Topic: Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not? - page 36. (Read 76775 times)

Yep, and as requested I just sent the one fixed back. I tested it overnight and did a quick test on all six ports this morning. And got out of bed, sucks to get out of bed on Saturday :-)

Can't do anything on the others (or the one that just arrived this morning) till Tuesday when the next batch o' parts come in. So I'll focus on these Titan boards and see if I can get one of them to respond to basic commands.

ASIC4 is most likely a blown power supply. However fixing it would only give you a few more MH, so it might not be worth fixing.

The second one is a bit more interesting. Try going to -.0366 or so and 50mh on the chip. Watch to see if the supplies turn on for awhile then turn off or start at 0 volts. Also check the heat sink connection, and if there is junk/crap all over the power supplies especially the ones on the sides.

Sure, I can fix Titans, they're still worth fixing based on the prices on Ebay. Feel free to PM me about what you have.

@ Tigggger

I have a couple of cubes that do what your cubes are doing they run for a little bit and then shutoff. I believe it is caused in many cases by insufficient cooling and the heat sync not being in good contact on the surface of the chip. I went out to examine the cubes and found that the two that were malfunctioning I had laying on their sides. This I think had the effect of pulling the heat sync away from the surface of the dies. I placed them right side up and the cubes started to perform better. They still need improvement because they still seem to be running hot. I will recondition them to improve cooling. Its good that people are sharing info on this blog this info is helpful.

Question for lightfoot. Do you fix titan cubes for other people?

they were designed for 3 month warranty....that was it ..the only reason the orig titan owners got 1 year a bunch of us ordered such before they changed
the web pages...they then tried 'dual warranty' those before that date got 1 year those after got 90 days..part of the reason I'd like to figure out how to take
all the wayback machines archives of knc from 2013-2015 and 'merge' them for a kinda sorta mirror (anyone how is this done)...just so I could read all the crap
the pulled again and flat out 'lies' they said along the way ...(why they nuked it imho ....because of the class action)

..then of course the large amount of RMA's came
in on the first batch of dies not being too good...so they then changed the max from 300 on the adv page to 325....so they have overclocked this unit 2x
above ..what their orig web pages said of 250mh.....thus the need for the y 2 cable and 2 psu's etc etc.....after that point all titans have been run full out

it is a frigging asic 'miracle' my rasberry pi 8th grade science project .controller board just sitting around .exposed to the air/cats/etc (I mean could not even afford
a plastic box for it ..how cheap is that) .has lasted 14 months....

I attribute that to just the plain 'evilness' of KNC machines........like 'asic' zombies ...unless monitored constantly...they 'kinda sorta' work but 'refuse to die'
keeping 'minon's like us" in the constant battle to stop them from 'bricking themselves to a door stop at the first oppurtunity..evil I tell ya

and of course what the market would bear when they put the price tag on these

by the by ...what is an estimate from someone in say the mnfg field of the reality of what these cost with parts/labor and the chips....1/5th what they charged is my guess

at the MOST..

anyway....like all 'space heaters' they will eventually 'fry out' imho ..they were 'road hard and put away wet' out the factory gate

last point...did anything ever come of that 'swedish class action' you put 1.5k down per Titan and/or maybe more if you lost the case?

Further to my post a few pages ago, https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13519222

I turned my machine off shortly after as wasn't really profitable to run anymore in the UK, but the recent spike in rates on nicehash brought it back to life, after talking with GenTarkin I bought his custom firmware and it did cure the problem.

Here are a couple of other problems that my machine has, I'm sure you've come across them already but just for info in case you haven't



Asic 4, Die 1 (The Half Running Die)
I have quite a few of these across my 6 cubes, I presume this is just a faulty asic chip and nothing can be done

Asic 5, Die 2 (The Half Speed Die)
Have a couple of these as well, they will only run at much reduced speeds as the voltages are very high, these are a mystery and am curious on the problem.

I'm pretty sure that that one is mine   Thanks!  (I know I have 3 there somewhere!) LOL

I swear to God, I'm beginning to think I can fix a bad day. 6 BGA pads lifted, placed back by hand, new FPGA placed, aligned, flowed and the damn thing works. Yep, I definitely worked for this one.

I'll deal with the other three when the parts come in next week. But yep, I'm fairly good....

Awesome work!  Always intriguing to watch your "stream of thought" in these threads.

