Topic: Say. If somebody built another small miner... (Read 2371 times)

Ah cool, thanks for the insight! Sounds like a good methodology - looking forward to it then

Going by history, sidehack will usually iron out the bugs/production process on the USB sticks first before moving onto the more expensive to manufacture pods.

Hey there, pod miner originally alluded to in this thread's start is still in the works or was the project substituted by Ferrari / Compac F?

Oh yeah um, the official announcement with pictures and real-world performance stats.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gekkoscience-has-a-new-stickminer-that-does-300gh-5355470

So we're still ironing out some kinks, but I got two sticks on my testbench right now, each putting up 330GH at 13.5 watts from the USB bus.

You know, in case y'all wanted a little more to get excited about.

Superb! I may well see if I can get one over here in the UK then (via 419 if no EU distributors get them). If not I’ll wait for the new Pod *crosses fingers hoping there will be one*.

Just like all the previous 'Pacs, because the chip (same as used in the T17's) has different requirements it needs a new driver for it so, yes. Kano is working on it as we type

So will this stick require an updated version of the Gekko cgminer?

Anybody have a coupon?

fuck the coupon I ordered 1.

When I did direct sales, pre-orders were common because I needed to raise money for production. The only difference here is I told my resellers we had a new thing before I announced it on the forum.

But yes, GekkoScience is dropping a new stick. We're still tuning the driver so a full top-end test hasn't been done yet but the testing specs are already a significant improvement on the NewPac.

And this one is Red.

believe the link to 419 mining site is above which has it available for preorder - though it is a very short preorder as they ship next month, if I recall correctly.

the only reference is that he has never done a pre-order before so some I think were questioning the validity of the 419 sale.

pre order is not an issue.

i want one where do I sign for it?

yes you did, I guess that we didn't hear it from you and that it is a pre-order threw a lot of us off.

So whats the specs for it? Obviously it will need the Gekko USB Hub. But whats the power draw like? Will there be an official announcement and EU distributors?

Nice looking. I Will need to get it.

Hey, I told you guys we were working on exciting stuff.

... and a reminder for anyone who buys a Ferrari
You need a good high amp USB hub to power them if you don't already have one:
https://www.419mining.com/shop/cables/gekkoscience-7-port-base-hub/

The announcement email:

Ok, calming thoughts… So we just had a happy surprise, GekkoScience sent us a Newpac Shipment! We will be posting 50 units tomorrow (Wednesday 8/4) and an additional 50 on Friday 8/6. If you receive this email,  you will be notified when the units are posted.
 
Even More Amazing, The Ferrari is here! 🏎
What is the Ferrari? Imagine a newpac, capable of 200GH STOCK, estimated at around 350GH max.  This little guy likes high speeds, so we figure it is marketed specifically as an overclocker.
 
This is not intended to be a NewPac replacement, more of a short run special edition product and will be available via Pre-order only. We (419Mining) are limited to a max of 200 units.
 
We will be posting the unit tomorrow with a limited stock of 200 units and will be sold at $200 per unit. AGAIN, this is a preorder! The estimated deliverable date is late September.
 
 
Nicholas Craig
Chief Technical Officer

VERY surprised at 2 things:
Sidehack has said nothing publicly about these.
It is a pre-sale which is something Sidehack has never approved of before.

From Discord chats in his pool's room we know that a certain developer (not VH or -ck) is working on the driver for it but seems very odd that Sidehack has allowed 419 to make this announcement.

https://www.419mining.com/shop/miners/gekkoscience-compac-f/

Neither did I and I have purchased from them before. Its got my spidey senses tingling now at the anticipation of a new Gekko product 

ahh for a usb - and I didnt get that email

A new 200gh/s stick from gekkoscience is mentioned in the email

about which miner? the new one? or one of the existing ones?

I think 419 mining emailed me about this miner being offered today

I don't have any solid news right now, but we're working on some stuff that should be pretty exciting here shortly. The rest of this year, if plans stay on track, is going to be a lot of fun.

I agree. sidehack's gear has been phenomenal so far, and I trust the product. Even though Apollo looks, and based on reviews on here, sounds like a good product, I truck the gekkoscience brand and would gladly pre-order if it would help get new gekkoscience gear to us home miners.

Yes if its quiet like a Noctua fan and tiny. But that 200+GH USB stick is something i want!

A lot of us already own Sidehack’s hardware. I’m happy to support GREAT engineering.

Sidehack does not do pre-orders. Personally, I have always felt that taking pre-orders without a proven product is a highly unethical practice.

