SUPPORTED DEVICES Currently supported ASIC devices include Avalon, Bitfountain's Block Erupter series (both USB and blades), a large variety of Bitfury-based miners, Butterfly Labs' SC range of devices, HashBuster boards, GekkoScience's Compac USB stick, Klondike modules, and KnCMiner's Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn. ANTMINER U3 ----------- The U3 does not support autodetection, so you will want to use --scan-serial to manually probe it. For example, to scan all devices, you can use: -S antminer:all Additionally, for optimal performance you will need to set voltage, clock, and timing. Neither voltage nor clock for the U3 are documented by the manufacturer, thus must be provided as hexadecimal configuration codes. Timing is provided in the number of nanoseconds each hash takes at the given configuration. A known-working configuration is: --set antminer:voltage=x800 --set antminer:clock=x1286 --set antminer:timing=0.022421 Some valid values for clock setting are: x0783 for 100 MHz, x0983 for 125 MHz, x0b83 for 150 MHz, x0d83 for 175 MHz, x0782 for 200 MHz, x0882 for 225 MHz, x0982 for 250 MHz, x0a82 for 275 MHz, x0b82 for 300 MHz, x0c82 for 325 MHz, x0d82 for 350 MHz, x0e82 for 375 MHz, and x08f2 for 400 MHz AVALON 1 -------- Currently, Avalon boards are best supported by connecting them directly (or via a hub) to a regular PC running BFGMiner. It is also possible to install the OpenWrt packages of BFGMiner to the Avalon's embedded controller, but this is not a simple task due to its lack of available flash space. To use the Avalon from a regular PC, you will need to specify two options: First, add the -S option specifying the avalon driver specifically. For example, -S avalon:\\.\COM9 Next, use the --set-device option to provide the device configuration. If you are translating options from --avalon-options (cgminer and older versions of BFGMiner), note the values are baud:miner_count:asic_count:timeout:clock. baud=N The device is essentially hard coded to emulate 115200 baud, so you shouldn't change this. miner_count=N Most Avalons are 3 module devices, which come to 24 miners. 4 module devices would use 32 here. asic_count=N Virtually all have 10, so don't change this. timeout=N This defines 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. clock=N This is the clock speed of the devices. Only specific values work: 256, 270, 282 (default), 300, 325, 350 and 375. Sample settings for valid different frequencies (last 2 values): 34:375 36:350 39:325 43:300 45:282 47:270 50:256 AVALON 2/3 ---------- Avalon 2/3 units communicate with a UART, usually attached to your host via a generic USB UART adapter. Therefore, you will need to manually probe the correct UART device with the -S option: -S avalonmm:\\.\COM22 Next, use the --set option to configure at least your desired clock frequency and voltage. Avalon 2: --set avalonmm:clock=1500 --set avalonmm:voltage=1 Avalon 3: --set avalonmm:clock=450 --set avalonmm:voltage=0.6625 You may also want to set the fan speed, which is specified as a percentage: --set avalonmm:fan=95 BFSB, MEGABIGPOWER, AND METABANK BITFURY BOARDS ----------------------------------------------- Both BFSB and MegaBigPower (V2 only at this time) boards are supported with the "bfsb" driver. Metabank boards are supported with the "metabank" driver. These drivers are not enabled by default, since they must be run on a Raspberry Pi in a specific hardware configuration with the boards. To enable them, you must build with --enable-bfsb or --enable-metabank. Do not try to use these drivers without the manufacturer-supported hardware configuration! Also note that these drivers do not properly support thermal shutdown at this time, and without sufficient cooling you may destroy your board or chips! To start BFGMiner, ensure your Raspberry Pi's SPI is enabled (you can run the raspi-config utility for this). For Metabank boards, you must also load the I2C drivers (do not try to modprobe both with a single command; it won't work): modprobe i2c-bcm2708 modprobe i2c-dev Then you must run BFGMiner as root, with the proper driver selected. For example: sudo bfgminer -S bfsb:auto BFx2 ---- You will need to install the WinUSB driver instead of the default FTDI serial driver. The easiest way to do this is using Zadig: http://zadig.akeo.ie/ Note that since it's impossible to tell the BFx2 apart from various other devices (including BFL/Cairnsmore1 miners and even many non-mining devices!), you must run with the -S bfx:all option (or 'bfx:all' at the M+ menu). I do not know what this will do with other devices; it may start fires, launch nuclear missiles (please don't run BFGMiner on computers with missile controls), etc. BI*FURY ------- Bi*Fury should just work; you may need to use -S bifury: On Windows, you will need to install