Topic: The combined sidehack-novak usb stick review thread. AKA GekkoScience BM1384 - page 3. (Read 26345 times)

I need some better shots of the cables




this is the best shot of the cable so far

they are working okay see gui for cgminer 4.9.2




here they are in action freq 250 with a fan

I received my 5 sets of y cables from this ebay seller

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1Ft-USB-2-0-A-Female-to-2-x-male-Y-Splitter-Extension-Extender-Lead-Cable-Power/221661361513?

I left him this feedback

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=2012-boutique&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2050430.m2531.l4585

Right?  I still think they're way too bright, stock, too.. bit of tape & marker I reckon.

Sure I am, check out 17 seconds in  One of those arctic breeze USB type things (somewhat quiet, pushing a fair amount of air, easily positioned) from the BEUSB era.

I'm trying to *not* break it - maybe a (bitshopper) production one

The limiting factor in that setup, by the way?  The USB cable (+ connectors) that's going between the power insertion board and the little USB test point board used by the meters.
Vusb@start: 5.66V | Vusb@end: 4.76V | Iusb: 2.37A
(5.66 - 4.76) * 2.37 = 2.133W being dissipated in that assembly.  The USB cable gets very slightly warm (5.5°C above ambient)

I should have a shorter, beefier (cheaper shielding, thicker wires) one somewhere, but I'll probably just stick some test points on the power board instead and plug the Compac in direct when I start pushing it further.  Have to re-mount the flipside heat sink first.

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Edit: Doing just fine at 400MHz:
Starting to get a little warmer though: 50.2°C (27.7°C ambient)

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Edit: And at 431.25MHz:
Though this did take several start-up attempts.  I had it notched up one higher (437.5 / 24Gh/s), but no luck getting that a second time so far.  Maybe with whatever code changes sidehack mentioned to make it a bit less demanding at init.  Leaving it running as is for a while

Nice. I was just talking to someone about BM1384 performance on the S5, and mentioned that Novak and I had talked about freezing a Compac (maybe oil immersion or something) and seeing how far the chip would go before it crapped itself. I don't know about init bursts (which a better driver will fix, and is on our to-do list in progress) but the buck should be good for steady-state currents well in excess of 400MHz. The inductor is rated for about 17A, which a BM1384 should draw less than 13A at 400MHz/0.8V

Wow.. I thought the flashy lights were annoying.
But you aren't running a fan for cooling?

Throwing this back on-topic a bit - have been playing with pushing the Compac a little harder.

Here's a video of it hashing away at ~20.39Gh/s @ 375MHz.  Might want to mute audio, unless you're OZR from our good friends over at the main Russian Bitcoin forum - he seemed to enjoy the fan noise last time, throwing in a little extra in this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjA-m1DbRf8

Quick grab of those stats before I hit post (edit 2: updated again, ~20.59Gh/s as early errors have less influence.  Shutting it down at this point to go add some test points to my power injection board):
temp ambient: 26.2°C
temp heatsink: 44.3°C
temp delta: 18.1°C
( Fan center ~9cm above Compac - got bumped a bit trying to get the Block Erupter USBleep to pick up the blue flashes  )

heh.  I chalk it up to alltimers - er Alzheimer's. yeah yeah thats the ticket.. anything to excuse my errors ya know

see bolding

Yeah I am so guilty of this.

congrats on baby!

I got zadig to run no problems (except one that was my fault; see below) on vista 32 ultimate, win7 starter, win764Pro, and XP (use a special XP version of zadig). its wasnt sidehack stuff it was other USB controlled miners with the same controller chip as sidehacks.

protip: dont replace your HID keyboard driver with zadig

aside to above I do full image backups on dedicated miner computers (well all my boxen actually) once everything is confirmed to be working. then anything at all goes into the weeds just restore form latest backup. saved me from myself a few times, as I regularly forget how stupid I can be heh.

Thank you.

Very cool on the pot by the way. I am going to have fun with this. 
I think the drivers are being a pain with Zadig. I used admin mode as a matter of course. I will take it all down and make sure nothing is in the background running. Should help.

Thanks again I will post my results once I get this going.

congrats on the baby!

as for zadig  I was able to run it as admin with a right click.  I then had all other programs turned off. this got it to load the correct driver.

I then ran cgminer 4.9   I also got cgminer 4.9.2 to work.

as for getting stick recognized try turning the little pot .

  +       <   the pot has the phillips screw  so do a ¼ turn   If you have the gold model heatsink turn it counter clockwise  

also use freq 150 to start  if it starts and tosses hardly any HW errors turn the pot ⅛ clockwise while running then see if lot of HW's occur.

I have not been on much with the new baby coming a couple weeks ago but I am getting back into things now.
I am setting up the stick so I can give my feedback as well.

Zadig is a pain in the butt on the Win 7 setup with these that is for sure.  I will let you know how it goes. cgminer is not finding it right yet but I will fiddle with it and get it going.

Nice work Sidehack and Novak. I am glad to see the sales thread as well.

Yeahhh let's not

Let's instead see if MrTeal and CanaryInTheMine can post with their feedback?

Thanks very much .

I'll raise you my copy/paste to your copy paste (this could get silly)

copy/paste it is;

Can anyone please tell me for 5 or 10 of the units would a powered usb hub be ok to power them and what specs would it need to be?

Also any recommendations on a make/model would be greatly appreciated .

Luke-Jr has requested a stick, so we'll probably see BFGMiner support. That's good news for y'all what use BFGMiner.

My two sticks running on a customized linux build of 4.9.0 (the only real changes were to U3 frequencies available in the Icarus driver) at 300MHz ran for about eleven days without any known hiccups - until, it looks like internet dropped out at the shop this afternoon so now I gotta go fix it. Grumble grumble.