In the meantime I had a couple of interesting breakthroughs:

I know what the pins for those titans are now: They are 3.3 volts and 1.8 volt sources from the TMS power supply. They're not for the main power supplies (they have their own power sources) they might be for the EEPROM. I'm going to modify (cut) a 10 pin cable to bypass them and see what happens when I plug it into a controller:

If the LM75's come up with no power and it recognizes Titan that's not good. If they don't I will haul both and see.

I'll then try powering up the 12 volt line.

I think also I can see where an exploding power supply could take out cubes on a controller (and the controller). Basically that is a shared line to all cubes, if 12v got on those lines it would short anything there.

I just hope it ain't the dies. If so we're fucked.

Also I took apart the roaster board and sure enough both the FPGA and the TMS chip are shot. Replaced TMS, voltages are up, will think about putting my last FPGA chip on there. I have a several hundred dollar order on with Digi-Key, that will come in next week.

Next up: Titan work.

I don't think it's utter shit, technically there is always worse. Using  off the shelf power supplies was actually a masterful idea since it took the risk of building a mongo power supply out of the equation. And I have no clue how they managed to get a high power scrypt chip together....

Then again the cases are hand cutting.... ok they suck.

(there's also the fact that building miners is a queen's race. I wouldn't do it)

They only wanted to raise money, not actually build something worth the money. >_<

Ironically, many claimed that they mined with these machines prior to sending them to the purchasers, but I have to wonder what kind of cluster-F that turned into when the machines were so attention-demanding. Think of all the times they would have had to reset cubes, just to keep them mining. I suspect they realized the production quality was rather poor, once or if they had mined with them. This is what happens when you outsource the entire design and production of a product, with no or little quality assurance, or oversight, being incorporated in the process.

Man.....why did KNC build such utter SHIT?!?!?

Back to working on boards: Got three controllers in today, all dead. Bit odd in that they don't flash the green light which is what normally happens when the TMS chip or FPGA fails.

First board had literally blown two of the pads where the TMS chip is. Great. Put that aside.

Second chip fired up and lit the bright light, followed by green with no miners. Nice. Figured it might be ok, then it shut down the power supply. Not nice. Power cycled and felt temps. When the bright light lit, the FPGA started getting *exceptionally* hot. Hot enough to burn my thumb. Ow. Powered down, went to pull the FPGA chip (bad).

FPGA came off, but some of the traces underneath it literally had delaminated. Wow. Now it's true that the controller board is not designed for heat, but this is a first. So I cleaned it up, took off the solder, and straightened the 6 pads that had come loose. Tomorrow I'll sit down and see if I can put a new chip on it; the balls should pick up the pads and provide stability.

This however points to a failure mode: FPGA degrades and pulls more current. Gets hotter, then either the FPGA shorts or it blows up the TPS chip. Or in this case screws everything up.

Never dull.

Yeahp, I believe thats stated on checkout =)
Thats why account setup is needed, so upgrades can be attained w/o having to repurchase.
Also, please dont confuse upgrades with additional Titan installations. Technically an additional half price copy should be purchased for each additional miner.

Gen Tarkin - Just ordered and sent the bitcoin I will let you know how it works.
Thanks
Do we get free upgrades?

NP ... hope ya like the firmware =) ... if ya do, feel free to spread the word =-0

Thanks for the clarification GenTarkin. I think I would like to try the latest version. Thanks for the link. 

Just to clarify..... the donation version has been done away with long ago. The paid version DOES NOT do the daily mining fee and NEVER HAS. At one point I simply had 2 options of payment. Those who didnt mind donating a smll amount of hashrate to myself, or the pay up front version. Due to abuse, I got rid of the donation version.  You are correct to assume the donation code is still in the PAID version but its simply not enabled at all. I wasnt sure if I was going to bring the donation version back at some point so the legwork of the code was left - just disabled.

The reason the source isnt available except for people who purchase(which is my right as per open source licensing and the licenses used in this firmware) is to protect my code from simply being downloaded w/o payment. The source is free to inspect once you pay. The source code on github is a private repo, the public one I left available as a form of information about my firmware - it still has the release history & README files available to tell about the project.

If you are interested in purchasing my firmware ... my official website is http://gentarkincustomtitan.pcriot.com


Also, if you dont keep up to date on my news ... the latest is ... for the last 4 months I have been working on a release that automatically tunes all dies voltages for a given clock speed to optimize for the best effeciency possible while maintaing stability. I have invested much time into coding & testing this. Ive also added many features & fixes along the way for various things that came up in testing.

Sounds good. Need to place an order with Digi-Key for some more FPGAs and power chips. And just sent out a repaired Titan, we're hitting a stride here.