Topic: [Setup Guide] Blackarrow Bitfury 16 chip board support and tuning thread (Read 13376 times)

Well boards are made and ready for orders check my previous post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitfury-controller-boards-v2-available-748406

ok so i was arguin with BA back and forth for a while now and mostly getting no replies or replies that were late but a couple of days ago i finally got things movin in the right direction.

https://github.com/blackarrowsoftware/

the link above has the controller board files if you want to give them a quick download and check them out. this will help people like me make these boards and repair them without having to figure out what each component rating is and so on blahh blahh but ya hopefully others can benefit from these files. idk what app opens this format but i also havent tried finding out yet because im busy repairin cointerra miners but i saw the email on my phone and wanted to post the info so others know too. the files were justtttt uploaded so they are fresh fresh fresh. enjoy .

I to need a v2 controller. shame we cant get the pcb files and just get bulk produced cause like you said black arrow dont respond to emails and all controllers out of stock

My guess here is increase the timeout setting for cgminer so that it waits a tiny bit longer for work replies? Not sure if you can set that on the fly or would have to recompile.

1. Sooooooo i had a few questions about these miners…..i finally got them workin a while ago but when lookin online for controllers i saw  where blackarrow says 1 v1 controller can handle 6 mining boards each but when i try 6 i get nothing but "bab0 delay getting work reply" errors allond with a few "accepted" messages but mostly the delay errors. when i remove the 6th board the errors go away. when i use a good board from another group of good miners to make sure the board i added the first time was working fine suddenly the delay errors come back lol….i just dont get it.

I soldered the wire to bring the last boards spi voltage up to 1.7-1.8v and even without doing that it happens so with or without the wire it gives the same errors. when 5 are hooked together in a chain they dont get the error but no matter which chain i use to add the board to the same thing happens in cgminer. I made the changes sugested in this thread too and those didnt help stop them. my pi is at 900mhz so its overclocked and not runnin at stock speed but even then it happens. I cant find any support for these damn things except what this thread has and like before im very grateful that some folks took time to post their experiences about setting these up.

black arrow does NOT reply except for one email that looked more like a sales email for their prospero x-3 and not a reply to actually help a buyer out. ontop of that they wont give the files needed so we can make our own effin controllers cause clearly they didnt make enough to handle the amount of users that fried their controller traces due to hooking them up backwards but with the small amount of support they provided im not suprised so many fried :/.

2. what is the switch on the controller for?? i flipped it on one miner and no matter which way i had it the controller powered up and powered the pi and i havent seen anyone else say anything about it so what does it actually fricken do?!?! its weird….its not labeled at all lol.

3. ne one have any v2 controllers they want to sell??

You can get the Raspberry pi/s from Newegg or Newark.   As for the GPIO cable just make one out of a 40 pin IDE cable!  I know it is not the most

graceful approach but in a pinch it works.  Just tone out the 5V feed first to keep from smoking your Pi!  You can half the number of brass risers you

need by lying the boards down on their side with the power connectors pointed up.  If you do this and use 120MM fans you only need 2 per board.

As for the controllers you can redo the ends of the 10 pin cable to act as a sort of "crossover" cable and make you downward facing board connectors

work with the upward facing controllers.  Can't find a stock picture of this so I will try to take one tonight.  You basically cut the end of the 10 pin

cable off, slice it every 2 conducters, twist them 180 degrees and recrimp.

i have about 100 spacers, rpi gpio cable and about 50 of the 8 pin connector cables if anyone is interested in the set?

"Anyone here that can ship me a GPIO cable over night, shipping? To Canada BC?

Also if anyone has bitfury spacers, and stands, and can ship 100 or so off em.
Basically these http://www.dx.com/p/brass-threaded-stand-off-hex-screw-pillars-w-nuts-m3-x-30mm-6-30-pcs-148712#.U4ZENvldVT4.

Also looking for some raspberry pis. Like 2 or so.

I also need some Bitfury controllers that is pointed downwards and not upwards."

