Bitcoin Forum

My S5 lost a board last night.  Chain 1 showed many "x"'s.  I changed supplies, no help, in fact chain 1 went completely dashes.  I swapped sides.  Chain 2 went all "x"'s.  I lowered the frequency to 200M.  Ten "0"'s and 20 "x"'s on the bad board!  I cleaned the board.  Now all "x"'s again.  Must admit the board had gotten dusty and the heatsink fins had accumulated dust at the intake.  My last try today was the newest firmware.  So, I believe the board has gone bad.  This is a Batch 1 S5 I bought in March, well beyond the 3 month warranty.  What kind of charges have others seen from Bitmain for this kind of board return and repair?  Thanks for insight.

I had no luck getting replacement from Bitmain.

You could try messing around with, only running it with the controller. Check if a cap is dead, etc. Maybe you can post a pic of the board or check if there's anything burnt. If not you could sell the board, if you're in North America i could be interested.

I dont think dust would had killed it.

I doubt replacements from Bitmain for a S5 (considering you have to pay outbound shipping) will be profitable. Have you tried contacting Bitmain's support to confirm?

Another option would be to buy another hashing board from someone closer to you to replace the broken one or sell the working one.

My experience with buying other than from Bitmain directly has been disappointing for the most part.  Most used Bitcoin miners of any efficiency sold by individuals are problem devices.  Profits are low and getting a buggy miner is continually frustrating.

The U19/U20 pair seem shorted to ground.  There's a 4.99 ohm 1% resistor across the caps mounted between each ASIC pair but across that cap C12 there appears to be a short.  A close inspection shows no debris on the ASIC pins.  

This board has a T09 round sticker in the upper right.  It's heatsink screws with springs were torqued less snug than the other board.  On the inside, the heat sink side, perhaps as is true on all the boards (will think to look one day), the positive rail comes thru to the inside to that ASIC pair in clusters of thru holes.  One of those thru holes is not coated for contact purposes when troubleshooting.

Dust impeded cooling - hotter ASIC became inefficient - inefficient ASIC drew more current - internal ASIC component or conductor couldn't stand up to the higher current, melts and shorts to ground.

Which would all mean something if the ASIC was allowed to run to 90c and 100c, which it cannot because the miner will stop the mining if it reach 80c. And a 2% in power draw isint enough to make a difference.

Except the sensor for temp is dead center on each board so if the hottest asic is on a top corner of the board the sensor may not read that it is at 100c

It is taken into account and sure the chips are indeed hotter at the end, but the chips are from from breaking down at that temperature.
We do put these in the oven after all. It would take a long time of overheating for the chips to get damaged and i don't think thats the issue here, even if OP forgot his S5 in a sauna for a month and did not notice the temp alarms during all that time.

We did see some S5 with a certain firmware overheat and break while losing internet connection however.

Is there another good reason that the resistance across the diodes is measurable above 4 ohms except in the quadrant of ASICs 19 & 20 where the resistance measured is well less than 1 ohm?  There are a relatively small number of filter capacitors to ground, but my money's on one of the two ASICs.  The large diode is good.  Other diodes are good.

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Sorry, long day working on car, 4.99 ohm resistors in parallel with capacitors but my meter reads resistance of between 4 and 5 ohms except for 19/20.

I usually see between 4.6 - 4.7 Ohms (Important to check the meter lead resistance first touching the leads of the meter together at these low values) Anything much less than this indicates a short in one or both of the ASIC's. Anything much higher can only indicate that the 4.99 Ohm resistor has gone high value for some reason?

Rich

Thanks.  That's what I thought.  Any way to get the board running without those 2 ASICs?  Removing one or both of the ASICs should clear the short but I hear they run in a chained operation.  I see the R39/D92 - R45D98 could be jumped, say removing D92&R45.

I have thought about but never tried removing a pair of chips & jumpering the data, it is far from straightforward.

First the chips are difficult to remove you need a decent rework station. Then there are 4 or 5 data signals that will need to be jumpered across the chip(s). Then the power either needs to be jumpered or a resistive load put in it's place equivalent to the effective resistance of the chips at the frequency the chips are hashing at, if this is not done and the power just shorted you would need to reduce the supply by 0.8V, and remove one set of the level shifting diodes.

Finally there is almost certainly something else I have not thought of? In theory it's possible, in practice probably not to be recommended.

Rich

So through all the mumbo jumbo, i understand OP has two bad chips? Assuming there is nothing else wrong with the board... Best thing might be to replace the 2 bad chips from 2 working chips from another bad board.

Yes agreed  :) But the OP asked about running with chips removed, so I had a shot at an answer.. Best thing is, as you suggest, to sacrifice a board for repairs, only I guess that does not work if you only have a single failed board to play with.

I have not been that successful so far repairing the partially failed board I have. This has been partially because I only had a Hot Air Blower and also that I was never certain if the chip I was using as a replacement was good. Have now got an IR Rework Station so once I have learnt to drive it that should improve things.

Rich

Sound like you have a pretty nice setup. I'm guessing the first issue with repairing a board is finding out exactly what is wrong. If simply switching out chips, resistors or some other doodad works, you can probably get a dead S5 boards for 50$.

Anyways that was the trade-in value before the BTC price raise.

Maybe sidehack could simply sell 2 working chips if that is really all that is missing.

I use to change ASICs on the thumb miners, sometimes the crystal.  These ASICs are of course even smaller, closer pins.  I would remove an ASIC if I thought there was hope but not try to replace one of these.

So, the board is sitting here.

Saw btc hit $500 today so tonight before dinner I took a C1 and got it up and running.  Tried to get my second up but in the process partly cut power to the first and stupido turned it on quickly perhaps losing the controller.  Tomorrow I'll try resetting.  Bother, my miners aren't on the .1.0 subnet.

So since its on a chain, if the first ASIC goes bad all the ASICs after will go dead also?

If its the last ASIC then all would be good expect the last one ?

Yes correct except that dependant on the fault with the ASIC the voltages to the rest of the ASIC's can be increased or decreased and that can also stop the entire chain from working.


Rich

And notice the difference between an ASIC going x with the others o's but when the ASIC goes short to ground the whole chain goes bad.

Its not a bad idea, i might even be interested in picking up such offer if the shipping to Canada is not too bad. If its available in one or two weeks i would probably pick up the deal.

No way.  I see no more S5's for sale by Bitmain.  To sell this perfectly working board running at half speed for money toward somebody else's 2 board castoff that in all probability would be a can of worms and nothing but headaches is not a smart idea.  If an S5 is working good who in their right mind would sell?

Okay so you have 3/4th a miner, not 1/2 of a miner. Would be more than 200$.

And replacing the board is strait forward and the go to solution when you have a dead board. But your is... half dead. Sound like it could go at any time. But not necessarily worth swapping it out yet, if the miner also run at the proper 3/4th of the power consumption.

Anyways the boards don't work together or anything, they are completely individual, they are merely two different miner running on one cgminer, so you can run 1, 2, 3 or 4 (or more) on a controller, you can even hack together a way to connect them through USB to use a miner on another OS to run them.

So buying a good board is exactly the same as buying a used complete S5.

Eh, it depends on the price offered. I think I'm about to put a few SP20 units that are giving me problems up for sale at a discount. They power up and all and I'm sure there is a way to fix them but I'm just fed up with working on gear. No time. I think I'll just put the money towards a new S7 which is what I would recommend the OP do if he can afford it. Someone else could probably get it back to 100% and then its a win/win for both parties.

Selling partially working gear, or multiple faulty units, can often get a good price because of the "Gamble" value that people put on their ability to repair the faults.

Rich

Sent the board back to Bitmain via US Postal Service Priority Mail on Nov. 23rd and it arrived in Miami on Nov. 25th.  Today was Dec. 14th and there has been no further movement in Miami.  It would appear the US Postal Service is not the carrier to use to China.

11/23/15 mailed, priority post

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11/25/15 package arrives at Miami

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12/22/15 package still in Miami.

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12/26/15 package still in Miami.

1/1/2016, starting the new year and the S5 hashboard sent back for repair is still sitting in Miami at the USPS facility, there since 11/25/2015.  Wonder if the problem is that the Bitmain rep said to write on the package that the value was $20 or less which then begs the question why spend $17 on priority mail postage.  Or perhaps the USPS just doesn't want to engage in mail service to China.
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Put a trace on it yesterday.  It's still there tonight 1/6/16, 42 days since being mailed, no indication of having been moved from USPS Miami to US customs.

January 11, 2016 and still no movement from the Miami USPS.  November 23, 2015 to present, 50 days.  And because Bitmain asked the value to be displayed as <$20,  if the USPS says they've lost it then guess what I'd get for it.  Probably would get postage refunded too tho.  That would be an S5 board with 2 ASICs dead for $37.

And today 1/13/16, a few minutes ago, I checked the tracking number on www.usps.com and got the following notification:



    The Postal Service could not locate the tracking information for your request. Please verify your tracking number and try again later.


Perhaps a worker at Miami's USPS took umbrage at my unfortunately poor penmanship on the customs form.

Well that's interesting.  This morning I checked the routing number again and it's back showing the hashing board to have arrived at a USPS Miami site.  Same tracking information as before the tracking number became `not found`.  When I got the tracking number not found notification, I notified Sherry.  This morning I received notification from Bitmain the parcel was received and the defective part has fixed well.  I've been given a figure to cover and am awaiting confirmation they have my correct address. :)

So, how do Bitmain repairs work?  After sending the required btc and transaction ID, there are no new entries on my Bitmain page, just indication of the new miners I bought in the past.  It's been a few days.

Perhaps in Miami they thought my poor penmanship, I filled out the customs form unexpectedly at the post office, was deliberate and for the inconvenience, after being contacted with the trace, sent the package on to China less tracking.

So Bitmain has had my btc for the s5 hashing board repair for a few hours shy of a week.  To recap: I had sent Sherry an email asking about a repair.  Was given information on where to send the board.  I sent it via USPS Priority Post.  Tracking stopped in Miami.  I received notification from Bitmain that the hashing board had been received and repaired successfully and told I needed to send 0.1357btc to address: 1KwA4fS4uVuCNjCtMivE7m5ATbv93UZg8V, transaction ID is: c6d748a7053f3c26672503b04f09472a80032ea16442cc0087dac5422bc8ed88.
After a couple of days not hearing back after sending the btc, I sent an email asking for info and tracking on the return board.  No reply.  I only then opened a ticket on my Bitmain page and described most of the above including the transaction ID.  I got an email reply of a support ticket created on 17 Jan.  I looked at the support ticket on my Bitmain page on Jan. 19th but the ticket information was gone.  So I went to the support email and clicked the "here support ticket" to "view this ticket's progress online and update".  It was there and I added a note making myself more clear then a second addition later that night.  I just looked again and there's no movement on the ticket.  There has been no reply from Bitmain nor Sherry.  I have just sent another email to Sherry asking for info.  Also I stopped back at the US Post Office where I mailed the package last November and made sure they had all the correct information and phone number Sherry had given me for the shipment and asked them to make sure the trace that I had previously requested had all the correct data.

Maybe a low level, nationalistic, worker in the Miami post office, viewing the man-made island in the South China sea situation, dead boxed the hashing board shipment in Miami.  Then in response to my email request to Bitmain, Bitmain lied about having already received the hashing board and just assumed it would arrive eventually and gave a typical replacement price and claimed my hashing board had been repaired.  But, when the hashing board still didn't arrive they decided to keep the 0.1357btc and continue waiting for the board before sending a replacement because they want to burn the old down to recover metals.

Interesting.  Following the link in the ticket reply email I'm getting a Bitmian page, the person icon when the menu is pulled down says Welcome Billy Johnston.  The page has a left column saying My Tickets and below Solving 0 Solved (no digit), and the right page side shows one ticket, the title, the creation date and the status (waiting). 

Now I go to another machine and open up the Bitmain website and log in.  I look at the person icon and it says Welcome BillJ.  I go to the My Tickets page, where I had created the ticket that prompted the email in which I found the link which I followed above, and now it shows no tickets under the My Tickets.

So, I created a ticket as BillJ.  The notification of ticket creation went to my email address.  Following the ticket link in the email takes to to a Billy Johnston My Ticket page showing the ticket but the ticket on the BillJ page is gone.

Perhaps it's because the ticket was moved to Bitmain Support Center that it no longer appears under my central Bitmain account page where no record of it appears.

I think that you can purchase hashing boards off sites like ebay.

This means that you can replace the board and get it funtioning quickly.

No.  I'll never buy a miner off Ebay.  Repair or replacement from Bitmain will work for this S5.  Might not be profitable nor even break even but will help heat my home at a lower cost than my other miners.

Maybe the Miami post office sees Trump making so much headway as a Xenophobe that they hope losing packages to China will boost the Bush prospects.

Sherry has replied and will inform me of the tracking number in 2 days.

Nothing new on the USPS tracking site.  Still showing nothing beyond having reached Miami.  I mentioned I stopped back a the post office and presented a printed copy of the destination data with phone number but I didn't mention that the gal at the counter said the postmaster was out until next week.  I was requesting that the trace I put on the package be checked to have all the data I presented with the printed page but apparently it was above her pay grade.  Not sure what day next week the local postmaster will be back.  Am considering going to another post office and requesting a trace, for instance from Peachtree City US post office.  My local post office is great in that there is rarely a line longer than 3 patrons and Peachtree City usually has a line stretching 10 or 15 deep.  But, PTC has a good number of major corporations while Hogansville has none.

Ah, great.  UPS shows a delivery scheduled for tomorrow, Monday.  I was wondering what would happen if the hashing board were mailed without tracking to my home.  Having a fence, UPS sometimes doesn't deliver, returning the package to the office instead of just leaving it inside the gate.  Without a tracking number I couldn't request email updates.  But, having my name and email address on file, UPS looked it up and sent me a notification!

I have an S5 with bad boards, how do I get in touch with Sherri?

I do not think that the S5 replacement and repair is still available.By the way her name is Liu Sherry.

Board arrived today.

I know.  The name order confuses me too.  Had a friend, chess player, Hshaun Kuo Yu, called him Kuo.

Sherry Liu <xiaorui.liu@bitmaintech.com>

Busy, and it was warm today so the board is still in its shipping box.  Who knows, perhaps when a farm S5 goes half bad they retire it then send out the good side as a replacement for a fee (only when a board is available) but officially not still repairing the boards.

Opened the package and it's the same board I had sent for repair.  Will test it later.

Found time today.  Repaired board in, fired up, it runs fine but my first good board is coming up short, only 18 o's showing on that board no x's, suspect a power supply issue.

Putting the repaired board on the side with the 4 wire ribbon cable and no power pcie connectors to the older board I get chain 1 showing 32 o's and am getting 582.48 GH/s.  Shutting it down, adding power to the long time good board, I fire it up after 2 minutes cold and the long time good board is showing as chain 2 with 20 o's, no x's.  After 6 minutes the 20 o's of the older dependable board has changed to all x's which agrees with an earlier test where it was the only board, showing 20 o's no x's but wouldn't show any hashing.  So, my old board has gone bad.  When I had it apart I brushed it off and hit it with compressed air.  Will have to give it a good cleaning and see if it improves.  But the board I had sent for repair, clearly marked with a sticker, is working well.

Not sure from the above but have you tried the "Long time good board" on it's own, Chain 1 side with the 4 pin power connector?

Rich

So a repaired board good and a good board gone bad, no gain on the play and a cost of ~$75. :(

Yes

Interesting.  Over time the 20 x's increased to 26 x's.  Anyone seen anything like this before?
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Shutting down, swapping ribbon cables, waited, started it up, 19 x's.
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Shut it down, removed first hashing board, cleaned thermal paste and reapplied as well as a quick clean of the topside with brake fluid.  Back in as secondary, now showing 22 of 30 ASICs but after a minute they're all x's.  So, no gain.
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Just to be sure I wasn't mistaken, I shut it down, put the fan on the other side, ripped off the sticker, flipped the controller board to the other side, and only connected the old board that had been working yesterday with nothing to repaired board.  It's showing a chain of 16 ASICs, all o's but it's only been a little over 3 minutes since firing it up so I expect to see x's soon as there's no hashing going on.  5 minutes, 10 getworks, zero hashing.  Will ssh in and /etc/init.d/cgminer.sh restart....resstart shows 'Have bitmain-asic 7'.   Now it's 17 ASICs on the GUI, all o's, but no hashing.

So, postage and repair costs, with the other hashing board going bad, has eliminated any savings I would have made this winter using electric (miners) instead of propane to heat my home.

Took the old board out, inspected, D102 appears damaged, got knocked somewhere.  Will address tomorrow earlier in the day.

Couldn't just watch TV and wait until tomorrow.  Removed the broken diode and replaced it with a small signal diode, 1N4148 probably, unmarked.  Fired it up just now and have both chains, all 60 ASICs, but chain 1 is running at 49° and chain 2 is running at 61°.  That chain 2 temp seems hot.  I have a second fan on the back driven at 12v.  Okay, just shut it down as the Dell server supply has a voltage too low and am going to other supplies.
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Okay back up and temps are 51/57 but will see in a while.

At 32 minutes, 1,129GH/S(avg), HW 5, 52°/58°, fan 3960.  I think it's fine.
94 minutes, 1,145GH/s(avg), HW 5, 51°/58°, 3960.

Interesting on D102. It is part of the level shifter that couples the reset signal between the chips. If faulty then chips after 14 would not be receiving the reset signal.


Rich