Topic: Hacking a BFL Jalapeno to 32GH and beyond....(???) - page 2. (Read 54329 times)

Now that rocks.
You should post that. 

Got em. And movies. Pretty.

C

I was part of the Fire Protection unit during my summer off from college at a PaperMill.  We had an electrical fire it bizarre to say the least.  Hair standing on end in my turnout gear trying to get around it to cut the power while it melted the steel frame to a multi-ton dryer unit.  Not fun.
I can imagine the plasma bolts you saw on the other one were spectacular.  Run, Run!!

That is cool.
You should have taken before and after pictures.

I do have a fire extinguisher, and yes when I saw the first fireball I thought "grab the extinguisher". But this was merely a 12 volt, 2 amp mini fire, not a 300v 10,000 amp one. With a 300 volt fire (or a 36v fire if you have several thousand amps of power) you literally throw the fire extinguisher *AT* the IGBTs so that it's mass will blow the parts far way enough that the plasma arc will go out.

Been there, done that.

So the unit stayed on the heat plate (which is all about heat) till I was able to dig the fire out.

C

Update: The fireball is now hashing away at 5gh. Bit slow, but I have seen worse.

What did I do? Why dig out the fire, like a coal mine fire. Literally, I dug through the board substrate, removing layers till I got rid of the ground plane for the right side FETs. Then removed all the caps in the region, removed the right side choke, and fired up the unit.

Came online with the left side FETs. Put heat sinks on the FETs to control temps, put a big fan on pointing *DOWN*, and it's hashing away at 5gh.

Yes, anything can be fixed if you have enough insanity. But still the little fires were pretty.

And no, I am not turning my back on this one. It will go into the museum of weird stuff.

C

Hi, I have 2 butterflylabs single sc 60 gh / s, I think this post is aimed for the jalapeno, but it could make the single 60gh Oc / s?

Forgive my English I'm Spanish.

regards

Sounds like you might need a fire suppression system in your work room.

Update: I just had that shorted jalapeno erupt in a mini fireball on the bench. Cool!

Apparently removing the incinerated FETs allowed 12 volts to go through the little caps. Each cap lit up like a little sun on 2 amps of power, then the next one went off. Counted three before I could crowbar the supply.

Wow. Like little arc lamps on your jalapeno!

Note: This one was a June 2013 model with little FETs. I think the fan threw a blade, and the unit overheated the FETs and started a small fire on the board before the power supply blew. Very interesting.

C

So what's been going on...

Got three jalapenos in as donations, all of which have interesting little problems.

The first is pretty unusual: It looks like the FETs have shorted out. Symptom is 2-3 volt pulses on the 1 volt line that heat up (and I believe have destroyed) the hashing chips. I think the culprit is a short of the high fets *or* a failure of the lower voltage FETs.

The way the power supply works is that the 1 volt line is attached to the 12v line for a short time, then to the 0v line for a longer time. The capacitors and the the chips smooth out the resulting voltage, and the monitoring circuit picks this up as a stable 1 volt. What this also means is that the bottom chips (the 1v) are on longer, but the top chips (12v) have a higher inrush current. One set of FETs is going to take a lot more current than the other, this might be the reason the "hot FET" issue popped up in the beginning, and why BFL put bigger FETs on one side (and beefed up all FETs on the singles). Mystery makes sense.

However if the FETs fail to gate interesting stuff will happen. If the high FETs short, then you're going to have 12 volts on the 1v rail but the bottom fets should short as well. Might result in blown FETs. If the bottom FETs open then nothing is there to prevent the high rail from blowing up the chips.

This would explain why trying to remove chips from this board and put them on others does not work. Nasty failure mode.

The second one had one chip hashing at about 4gh. The second chip looked good, but was not working. Tried a reflow, chip would warm up but still nothing. Removed it from the board, held it in finger and thumb...

