Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not? - page 37.

hawkfish007

hero member

Activity: 895

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Quote from: lightfoot on January 26, 2016, 08:28:29 PM

Quote from: hawkfish007 on January 26, 2016, 05:53:22 PM

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

Yep, short, sure, send it in.

Sick controller w/ an extra bridge on it's way. PMing tracking #.

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Quote from: hawkfish007 on January 26, 2016, 05:53:22 PM

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

Yep, short, sure, send it in.

hawkfish007

hero member

Activity: 895

Merit: 504

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

Searing

copper member

Activity: 2898

Merit: 1465

Clueless!

hey tripped over an ip direct address that works with kncminer site before they took it down (but not forums)

but all the stuff from 2013 or so seems to be on there if you want to archive it with a web archiver product

(i use winhttrack myself freeware on downloads.com

anyway it is something

this is on wayback machine

https://archive.org/web/

also i posted this and my thoughts on IF there is a way to merge the 12 or more snap shop archives of kncminer.com/forums/forums (see other thread below)

and MERGE them ...so that it is 'half assed' way to search knc forums yet...at least something

my thoughts on the knc Swedish asic miner thread below

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13680898

anyway links etc hopefully it is useful to someone that knows how such merging works

if nothing else you can track their 'shift to the dark side' from the news forum ..that you can still get to via the ip (see above link)

(hey it is something)

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Ok, so on both the Neptune and Titan pins 2 and 8 go to pin 1 on U14 and U16. Which are an LM75 (temp sensor) and a 24C32WP (Serial Eeprom).

Well, it's not pins 4 and 6 but it's a start. Hm. What were you doing KNC?

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Ok, that is *very* different, and it might be good to modify your previous post. My belief is that information should be free, but ability should be paid for properly. In my case, I post the things I find here as a service to the community, but I charge for the work I perform. If someone else can also do the work then all to the better as we get more home miners.

In Tarkin's case, he took the time to write the code and you can either pay $50 for it (cheap as hell) or pay 1% mining fee (also cheap as hell). When I get the Titans running on Beaglebones I could probably charge as well, but to be honest I'll just post the basic steps. If someone wants me to reprogram their BB then I'll charge some bitcoin amount to do it.

Either way far cheaper than either resetting your miner all the time (Tarkin) or spending $1k for a Titan controller (me)

mmfiore

hero member

Activity: 808

Merit: 502

I researched this software before making a purchase and you really have to dig to get to the truth. Here is the passage from the Readme.md file.
Located at:
https://github.com/GenTarkin/Titan/releases

Download the link that says source code. Its not really source code it is a small text file called ReadME.md and read the file. In the file you willo\ see this.

Quote

Upfront payment of $50 for version which has daily donation fee disabled.. see this post for details & questions:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12194406
(vegasguy is handling processing & distro of the img for prepaid version)
TO PURCHASE go here: http://bitcoinlasvegas.net/kncminer-titan-custom-firmware-mod-paid-membership-page/

2. The version available for download as an img here on github in my releases, this has a built in .75% DAILY donation where your Titan mines for me roughly 11mins /day.

I bought the supposed version that is not supposed to have the code in it but I found it is still there. I would feel a lot better if they would come out and say that on the website. Maybe it is disabled and maybe its not. Who knows.

As far as I can tell at this point the free version has the donation code and the purchase version has it disabled. That is not as bad as I thought. I definitely do not mind buying it if it does not have the donation code.

This page explains it best.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12194406

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Quote from: mmfiore on January 25, 2016, 09:04:01 AM

I do know about Tarkin but that software takes over the miner once every day and hashes for tarken for about 11 minutes. I am not comfortable with that. I don't mind paying the 50 bucks but I think its a bit greedy to keep extracting payments everyday indefinitely thereafter.

WHAT?

Really? First I have heard of that.

mmfiore

hero member

Activity: 808

Merit: 502

I do know about Tarkin but that software takes over the miner once every day and hashes for tarken for about 11 minutes. I am not comfortable with that. I don't mind paying the 50 bucks but I think its a bit greedy to keep extracting payments everyday indefinitely thereafter.

After further researching some more I found out that the paid version has the automatic switch over for 11 minutes disabled. Only the free version mines for Tarkin 11 minutes a day. Sorry for the confusion.

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Don't know. Tarkin has this all figured out, $50 is cheap for the work he did.

On a related note I know why my last two Neptunes are not working: The boards are literally curved like a taco chip. Apparently someone in the past tightened the screws down so hard the heat sink warped the board. Gets hot, connections lift, bye bye board.....

mmfiore

hero member

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Merit: 502

Is there a way to do a soft reset to each Titan cube from BFGMiner?

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Interesting Neptune here: This one seems to have two dead supplies.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/137949766@N06/shares/6Hs3ES

DC/DC   Voltage (V)   Current (A)   Power (W)   Temperature (°C)
0   0.7839   37.0625   29.053   80.375
1   0.7826   37.6875   29.494   91.125
2   0.7809   39.0000   30.455   64.625
3   0   0   0.000   0.000
4   0.7819   37.3750   29.224   56.938
5   0.7826   38.0625   29.788   65.000
6   0   0   0.000   0.000
7   0.8092   0.0000   0.000   42.438

And hot on the bottom. Fair enough, standard bad connection/etc. Opened it up, and *nope* It's was better.

