Using the bitaxe with CGMiner and a PC

[skot]

The ESP-Miner firmware which will enable mining from the bite's ESP32 microcontroller is not yet finished. In the mean time you can connect a bitaxe to a PC and mine with the CGMiner software.

This requires a FTDI usbserial adapter to connect your PC to the bitaxe. Because the BM1397 ASIC uses 1.8V logic levels, you can't just use any random FTDI usbserial adapter you might have. CGMiner also uses the FTDI CBUS1 pin as the RST signal to reset the BM1397. CBUS1 isn't broken out on your standard FTDI adapter.

The combination of 1.8V logic levels and needing the CBUS1 pin makes finding this adapter challenging.

I'm looking at a few options to make this process easier, and I'll post here when I come up with a good solution.

[a-1500]

Does the FT232H work?

[skot]

I got a cheapo FT232H adapter that supports 1.8V VCCIO off Amazon... I couldn't get it to program with ft_prog (to enable CBUS1). I'm not sure if it was a fake or what. So to answer your question; I'm not sure if the FT232H works.

I did however manage to modify cgminer to use the RTS pin for the RST signal instead of CBUS1. This means you can use the broken out RTS pin on the jim.sh Micro1v8 usbserial adapter. I have forked cgminer with these modifications.

[skot]

Here is the amazon link to the jim.sh usbserial adapter. It seems to be working well.