SUPPORTED DEVICES Currently supported devices include the Avalon, the Butterfly Labs SC range of devices and the ASICMINER block erupters. The BFL devices should come up as one of the following: BAJ: BFL ASIC Jalapeño BAL: BFL ASIC Little Single BAS: BFL ASIC Single BAM: BFL ASIC Minirig BFL devices need the --enable-bflsc option when compiling cgminer yourself. Avalon will come up as AVA. Avalon devices need the --enable-avalon option when compiling cgminer. ASICMINER block erupters will come up as AMU. ASICMINER devices need the --enable-icarus option when compiling cgminer. GETTING STARTED WITH BUTTERFLY LABS ASICS Unlike other software, cgminer uses direct USB communication instead of the ancient serial USB communication to be much faster, more reliable and use a lot less CPU. For this reason, setting up for mining with cgminer on these devices requires different drivers. WINDOWS: On windows, the direct USB support requires the installation of a WinUSB driver (NOT the ftdi_sio driver), and attach it to the Butterfly labs device. The easiest way to do this is to use the zadig utility which will install the drivers for you and then once you plug in your device you can choose the "list all devices" from the "option" menu and you should be able to see the device as something like: "BitFORCE SHA256 SC". Choose the install or replace driver option and select WinUSB. You can either google for zadig or download it from the cgminer directory in the DOWNLOADS link above. When you first switch a device over to WinUSB with zadig and it shows that correctly on the left of the zadig window, but it still gives permission errors, you may need to unplug the USB miner and then plug it back in LINUX: On linux, the direct USB support requires no drivers at all. However due to permissions issues, you may not be able to mine directly on the devices as a regular user without giving the user access to the device or by mining as root (administrator). In order to give your regular user access, you can make him a member of the plugdev group with the following commands: sudo usermod -G plugdev -a `whoami` If your distribution does not have the plugdev group you can create it with: sudo groupadd plugdev In order for the BFL devices to instantly be owned by the plugdev group and accessible by anyone from the plugdev group you can copy the file "01-cgminer.rules" from the cgminer archive into the /etc/udev/rules.d directory with the following command: sudo cp 01-cgminer.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/ After this you can either manually restart udev and re-login, or more easily just reboot. AVALON DEVICES Currently all known Avalon devices come with their own operating system and a preinstalled version of cgminer as part of the flash firmware, based on the most current cgminer version so no configuration should be necessary. It is possible to plug a USB cable from a PC into the Avalon device and mine using cgminer as per any other device. It will autodetect and hotplug using default options. You can customise the avalon behaviour by using the avalon-options command, and adjust its fan control-temperature relationship with avalon-temp. By default the avalon will also cut off when its temperature reaches 60 degrees. Avalon commands: --avalon-auto Adjust avalon overclock frequency dynamically for best hashrate --avalon-cutoff Set avalon overheat cut off temperature (default: 60) --avalon-fan Set fanspeed percentage for avalon, single value or range (default: 20-100) --avalon-options Set avalon options baud:miners:asic:timeout:freq --avalon-temp Set avalon target temperature (default: 50) Avalon auto will enable dynamic overclocking gradually increasing and decreasing the frequency till the highest hashrate that keeps hardware errors around 1% is achieved. This WILL run your avalon beyond its normal specification so the usual warnings apply. When avalon-auto is enabled, the avalon-options for frequency and timeout are used as the starting point only. eg: --avalon-temp 55 This will adjust fanspeed to keep the temperature at or slightly below 55. If you wish the fans to run at maximum speed, setting the target temperature very low such as 0 will achieve this. This option can be added to the "More options" entry in the web interface if you do not have a direct way of setting it. eg: --avalon-cutoff 65 This will cut off the avalon should it get up to 65 degrees and will then re-enable it when it gets to the target temperature as specified by avalon-temp. eg: --avalon-options 115200:24:10:45:282 The values are baud : miners : asic count : timeout : frequency. Baud: The device is pretty much hard coded to emulate 115200 baud so you shouldn't change this. Miners: Most Avalons are 3 module devices, which come to 24 miners. 4 module devices would use 32 here. Asic count: Virtually all have 10, so don't change this. Timeout: This is how long the device will work on a work item before accepting new work to replace it. It should be changed according to the frequency (last setting). It is possible to set this a little lower if you are trying to tune for short block mining (eg p2pool) but much lower and the device will start creating duplicate shares. Sample settings for valid different frequencies (last 2 values): 34:375 * 36:350 * 39:325 * 43:300 45:282 (default) 47:270 50:256 Frequency: This is the clock speed of the devices. Only specific values work, 256, 270, 282 (default), 300, 325, 350 and 375. Note that setting a value with an asterisk next to it will be using your avalon outside its spec and you do so at your own risk. If you use the full curses based interface with Avalons you will get this information: AVA 0: 22/ 46C 2400R The values are: ambient temp / highest device temp lowest detected ASIC cooling fan RPM. Use the API for more detailed information than this. --- This code is provided entirely free of charge by the programmer in his spare time so donations would be greatly appreciated. Please consider donating to the address below. Con Kolivas 15qSxP1SQcUX3o4nhkfdbgyoWEFMomJ4rZ