Topic: Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com - page 9. (Read 3049520 times)

Actually 10btc sounds like about what it would cost me in time to hack together the code load on a BBB to a point where anyone could use it. Fair deal.

Kicking out a link to my post in the goods forum, I sat on the firmware for a few months now thinking I would bundle it and sell it in partnership with GenTarkin, just don't have the time so I put it up for sale since it hasn't been distributed anywhere yet..

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/beaglebone-black-jupiter-controller-knc-titan-firmware-build-instructions-1678815

tricky question: depends what the definition of "working" is and what the definition of "is" is

You have a working batch 2?

C

No I meant the reference to getting them working without modification. I think if the current design is dealt with, I can move on to getting rid of the need for it in a controller altogether. Can't even modify the size of the PCB without the main board getting in the damn way.

**I'll post some high quality images of my working batch 1's and batch 2's for comparison.

You don't know what is wrong with your board?

C

ouu that sounds nice. Let us know. Though keep in mind, the main board does not source up the chain unfortunately.

Oh I see what happened. He didn't short the +5 volts to ground. He shorted the +3.3 volts to ground. Which is produced by the Pi on pins 1 and 17. I can tell because the line from 1-17 that goes to two vias is shorted to ground before the first via. It then is supposed to attach up through the second via to the cap for the crystal, then go down to the main controller board (not sure if the main board uses 3.3 sourced by the Pi/BB. That would be odd since they have a perfectly good TMS chip there on the left....) I can see it's still grounded at the bottom of the board, will try seeing if I can figure out which via (or both) is shorted next.

Cutting that trace gives me a pi that will come up on the qberty board. Not going to try to hash with it (the crystal is powered by that 3.3 line, so it needs to be intact somehow) will see if the mainboard provides 3.3 as well. Maybe I can hot wire it.

Oi.

Edit: Found it. 3.3 is needed on main board. Working to re-mediate the error.

Oh I'm hardly out of luck; I'm just stuck using my brain.

So far two of the Qberty boards shut down the Pi on powerup with nothing else, I'm going to try #3. And I got another mumbler working, and I have isolated the short off pin 4 to 6 only. Still not there, but that does narrow things down somewhat.

Back to work.

Yeah the batch 2's are the ones with issues that I just had issues. I think the issue you're experience might be an isolated situation. But you're welcome to try on some more (as I have a couple more laying around).


In my opinion, I think all of KnC's specs should be public after all this, and i'm trying my best here. I'm not a part of KnC and can't even grant NDA's like that. So lightfoot would be out of luck if he were even into getting it. but that's more hoops to jump through than it's worth. I'm working on some things to make it easier for everyone on the software side of Titan customers. I wish I could do something about the neptune customers, they are in the worst position of all.

As to the KNC NDA stuff Qberty should just imho  email the lawyer in previous posts the guy  always replied promptly to our liquidation purchase emails which mainly went along the theme...".er huh are you really really legit and representing KNC or are we gonna get screwed on this wire transfer"....in veiled terms we.....were...MUCH MORE then  a bit paranoid it being KNC and all ..he held our hand nicely)


thanks for the update ..I did not want to ask ....the KNC stuff is so flakey it could have sent you off into a legitimate rage as a result and you'd have looked for a hammer

by the by any hope of the full cube that went away just blinking a white light in memorial to its past up to that point full cube hashing?...

the other 2 1 die only boards as well I guess anything up with them?

(now I went and done it ....showed him all the crap he has to work to REVIVE AND LIVE AGAIN...so he is off ranting "I'm an engineer ....not  Jesus damn it!
...jeez..hope he can't find the hammer)

Not super comfortable with NDA's. I've been sharing my knowledge here as a matter of course, and I'd hate to not do that. Service to the community. However if people consider the name of a chip used on a board to be restricted information then so be it; I'll continue to go it alone.

Moving on, with the Qberty design the Pi power goes out when I plug the Pi into the Qberty board. That's odd. However if I lay the board down at an angle to the connector so just the first two pins connect it comes on. Which means something is odd in the first 10 pins on the Pi-Qberty board.

More working today. I fixed the bottom pins on that sacrificial board Searing, now I'm going to pull the top pins to see what's up if I can't rig up a quick header.

C

Well still if you had a NDA i assume the China fab folk you had to sign one. Because they MADE
YOUR bridge. So just have lightfoot sign a NDA as a Tech you have to FIX your bridge boards

If the China fab folk did not sign a  NDA then a contracted repair tech would not have to either

To be safe call the KNC bankrupt law firm but if no  NDA China fab folk none sure is not
Needed for lightfoot to fix unless you need one yourself not to copy your work

Again the only questions can be resolved with an email to the previous posted KNC bankruptcy firm

In my previous posts.

