Topic: Doctor for Block Erupter USBs? (Read 1665 times)

Check that the USB ports on your PC are working - for example by plugging a USB Flash drive and checking that it is recognized.  Had a case of USB port damage (seems only the 5V rail) due to a powered hub 'injecting' too much into the PC.
Check the suspected BE's with another hub or by plugging them 1 at a time into the PC USB port.

There was a guide somewhere on the forum on clearing the USB port settings (but you probably took care of that by restoring the partition)

Sure you got it...PM me  I'll pay you 3.50...just putem in an envelope with a sheet of paper and mail them to me...Im likely going to take the silabs driver off one and fix my fried erupter then convert yours into decorative pins to sell.  I'll even pm you when their ready and ship one back to you if you knock that off my price and simply give me an address to give you 3 dollars for them.

Yes pls!  pm me and I'll give you my address quote me the shipping and ill shoot you some coin to cover it!

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

One person seems to have misunderstood me, so I would like to clarify that after my hub went bad and the computer stopped recognizing the block erupters, when I restored my computer using the image from a week before, I wasn't trying to fix the hardware problem that way. I just wanted to rule out any possibility that it could be a software issue prior to posting here asking about repairing the damaged block erupters. I have read other reports in the forum of similar cases when a hub power supply went bad and caused a power surge, and Windows reacted by disabling the ports. I also read another report in the forum about a situation where a corrupt registry entry was preventing a block erupter from being recognized. Since I had a byte-for-byte image backup of my hard drive from a week before when everything was working perfectly, before posting a request for help with the hardware problem, I chose to try restoring from that image first, just to rule out any possibility of it being a software issue. I was afraid that if I didn't rule out the possibility that it might just be a software issue, someone would suggest that I do that, prior to declaring the block erupters officially dead.

I admit that I don't know all that much about the block erupters though; I've only been mining with them a few weeks (before I got the BEs, I was mining scrypt with a CPU and a GPU). But what I've seen on the forum over the past months is that the block erupters seemed to start out at a price of around $175 (which seemed a little pricy to me at the time, which is why I didn't buy any until recently). So I'm not sure I agree with the comment that block erupters were "designed to be cheap and disposable." My impression is that the cheap price is a recent phenomomen, which is more a consequence of the recent difficulty increases and decreasing ROI, and the competition beginning to release second generation ASICs, rather than ASICMINER's original intention. I do agree, though, that with the recent Block Erupter price drops, it is not economical to pay over about $10 to repair each one.

If someone on the forum thinks they might be able to fix or reuse them and wants to take these three units off my hands, please let me know. I'm hoping to get my shipping costs reimbursed, plus maybe $1 or so total just so that I can have the psychological satisfaction of knowing that I got something for them and that they weren't a total loss. Otherwise, I'll probably keep them sitting around for a while, until I get more free time and/or get sick of looking at them, at which point I will either clean up the room and throw them away, glue magnets on the back and use them to hold papers on the refrigerator, donate them to frankenmint or another worthy applicant, or maybe take the time to prepare a listing and put them on Ebay (although I have some doubts as to whether I could make enough from an Ebay sale to make it worth my time to prepare the Ebay listing).

Thanks!

It is very unlikely you'd find a service man able to do the work, parts and labor, for about $15 apiece.




I've got about 18 BE heat spreaders, you want 'em?

I accept broken usb erupter donations...will convert them into decorative bitcoin pins to be resold for the same value as a working erupter.

Try selling it in this condition, some people might just buy it for education purposes.

It's clear from your post that you're not very knowledgeable about computers so I'm going to be direct.

Block Erupter USBs are designed to be cheap and disposable. They are almost impossible to service and even if they weren't it wouldn't be worth doing so, professional repairmen charge > $100/hour.

P.S. Forget about trying to fix hardware problems with software, that's crazy.

The cost in time and parts to repair/ponder the issue could be better spent buying a new one. No Sarcasm.

Due to the units now very low value, I would suggest they are beyond economical repair, however I am sure someone in the marketplace here or ebay would buy them from you for spares / repair.

Put it in a bottle and float it out to sea.

I apparently tried to run too many block erupters off of one hub; the hub got very hot and seems to have burned something out inside (apparently the part of the hub that supplies the power to the individual ports), and now 3 of the 4 block erupters no longer seem to be working, even when I try to use them with another hub (when I plug in the block erupter the computer doesn't even seem to recognize that anything has been plugged into it). I don't think there is any damage to the computer or its USB ports itself though, because it still recognizes and uses USB flash drives and external hard drives without a problem.

I was hoping that maybe it was just some sort of a software/registry etc. issue, but I restored my entire OS partition from an Acronis True Image image I made a week ago when the block erupters were still working fine, and the computer still does not recognize these 3 block erupters. So the problem seems to be the block erupters.

Two of the block erupters I don't see any signs of life at all in; the third sometimes when I try plugging it in, the little tiny square LED light will come on and stay on continuously, but the computer still doesn't recognize the block erupter.

Is there any kind of repair service that may be able to fix these 3 block erupters? If so, what is the cost and how do I get in touch with them?

If not, does anyone have any suggestions for environmentally friendly uses for dead block erupters? So far I have thought of 'paperweight', but I'm sure there are more uses I haven't considered.

Thanks!