Where are all the BFL tech support people, non-employees, who used to have a direct line into the BFL and had product before the customers so amazingly that you would have thought they were part of the BFL fold right?
At this point those people have gone dark and I wonder why that is the case?
Where did LIGHTFOOT go? Truly amazing that as soon as the veil was finally lifted on the fraud these great community supporters of BFL just went POOF. One can speculate why and it was a cozy relationship given that Bruce, SLok, and others frequently discussed the Monarch in the thread I have quoted below. Lots of data was coming directly from Lightfoot from some sources inside BFL obviously.
Well, the 300gh unit is back up and running, but with a slightly higher error count than normal. 15%, normally I see 2-5%. It's also a tiny bit slower, 280 or so instead of 300. Most of the errors are on the front chip but it's purring along and mining for the owner.
The two 700's are a different pair: One of them is running with one of it's two chips normal, the other 100% errors. Checking the FETs I see the voltage is a lot lower on that side; either the whole chip is toast or all of the FETs on that side are damaged. Or a *low* side FET failed, but that would create a hell of a hot spot. I may hook it up to the scope this weekend to see if the gates are all smooth or if one channel is odd (pointing to an intermittent FET).
The second one is dead. Removing the FETs I found that the PCB under the FET itself was burned in two places on both sides. Nothing spectacular, just a <1mm pad had vaporized under the FET. Result is I can't put a new one on, I did a quick try swapping in 17506 FETs but they can't hold 350gh a side without blowing up. They can hold 250, so I may rebuild this one as a 500gh unit.
Or I will have them RMAed with BFL. The water blocks on all of them share a common thread: Leaks or serious weirdness in the front block. I haven't see this on other units and the guy has other Monarchs that are fine. This miht just be a case where a bad batch of cooling blocks leaked over time, which then caused the chips to overheat with spectacular power draws and interesting results.
The 300 held because when it heated up the damage was minor. On the 700's one knocked out a side, and the other ran till the FETs failed hard. Not unbelievable.
Interesting. Well, I'll try replacing the FETs on the left side this weekend to bring the one unit back to normal, and will then try lower speed FETs on the other one and drop the voltage to the point where it will run at 500 or so. That should do it.
In any event since I am experimenting at this point on my own time, flag, and dollar I will stand behind my work personally: If I have to donate a SP20 (same 1.7th) to make things right I'll do that.
The two 700's are a different pair: One of them is running with one of it's two chips normal, the other 100% errors. Checking the FETs I see the voltage is a lot lower on that side; either the whole chip is toast or all of the FETs on that side are damaged. Or a *low* side FET failed, but that would create a hell of a hot spot. I may hook it up to the scope this weekend to see if the gates are all smooth or if one channel is odd (pointing to an intermittent FET).
The second one is dead. Removing the FETs I found that the PCB under the FET itself was burned in two places on both sides. Nothing spectacular, just a <1mm pad had vaporized under the FET. Result is I can't put a new one on, I did a quick try swapping in 17506 FETs but they can't hold 350gh a side without blowing up. They can hold 250, so I may rebuild this one as a 500gh unit.
Or I will have them RMAed with BFL. The water blocks on all of them share a common thread: Leaks or serious weirdness in the front block. I haven't see this on other units and the guy has other Monarchs that are fine. This miht just be a case where a bad batch of cooling blocks leaked over time, which then caused the chips to overheat with spectacular power draws and interesting results.
The 300 held because when it heated up the damage was minor. On the 700's one knocked out a side, and the other ran till the FETs failed hard. Not unbelievable.
Interesting. Well, I'll try replacing the FETs on the left side this weekend to bring the one unit back to normal, and will then try lower speed FETs on the other one and drop the voltage to the point where it will run at 500 or so. That should do it.
In any event since I am experimenting at this point on my own time, flag, and dollar I will stand behind my work personally: If I have to donate a SP20 (same 1.7th) to make things right I'll do that.
