[Setup Guide] Blackarrow Bitfury 16 chip board support and tuning thread - page 2.

warrensgun

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Quote from: btljuice on June 11, 2014, 08:40:28 PM

For the people who posted that they got the blue boards working. Am I correct in reading that you have a controller with the pins facing down (for at least 1 of the SPI connectors)? Because my controller has all of the pins facing up. That's been my problem getting them going, is I can't get the pins to match.

My blue boards all have pins down - and 2 of the green ones. I had to hook them up to the pins down on the controller. The pins that were down on the controller appeared to have been added after - or the pins that were up were. Either way - it looked like someone soldered the pins on themselves.

btljuice

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For the people who posted that they got the blue boards working. Am I correct in reading that you have a controller with the pins facing down (for at least 1 of the SPI connectors)? Because my controller has all of the pins facing up. That's been my problem getting them going, is I can't get the pins to match.

dozerz

legendary

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just ordered some replacement cables, would explain errors and random burning of the controller.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8535

brettsimons

newbie

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So I finally decided to try CGMiner with no success Sad

. I plugged only 1 board in (it somehow detected 3) and tried to run it and besides connecting to the pool and getting new blocks, all I see are hardware errors and bad chip messages where it slows down the chips until it eventually disables it... Any ideas on what is happening??

https://i.imgur.com/VV8mPyM.jpg
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #2aVwgKCBcWYKbC3T

helipotte

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Pick and place? I need more coffee.

I am still fighting hardware/spi errors. Rebuilding all of the cables that link the boards together. Seems some of them are miscrimped and have opens! This can cause crazy

high errors. I like to keep errors below 2%. If you don't want to torture yourself and rebuild these things I would suggest buying new ones.

warrensgun

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I'll post some pictures later - finally got 18 boards hooked up - in 4 chains. HW error rate seems high.

Went to a computer recycler and bought some server fans that push 100CFM from an 80MM fan - stacked three high on the one side - the output was so powerful the fans blew themselves away from the cards - so I had to rig them up with zip ties.

Ended up using a pack of these B00GWF65GK (well it was similar) and 2 packs of some that were 26 or 28mm from amazon. Then i grabbed some small plastic ones to use as spacers.

This thing isn't pretty by any means.

It is drawing power from a Dell server PSU with breakout board from Minersource - the Barrel connector adapaters are getting warm - so I plan on running new wires with the 2 screw adapaters from amazon straight to the dell PSU. For 12 boards Kill-a-watt says about 475 watts from the wall.

I couldn't get chainminer to work for a darn - so I ended up the cgminer route.

Several chips still get too hot - or are just bad - cause cgminer tries to increase their rate and then drops it later on.
BaB0: chip 59 disabled!
[2014-06-11 00:16:11] BaB0: Chip 106 BAD - speed down from 52 to 51
[2014-06-11 00:16:12] BaB0: Chip 122 High errors 94.30% - speed down 52 to 51

dozerz

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Quote from: helipotte on June 06, 2014, 04:01:31 PM

Quote from: warrensgun on June 06, 2014, 02:37:15 PM

Got some of the boards working - the ones with the pins facing down - hooked to the controller with pins facing down. Couldn't get chainminer to work for a darn - so I'm using cgminer for now. More HW errors than I'd like but I'm hoping that can be configured away.

I have 11 of the 18 boards hooked up now. Based on space, power and the lack of standoffs - I have to get some more parts in to get the rest working

Regarding lack of standoffs, I have found laying the boards down and using two on the bottom to connect them works well. For me, most of the dinky

40mm fans where toast anyway so I removed them and use three 120mm fans per bank of 10 boards. I reversed the cables and run them under

each board and the fans blow in from the cable side. This allowed me to use half the standoffs AND get better cooling. They take up slighty more

space but I have plenty of that. I will post a pic soon. Works really well actually.