The miner is a work in progress and until his products are built, tested, and parts sourced for production he does not offer them for sale.  

Update?

But a preorder link would be way better 

I personally would love one. Getting back into crypto after a long hiatus, would love to set up a mini plug&play rig that can hold it's own against the mass of ASICs nowadays. Still have a have a block eruptor in a desk somewhere, have fond memories of that lil guy

So its been a couple of months now since you proposed the idea and from what I've read you have a big thumbs up for the go ahead.

Is there an update forthcoming on what you're dreaming up? My R606 and 8 newpacs are looking for a new friend.  I also ordered the standalone miner from Apollo so waiting on that one to arrive.

Anything home BTC miner related is a big swing in the right direction so I will continue to support any company or persons that develop them.

Count me in!

Sidehack, I’m a “long time listener, first time caller”. Your hardware is solid. Here to support you and your builds. Put me down for 2.

Yup I'd be interested as well.  Still have my 2 R606's and 4 newpacs running and have been for the most part trouble free. One pod had a fan die in it but was easy enough for me to rig up a couple of fans to it.

Would you expect any less from a Gekkoscience product 

I would buy another R606 like miner if it was developed, my R606 which i bought in 2019 still works after almost 2 years

sign me up also! Thanks

just now seeing this thread, I am stoked - if you need anyone to test one, I would like to volunteer - I am sure you have no shortage of volunteers

either way, I look forward to seeing what you do. I love my r606's had 4 of them but my son now has 2 of them.

I suppose there are sides to being a good seller although responsibility for unit / user malfunction cannot entirely be a fault of the seller. I think cooling in gaming style cases has improved leaps and bounds over the last decade... the power supply is a third party addition, utilising the pcie blanks for spacing with  some kind of custom cradle for a tek-fix to the case / chassis would possibly work? Those custom milled heat sinks could be turned down a notch and hey presto -- a scalable blade based system   --- you could prohibit user malfunction with the heat sinks.

Been wanting this for years.

Yeah, I guess I didn't think that through from the customer service side. Although you could probably just put in a very low thermal cutoff, it's not worth it. But it would still be cool as an option, I like home mining even if it's not efficient, but hate the way miners look.

-Dave

Intending the end user to supply the case becomes a significant factor for cooling, and I don't trust end users to do this correctly often enough to base a product around the idea. Leaves a lot of room for the occasional idiot to roast his unit and talk without ceasing about service and replacement and to quote the lady from the meme, "ain't nobody got time fo' dat".

I posted something similar the other day.

Makes you wonder if something like the old BFL monarchs would work. They could be hooked up via USB or through a PCIe connector.
They were more or less a massive, at the time before all the insane sized GPUs, PCIe card.

Back then the few people who got them used USB.

Now I have one in a PC case in the corner of the room acting as a space heater. It does not look like miner, it does not sound like a miner.
It's looks like an older mid tower PC.

Yes, it's not hooked up though the PCie at the moment, just though an RPi sitting in the case. But the concept seems interesting.

Would also save on manufacturing costs, since there would be no case, just a board.

-Dave

I'm genuinely surprised that the network hashrate is even viewable, it's gotta be a given that the public pool fee rates are disproportionately applied, i mean i reckon at least half the visible pools are using their own mining rigs, which as you say are manufactured by the same enterprise.

I gather this means Gekko Science has embargos against various corporations... I was really only suggesting from a manufacturing perspective and in terms of managing risk, say have a card compatible with an atx / mini-atx would create several liability, a SSH access for the product - it would mitigate a concern for Gekko Science in the product's distribution (though it is my intention, I am not readily read up on US law, but from a UK comparison). There are benefits to a "third party chassis".

"bigger commercial contractors" can take a hike, they already own the entire hardware market

I'd definitely be considering a few. Been tinkering with an R606 I purchased from bitshopper, its pretty deadly. I tried it on my old slush account, not making much returns there; however, to be expected. So I've put the unit on at http://pool-btc.ga mining solo BVG, its smashes those blocks like an absolute beast, some really clever gadgetry going on, hardware was always my issue back in the day, the S3's I was running were bought second hand, so the r606 coupled with a lower difficulty coin - I've never seen anything like it.

I've been deploying some mining contracts through http://miningrigrentals.com, and the r606 (solo-http://pool-btc.ga) is outmatching an S9 (pplns) http://persianmine.net, though this may be due to the difficulty settings used by the pools on the coins I am targeting (mainly BVG).

I like the r606 form factor, although for a stack something like those FPGA cards in a ATX / mini-ATX case would look pretty good, if cooling wasn't an issue.

