GAWMiner Fury

So I’m attempting to jump on the Scrypt based ASIC coin mining bandwagon. I got a GAWMiner Fury to try out. It came with a free ZenMiner, which is a Raspberry Pi with a custom image that runs mining software automatically, and connects to a 3rd party website to allow remote control and monitoring.

It came with everything needed to power up and get started. The included instructions just mention how to get started using the ZenMiner, so it’s pretty skimpy compared to most other packaged products. Being an ASIC cryptocurrency miner, it’s already a specialty device so you likely know what you are doing. Still, the ZenMiner is geared to newcomers so they can easily start mining. In that respect I think it still needs work as the ZenOS web interface is pretty but limited.

The software it runs is a few python scripts, a bash script or two, and a custom cgminer 3.1.1.1 build. That build of cgminer (either the vanilla or their modifications, I’m not sure which) has a bug that causes a lot of invalid shares. Originally I thought the problem was with cgminer not using the broadcasted network difficulty. There was even an updated release found on the ZeusMiner Blizzard site to fix this, but after building the results were the same: low hashrate at the pool due to discarded shares.

So, on the various mining forums someone discovered a BFGMiner fork that has support for GAWMiner/ZeusMiner Fury/Blizzard devices (they are the same). So, now many forks later, it looks like there is some stable software. I’m pretty disappointed that the hardware ships out with broken software and no pointers at all on how to fix it. Luckily I was able to troubleshoot well enough on my own. Other users on the forums are clearly frustrated with the stock software setup.

That said, I’ve bought a few more to try my luck out with mining. Bitcoin mining is out of reach save for only the largest mining groups since the difficulty is so high. Litecoin and other Scrypt based coins are headed that way as well, but I should be able to get on the train and ride for a little bit. Whether it turns out to be a wise investment or not remains to be seen, doubtful considering that once the Scrypt ASIC fad starts taking off, older models will be worthless.

I am using the ZenMiner as just a rPi with BFGminer 4.2 built and running my own script to mine. I configured it to skip building in other drivers and unneeded stuff:

CFLAGS="-O3" ./configure --enable-scrypt --disable-other-drivers --enable-zeus --without-sensors --without-libmicrohttpd

Here is the command line:

./bfgminer --zeus-cc 6 --zeus-clk 328 --config bfgminer.conf

And bfgminer.conf:

"scan-serial" : [
  "zeus:/dev/ttyUSB0"
],
"failover-only" : true, 
"expiry" : "10", 
"hotplug" : "5", 
"log" : "20", 
"no-pool-disable" : true, 
"queue" : "1", 
"scan-time" : "1", 
"scrypt" : true, 
"shares" : "0", 
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"

Note that 4.1 uses -ltc-* and 4.2 uses -zeus-* for some command line options.

With the new BFGMiner 4.2.1, I’m getting excellent hashing rates: