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Reserved for technical things.
Currently I can fix the following things:
Most problems with KNC Neptunes and Titans
Power and cooling issues with Monarchs
Burned power plugs on Avalon 6 and 7 miners
Burned power plugs on just about anything
Working on MAT miners (weird things)
Open to working on other systems as presented.
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Hello all!
I'm Lightfoot, and this is my thread for fixing general miner problems with bitcoin miners.
I started with Jalapenos, then went to fixing Monarchs, Neptunes, have been enjoying a good run with KNC Titans and now I'm branching out into fixing other types of miners. Mainly because people have them, they need fixing, and I enjoy working for bitcoins and litecoins. Go figure.
Anyway, this thread will be similar to my other threads where I fix KNC stuff and the like. Same rules apply: I get stuff to fix, I post what I do, what I learn, and charge for my time and expertise to repair. The classic information is free, experience is rewarded thing.
As for myself, I have been fixing miners for about 4 years now and have gotten pretty good at it. Truth be told there are only so many ways to build a miner, and I've been able to troubleshoot a lot of problems without the help of things like schematics, vendor help, and the like. Not that I would refuse it, if a vendor wanted me to help I would be happy to, I just would write what works so other people can fix things too.
I have air tools, SMD rework tools and the almighty board pre-heater. Seriously if you want to fix PC board get a good pre-heater even if you're using a soldering iron. They warm the board up, allow the solder to properly flow, facilitate taking off components with ease, and most importantly allow you to reduce the temps on your iron which keeps the board from getting burned/traces lifted. There's no feeling quite like opening someone's miner to find that someone else took a blowtorch to the inside.
Anyway, on with the thread. Unlike my ones about KNC Titans and Neptunes, this will cover general bitcoin miners. If you have a question feel free to post. We'll start with an Avalon A6 which came in with toasted power plugs....
Lightfoot Labs
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Bitcoin is at 2640. I am really glad I didn't pay for hookers when Bitcoin hit $500 a few years back. I would be feeling less pleasurable now.
2640. That's not bad.
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Fixed another 7 boards. This came from a guy that had heat sinks on all of the power supplies, the sinks do allow more power to be pulled but in this case he literally baked off the high side FETs on the supplies. Fortunately he included a bag of supplies, however failures included shorted supply controller chips, and just a general 2 day mess repairing the boards. However I did get 7 fixed, one was fine, one was totally shot.
Today I am working on another three that look like rejects from someone else's attempt to fix boards. Hint: A soldering iron alone will not take off a power supply and ripping up the vias is not impressive. I'm focusing on one board; the drivers were blown and one of the supplies shorted the control pin to 12v. This blew out every single supply on the board, I have pulled up and replaced five of them so far. This is, to be honest, insane.
Oh well. Forunately I have a supply of Titan boards to raid for supplies. Still a mess...
C
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I know, I got my quagmire post deleted. But that said, I think I did it at 1200 a bitcoin, which of course was a really terribly low level but a few months ago. 2200 is much more like it for my tastes (buying better wine)
Back to slaving over a hot (reflow) oven.
C
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So more repairs coming in and I'm seeing something interesting on a few of the cubes.
Apparently someone else is trying to replace the power plugs. That's great, but these plugs are burning out as well and after looking at it I see the problem:
It looks like they are being taken off with a very hot iron without pre-heat. Do-able perhaps, but the problem is that much heat on the bottom is de-laminating the lowest layer of the board; breaking off the pads and causing the lower plane to be powered off the top plane through the vias. Not good, more heat.
More of an issue; the new plugs are being soldered on without warming the whole board, so the solder joints wind up being cold-soldered in the midde of the board. This causes resistance which is causing a lot of heat and baking the pins.
I recommend snipping the neutral pins first, then warming the whole board to around 150c as measured at the board with an IR thermometer first, then tinning the leads with rosin/lead solder, then removing the pins one at a time. With the top three off the bottom three can come off as a set when you tin them (which lowers the melting point of the solder from the very high ROHS levels to a more rational level) at which point you can remove the solder with wicking, test fit the new connector, then put some flux on the new connector pins, put it in, take it off the pre-heater and quickly solder the pins from the bottom. Then put it back on pre-heat, and check to make sure all six pins have solder when viewed from the top.
