Author Topic: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips  (Read 58851 times)

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Offline FrankBussTopic starter

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #75 on: February 16, 2014, 11:09:31 pm »
The Biolite uses a much higher temperature difference.

For programming the PIC, I'll use the PICkit 3 (unfortunately the PICkit 2 doesn't support this PIC).

Looks like there is an alternative for the SmartView program: Someone reverse engineered the proprietary is2 file format and wrote a viewer script for Matlab. I don't have Matlab, but this might be a good starting point to write a better standalone program for it, maybe with Qt.
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Offline GiskardReventlov

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #76 on: February 17, 2014, 06:46:33 am »
The Biolite uses a much higher temperature difference.
  That's true and I also found that it has a battery that must be charged first before you can USB charge. So it probably trickle charges its own battery.

Quote
For programming the PIC, I'll use the PICkit 3 (unfortunately the PICkit 2 doesn't support this PIC).
I decided against the pickit3 because I feel it locks you in too much.

Quote
I don't have Matlab, but this might be a good starting point to write a better standalone program for it, maybe with Qt.
Qt is good. Pretty good portability if I recall.

Back to the topic of the miner, I saw a water-cooled solution for the BFL miners on kickstarter.  Unfortunately I didn't find good pictures of the implementation.
Water cooling seems a bit overly complicated and messy and conventional cooling is cheapest and simplest.
 

Offline qs300772

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #77 on: March 28, 2014, 12:13:56 pm »
Hello, your project seems very interesting to me. I noticed you had some successful test, but i didn't found anything about the firmware used for these tests. Can you please advise on that subject? Thank's and regards!
 

Offline scientist

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #78 on: March 30, 2014, 05:14:34 am »
Hello, your project seems very interesting to me. I noticed you had some successful test, but i didn't found anything about the firmware used for these tests. Can you please advise on that subject? Thank's and regards!

 :palm:
 

Offline FrankBussTopic starter

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #79 on: March 30, 2014, 08:32:03 am »
Hello, your project seems very interesting to me. I noticed you had some successful test, but i didn't found anything about the firmware used for these tests. Can you please advise on that subject? Thank's and regards!
The tests are in the script directory. But it needed the DE0_NANO FPGA project as well, until today. This weekend I had some time and started with the PIC firmware implementation. Currently it does the same as the FPGA implementation, just a thin wrapper to translate the Python script commands over serial port to CONFIG_P/N signals and report back the REPORT_P/N word. The Eagle schematic is updated as well, it works on my breadboard. See the Github repository: https://github.com/FrankBuss/gandalf-minder

And with pic32prog it works even with my old PICkit 2 programmer, which is faster than my PICkit 3 programmer, which is the only programmer supported by MPLAB X for this microcontroller, which is silly, because pic32prog demonstrates that it works without problems with the old programmer.

It was not easy to write the firmware for the PIC, because the "PIC32 Peripheral Libraries" documentation is missing (the link in the start menu after installing MPLAB X is dead) and the version I found on Google is missing some functions as well. It doesn't help that there is some legacy library code, which is mixed with the new library and you have to implement some functions with low-level register access anyway. E.g. I couldn't find a library function to clear the UART overrun flag, and if it is not cleared when it happens, the UART stops receiving data. This is not consistent with the SPI module, which has a nice function for this purpose, with the obvious name SpiChnGetRov :-// . So if you want to use the Microchip library, you have to read the header files and sometimes the C implementation as well to see which registers are changed, and if you are lucky, you find something with Google or in the examples folder |O

Next step will be to test the analog inputs for the temperature sensor, and maybe for measuring some voltage levels as well, testing the digital potentiometer to set the core voltage with the power supply, testing a PWM output and tacho input for a regulated fan and then routing the PCB. Might need some time again, because I don't have much spare time at the moment.
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Offline qs300772

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #80 on: March 31, 2014, 06:12:21 am »
Thanks! This Github update seems to be what i was needed.
 

Offline Moo3

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #81 on: November 22, 2017, 07:10:42 am »
Hello Frank,
did you try Arduino instead of PIC?
Did you play with Avalon A3222-Q56 chip?
 

Offline FrankBussTopic starter

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #82 on: November 22, 2017, 02:38:58 pm »
I lost interest in the project, because it would never generate any substantial money with the high hash rates at the moment. Would be still fun to do it when I have some more time and feel like I want to finish it.
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Offline Artlav

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #83 on: November 22, 2017, 04:30:28 pm »
It's still a fun project to try - i made an FPGA miner a few months ago, and while it can't generate any money, it is fast enough to make coins on the testnet, which can be handy if you do Bitcoin development stuff.

 

Offline Moo3

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #84 on: December 04, 2017, 06:48:55 pm »
Frank, will it be intresting to you to play with Antminer's BM1387 chips?
 

Offline FrankBussTopic starter

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Re: DIY bitcoin miner for Avalon A3255-Q48 chips
« Reply #85 on: December 04, 2017, 09:27:33 pm »
Frank, will it be intresting to you to play with Antminer's BM1387 chips?

No, I'm too busy now with my Vectrex Kickstarter project for the next months in my spare time.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Electronics, hiking, retro-computing, electronic music etc.: https://www.youtube.com/c/FrankBussProgrammer
 


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