the standard USB CDC driver for it. http://store.bitcoin.org.pl/support If you want to upgrade the firmware, unplug your device. You will need to temporarily short a circuit. With the USB connector pointing forward, and the heatsink down, look to the forward-right; you will see two tiny lights, a set of 2 terminals, and a set of 3 terminals. The ones you need to short are the set of 2. With them shorted, plug the device back into your computer. It will then pretend to be a mass storage disk drive. If you use Windows, you can play along and just overwrite the firmware.bin file. If you use Linux, you must use mcopy: mcopy -i /dev/disk/by-id/usb-NXP_LPC1XXX_IFLASH_ISP-0:0 firmware.bin \ ::/firmware.bin After this is complete, unplug the device again and un-short the 2 terminals. This completes the upgrade and you can now plug it back in and start mining. BIG PICTURE MINING BITFURY USB ------------------------------ These miners are sensitive to unexpected data. Usually you can re-plug them to reset to a known-good initialisation state. To ensure they are properly detected and used with BFGMiner, you must specify -S bigpic:all (or equivalent) options prior to any other -S options (which might probe the device and confuse it). BLOCK ERUPTER BLADE ------------------- Blades communicate over Ethernet using the old but simple getwork mining protocol. If you build BFGMiner with libmicrohttpd, you can have it work with one or more blades. First, start BFGMiner with the --http-port option. For example: bfgminer --http-port 8330 Then configure your blade to connect to your BFGMiner instance on the same port, with a unique username per blade. It will then show up as a PXY device and should work more or less like any other miner. BLOCK ERUPTER USB ----------------- These will autodetect if supported by the device; otherwise, you need to use the '--scan-serial erupter:' option to tell BFGMiner what device to probe; if you know you have no other serial devices, or only ones that can tolerate garbage, you can use '--scan-serial erupter:all' to probe all serial ports. They communicate with the Icarus protocol, which has some additional options in README.FPGA COMPAC ------ These USB sticks are based on Bitmain's BM1384 chip, and use the antminer driver. You can set the clock frequency with --set compac:clock=x0782 The same values for Antminer U3 (above) are valid for the BM1384. HEX*FURY -------- Hex*Fury uses the bifury driver. Miners using earlier boards may need to workaround bugs in the firmware: bfgminer --set bifury:chips=6 --set bifury:free_after_job=no This may cause poor behaviour or performance from other bifury-based devices. If you encounter this, you can set the workarounds per-device by using their serial number (which can be seen in the TUI device manager; in this example, 141407160211cdf): bfgminer --set bifury@141407160211cdf:chips=15 ... KLONDIKE -------- --klondike-options Set klondike options clock:temptarget KNCMINER (Jupiter) -------- KnCMiner rigs use a BeagleBone Black (BBB) as the host; this is pluged into a "cape" with a FPGA and connections for 4-6 ASIC modules (depending on the cape version). Note that in addition to the usual dependencies, this driver also requires i2c-tools (aka libi2c-dev on some systems). The BBB comes with the Ångström Distribution by default. The following is a step by step install for BFGMiner on this system; -----------------Start------------ cat >/etc/opkg/feeds.conf <<\EOF src/gz noarch http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/v2013.06/ipk/eglibc/all/ src/gz base http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/v2013.06/ipk/eglibc/armv7ahf-vfp-neon/base/ src/gz beaglebone http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/v2013.06/ipk/eglibc/armv7ahf-vfp-neon/machine/beaglebone/ EOF opkg update opkg install angstrom-feed-configs rm /etc/opkg/feeds.conf opkg update opkg install update-alternatives opkg install automake autoconf make gcc cpp binutils git less pkgconfig-dev ncurses-dev libtool nano bash i2c-tools-dev while ! opkg install libcurl-dev; do true; done curl http://www.digip.org/jansson/releases/jansson-2.0.1.tar.bz2 | tar -xjvp cd jansson-2.0.1 ./configure --prefix=/usr CC=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc --disable-static NM=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-nm make install && ldconfig cd .. git clone git://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer cd bfgminer ./autogen.sh git clone git://github.com/troydhanson/uthash ./configure --host=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi --enable-knc --disable-other-drivers CFLAGS="-I$PWD/uthash/src" make AR=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-ar /etc/init.d/cgminer.sh stop ./bfgminer -S knc:auto -c /config/cgminer.conf ---------------END------------- KNCMINER (Titan) -------- Titan uses RaspberryPi as a controller. Build instructions: -----------------Start------------ git clone git@github.com:KnCMiner/bfgminer.git cd bfgminer ./autogen.sh ./configure --enable-scrypt --disable-sha256d --enable-titan --disable-other-drivers make sudo /etc/init.d/bfgminer.sh restart screen -r ---------------END------------- MONARCH ------- The Butterfly Labs Monarch devices can be used as either USB devices, or in a PCI-Express slot. As USB devices, they are essentially plug-and-play. If you wish to use them via PCI-Express, however, you must first load the proper driver. BFGMiner can work with either Linux uio (2.6.23+, requires root access) or Linux vfio (3.6+, requires IOMMU support). To enable uio on your cards, you may need to do: sudo modprobe uio_pci_generic echo 1cf9 0001 | sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/uio_pci_generic/new_id Enabling vfio is similar, but allows you to run BFGMiner without root privileges. Since setting this up is more complicated, BFGMiner includes a setup-vfio script (which must be run with root permissions). Simply run: sudo setup-vfio --unsafe --user $(whoami) 1cf9 0001 You will be asked about each Monarch found, and must answer 'yes' to each one. If you wish to manually setup VFIO, follow these steps: First, load the kernel module: sudo modprobe vfio-pci Next, identify what the device ids are for your card(s): lspci -D | grep 1cf9 # the first number of each line is the device id From that, you can identify its IOMMU group, and list all devices sharing that group: readlink "/sys/bus/pci/devices/$DEVICE_ID/iommu_group" ls "/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/$IOMMU_GROUP_ID/devices/" All of the devices listed (other than the Monarch), if any, will need to be disabled and unbound! To do that, use: echo "$DEVICE_ID" | sudo tee "/sys/bus/pci/devices/$DEVICE_ID/driver/unbind" echo "$DEVICE_CODE" | sudo tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/new_id Note that $DEVICE_ID should be something like "0000:01:00.0" and $DEVICE_CODE is something like "1cf9 0001" (this example is the Monarch itself). If you want to run BFGMiner as a normal user: chown "$USERNAME" "/dev/vfio/$IOMMU_GROUP_ID" Depending on your system, you may also need to do: echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/module/vfio_iommu_type1/parameters/allow_unsafe_interrupts ONESTRINGMINER -------------- OneStringMiner boards use the bifury driver. Miners using earlier boards may need to workaround bugs in the firmware: bfgminer --set bifury:chips=15 --set bifury:free_after_job=no If you have different devices using the bifury driver, see the section on Hex*Fury for applying workarounds per-device. GRIDSEED -------- Gridseed units, at the present time, come in two versions: Blade - a 40 chip unit and Orb - a 5 chip unit. Orb units can be used to mine both SHA256d and scrypt based coins whereas the Blade is scrypt only, although BFGMiner only supports scrypt mode at this time. BFGMiner allows a miner to connect both types of units to a single miner instance and provides for granular control of the clock frequencies for each device and each chip on each device. The basic use of this feature is to use the --set option on from the command line: bfgminer --scrypt -S gridseed:all --set gridseed@:clock=825 for multiple devices, add multiple --set arguments. Additionally, these can be added to the bfgminer.conf file for persistence like this: "set" : [ "gridseed@:clock=825", "gridseed@:clock=850", "gridseed@:clock=875" ] To find the device serial number, start bfgminer and press to manage devices, then or through the list of devices and take note of the device serial number in the device information shown. ... Select processor to manage using up/down arrow keys GSD 0a: | 74.4/ 72.9/ 10.2kh/s | A: 1 R:0+0(none) HW:0/none STM32 Virtual COM Port from STMicroelectronics Serial: 6D85278F5650 Clock speed: 875 ... So for example, an entry would look like this: gridseed@6D85278F5650:clock=875 ZEUSMINER --------- Zeusminers do not support autodetection, so you will need to use --scan to probe for them: -S zeusminer:\\.\COM3 You should also configure the driver for your specific device: --set zeusminer:clock=N Clock frequency (default: 328) --set zeusminer:chips=N Number of chips per device Blizzard : 6 Cyclone : 96 Hurricane X2: 48 (2*24) Hurricane X3: 64 (2*32) Thunder X2: 96 (4*24) Thunder X3: 128 (4*32) Note: if you set this option incorrectly, the device may underperform and/or misreport hashrate. For example: bfgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://pool:port -u user -p pass -S zeusminer:\\.\COM3 --set zeusminer:clock=328 --set zeusminer:chips=128 --- 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. Luke-Jr 1QATWksNFGeUJCWBrN4g6hGM178Lovm7Wh