Edit: Finally got the errors under control. Seems more than four boards drops the SPI bus voltage too much. Back fed this into the last board on pin 10 and no more errors!

I noticed that with 5 boards, the voltage was only 1.55 at the last one. some chips apparently don't like it this low and send out a lot of bad data even though they are hashing

with low errors.

please post some pics including your mods to the boards and cooling setup. i have some time this week to start experimenting and would love to see how yours is setup.

helipotte

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Quote from: warrensgun on June 09, 2014, 11:48:23 AM

Quote from: helipotte on June 06, 2014, 04:01:31 PM

Regarding lack of standoffs, I have found laying the boards down and using two on the bottom to connect them works well. For me, most of the dinky

40mm fans where toast anyway so I removed them and use three 120mm fans per bank of 10 boards. I reversed the cables and run them under

each board and the fans blow in from the cable side. This allowed me to use half the standoffs AND get better cooling. They take up slighty more

I tried this - and the boards that i removed the fans from - seem now to get way too hot. I pointed 4 120mm case fans at the bank of 5 boards to see if it helps

How much air do your fans move. I am using fans that move about 60-70C cfm. Three per 10 boards. Most of the heatsinks are just warm to the touch.

The fans aren't quiet but where they are this doesn't matter. Don't worry though these boards are not very heat sensitive.

warrensgun

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Mining since bitcoin was $1

Quote from: helipotte on June 06, 2014, 04:01:31 PM

Regarding lack of standoffs, I have found laying the boards down and using two on the bottom to connect them works well. For me, most of the dinky

40mm fans where toast anyway so I removed them and use three 120mm fans per bank of 10 boards. I reversed the cables and run them under

each board and the fans blow in from the cable side. This allowed me to use half the standoffs AND get better cooling. They take up slighty more

I tried this - and the boards that i removed the fans from - seem now to get way too hot. I pointed 4 120mm case fans at the bank of 5 boards to see if it helps

helipotte

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Pick and place? I need more coffee.

Quote from: warrensgun on June 09, 2014, 09:35:19 AM

You can order standoffs from some of the dx and aliexpress type sites - or several sellers on amazon have them. search for 3mm standoff or something like that and pick the ones you want.

I've gotten about 11 boards up and running anywhere between 400 - 500 ghash on cgminer.

I'm going to play around with some reconfiguring of the stand offs - as suggested by helipotte. As well as try to reduce the number of boards per chain.

I'm not sure what was meant by the back feeding on pin 10 so I likely won't be doing that.

It's clear that one of my first mishaps was to connect boards with the pins down and boards with the pins up - as well as then not worrying about whether the pins were up or down on the controller card.

Pin 10 is the SPI bus voltage. What I did was run a wire from the control board 1.8Vdd to the empty connector (spi out) on the last board in the chain. I

noticed the voltage drop was the greatest on the last board. What connecting a wire does is basically a pull-up of this voltage. The gauge of wire used in

the 10 pin cables is, in my opinion, to small for the current required by more than 48 chips. This leads to SPI errors and chips being marked as bad/slow

by Cgminer.

warrensgun

full member

Activity: 195

Merit: 100

Mining since bitcoin was $1

You can order standoffs from some of the dx and aliexpress type sites - or several sellers on amazon have them. search for 3mm standoff or something like that and pick the ones you want.

I've gotten about 11 boards up and running anywhere between 400 - 500 ghash on cgminer.

I'm going to play around with some reconfiguring of the stand offs - as suggested by helipotte. As well as try to reduce the number of boards per chain.

I'm not sure what was meant by the back feeding on pin 10 so I likely won't be doing that.

It's clear that one of my first mishaps was to connect boards with the pins down and boards with the pins up - as well as then not worrying about whether the pins were up or down on the controller card.

chadtn

sr. member

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Merit: 250

I returned mine. Too much damage. Waiting for my refund now. Did no one get the stand offs?

Chad

firejuan

sr. member

Activity: 256

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Because it's sterile...

