BAMT the dedicated alt coin mining OS

BAMT: Big A.. Miner Thing

What is it:
A free Linux distro
Designed to be run from a USB thumb drive
For the purpose of GPU mining scrypt coins
On a dedicated mining machine

Why:
No need to purchase Windows. (Saves $)
No need to learn Linux. (Saves some of us )
Does not require a hard drive. (saves $ and valuable PSU connectors)
Does not require a CD/DVD drive. (saves $ and valuable PSU connectors)

What hardware do you need?
1. 2GB or larger USB drive
2. MOBO, PSU, RAM, CPU/cooler
3. Scrypt capable mining GPU's
4. A functioning machine to download the software and burn an image on the USB drive.

What software do you need?
1. Litecoin BAMT 1.2: https://mega.co.nz/#!qZ1TXRxD!Mcw8pkrP4SQE8D7bIfmZZEola01hxVFtbOBg6Cr3Zeo
2. Win32 Disk Imager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

I've got the hardware and the software is downloaded, now what?

1. Extract Litecoin BAMT to a new folder.
2. Insert your blank USB drive (note: files will be destroyed and partitions may not be reversible, so go get a dedicated $8 drive)
3. Open Win32 Disc Imager.
4. Use Disc Imager to browse to the extracted BAMT image.
5. Select the drive letter for the USB thumb drive.
6. Select Write. This burns the BAMT image to the USB drive.


When complete eject your newly created BAMT USB drive and close Disc Imager.


Congratulations! You have completed stage 1 and your BAMT Distro is ready to use.






Credit to https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=2924.0 and Scoutcamper for helping me get my BAMT dedicated miner operating.

Getting the dedicated miner running:

Prepare the BIOS
1. Insert the BAMT Drive (NOTE: DO NOT USE A USB 3.0 port)
2. Boot into the motherboard BIOS.
3. Set the BIOS to boot from the BAMT drive you created.
4. Set the Clock/Calendar.
5. Save BIOS changes and reboot.

The system should find the BAMT drive.
Black screen with flames should appear.
Progress bar moves across the page (error at this point probably indicates you are plugged into a USB 3.0 port)

BAMT opens and reports that no GPU's are configured, this is normal at this point.

Your BAMT machine IP address is displayed on screen.

You can connect to the BAMT machine directly, or see an HTML report from another machine by entering your BAMT IP Address into the browser address bar, or log in remotely using "Remote Desktop Connection" (or ssh) with the username 'user' and password 'live'.

Work in progress, stay tuned.

building your conf file


Work in progress, stay tuned

Reports

From another PC, type the IP address of your BAMT machine into a browser window and press enter.

You will see a report showing the long term status of the miner.


Selecting the GPU number at the top left will open a report on that specific GPU:


Selecting the reports button from the bottom of the main page leads you to a selectable list of all BAMT reports:

the downside,

poor(no) overclocking ability in linux. if you want an overclocked/undervolted card, you have to flash the BIOS, and you better hope that you pick a flash that is

1. compatible with your card (if not, bricked)
2. the OC/volt settings are stable (if not, poor performance, possible damage to card)

I really like bamt except for two things, perhaps a Linux expert could assist with those.
1. I could never get it to work simultaneously with my CPU mining program.
2. I would rather use an old hard drive instead of a USB drive.

There is a xpm mining setup guide on peercointalk that I followed, but could not get it to work properly.

xsuperbgx said:

I really like bamt except for two things, perhaps a Linux expert could assist with those.
1. I could never get it to work simultaneously with my CPU mining program.
2. I would rather use an old hard drive instead of a USB drive.

There is a xpm mining setup guide on peercointalk that I followed, but could not get it to work properly.

Click to expand...

Yes you can burn the ISO to a hard drive and set your bios to boot to that drive.

I've heard about BAMT, and I love the idea of Unix, very powerful OS line but I'm a Windows boy

Are there huge hashrate improvements with BAMT over Windows?
I'm also running a large overclock, can BAMT sustain that? (my 6850 of course is what I'm using)

xsuperbgx said:

I really like bamt except for two things, perhaps a Linux expert could assist with those.
1. I could never get it to work simultaneously with my CPU mining program.
2. I would rather use an old hard drive instead of a USB drive.

There is a xpm mining setup guide on peercointalk that I followed, but could not get it to work properly.

Click to expand...

To install BAMT to a hard drive follow the directions eaglescouter posted but connect your old hard drive to a usb port and use win32diskimager to burn the iso to that drive.

Never tried CPU mining with BAMT, maybe i will try this weekend if i get some time

gsrcrxsi said:

the downside,

poor(no) overclocking ability in linux. if you want an overclocked/undervolted card, you have to flash the BIOS, and you better hope that you pick a flash that is

1. compatible with your card (if not, bricked)
2. the OC/volt settings are stable (if not, poor performance, possible damage to card)

Click to expand...

On the contrary, you can easily overclock your card in linux, use the AMD Catalyst Control Center and its overclocking functions work fine under BAMT AS LONG AS YOU ARE USING DIRECT ACCESS! Do not attempt to OC over the built in RDP as it will crash!

First I've heard of that. Every account I've seen says Linux AMD drivers/utilities/whatever sucks for OCing and that most people are re flashing the cards to OC.

Also. A tad back on topic,

How big is BAMT? As in, what is the smallest flash drive you can use? 1GB? 2GB? 8GB?

8gb is the smallest reasonable drive to put it on. BAMT takes up about 4.1gb on drive after you burn it before you upgrade drivers as time goes on or anything like that, so 8gb gives you a nice buffer.


EDIT: When you first install it BAMT takes 2gb, but once you have done all the updates to install latest drivers and whatnot you are in the 4gb range.


With the cost of flash drives these days a 8gb drive only runs about $7.50 so that would be my weapon of choice, give room for expansion...

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digi...&qid=1389897539&sr=8-1&keywords=8gb+usb+drive

Developer says you need at least a 2 gb flash drive for BAMT
I bought a 16 because it was on sale cheap at a vendor I was placing an order with.

From experience, bamt does allow overclocking, just do it in the cgminer conf file. I stopped using it because of no undervoltability, but now with vbe7 that takes care of that. Also very useful because if it restarts, it doesn't need any input, such as Windows does sometimes asking if you want to start "error recovery" or whatever forever going to an infinite loop of recovery unless your keyboard is plugged in and you choose "start normally" hahahahahaha

Also get some good quality usb drives, I had 3 go out while BAMTing
Edit: you can also modify bamt cgminer conf file to allow cgremote access. Useful imo.

I've been messing with BAMT since yesterday... gonna have to scrap it since it won't allow me to adjust the video card voltages, and it's making my MSI 7950 run at 1.25v instead of 1.15v, core clock at 1075mhz, no idea why, and it's causing my card to run excessively hot.

So judging by some posts, I'll answer my question: No performance gains using BAMT vs Windows?

it has one advantage... it will automatically start mining after it boots

Luis_GT said:

it has one advantage... it will automatically start mining after it boots

Click to expand...

That is a nice feature, I can do that using my ".bat booting system" I made though.

Now BAMT would really impress me if it can restart mining after the drivers crash... Something I can't remedy automatically in Windows.

cgwatcher does that silver. You just have to set it to restart computer and make sure your computer automatically logs in.