Topic: Revive a Dead Antminer S2 with Beaglebone Black Rev. C (off the shelf) - page 2. (Read 13499 times)

never mind I had an old version of 7 zip... latest one works with xz

step1

How do you extract the .xz file in windows ?   7zip says its not a valid archive .

http://s3.armhf.com/debian/raring/bone/ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz

I don't imagine the version should make much difference, they're basically the same except the Rev. C has more onboard storage.

Also want to point out another nice feature of this setup is that you can keep the beaglebone on despite removing power from the rest of the S2 by connecting a wall wart or USB 5V power supply.

I have ordered Rev B ( that was the only available on Monday in canada).. once I get i will post results

Thanks for starting this.. I have the exact same problem..  I will try to order the off the shelf beaglebone

My Antminer S2 (kit) decided it didn't want to boot anymore after I shut it down briefly to re-route some cables. I scoured the forum and found all these "re-image the SD card" and "buy a class 10 SD card" solutions like this
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/antminer-s2-discussion-and-support-thread-515448

I tried all that and still got nothing. Fans spin, Red LEDs on backplane, 4 green and 1 red LED on IO board, No LED action and blank display on display panel, No LEDs on the Beaglebone Black control board. I emailed bitmain, they were useless.

I ordered a Beaglebone Black Rev. C from Adafruit.com ($55) to see if it would work as a replacement. The one that comes on the S2 is a stripped down version. Here's a few pics of the differences.

https://i.imgur.com/96N4U6b.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ydY7aKk.jpg

Here's what I did (first try, moderate success. See second attempt below for better results)
1-So I imaged an SD card with this Ubuntu image for the Beaglebone Black
http://s3.armhf.com/debian/raring/bone/ubuntu-raring-13.04-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz
(Extract .img file, Format SD card Fat32, Win32Imagewriter)

2-Boot up Beaglebone Black. Once booted, insert SD card, press and hold Boot Switch button, press Reset button. (Beaglebone Black boots to SD card)

3- I put this image from bitmain into my dropbox, SSH into the Beaglebone Black, and wget bitmain image dropbox link to download it.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9mK2-whJv8cU0Q5R1hIQTJnRVU/edit

4-Once downloaded I installed it on the 4GM onboard eMMC storage with this command:
sudo dd bs=1M if=bitmain.img of=/dev/mmcblk1
(note I changed the name of the image from bitmain to bitmain.img to simplify things for myself)

5-Once finished power off Beaglebone Black. Attach to IO board from S2, insert IO board into backplane. Apply power.

RESULTS- This works, but if I rebooted the S2, changes were not saved. Had to re-enter pool info, network settings, etc. everytime. Couldn't overclock. Basically, what I think is happening, is that the firmware is set up to write settings to the SD card, but since I was booting from the onboard eMMC storage and didn't have an SD card in, it wasn't working. (Note, I didn't try just adding and SD card to this setup, but it's possible that may work fine) I'm sure it's also possible to tweak the firmware to write to the onboard storage, but I'm not the guy to figure that part out on my own.


Second attempt, more ideal results.
1-Same as above

2-Same as above.

3-put ubuntu image from step 1 above into dropbox and wget ubuntu dropbox link
(supposedly this version of ubuntu will check if there's a bootable SD card and prioritize that over the ubuntu image)

4-repeat step 4 but replace bitmain.img with ubuntu.img (note, again, simplified renamed image files)

5-Power off, reboot.

6- Flash bitmain image from above link to SD card (Class 10 SD, Format Fat32, win32imagewriter)

7- Insert SD card with Bitmain image into Beaglebone Black. Press and hold Boot Switch button, press Reset button. (supposedly rebooting should have booted to SD card image but I didn't find that to work as expected.

8- Power off Beaglebone Black, attach to IO board from S2. Press and hold Boot Switch Button (this is kind of a pain with the IO board on but doable), apply power to Beaglebone Black via USB or wall wart. Insert IO board into S2 backplane. Apply power to S2. Remove USB/wall wart power from Beaglebone Black.

At this point, it's booting from the SD card, and when restarted it actually boots to SD card without using the Boot Switch button. Settings are saving properly and I'm hashing again, overclocked to 219 MHz.

I'm still trying to get a replacement S2 Beaglebone, but at least I'm up and running in the meantime.

Hope this is helpful to someone.