I would suggest that keeping the Rpi away from the assembly would be a good idea at least for offering a scalable product, I think issues experienced by R606 users may be associated with RAM, the headless Rpi 4 is running at least one r606 very well, i don't really know enough about what each component in that configuration is doing, but an FPGA style offering to be paired with a proliant system would probably spark alot of interest from bigger commercial contractors.

From the RnD off this device i've bitten the bullet and building a cryptopool at http://moonpool.io

Keep us posted !

Count me in I would take one for sure. 

I use Duplo to place brackets under/around small mining hardware (and my network devices)
Got lots of it from when the kids were young, it's very sturdy even when put together, and it has a very low % contact area on the top.

I intend on making another R606-sized device. Been considering the idea of a ~300W machine with a built-in Pi controller in a simple case. Still just an idea, we're still very early in dev, but it'd be pretty nifty.

I would be interested in three or four of these once you have them ready!  I have been looking for a replacement to the R606's and you do make great hardware!
I would also probably design and 3d print some kind or bracket or case if they came without one.  I've done some carbon fiber style cases that can take a bit of heat.  If I did design something I would release it for everyone to use.

I'm interested, depending on the price, fan noise and whether it will be available in Europe.


A mini itx case is a good idea. I have some metal plates in this form factor with mounting holes to build an adapter plate. I hope that if the new miner should show up, they will have some holes to attach to an adapter plate with spacers.

I'll be doing some testing with soldering heatsinks, but I'm already using a low-temp soldering process for chips so it'll take a lot of experimenting to be safe/reliable. Most likely I'll stick to my screwed-on heatinks. The biggest thing there will be that surface plating is connected to power ground, so heatsinks from adjacent voltage nodes must remain isolated. But that copper plating should be the next best thing to an exposed die for reducing thermal resistance, assuming it doesn't delaminate. But I don't want the kind of heat density and total temperature that should cause that.

What isn't awesome is how they attached heatsinks on these... they missed the mark there big time.

If you can find a way to avoid soldering the heatsink to the top of the chip, do it. I've been repairing 17 series hashboards and it seems like nearly all issues are related in one way or another to those heatsinks. The chips have a film on top to interface between the chip -> solder -> heatsink. Many times the film fails and delaminates from the chip. Then the chip overheats to the point of melting solder and there ya go.

Also see a lot of problems with excess solder from the application of the heatsinks falling down onto the board. Little balls of solder precariously held in place by remaining flux residue... just waiting to short out pins after the right nudge shakes them free.

I just joined this forum literally / specifically because of THIS thread, and the future potential product(s) being discussed here.

@sidehack I just found out about your products, and it is truly awesome and appreciated that you do this type of work.

I wish I had known about the previous products when they were first released, as those latest ones being from Q4 2018 are slightly dated now... which is exactly why I just joined here: to be among the first to find out when the next product(s) get released (especially those based on the 1397)!

(I also looked into the FutureBit gear and as sidehack said it raises the bar... )

Looking forward to your next generation of ASIC USB and pod products... (hopefully this year?)  ;-)

Cheers.

Well I don't know about the protocol. VH is working on that. My job is the hardware, and I gotta say, all the hardware improvements to the chip are AWESOME. Like when I saw a spec sheet I was really confused about a lot of things because it was all so different, but when I saw 'em on a board it started making sense and now I'm genuinely impressed at how well thought-out these chips are. It'll mean a lot of design changes from the old stuff, but it also means the new designs will be a heck of a lot easier.

At least the footprint is the same, so the various iterations of stenciling and process changes we figured out for BM1387 will still apply.

Of course ... why make it easy when you can arbitrarily just switch everything around....

Are you able to get datasheets for these or do you have to reverse-engineer all the details?

Yes I did mean 1387. Had 1397 on the mind lately for, oh, no particular reason.

From 1387 to 1397 they use the same footprint but from what I can tell, entirely different pinouts, power levels, even the protocol has changed somewhat. It's definitely not a drop-in replacement.

Did you mean 1387?

I was wondering why you wouldn't just use the 1397, seems like the pin functions are pretty close to identical. Do they mess with the commands over the serial interface enough to make switching a hassle?

Might double your BOM cost, but also doubles efficiency....

Yea it has got a decent efficiency for us home miners (although awful compared to industrial gear).

Have you got any sort of time frame for the usb sticks or the new chip pod (assuming its a pod/R606 style)?  I know some would hold you to a date but I’m just wondering if its this year or next lol

An S5 size package that can reuse the heat sinks and controllers would be awesome, I'll take 20-30 S5 worth lol..