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7727928

"I am looking for bitfuries 40GH boards that you couldn't get to work, or is non functional, optionally I'd be willing to take
good working ones as well. Let me know your price.

Conditions, there must be no visual missing components, or burned out parts on the board, must look visually good.
You haven't tried any soldering, or anything to fix the board, and it still doesn't work, no soldering must of been attempted.
If all these are met I will be interested."

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7727382

Im looking to unload my 17 boards, controllers and cables. If you are interested in taking the whole lot and are in the USA just shoot me a PM.

Still looking for some controllers if anyone has any they cant use or just dont want anymore. might want some more hashing boards too if i can get some extra controllers.

I purchased dozers boards.  I will post in this thread when I receive them.  I hope I will have some extra controllers for sale.

Thats cool. mind if i ask how much u got for your boards?? and whos the buyer?? or can you send the buyer my way?? idk who purchased them so i cant contact him/her about the controllers.

if anyone else has any controllers they want to unload both v1 and v2 let me know.

everything has been now sold. maybe the buyer will be able to help out with some of the controllers.

how much for the controllers and which version r they?? same for the boards but mainly the controllers cause i have a ton of boards right now lol.

i think i will sell mine as dont have the time required to tweak these.

if anyone in eu wants 20 boards with all accessories including some spare controller boards let me know.

I setup Cgminer following the directions from Kanos - http://www.kano-kun.net/?p=87

Then I did this

That then moved all of the chainminer files into a new folder - so I could move them back if i needed to

Then


Then

cd to the cgminer directory (/opt/cgminer for me)



I'd make it sure was all running - then press Ctrl+a then D (that tells it to disattach from the screen) -- screen allows stuff to stay running on linux after you end your SSH session.


Once you get everything working -- check the crontab that was default in the image -- Don't bother doing this till you are done tweaking.


see the command about killing the screen -- and it references a file something like /etc/local/rc.d  -- I'm writing this from memory

Open up that file      then you can edit which command it is running - by default it will be trying to run a command to open up chainminer and the stratum proxy.  You can replace this with the command you need to run cgminer.

Hope that helps -- mine still aren't stable - nor are they performing very well - and I'm having to reboot cgminer every 20 minutes to get much out of them other than a metric ton of hardware errors.

i noticed that too.

I also unsoldered the blue boards pins and flipped them around so they can be connected to the gen 1 controlers since thats all i have at this point.

also how do you replace miner proxy with cgminer in the chainminer image? I compiled cgminer and all that but i want to try it out but im not too handy with linux i guess because i cant figure out half this shizz. these miners are the only ones i have ever seen with such crappy support (from the maker that is. community support is amazing and is why i got as far as i have) so i cant figure out why im getting so many spi errors and errors in general. this is what i get:

speed:17010 noncerate[GH/s]:10.609 (0.034/chip) hashrate[GH/s]:176.407 good:741 errors:63253 spi-errors:5038 miso-errors:5396 jobs:336 (record[GH/s]:0.000)

ne ideas would be greatly appreciated. I made the changes to the bus speed like sugested but i cant make sure the chip speed is 900 because i have no idea where the settings are to set the clock speed for the chips or what the settings should be to provide the proper speed and voltage or if im even able to change the voltage period lol. thanks in advance guys and i hope this account doesnt get hacked like my numnutz2005 account did……cant even recover the damn thing……some chineese dude startin postin with it lol but i didnt see the change your password message for heartbleed until it was too late i suppose.

Well ends up today I have the blue cards working with cgminer! Ends up that instead of being intuitive and hooking up the controllers to the cards from the controller to the data out pins, you're supposed to connect the spi cables so they go from data in to the controller...  But now that I switched the cables, with 12 boards, were working at about 370 Gh/s which is a heck of a lot better than 0! But now that it's finally working, I can work on getting the hashing rate up

good call - worth a shot at this point.  

I'm also thinking setting up the pi to kill cgminer and restart it every hour or something.

I've been using difficulty 256 - anyone have better or worse experience with others?