you have any other suggestions id love to hear them! Could i perhaps use the reset button on the baseboard or reprogram the firmware to get a result, or is this just an issue that is likely the FPGA chip itself?

additionally, the unit will run if only slotspositions 1,3,and 4 are filled correct? (it runs the 3 working cards fine when the bad card is in slot 2, but its only in at the moment because of the cool leds) UPDATE: looks like slot 1&2 are a bank, and 3&4 are a bank, because putting the bum card in slot 3 causes slot 4 to not be seen by cgminer

There are a few possibilities, all easily testable.

The LED on the back of the blade card should go off after configuration.  If it's not, that's the dead card if you only see three.

Swap the cards around - does the bad card follow the baseboard position, or the card?

Second, try with just two cards (one bad card, one good card).  If there is not sufficient supply voltage/amperage, you can end up with unreliable card detection.

I have good cards for the MMQs if you need any.  I also buy dead MMQs or swap for known good hardware.

what if 3 cards work, and the 4th card lights up (the card's led, not the fan obviously) but is not recognised? All resistors look good, is the chip just bad/burnt maybe?

also had a successful swap with bitweasil for my non-working MMQ.  Stand up guy as far as I'm concerned, Thanks!

Glad it worked.

For anyone troubleshooting MMQs, the DC-DC converter in the center seems to go bad far more often than one would expect, and the symptom is that everything works in terms of identifying the board, but the board cannot see any FPGAs.  It will look like everything is working but not find any chips.  You can also verify this with a voltmeter, though I don't recall offhand the pins to test.

If anyone else has dead MMQs exhibiting the "cannot find FPGAs" symptoms, let me know and I'll swap them out as well.  I'm not in any way affiliated with cablepair/btcfgpa/etc, but I have my reasons.

sorry to resurrect an old thread, but i wanted to update everyone.  i never was able to get the MMQ working.  Tom continually came up with answers like "your power supply isn't good enough" etc. etc.  still didn't work after i purchased a new, powerful PSU. 

then i started talking to another member here - Bitweasil - who surprised me with a very kind offer.  having familiarity with the MMQs and their issues, Bitweasil offered to trade me the broken MMQ (which he said seemed to have some bad hardware) for a functional 1.5y ZTEX which would supposedly get around the same hashrate.

due to Tom's comments, i was pretty convinced that i wouldn't be able to run the ZTEX either, because i thought i was just too stupid to get the MMQ working.  still, i went ahead and took Bitweasil up on his offer and, to my surprise, managed to get it up and mining WITHIN FIVE MINUTES of receiving it!  lol  i downloaded the necessary driver for it to work with bfgminer, and it worked immediately. 

hopefully Bitweasil has been able to repair the MMQ so he can use it.  (i know nothing about soldering so i didn't want to try and at that point was already so frustrated that i wanted nothing more to do with the MMQ)

anyway, this is just to say THANK YOU to Bitweasil for his generosity, his helpfulness, and the ZTEX that worked immediately ... after spending months trying to get the MMQ to work and trying to get Tom to communicate with me, this was such a pleasant surprise that i wanted to be sure to post my thanks to Bitweasil. 

Thats what i am thinking as the poster said he moved 3 hours away from original location. I am going to still try and by 4-5 from him but will make the 3hr drive to avoid the scam. Lets see if happens but at the moment not counting it..

If you can find one for $200, yes.  They're still selling for $700-$1000 on eBay.  So it's probably a scam.

 trying to make sure it is not a scam as i found this craigslist ad selling them...hmmm! Going to try and meet in person to avoid losing some BTC

200 would be a steal - where are you getting them?

If I were to get a hold of a couple of these for say $200 each then would it be a good deal with the current difficulty,etc?

I don't have a windows computer available to use .... and the last time that Tom SSH'ed in, he said everything was configured correctly for the MMQ so that it should just be a matter of plugging it in once I had the new power supply.  Didn't change a damn thing.

have you tried a Win7 64 bit?  That would probably be the easiest way to prove if anything is wrong with it.

I got it to work on a WinXP 32 bit but had to mess with the config file

Update: 

It has been over a month and a half since I initially placed my MMQ order.  Two replacement cards later and multiple peoples' attempts to get it working (including Tom, whose product this is) and it STILL will not work.  I've tried three different power supplies, five different operating systems, three forum members with FPGA and Linux experience have tried SSH'ing in to no avail, Tom himself hasn't been able to get it work ... and at this point, I just want this situation resolved. 

Jon -

Were you ever able to successfully get the card working?

Yeah, he moved it to here:

modminerquadstore.com

And now that website is down.

www.btcfpga.com

I spoke to Tom earlier after a couple of attempts got hold of him.

Try calling him, the number is on the modminerquad.com page.

Well, it has been over a week since Tom said he sent my 2nd replacement card and I still haven't received it or had any luck getting the miner to actually mine.  Tom also hasn't responded since Wednesday.    This is getting frustrating.