That's a work in progress. We might be able to hit 300GH.

Also, the original idea mentioned in this thread has largely petered out. I was looking at a thing with a butt-ton of cheap 1397 running at bottom clock that I could put together quickly, but I think I'll move forward with new chips instead. The new Futurebit gear raises the stakes a little.

So whats this 200GHs+ USB stick sidehack?

Newpac with new chips? Does it need extra juice? Will the GS hub handle it?

I'm down if you put up orders.

@sidehack I am interested. I am still holding on to my old S1/S3 units in case you ever finish your upgrade kit idea.

I'm basically interested too.
Which chip?

Guess I need to step up dev on my end. I'm way behind on R&D on account of manufacturing backlog and being shorthanded what with the plague we got going on. VH and I are working on some fun stuff, which includes having recently proved a USB connection like we use on NewPac and Terminus can exceed 4TH, but it takes more time than I have right now.

yeah, it's going to be $600 for the whole deal.  He set it up so you can add on the extra hashboards to the main unit or run it off of a raspberry pie with ha separate psu.

I think $349 is for a hash board only.

So now you have a baseline of what is going to be coming, futurebit who has been making LTC stuff for years is now going to be making a BTC miner.

https://www.futurebit.io

Going to be interesting to see if they actually make that price point & deliver but they have been doing it for years so I guess they know what they are doing at this point.

Edit: The 2T board is $349, the board + PS + controller with full node is $600

-Dave

Nothing real to report, just doing some testing and figured I'd check to see if people would care if that test turned into gear.

May be something, may be nothing. Depends on markets and other projects.

So whats in the pipeline sidehack? Any spoiler photos? Any more details? Chips? size? Layout?

I'm interested to know more. 

Yep I'd purchase one

 Interested.

Always interested in hobby/home miners.

Another option is make it fit mini ITX motherboard mounts so it could go in a mini-itx case for easy cooling - like this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T94W9YS.

sure, if it will be available in europe to. 140 W for 2 TH/s is an argument to buy it.

Just setup 4 R606 from 419mining with your hub and an HP 1200 PSU.  Great little setup for lottery mining.

I would definitely be interested in something with more power - be nice to have 20+TH home mining

Even if you produced basically a motherboard full of asic chips that had atx/mtx etc mounting holes so it could easily be mounted in an open air frame like this https://www.amazon.com/Overclock-Computer-Aluminum-Chassis-Graphics/dp/B07YYZSYQ6.

Sign me up.

I'm interested. Please tell how much it cost, size and what about noise.
Also wanted to buy R606 but can't find anywhere.

Depends on price.

Not to put too fine a point on it but you can get very high priced FPGAs to do 2TH @ 80W add in a bit for fan & such and you are still well under 100W. 145W although still nothing in the real world of power is still a big % over what is out there. I own several of just about everything you made, but unless this is really low cost I would have to pass.

-Dave

Yes yes and another Yes!

I was tempted to get another 606 to replace my 6xnewpacs. But now i think ill wait.

Interested depending on price point.  If it’s good I’d probably buy 10-15 just for kicks, plus it would be a reminder of how 20-30TH/s looks compared to my racks full of hardware in 16 lol!  Plus could just let it play the lotto.

I'll buy one and do a review for it!

I would grab 1 or 2

I assume  they are small sized.

Would definitely be interested in a couple to point at my Kanopool solo account along with your sticks that are already happily mining there.

I live in a country with a very hot climate, and even when temps are pretty high, I can get away with 50% fan speed on S9 which uses two 12cm fans, and 50% speed is 2500-3000rpm, provided that I underclock the miner to 10th or so, where power consumption is below or right about 1000w, 140 watts worth of heat is really nothing serious, it can be really silent and run in a hot climate.

@sidehack, sadly, I am not a hobby miner and thus I won't be interested in small mining pods, although I think 2terahash per second at 140w is a great achievement, and I have always admired your work.

With that being said, if the price is right, I might be interested in 1 or 2 of them just to solo mine on ckpool.

Good luck.

Wouldn't have a fancy shiney case or milled heatsinks. The 606 takes freaking FOREVER to build, what with all the custom metalwork. Going fast and simple here. Quiet I guess depends on how much of a 120mm fan it takes to clear 140 watts. Sure won't be a turbine.

Have a price point in mind?  Would it still be quiet?

Also I live by Miami now, quite a bit warmer than Wisconsin would that be a problem you think?

Same concept as your 606? I would be interested.

...that ran around 2TH over USB from around 145W (12V PCIe), would anyone buy it?