And it cracked apart. Not the normal shatter into little bits, a clean break in half. I think this one was a victim of a heat sink screwed down too hard; what happens is that the pressure torques the case around the BGA balls, and if one of them is a tiny bit higher you get a fracture inside the chip and failure. Only way to see it is to pull the chip and try bending it.

Third unit is another one that is shorting out, will take it apart and see if I can replace the FETs to get it going. But I'm guessing it has the same failure mode as the first. Drat.

Anyway, things keep rolling along, we keep hashing, and I dream about 300gh jallies in my sleep. What a neat thought...

C

Dude congratulations on the consulting job. 
I have been recommending you all over the place.

FET's shorted that does sound odd.  I wonder what failed to make that happen.
Keep us posted.

I have thought about the BE's, but they seem like odd chips, less documented than the BFL stuff and to be honest it might not be worth the cost of repair for 30-40gh. However I have been very busy this week with a separate consulting project, so it's not dull.

Also got in a broken jally that is weird. I think the FETs are shorted to hot, as the power on the 1 volt rail is all over the place. Will be working on it more this weekend, it's weird.

C

I bet he could do quite a bit if he got his hands on a couple.
He really did a great job on my Jalapeno.
I am going to have him do it to a 2nd one when I can save up for the chips.

I've lurked these forums for a while.  Mostly on Litecoin Talk.  But I wanted to say that this is probably the most interesting thread that I have read.

Continued success.  I wonder what you could do with a Block Erupter Cube 

A couple weeks ago I woke up to my Jalapeno dead.

Lightfoot had me send it to him and was able to quickly diagnose a power supply issue which was great.

It only ran at 5 gh/s and he was able to flash it and get it running faster which was great as I did not have the gear to flash it's firmware.
From there it was time to upgrade it while he had it.

I was able to order chips from his recommendation and had them drop shipped right to Lightfoot.
I could only afford 3 ships and it took me a few days to be able to afford them.  Not because they were expensive as they are fairly inexpensive but due to me being broke. Once he got them he had it up to 20gh/s in no time with them.  He added heatsinks and a fan grill making sure it was running cool and safe.

The whole time he kept in great communication with me and even waited on being paid while I came up with the BTC for the work.  He even sent it back to me before I had paid.  Just a great guy I really appreciate that.
The whole process was excellent.  He had it done quickly and the only hold up was me getting the chips sent.

So now I have it at home and it is running great.
20 gh/s stable at 50c degrees with no hiccups.  It went from a good unit to a great unit and looks cool to boot.

Thanks so much Lightfoot for doing the upgrade for me and being so easy to work with and trust.

I once had an apartment with those heaters. I had the windows open in the dead of winter to cool the place off. lol and god forbid you accidentally put your hand on one >.<

My wife got interested when Overstock decided to accept Bitcoin as well.  LOL
As I get more gh/s she will be getting her cut I have been informed just for that site.   
We have a 7yr old house with radiant heat but they are the baseboard heaters.  They work ok but her uncle who built the house last min decided to go with them instead of the infloor heating it was mapped out for so there are some odd cold spots.  I am hoping this upcoming summer we can switch it to infloor as it would cut the gas usage by a 1/4 or so due to the better insulation and placement.  Plus I just want to not walk on icy floors all winter.
Then again if I keep building my mining operation in my server room downstairs it will heat itself.  LOL

The wife loves bitcoin. She went nuts on overstock.com, getting some speakers for her computer, teapot, stuff and it just magically appears. Bitcoin is like a cute little money machine upstairs.

And although it's more expensive to heat with electricity than natural gas (we have radiant heat from the 1950's godlike) these things also throw off teapots and such.

C

That's got to be nuts.  Does the wife enjoy the extra heat in the winter?
I know my wife is always chilly.  LOL

I don't think the top floor heat has kicked on since I fired up all these boosted miners. 220gh of power actually keeps the rooms warm at night. Come spring I'm really going to clock them down a *lot* but for now it's free heat and bitcoins!