Topic: Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not? - page 2. (Read 76586 times)

Lightfoot.

I can't believe I'm asking this ...but seeings how everyone has lost their minds and getting 340% merge mining dodge on top of Litecoin on www.litecoinpool.org

I am gonna move more than a few cubes out the door (contact me on here or eventually eBay.....if you believe dogecoin is going to hit $1 and want in on these

titan cubes/units. I may cut you a deal for you  to repaste/clean and otherwise get these up in some manner anyone here still wanting or following this thread.

Or else eBay they go as is/broken and repairable and need work repaste/etc no refunds..I mean they have been sitting in my attic since when 2017?

Sheesh....use the calculator on the above link ..it is frigging shocking and worth running these again..but I think I'm just gonna move them out the door to

someone who has less than 16c kWh Summer rates, etc, etc.

Anyway, the point is I need the following:

1) a link that works to your beagle bone mod (w/o bridge) direct to a knc titan 4 ribbon board? Or in other words, using a KNC Jupiter/Saturn/Mercury to

run some/titan cubes on. As long as I have to remember/learn again how to flash SD chips for KNC/github 2.002 firmware..I may as well take the extra

step and do some with your firmware beagle bone mod as well.

by the by the github for KNC 2.02 still exists here: https://github.com/KnCMiner/titan/releases.

Also, does anyone have the link again from KNC for the  'step by step' process of how to FLASH these SanDisk SD 8gb cards as such?

Anyway, contact me if you want these....just to know they are going spendy on eBay....like $175 cube a ways back w/shipping

use the calculator on litecoinpool above

and this is probably NOT the stuff for 'newbs' if you found this thread...these knc titans are a breed of treacherous wenches....When home mining in the basement

and doing laundry I carefully 'averted' my eyes not to make contact ....as to that alone would piss them off and they would 'brick' themselves.

I've never seen any 'device' so 'eager' to turn itself into a paperweight...so newbies avoid the heartache pay extra for bitmain L3+..more $$$ but less

heartache.

anyway....get me those links I'll let you know my progress on both firmware hacks above

brad

Well, since I'm fixing them again (well, mine) I figured I would update.

First, yeah the plugs still melt. I melted a pair of PCIe plug and sockets on a pair of 4 die hashing cubes so I brought them in, took the boards apart, read this thread to refresh my memory, and swapped the plugs for true nickel ones (had some in the bottom of the drawer)

Still: You will not get the plugs off with an iron unless you pre-heat the board. Try to do it without a pre-heater and you will just ruin the vias. Oddly enough I also burned the plugs on a Dragonmint T1 board and those are easier to remove but still need pre-heat. The Titan has a massive amount of copper in those layers. It wicks heat away too fast for an iron.

Likewise you can tell a board is power deprived because the cube will show, but not hash. As a verifier you can try using 50mhz clock rates, the cube will probably hash. But as soon as the voltage drops due to burned pins it will fall like a rock.

After replacing the plugs, things came right back up, both for the DragonMint and the Titans. I'm currently running 5 cubes, 300mh, 1100 watts at the wall. Of course it's only half the efficiency of an L3+, but to be honest it's still profitable with this insane 410% PPS on litecoinpool.....

I'll probably hook up a final cube and pull the display, this board is a Tarkin coded one and that code is really worth it. Slows down the DC-DC's when it gets hot, and if a fan fails it will save the cube before it burns. I may just code up my own DC-DC current limiter on the Lightfoot code, mainly because the Raspberry Pi's were so slow compared to the Beaglebones. But it's a good solution and if you're running one of your Titans it's probably worth it to send a few bucks to GeneralTarkin for a license.

Anyway with 6 cubes (3 4 die, 3 3 die) I should be able to hash at around 370mh or so. Then I'll think about bringing up another board with the 2 die cubes and run those flat out.....

8 years and the miners are still profitable. That's gotta be some sort of a record.

Oddly enough they were even profitable then: Litecoin was stuck at $2 a coin and was pretty much dead, then it ripped up to 50 or so and for a year or so mining was very profitable. Then the L3 series came out and they're about twice as efficient so there you go. Last I mined with them was in 2019, then I stuck em in the closet.

The design was... not great: The stamped metal cases were junk, and yes they pulled way too much power through that plug which caused it to overheat, lift the ground then it happily blew up because it tried to pull ground from the 10 pin ribbon cable. That would blow a die out at least. I put better quality plugs (nickel instead of that crap brass) and they could handle 300watts/80mh per cube.

The other problem was the controller: For 50 cents they could have put optoisolators between the board chip and the cubes. But no, they didn't and in addition to that damn ground loop a cube that wasn't plugged in right would blow out the controller *and* the cube and sometimes other cubes as well. Then you had to swap the FPGA to get it going again, did a lot of those :-)

But the thing was made in like 2014 or so, and it's 2021 and now profitable again. That's just the outside of insane. :-)

(PS: The current reward is 280% PPS. That's nuts)

www.litecoinpool.org is at 195% now for merge mining in addition to LTC....at 8c kWh ...IF I remember right WITH tarky titan firmware I THINK I used to get

275 watts per 80mh per full working cube...that is now $2 a day or $60 a month using the above pool.

So, for 4c kWh folk in the west coast or down south hell $4 a day or $120 is nothing to sneeze at for giggles

gonna go up on eBay Stuff to try and remember (flashing SD etc, etc it is All so murky now)

brad

Man I saw this topic and assumed I was taken back in time. I remember reading this topic alot back in the day and haven't seen it in years. Sure brings back memories.