I can post pics if anyone is interested, but this is important. If the ground leads ever fail or go high resistance the board is destroyed by the resulting voltage differential between the chip hotel supplies from the ground on the controller board and the current demands from the hashing engines. It wrecks the chip and is the only thing so far I can't repair.
C
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I know! Litecoin is down to a miserable, paltry $31. The horror (weeps)
Excuse me I need to go touch myself.
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Twenty five hundred fucking dollars for a bitcoin. Good God!
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oh look a new ATH how nice.
yeah. great. I s'pose. We are so jaded.... |
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Front page news on cnn.com.
Hm.
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Just took a look: Transaction volume is through the roof right now. So how are people driving the price up and down so quickly?
C
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Needs to go up more. There's a new 2m personal jet that looks quite interesting. Hm....
(Yeah, right)
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We would never have reached this position with China still in charge. They would've dumped into oblivion in the late hundreds and continued while everyone else cowered at their mighty fake numbers.
Perhaps the PBOC should be sent a nice card from us.
That's a good point. Their infinite BS Bots were screwing up the prices. Anyone got an address for the Commie party? |
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LTC could continue stagnating into nowhere land for all we know. I hope that is not the case, but looks like people couldn't care less about high fees and slow transactions. BTC is going to hit $2000 any minute now. It's time for you and the rest of people that sold ages ago to admit you fucked up.
Eh. People did the best they could with the information they had. I've run a rule saying I would not buy bitcoin, only earn it. It's served me well with limited downside and no screwed up nights wondering if it would implode. As for cashing out, I have some gold I got at $600 a coin, worse things have happened. However I am working a bit harder lately and it's starting to chew into surplus free time. So there is that to think about. |
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That said, I'm going to splurge a tiny bit. Top line tickets to the Belmont Stakes. Half a bitcoin can go places. Wonder if they take it at the track.
They should.....
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same. all my friends for the last 5 years have believe that they had "missed the boat." what a shame. edit: whoa  go bullstamp I tried to convince my family and friends to invest in bitcoin since 2013. I've explained them throughout the years everything about the technology and its potential. What did they do instead ? They took bank loans and bought themselves expensive cars and spent their salaries on dumb worthless shit. I was their god damn lottery ticket, the winning one, and they fucked it up. I never wanted to buy and hold the bitcoins for them, because ignorance should not be rewarded. I just wanted for them to follow the same path as mine, and to discover and appreciate the philosophical/economical and technological breakthroughs behind the Blockchain protocol. Bitcoin has gone up by 10x and they still don't give a damn  . Told them that we will be talking again after the next 10x. Shit happens. Hell, I remember picking up class C swamp blocks and some domain names and letting them go because other people needed them to make the internet go and why should I hog them? Eh, live and learn. |
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2 k. One of the best weekends ever  Porsche or ferrari? Porsche of course. Ferrari's are a real pain to work on. But the bigger question is just how many can you fit in your driveway before you have to ask friends to park them in theirs.... |
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This seems like yet another example of people not understanding what we are actually doing. No, I thought it was the former, but it had me questioning a bit. Technically the scenario of paying more for bigger shares would not be logical as the guy/gal/dog who submits the winning share would get a larger percentage of the proverbial pie. I don't understand every nuance, my specialty is hacking and fixing the mining hardware. That I'm good at :-) |
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Meantime back to cooking over a hot oven. Or rework rig. Whatever. :-)
Two more cubes in for repair, looking at them with interest. One had the normal blown drivers, fixed, testing at low speeds tonight for errors, then will ramp it up tomorrow. The second board is odd however. It doesn't crash a Titan controller board with Pi (man these things are so much slower than BB's) but it does fail to respond to PSU Spi requests with the power bus off. Might be a damaged supply screwing up the SPI bus, might be something else. Will review.
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1900? HOLY FUCKING CRAP!
Ah yes, this is a nice feeling. When and where is the party?
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