They aren't upside down funny enough. They are identical to my batch 1. My batch ones worked even on faulty Pi's. The batch 2's are the exact same designs with no change except textual (which is far away from any danger).                                                                 

Never mind, I see what it is. It's a 24.576mhz crystal, reason being the BBB will output that signal out from the board itself, while the Pi can't do that. So KNC had to create an external frequency base off that crystal.

Interesting. Did you put the crystal in upside-down qberty?

C

Edit: Weirder. Something weird is going on the first couple of pins. Not sure why, but different from the other boards. Odd.

I was thinking of a way to short the controller board to prevent it from providing power to the Pi, and just supplying external power to the Pi. This would require two power sources but would be way safer on the bridge. Waiting on a new shipment of Pi's to see if I can test out those issues and come up with a surefire way of fixing this without having to add anything to any of the boards.

For the rest of the group, I have a Rev 2 bridgeboard that just came in. If you have an original bb that's blown I can probably fix that but you also need a new Rpi (Amazon has em) (send it and the old Rpi over), let me know.

C

Indeed. I have seen a few Rpis that basically short their +5 charge pump circuit. Since this is powered directly off the main power supply unit through the controller board without a fuse you wind up with a big solid dead short. The weak trace is under the bridgeboard, that's why it blows up in the first place. Fixing the trace isn't difficult but you need to replace the Rpi at the same time otherwise the new BB will blow open too.

I have a rev2 BB and some other things here for this weekend, going to be a lot of work tomorrow looking at some of this stuff. But if someone on the planet can tell me the BOM for this board or the Titan/Neptune I would appreciate it.

C

Well things work a little differently with intellectual property that's assigned to an entity or person. Simply liquidating their assets doesn't mean their patents or trademarks or company secrets get laid out. If that were the case, the Titan wafer specs and board pcb layouts would have already been available for free on the net.

Anyway, I never said anything was screwed up on your end. I already admitted that the second batch was botched because of a retracing/outsourcing problem with that manufacturer (which is why i'm switching to a different local fab). What I mean by working Pi, is a Pi that has no noticeable voltage fluctuations.

I've noticed the most severe Pi's that cause the bridges to burn, is the ones that ALSO have an "iffy" RJ45 jack (ethernet port). I've tested almost 100 Pi 1.1 and 1.2's and the evidence is pretty obvious. Sometimes the port just fails, and then miraculously "fix itself". This is all due to the poor optimizations of power within the Pi. This isn't to excuse KnC's design of their boards though. Their boards are poorly designed.

KNC is legally bankrupt sold and gone. You can contact the bankruptcy firm to confirm. The company is Kaput...miners have been liguidated on a fire sale (I got 6 of them at 1900 bucks each 400mh with shipping) this last July.

So you have been off the hook for months

Still confused on what you mean by a 'proper working pi' all my pi's were/are NEW Raspberry Pi B+ 512mb replacements....they all work.

Also the bridges of qberty 2nd batch I tested fried nothing. On my Titan board or my Pi or anything. Just sat there and did not light up. I know this because I got a ''used' Titan Pi bridge
for 0.5 BTC (figured what the hell overpay I had 100 bucks in a Neptune 6 port board and 50 bucks in Pi by that point anyway...so for (at the time btc was) price of 325 usd
I got a spare titan bridge out of it ...when you get lemons make lemonade or so my roundabout way of justifying 0.5 btc for a working bridge works)

Anyway ..used all same Neptune board parts ribbons PI Sd card etc on the 'used titan bridge' and all was hunky dory worked just fine

So again ..nothing screwed up at my end...nothing fried...it just plain did not work ...and I had 3 of them 2nd batch bridges all the same just did not light up ..board and pi
are fine that tested with above...and all working fine on the used bridge after the fact

Well shoot your info to Lightfoot... your NDA also back in the day LIKELY did not apply to telling a Tech how to FIX your product bridgeboard. on your permission to make a production run that your NDA was involved with.....otherwise you could never have told the techs in China how to reverse engineer it...if you can tell folk outside of the NDA how to make it and what parts etc..you certainly can tell your tech folk (employed or contracted) on how to fix them

If you are really paranoid tell Lightfoot the info and get a NDA out of him and have even cover if it makes you feel better.  But again KNC is gone...I have their equipment and others bought out the rest of it.

They are no more.


https://news.bitcoin.com/knc-miner-sold-serious-swedish-buyer/

Talk or email the main guy below ..he is the one who did the liquidation sale and also the whole bankurptcy
.....just ask him .he always replied promptly on the liquidation sale process.


Nils Åberg

Advokat
Partner

Advokatfirman Carler

P.O Box 7557

SE 103 93 Stockholm

Sweden

Phone: +46 8 522 532 00

Direct: + 46 8 522 532 15
Fax:     +46 8 522 532 10

Mob:     +46 70 545 21 25

[email protected]

Secretary: Carina Christiansson ([email protected])

www.carler.se


Also sent you a pm of the above.