Butterfly Labs 50GH/s or 60GH/s devices

OldTimer

Has anyone managed to successfully run either of the Butterfly Labs 50 or 60GH/s miners on OSX, and possibly with MacMiner?  Would be interested in hearing whether it works and the current BTC mining success rate.

FabulousPanda

I've been running a 60GH 'Single' unit for months now and it gets almost exactly 60GH - I hear the new products are a little more capable though. It definitely works with MacMiner!

OldTimer

Hi Fab~Panda, what did you pay for it?  BTW where are you located?  I'm in the UK and a Senior Software Engineer by trade (C++).  Might take a look at your code somtime ;-)

FabulousPanda

I paid very foolishly in BTC, in preorder stage before they raised the prices so it was about $1500 if I recall correctly

I'm south London - Would be great to have another pair of eyes on the code! I jumped straight from HTML, CSS, ePub and a bit of PHP to Objective-C for iOS and now Mac so C++ knowhow is probably a good thing to have looking over it!

FabulousPanda

Oh, there are bounties on pull requests that get merged by the way, there's a link to the relevant thread on the github page

OldTimer

South London eh, I'm in Surrey.  I'll take a look at the code soon, maybe over the weekend.  Only just got into BTC mining, and getting hooked, have a single Red Fury at the moment with two more on the way.  May well get a BL 60GH/s miner soon; are the loud though?

FabulousPanda

Thanks, let me know how you get on!

The Single is the loudest miner I know of, with the case on it has holes on the front a bit like a Mac Pro which make this awful shrill acoustic which is much reduced by removing the case, but they're still not pleasant to be in a room with. It instantly creates that 'server room' ambience.

OldTimer

Sounds quite loud, hmm, maybe not what I want at the moment!

FabulousPanda

KNC are my favourites at the moment. All mining hardware with a fan is going to be a little noisy though.

OldTimer

Well I've gone and ordered a BFL 60GH/s unit.  This will give me ~67GH/s so I guess at the current rate I should be able to mine 1BTC in ~8 days.

OldTimer

Does MacMiner recognise the BFL 60GHs unit on OSX v10.9 (Mavericks) without having to install an drivers?

FabulousPanda

No, the BFL ASICs use the drivers here to talk to bfgminer

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

without those you have to unload system drivers that come with Mavericks and use the CGMiner window. 

How much are those 60 Singles going for now?

OldTimer

Going for £600

OldTimer

Well my BFL 60GHs ASIC miner arrived today, I installed the driver and rebooted the Mac.  The BFL and 3 Red Fury's are now churning along at ~67GHs.  The BFL isn't as loud as I thought it would be, but will still remove the casing at the weekend to reduce the noise.

OldTimer

I'm thinking of getting an ATX PSU, do you need to modify the PSU cables in anyway to connect them to the BFL?  Any PSU suggestions?  I like the corsair PSUs, I used a 750W corsair PSU in my Hackintosh.

Arras68

The BFL Single comes with a low-quality, inefficient power supply, so replacing that should be a priority. The two 6-pin power sockets accept standard 6-pin PCIe cables (same as you'd connect to a graphics card).

As for the noise level, I found it best to just replace the two fans in the case--one intake, one exhaust. Use quieter fans, just be sure to use the same RPM for both fans to avoid creating pressure build-ups. Good quality silent fans make a tremendous difference.

FabulousPanda

maybe the new BFL units come with slightly quieter fans? For me the worst is that grill on the intake which makes an awful high pitched whine. I like the seasonic PSUs - worth getting something gold/platinum rated

You don't need to modify the PSU but you need to use a jumper cable or wire or something to hook up two of the holes on the connector that usually goes to the  logic board to turn the thing on!

OldTimer

Do you have any info on the "... hook up the two of the holes on the connector ..."?  Or a URL that gives instructions on using a 3rd party PSU?

FabulousPanda

http://aphnetworks.com/tutorials/psu_paperclip_trick

Just gotta hope the cable has coloured cables!

OldTimer

Thanks, that makes sense.  I'll get a Corsair CX500M.  Looks like the cables are colour coded on the motherboard 24 pin connector.