Who got their boards from the fire sale on minersourse? I also didn't get the stand off's so I am trying to figure something out. I got my Dell 750 server PSUs in Friday so I hope to have the rest of my supplies gathered and hashing soon. It is bothering with 72 boards just sitting in a box not doing anything. Undecided

terrapinflyer

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Im getting some of the blue boards showing in cgminer now but they get nothing but HW errors

helipotte

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Pick and place? I need more coffee.

Quote from: warrensgun on June 06, 2014, 02:37:15 PM

Got some of the boards working - the ones with the pins facing down - hooked to the controller with pins facing down. Couldn't get chainminer to work for a darn - so I'm using cgminer for now. More HW errors than I'd like but I'm hoping that can be configured away.

I have 11 of the 18 boards hooked up now. Based on space, power and the lack of standoffs - I have to get some more parts in to get the rest working

Regarding lack of standoffs, I have found laying the boards down and using two on the bottom to connect them works well. For me, most of the dinky

40mm fans where toast anyway so I removed them and use three 120mm fans per bank of 10 boards. I reversed the cables and run them under

each board and the fans blow in from the cable side. This allowed me to use half the standoffs AND get better cooling. They take up slighty more

space but I have plenty of that. I will post a pic soon. Works really well actually.

Edit: Finally got the errors under control. Seems more than four boards drops the SPI bus voltage too much. Back fed this into the last board on pin 10 and no more errors!

I noticed that with 5 boards, the voltage was only 1.55 at the last one. some chips apparently don't like it this low and send out a lot of bad data even though they are hashing

with low errors.

warrensgun

full member

Activity: 195

Merit: 100

Mining since bitcoin was $1

Got some of the boards working - the ones with the pins facing down - hooked to the controller with pins facing down. Couldn't get chainminer to work for a darn - so I'm using cgminer for now. More HW errors than I'd like but I'm hoping that can be configured away.

I have 11 of the 18 boards hooked up now. Based on space, power and the lack of standoffs - I have to get some more parts in to get the rest working

helipotte

hero member

Activity: 650

Merit: 500

Pick and place? I need more coffee.

Quote from: dozerz on June 06, 2014, 06:44:27 AM

is it worth making available a arch linux image with compiled cgminer for these?

Raspbian is working well for me. Just imaged it to a class 10 SD card and complied cgminer on it. Getting about 785Gh out of 20 cards. They do seem

to glitch up sometimes and chips get set to bad status. A Cgminer restart clears them. Working on fixing this. I tried Minepeon with updated cgminer but

it seemed to require a lot more of the CPU. Huh

It would always max it out and slow down Cgminer.

helipotte

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Activity: 650

Merit: 500

Pick and place? I need more coffee.

Quote from: terrapinflyer on June 05, 2014, 06:58:07 PM

Has anyone got the blue boards to run yet?
I cant get any of them up.

Most of my boards are blue. They all run OK. Just check your controller. Blue cards need the SPI connector to be on the underside for the pins to match.

If in doubt, check with a multimeter in continuity mode. Be sure to check pin 10, this is the 1.8V bus feed. If you connect it backwards, you risk burning

up the controller card! I am not where the documentation I made is but I figured out the pinout. I think it is:

1 MISO
2 ground
3 MOSI
4 ground
5 SCLK
6 ground
7 NC/external clock
8 ground
9 ground
10 1.8Vdd bus

This is from memory, will verify later, but I am sure about 9 and 10.

dozerz

legendary

Activity: 2242

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is it worth making available a arch linux image with compiled cgminer for these?

warrensgun

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Activity: 195

Merit: 100

Mining since bitcoin was $1

my Rpi had a version of Scripta on it - so I just downloaded the image file in the first post on this thread and went from there.

Topic: [Setup Guide] Blackarrow Bitfury 16 chip board support and tuning thread - page 2. (Read 13376 times)