Topic: Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not? - page 10. (Read 76589 times)

Nice one, let us know how it went.

Well thanks for help, this way i was motivated to install linux mint and learn something new. I was able to truncate img to 3gb. Will test it tomorrow. Cheers

I could, but would they be worth fixing? Titans still are, but Neppies are a bit power hungry for what they do.

are someone working on fixing neptune boards? i got 5 cubes to fix , and 15 jupiter boards to dismantle.

There is nothing on that empty space. Linux puts pieces everywhere but only on its partitions. Just truncate the empty space using linux or cygwin on windows. A simple install of cygwin will suffice.
Its a simple process that takes no time at all. Remember to put the .img file in the cygwin (what it thinks is) the user folder (home, root, pi) whatever you name it.

@supersonic i'm not comfortable uploading someone else's spaghetti, sorry.

Well I compressed it with 7zip so it is about as small as it will be. Seriously, I can't find an SD card smaller than 32gb here, if someone wants to send me a 4gb one I'll transcode it.

If You could shrink that image and upload for us im sure others like me would be very gratefull, cheers

Oh I just set up a thread on litecointalk.io where I can fix these things.

https://litecointalk.io/t/fixing-and-hacking-knc-titans-because-they-break-from-time-to-time/1708/2

Posting here so people there can come here, see this, and know that thread is mine.

C

Mr Lightfoot.

The lights, (on the titan board) act as you said, except it does go to green, but only shows spimux, on the display.


I received my jupiter board and it seems to work fine, everything comes up ,but no hashing.
zero hashing, as you talked about earlier.
still can't get to advanced mode, in the knc-firmware either, using knc titan 2.0 (2.02 doesn't work for me).

I had cleaned these several times before without anything happening. Removing the heat sink,  totally cleaing it and replacing it, properly.
These went due to power supply problems.
My big military spec gold-plus...power supply, only lasted less than a year.
I turned it off, and one cube was ok, then back on and cube 2 was not communicating.
It was running flawlessly since I got it, 4 months after it's release.
If I ever unplug anything it is turned off, first.
Same with computers, since 1974.


on to the titan board(s).

I will p.m. you about sending you unit(s).

You got me at "im in Europe" let me know when product is ready ;> any idea what those will sell for?

https://preview.ibb.co/dtbQd5/SinkPack.jpg -> The big one is a bracket for the main large sink so that aux sinks can be mounted on the DC/DC's.

Well I know I'm not the first one who is manufacturing a X Bracket, but I'm in Europe and that's new :-) (at least).

Also I agree that the plugs are the weak (PCB I did not X-Ray it for good) component Bottleneck for Power. But I came up with a Double Plug solution on top of each other bridge-soldered together.

As soon as I start manufacturing, please let me know if somebody needs Cube upgrade Kit. (primarily for Europe people, but I will make an exception for all Forum members :-))

BTW: how can I insert pictures directly in the post., I used img tag and it shows as link?

Oh lord, let's try to stay on topic.

Two problems:
1) That solution will not have enough surface area to keep the main chip cool. The power supplies are the bigger problem, but the best solution is to run them a bit more slowly (60-70mh) and not at a screaming 80. Also someone else made a new bracket for the factory heat sink that allows you to stick heat sinks on the supplies.

2) Ability to dump more heat does not fix the problem that the power plug on the Titans is already over limits. Pull more power and you burn the plug which shorts and destroys the cube in a lot of cases.

I ran a Neptune with liquid cooling, worked great until the pump stopped one night. Small explosion, big mess.

CLEAN YOUR FUCKING FLOORS

lol

specially in a house, right. :-)

are you talking to me?

I live in a house, there is no dirt on my floors lol.

Hi, isn't the problem the dirt which resides on the floor? so you clog your miners within a short period of time.

I have air vents in the trimming that runs perpendicular to the floor. So for me, cooling is a breeze. Cold air flows directly into the fans which is perfect.

Hi everybody, need some feedback,

Today I stumbled on a couple of articles about keeping your miner cooler. So I developed a Heat sink kit for the KNC TITAN. It is not milled yet, but looks promising.
So what do you think about it.

1. The Large Sinks goes on top and pulls down the original Large Heat-Piped Sink. I added some airflow slots to further dissipate.
2. DCDC from Ericson got my attention with a large sink on the coil and a small sink on the switches, which actually nobody has (why?)
 
I will cnc mill it out of an aluminum block with the size of 100x100x10 (mm). All at once

Image:

https://preview.ibb.co/dtbQd5/SinkPack.jpg

Let's see. If nothing is connected to the controller, the light on the side (white, super bright) comes on, then off, then on then off, etc and does not go green then you have a bad FPGA on the board. Remove it with your usual SMD rework tools (flux, preheat, heat, pull straight up with a good picker once it just moves a bit when touched with a tweezers), remove all of the solder from the pads without hitting any of the capacitors, cool, clean off the flux with 95% isopropyl alcohol.

Then test the board. Fire it up with a bbb running the neptune code (a titan will try to reboot), log in and type io-pwr init as root. See if it comes back with OK (the TPS chip is good) or with a bunch of errors (you blew the TPS chip, replace that too, pain in the ass). Need to do this because there's nothing as fun as swapping the FPGA to find the TPS is bad as well.

If TPS is bad, replace it, then test board again to make sure it comes up ok. If not, keep working on getting the tps working. Soldering QFN is a pain IMO.

Then replace the FPGA making absolutely sure to line the balls up perfectly with the pads. This is why you removed all the solder, needs to be perfectly flat.

I normally do this for about .2btc+shipping (was .3 but bitcoin prices are up as are litecoin so .2 is fair). You can blow the FPGA by unplugging the 10 pin while powered, plugging it in wrong so only 5 pins are on the titan, it's a fragile interface because they don't have optoisolators or buffer drivers. Oh well.

Then follow my post on testing titans one at a time. Look for shorts on pins 4,6 to ground especially, those are the worst.

Or just put the Titan Pi and BB on the Jupiter board and fire it up. Success is white light on then off, then green with 2.00 or better Titan code.

C

mr Lightfoot.
would you mind posting or pm 'ing me with directions to your posts on repairing a titan controller board.

Mine seems to have had a problem.
(and what a time it chose to putz out on me)

Turning  it on, as you said, with only the 10 pin cables (2) plugged in, it only says "kncminer 2.02" "spmux".
The lights come on, as they should, it only goes to spmux and stays there.
3 leds on the left side of interface card, not 6 as it maybe should be, red led comes on as does the green (after turning white a couple of times)

adding the power supply to the units turns the fans on, as they always have.

The 2 units I have, are both kept extremely clean and do not have burnt 6-pin connectors.

I am most adept with a soldering iron and have a desoldering station along with smd removal tools, (heat blower pen, etc)

I went back several pages and cold not find a definitive guide to testing and repairing these.

I, also, bought a jupiter (6 slot) board, in case this works, by adding the titan interface card and raspberry pi, display, etc..

I tried a new sd card and that does not work.

It seems like it tries to kick in, after is goes to spmux once, but then goes to spmux again, (kind of blinks, one time, slowly) and stays there.

any ideas?

Thanks,