Oh yeah. Someone had torqued the screws down so hard they literally *broke* the aluminum base. Yes, another one was broken too. Yes, nothing was holding down the heat sink really. But was it KNC?

Nope. That's not their heat sink sauce.

So this unit was basically running without a heat sink and probably imploded two supplies. I'm going to declare this box a wreck, and see if I can get the board up on another box. Oh well, at least I know that you can't tighten the screws enough to break the chip.

Moral: Don't tighten the screws so much.....

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Yup. Those caps short, and sometimes incinerate the whole power supply. I just fixed a Titan where two supplies blew up, one so badly the traces under the board were wrecked. Fortunately it can run that core at 150mhz on one supply now that everything is cleaned.

Just checked it, at 500gh/350mhz temps are 45c chip and 69c power supplies. Fine.

helipotte

hero member

Activity: 650

Merit: 500

Pick and place? I need more coffee.

Might be the lighting, but some of those large surface mount caps on the VRMs look to have gotten WAY hot. I have noticed they change

color to almost a bluish when exposed to lots of heat. When this happens sometimes they change characteristics (maybe tiny fractures) and

eventually short. See it inside laptop computers all the time. Personally I hate SMD ceramic caps.

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Ok, so an update on that super-hot Neptune (Titans will do this too). Thing was running with PS temps at >100c, chip at 60c+ at a mere 350mhz, bottom was extremely hot to the touch (these things must be laughs on carpet).

Took unit apart, found this:

Yep. Filth and crummy hardened heat sink compound. Cleaned up the chip, the box, everything, and now:

44C

0   0.7838   34.5625   27.090   75.500
1   0.7834   35.0000   27.419   79.625
2   0.7859   35.0000   27.507   67.625
3   0.7823   34.3750   26.892   67.750
4   0.7838   35.3125   27.678   60.000
5   0.7870   35.7500   28.135   65.625
6   0.7848   34.2500   26.879   63.688
7   0.7828   35.0000   27.398   65.125

500gh, 218 watts, bottom normal temp to the touch.

Moral: If your unit is running hot, try opening it up and cleaning the thing. Replace the heat sink compound, clean the old crap off the chip (if there is hardened crud on there you will break the chip when you torque down the sink) and torque the screws down "finger snug". Likewise snug them in sequence, to even the pressure.

Never dull, on to the next unit.

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

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I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

That shows you this is some sort of a short in the SD card connector. Are any of the pins touching the frame? How about sliding a small bit of cardboard cut like a SD card in there?

Will check out mine further once I get these queued jobs done.

adaseb

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Quote from: lightfoot on January 23, 2016, 12:16:01 AM

Quote from: adaseb on January 22, 2016, 10:58:30 PM

It seems to work with the SD card in but I need to take it out or it will not boot, anyway to leave the SD card inside and have it start?

Weird, huh. How about power it up with the SD card inserted, then immediately pop it out. Or put it in far enough that it almost engages, the whine should stop. Once it's going, it seems to go.

Once again, not quite sure why.

Yes that's what i've been doing. But if I leave it in, it tries to read the empty SD Card and fails to boot. If I unclick it and leave it in there, it doesn't work and goes back to that whine error.

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Quote from: adaseb on January 22, 2016, 10:58:30 PM

It seems to work with the SD card in but I need to take it out or it will not boot, anyway to leave the SD card inside and have it start?

Weird, huh. How about power it up with the SD card inserted, then immediately pop it out. Or put it in far enough that it almost engages, the whine should stop. Once it's going, it seems to go.

Once again, not quite sure why.

adaseb

legendary

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Quote from: lightfoot on January 18, 2016, 08:32:44 AM

Ada: That's something which is on the Beaglebone and *not* the controller board. I think the problem is the BB SD card pins are touching the frame from being pressed on. Unit can't turn on its' DC-DC, doesn't boot, power cycling sometimes gets it up.

What does work for me is to put a sd micro card in the slot and turn on the unit, then pop it out once the power is on. That seems to allow it to boot every time, then I just leave it running. Weird, but a $40 BB problem and not a board problem.

It seems to work with the SD card in but I need to take it out or it will not boot, anyway to leave the SD card inside and have it start?

lightfoot

legendary

Activity: 3164

Merit: 2258

I fix broken miners. And make holes in teeth :-)

Snowing like hell this evening, so I unpacked my next job: 5 Neptunes, 3 controllers, three beaglebones.

Of the five Neptunes one has a shorted supply, and the rest don't have shorts on the 10 pin SPI connector. Plugged the first one in, power supplies appear but refuse to power anything. Possibly a reflow, will work on tomorrow.

Second one is *very* interesting. Comes up and runs, but is a super hot runner on the power supplies. No real reason why, but even at 350mhz it's running high 90's. So after letting it run a bit I picked up the cube from the floor.

The bottom of the cube was *HOT*. Odd, since the reference neptune (450mhz, all supplies around 80c) is not really warm on the bottom. Weird. I wonder if the heat sink has lost contact, and as a result the chip is getting super-hot and polluting the surrounding supplies with heat. One way to find out....

Topic: Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not? - page 37. (Read 76798 times)