[GUIDE] BitFury Miner Support/Tuning

[daddyfatsax]

Any thermal paste with metal can be electrically capacitive, but are not conductive. This means while the thermal paste may hold a charge, it does not transfer a charge from one object to another. But their is always a chance of something going wrong if you just slather it on there.

[klondike_bar]

I have gone almost a month at 400+gh and now recently my reported speeds are more like 200-300 at the pool.  Reported rates on the unit itself are in the 300-350 range but they used to be almost 500.  I have applied heatsinks to the backs of the chips and voltage regulater area and this is a climate controlled room with cool air blowing over the cards.  This is the new version hardware as well.  I regularly have cards going to zero, I manually tune them as far as 49 and they work at low rates and another card goes to zero, always at least one card down, sometimes as many as three.  I am using a 1200w power supply as well so it's hard to believe it's because they aren't getting juice. 

Any thoughts?

bitfury changed the exact chip voltage a few times between batches. most batches have some extra headroom to pencil mod the voltages higher but there are a few batches that almost benefit from the opposite.

take a multimeter and check the voltage beween the top contact on the inductor and a GND terminal on the m-board. 0.8-0.88V is the ideal range if you have reasonable amount of heatsinks AND airflow. If its <0.8V, do a pencil mod. if its >0.88V, improve the cooling. add a small heatsink to the thermal vias of the regulator on the backside of the board. this chip does a lot of work and needs just as much cooling as the ASICs

[BTClobsta]

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but can I put bfgminer or cgminer on the pi and use that instead of chainminer? From the bfgminer page, there is no support for the V3 M-board and I have not been able to get cgminer running. I can compile it with bitfury enabled, but when I start it up I get nothing.

i'm successfully running salfter's image of bfgminer from here:

https://asktom.cf/index.php?topic=251966.msg4511347#msg4511347

just installed it yesterday and the great news is it seems to have solved my "reset" problems i described earlier.  that was my first priority in evaluating bfgminer.  i still need to fine tune them as the hashing rate is not optimal with a fair # of HW errors on some rigs but i'm very much encouraged.

Awesome. I wasn't sure about that one, but I will give it a try. Thanks for the help.

make sure you change the pool settings as they currently are pointed at his pool 

got it working guys. turns out that BTCGuild was having problems with the server kicking off the bitfury. btcguild fix that problems now.

[benny32]

I have gone almost a month at 400+gh and now recently my reported speeds are more like 200-300 at the pool.  Reported rates on the unit itself are in the 300-350 range but they used to be almost 500.  I have applied heatsinks to the backs of the chips and voltage regulater area and this is a climate controlled room with cool air blowing over the cards.  This is the new version hardware as well.  I regularly have cards going to zero, I manually tune them as far as 49 and they work at low rates and another card goes to zero, always at least one card down, sometimes as many as three.  I am using a 1200w power supply as well so it's hard to believe it's because they aren't getting juice.  

Any thoughts?

bitfury changed the exact chip voltage a few times between batches. most batches have some extra headroom to pencil mod the voltages higher but there are a few batches that almost benefit from the opposite.

take a multimeter and check the voltage beween the top contact on the inductor and a GND terminal on the m-board. 0.8-0.88V is the ideal range if you have reasonable amount of heatsinks AND airflow. If its <0.8V, do a pencil mod. if its >0.88V, improve the cooling. add a small heatsink to the thermal vias of the regulator on the backside of the board. this chip does a lot of work and needs just as much cooling as the ASICs

I was under the impression that pencil mods were done on h-boards, not the m-board?  I do have heatsinks on every card, back of both chips and regulators as well so that should be covered.

[daddyfatsax]

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but can I put bfgminer or cgminer on the pi and use that instead of chainminer? From the bfgminer page, there is no support for the V3 M-board and I have not been able to get cgminer running. I can compile it with bitfury enabled, but when I start it up I get nothing.

i'm successfully running salfter's image of bfgminer from here:

https://asktom.cf/index.php?topic=251966.msg4511347#msg4511347

just installed it yesterday and the great news is it seems to have solved my "reset" problems i described earlier.  that was my first priority in evaluating bfgminer.  i still need to fine tune them as the hashing rate is not optimal with a fair # of HW errors on some rigs but i'm very much encouraged.

So I got the new image installed and nothing comes up when I get into bfgminer. Is there some argument I am missing starting up bfgminer?

