Post
Topic
Board Hardware
Re: FPGA development board "Icarus" for mining purpose - 2nd batch preparing.
by
ngzhang
on 23/12/2011, 03:11:09 UTC
How often is that error happening?

Not really a constant rate but I would say somewhere between min. 10 and max 30 times per hour.


i checked 3 board's log files with 144MB size here, and just find 8 "Read Miner ID ERROR" s. it seems really not a common error when i test them. because 144MB log file is a record of hundreds hrs. i test them under windows7 64bit.

this issue means  FPGA pushed a work result to PC, but with a wrong work id. so PC think there will be some problem and restart the script and FPGA.

i don't  know why it happy unusually frequently over there. some advise is check the USB connection or change to a USB port on the mainboard instead of at the front panel or change to another PC for a test. 

but i will fix this bug by a fully rewrite the u_mining_ctrl.v and the miner script. in order to resolve a lot of small problems and support regular miner software instead of a poor TCL script.

please keep me informed.

I'd prefer them as a quiet and power cheap alternative to GPU mining.

In my "review" I wrote that the fans made noise but I have to correct this, it was only in the first hours.
I think the fans moved during transport and the blades of one fan touched the heatsink.

Now I hardly hear the fans anymore, I think it's between 10-15 db, way less then a normal pc.


i'm planing to change the 2 X 25mm fans to 1X 40mm lower speed fan installed at the middle of 2 heatsinks. i will test this fashion on the 2nd batch.

about the heatsink, there is another issue. i must test the boards for hundreds hours before ship them, so i must install a heatsink on it. if a use thermal grease, it will get the boards dirty and negative affect when install a heatsink with 3M thermal tape, because the grease is hard to remove completely.

any suggestion?