I remember these ASICs. They weren't the best quality however they sure were profitable ASICs if you bought at the right time. I remember the KnC Neptunes on how they were pulling something like 500 Watts or so from a single PCIe cable. I had some of them and remember questioning if I should leave the house when the cables were hot to the touch.

Then there are those that got their shipment delayed by like a year or 2. Got the ASICs and basically just ebay'd it because it wasn't profitable at all for most home setups. Crazy that its profitable again.

I can't believe this, but I have been mining DOGE with a pair of Titan cubes and the things are.....

profitable.

It's like dragons have been sleeping in my attic, now I'm going upstairs, dusting them off and thinking "Really?"

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3365686

Just found my 1st post on here about when my KNC Jupiter (arrived full of water from DHL) on 10/18/2013.

Sheesh I was such a 'newbie'

brad

Well, hm. So you copied the lightfoot code (not the KNC code for a Titan) onto an 8gb or better SD card, popped it in the BBB, and powered up, and it doesn't boot?

One flaw in my code is that the button reset will screw everything up because I never put that in. Need more donations to make something like that happen :-)

Hey guys! so i have a problem with the neptune-controller im using and the BBB-card. Im trying to get my 2 titan-cubes running but cant seem to boot the SD-card properly, am i missing something crucial?
Kind regards Emilio932

Thanks, it is a start. I have the programs above someplace and a list on how to do this (hard copy) damned if I can find it though.

thanks

brad

You got to read the whole thread :-) In a nutshell you download the .7z file from my dropbox link, then decompress it with 7zip to an iso file. Then you use a program like w32diskimager to write the ISO file onto an 8gb or bigger memory card, plug it into a bbb, and you are off to the races.

The BB is faster than the Pi, and yes does fix the annoying amount of stale shares submitted. If you like it send me some litecoin.

Meantime I still have to fix your board.....

Anyone off the top of their head has the instructions on HOW to install Lightfoot's IMG file again?

I remember a long complicated process with KNC back in the day. But damned if I can remember how.

can't find a link

It used to entail using 7-zip to unzip and a program specific to copy IMG files on Windows to the SD card ..maybe some other hoops

Back in the day, I made about 7 KNC 2.00 versions of this...and just used the Gen Tarkin upgrade on top of such....on already made SD's. (When I knew how 3 years ago

plus) (now not so much)

However, there is/was a KNC Titan version 2.02 with an updated BFG Miner too match such released. Also can't seem to find that anymore either

again link?

Anyway, if someone has done this enough, could you whip out the process on here...I promise this time to print it out and save it hard copy

(not sure why the bother FJC works just dandy with the KNC 2.00 controller on the Titan Bridge and regular unit...I just wanted to finally get around to

trying Lightfoot's Beagle Bone Miner version...in that, I know that I have (since the downsizing) plenty of regular KNC Neptune/Jupiter Cards with bridge boards shot

or given to me. To see if this may work better. Also, FJC mines better with 2-3 cubes, error rate wise.

Dubious reasons indeed. These better be pretty good space heaters for this winter, in that FJC prices are also 'dubious' but hey..stuff to do...

Thanks in advance

brad

Is there a way to specify cubes or dies to use with BFGMiner so a Titan can run multiple instances without them stepping on each other reconfiguring dies?

I've been looking for controllers to split it up but it's like finding a unicorn.

Ok, so with no titans connected it displays spimux and never the IP address, correct?

If so the controller has a problem. Send it in and I'll look at it.

Are you comfortable with taking a cube apart and removing a board, or if you're in the US you can send over a whole cube and cable and I'll check it out.

hy, i can not try because the controler display only the titan 2.0 spimux.

I change the raspery pi , i use the same flash card 8GB Class 10 , and now it is ok. only one cube 300Mhz , hash 80-83Mhs.
How to test the 3cube left?
whare is the pin 1 to measuring from pin 9 ?
pls a picture.
whiht regards, florin c.

Ok, hm. Try this:

Connect one cube

Power up

Go to 50mhz on each die, -.0366 volts

See if it hashes at all.

This will tell you if the heat sink is loose; the cubes can run at 50 for a bit without much of a sink. If so you need to repaste the dies and ensure the sink is on snug enough that it can't be wiggled around on the chip.

Let me know. If that doesn't work you can try to reflash the controller or send the controller and one cube in and I'll take a look.

the light is green. i have put only one cube.
after restart on display show only KnCMiner  spimux.

whith no cube , the controler have the light green , an the display show DISCONECTED. some time whith cube is the same.
maybe rasbery pi is damege?
another time whiht cube , the controler is ok whiht ip , i make changes on web but no hashing. 0Mhs, temp on cube is showng 30C, and 7W power consumed.

Start at the beginning: If you power down and unplug everything from the controller, then power up the controller does the white light flash and the display show things? Does the light on the side of the unit go green?

hy, my new titan 1 controller +4 cubes not working.
the controler see the cube but 0Mhs , the advanced tab show 0A un core.
pls info for testing cube.
is titan 2.0 whith no network tab, and for me is a pain in the @ce to work.
after a time un display show disconected, no ip , and the lan interface from raspery is no led blinking.

Well, here it is June 2018, and I'm still getting the occasional Titan in for repair. These things don't quit.

They do age though. Three cubes, very nice condition, but I can see that the boards are slightly hogged (bent in the front) and putting the pad under the front of the board will really help the heat sink reconnect. Two of them have burned plugs, and the third has the short on pin 3 (not 4 or 6) which should be fixable by swapping the drivers.

Gives me something to do in between other projects. So yes, I'm still in business...