[Keefe]

I have gone almost a month at 400+gh and now recently my reported speeds are more like 200-300 at the pool.  Reported rates on the unit itself are in the 300-350 range but they used to be almost 500.  I have applied heatsinks to the backs of the chips and voltage regulater area and this is a climate controlled room with cool air blowing over the cards.  This is the new version hardware as well.  I regularly have cards going to zero, I manually tune them as far as 49 and they work at low rates and another card goes to zero, always at least one card down, sometimes as many as three.  I am using a 1200w power supply as well so it's hard to believe it's because they aren't getting juice.  

Any thoughts?

bitfury changed the exact chip voltage a few times between batches. most batches have some extra headroom to pencil mod the voltages higher but there are a few batches that almost benefit from the opposite.

take a multimeter and check the voltage beween the top contact on the inductor and a GND terminal on the m-board. 0.8-0.88V is the ideal range if you have reasonable amount of heatsinks AND airflow. If its <0.8V, do a pencil mod. if its >0.88V, improve the cooling. add a small heatsink to the thermal vias of the regulator on the backside of the board. this chip does a lot of work and needs just as much cooling as the ASICs

I was under the impression that pencil mods were done on h-boards, not the m-board?  I do have heatsinks on every card, back of both chips and regulators as well so that should be covered.

The "pencil mod" is done on the H-cards. Most people are measuring voltage from the top of the inductor on the H-card to the GND screw on the M-board. IMO, it's much better to use the individual H-card's ground though, because there's a significant difference that increases the further the card is from the power connections on the M-board. Using the M-board's GND screw, you might get a measurement of 0.90v at the farthest card and 0.85v at the nearest, while the true voltage on the cards is 0.83v for both. The chips only care about the voltage difference between the power and ground planes on their own card, not the voltage rise on the ground bus across the M-board. A good ground point on an H-card is the exposed ground pad on the back side of the card, behind the regulator IC.

[Swimmer63]

I have a head scratcher and maybe you all have some ideas.
I just received an RMA v2 mboard to replace one that semi melted the pci-e sockets.  I have both screw terminals and pci-e plugs in now.  So hopefully that won't happen again.
I lined up all my h-boards in the same order I had them on the old m-board.  Started up and I some were working others were not.  Typical Bitfury fire drill.
So I proceeded to move around my boards. Let them go and come back and fiddle some more.
Then the miner just stops.  Can't connect to it or pull it up in the browser.  Pi is flashing red lights.
So I figure bad SD and get a new card, download v2 image change the card.  Same deal, flashing red.
So I pulled out a new pi I had sitting around and plugged that in.  Same deal, flashing red.
No idea what to do so I changed out my ethernet cable.  Shazam - the pi has green lights and I can see the Admin page in my browser.
Here is the problem.  I can't get it to mine now.  Since all this happened it will not mine.  I have changed the pool configuration, changed the ip address just for the heck of it, rebooted ten times and let it sit for an hour.
I see the "0GH/s" flash ever so slightly every 10 seconds or so like it does when it's mining.  But every card is at zero.  I have 14 cards and was doing about 450 Gh/s.
So if anyone can help I would appreciate it.  I don't know what else to try.
Thanks!

EDIT:  Here is what the chips look like.  But I don't know much about this page other than they are not working.  I also have 14 boards so this is not nearly enough chips.

[cypherdoc]

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but can I put bfgminer or cgminer on the pi and use that instead of chainminer? From the bfgminer page, there is no support for the V3 M-board and I have not been able to get cgminer running. I can compile it with bitfury enabled, but when I start it up I get nothing.

i'm successfully running salfter's image of bfgminer from here:

https://asktom.cf/index.php?topic=251966.msg4511347#msg4511347

just installed it yesterday and the great news is it seems to have solved my "reset" problems i described earlier.  that was my first priority in evaluating bfgminer.  i still need to fine tune them as the hashing rate is not optimal with a fair # of HW errors on some rigs but i'm very much encouraged.

So I got the new image installed and nothing comes up when I get into bfgminer. Is there some argument I am missing starting up bfgminer?

try

Code:

screen -dr bfgminer

[daddyfatsax]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

[cypherdoc]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

did you change the pool settings in bfgminer.conf like i said to above?

[daddyfatsax]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

did you change the pool settings in bfgminer.conf like i said to above?

When I started bfgminer it asked to setup the pools. I did sudo nano into the conf, after I updated bfgminer per the instructions in the post you referred to, but it's not the easiest thing to add my BTC address for eligius in the editor. I made my own conf file when I got bfgminer running. I take it I screwed something up by not using the original conf file?

[cypherdoc]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

did you change the pool settings in bfgminer.conf like i said to above?

When I started bfgminer it asked to setup the pools. I did sudo nano into the conf, after I updated bfgminer per the instructions in the post you referred to, but it's not the easiest thing to add my BTC address for eligius in the editor. I made my own conf file when I got bfgminer running. I take it I screwed something up by not using the original conf file?

you should log in as pi, not root.  then go to /home/pi/bfgminer.conf for pool config.

watch out cuz there's another in /home/pi/bfgminer/bfgminer.conf.

your BTC address goes into the pool settings at the pool, not here in your local bfgminer.

[daddyfatsax]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

did you change the pool settings in bfgminer.conf like i said to above?

When I started bfgminer it asked to setup the pools. I did sudo nano into the conf, after I updated bfgminer per the instructions in the post you referred to, but it's not the easiest thing to add my BTC address for eligius in the editor. I made my own conf file when I got bfgminer running. I take it I screwed something up by not using the original conf file?

you should log in as pi, not root.  then go to /home/pi/bfgminer.conf for pool config.

watch out cuz there's another in /home/pi/bfgminer/bfgminer.conf.

your BTC address goes into the pool settings at the pool, not here in your local bfgminer.

I did login as pi. I went to the bfgminer directory and not the conf file in /home/pi. So I will try that when I get back home Friday. Thanks for the help man.

[cypherdoc]

I can actually run bfgminer, get the pool setup, and everything. After the pool is setup it doesn't show any devices present. Is there an argument I should put when I goto manage devices? I've got another SD card with chainminer, so the rig is still working.

did you change the pool settings in bfgminer.conf like i said to above?

When I started bfgminer it asked to setup the pools. I did sudo nano into the conf, after I updated bfgminer per the instructions in the post you referred to, but it's not the easiest thing to add my BTC address for eligius in the editor. I made my own conf file when I got bfgminer running. I take it I screwed something up by not using the original conf file?

you should log in as pi, not root.  then go to /home/pi/bfgminer.conf for pool config.

watch out cuz there's another in /home/pi/bfgminer/bfgminer.conf.

your BTC address goes into the pool settings at the pool, not here in your local bfgminer.

I did login as pi. I went to the bfgminer directory and not the conf file in /home/pi. So I will try that when I get back home Friday. Thanks for the help man.

don't forget to restart bfgminer after you modify the .conf like this:

Code:

screen -dmS bfgminer sudo bfgminer --config bfgminer.conf -S bfsb:auto

[Keefe]

I have a head scratcher and maybe you all have some ideas.
I just received an RMA v2 mboard to replace one that semi melted the pci-e sockets.  I have both screw terminals and pci-e plugs in now.  So hopefully that won't happen again.
I lined up all my h-boards in the same order I had them on the old m-board.  Started up and I some were working others were not.  Typical Bitfury fire drill.
So I proceeded to move around my boards. Let them go and come back and fiddle some more.
Then the miner just stops.  Can't connect to it or pull it up in the browser.  Pi is flashing red lights.
So I figure bad SD and get a new card, download v2 image change the card.  Same deal, flashing red.
So I pulled out a new pi I had sitting around and plugged that in.  Same deal, flashing red.
No idea what to do so I changed out my ethernet cable.  Shazam - the pi has green lights and I can see the Admin page in my browser.
Here is the problem.  I can't get it to mine now.  Since all this happened it will not mine.  I have changed the pool configuration, changed the ip address just for the heck of it, rebooted ten times and let it sit for an hour.
I see the "0GH/s" flash ever so slightly every 10 seconds or so like it does when it's mining.  But every card is at zero.  I have 14 cards and was doing about 450 Gh/s.
So if anyone can help I would appreciate it.  I don't know what else to try.
Thanks!

EDIT:  Here is what the chips look like.  But I don't know much about this page other than they are not working.  I also have 14 boards so this is not nearly enough chips.

Check the console output of the proxies and chainminer. Connect with ssh, and run 'sudo screen -r' to get the list of running background screens, then 'sudo screen -r xxx' for each one listed. You should have three instances of the stratum proxy and one of chainminer. Look for any errors or suspicious lines, and paste here.

[Swimmer63]

Thanks Keefe.  Working on it.  Now this morning I can't get the rPi to start.  Goes through what looks like initialization then flashes green and red, but mostly red.  Trying to solve that so I can solve this.

[Swimmer63]

here is what I get.  Not sure what I am suppose to put in place of the three x's in your second instruction.

[Keefe]

here is what I get.  Not sure what I am suppose to put in place of the three x's in your second instruction.

You got it, just need to put the "n" back in screen.

Considering the start times, 2209 should be chainminer and the others the stratum proxies.

[Swimmer63]

INIT: 1 chips detected

That's what the first on says.

How do I get back to the screen showing the other three?

[Swimmer63]

Second screen