Thanks for pointing out the services forum. I really should post my abilities there as a bitcoin miner repairer or whatnot-er.

At this point I think my reputation is good and my skills are up to date.

C

Sure I'll give it a shot if you like. Haven't worked on Gridseed, but done a lot of work with BFL Singles and jallies.

C

The BFLs are nice boxes, but they do pull too much power, especially if you do... things... to them.

As for solar note that I have 3kw on my sheds and it provides a fraction of the power.

Now with Monarchs, that may be a very different story. .3w per gh is a lot lot better than 1 or 4.

C

Depends. Main system is grid-tie with Sunny Boy 1800 and 700 inverters. However some of the panels keep a set of 200ah*24v batteries in the shed topped off for emergency power with a 700 watt inverter. If power goes out I can switch that in to run the fridge, internet, and coffee makers. Very important.

I can also put a 900 watt rotary inverter on the electric tractor. 36 volt by about 120ah capacity using flooded NiCDs.

C

Baloney. :-)

And in the interests of posting pictures, here's 300gh in my solar shed.



A close up of the equipment



Yes, the water cooled jallies are holding up fine. And finally, a wide angle shot of the sheds. Good solar porn here.



C

Well, a house should not burn down; if you have a 200a service then your house wires should be able to handle 200a. Well, 80% continious and all that. But the problem is the local infrastructure, and if some guy's house wires burned up it's probably because his house was rated for 60-100a service and some moronic electrician put a 200a service in. Likewise if you have 15a wires and you just jam in a 20a breaker expect hilarity to ensue.

Now normally when you upgrade your panels you get this thing called a "permit" from the evil govt. That is what the utility usally looks at when deciding how big the transformer should be, not

The problem is the neighborhood, and the utility are "other people" which sometimes individuals do not take into account.

C

Least you could get DSL. I was stuck with fucking ISDN (ISDL) for years till I finally got cable. I live in a literal data black hole; got a mountain of iron next to my house that sinks cell and I'm 15,100 feet from the stupid CO.

I live in a hole. Hi from the hole!

Luke wants his MTV...

Thank you.

Depends on your latitude. I also tend to run them a bit towards the flat side to maximize winter power on the main shed (they can also run the 24 volt battery bank for emergency power). I tell you, when you lose power it's *really* nice to wake up to a running fridge and a hot cup of coffee. Makes life better.

 And if you look carefully you can see where one of them bent due to a foot plus of snow this past winter.

The shed is actually well over 100 years old, the house builders liked it so much they moved it here in the 50's when they built the house. Drilling into the 2x4's is like drilling into iron.

C

Let's see. This is a picture of the junkyard full of mining gear. About 350gh here.



A close up of the equipment



A wide angle shot of the sheds. Good solar porn here.



And a close-up of the board work. Brand new FTDI chip=Happy unit!



Side note: When you put the chip on make sure that you align the dot on the chip with the dot on the board. Otherwise all hell will break loose and you will be placing yet another order with Mouser. :-)

C

Working on it. Takes forever for me to bother uploading pictures here.

Anyway, I finally fixed the BFL single miner board. It was a dead FTDI chip, must have shorted in the rain. Replaced the QFN chip with a LQFP and after getting all the pins soldered down perfectly the board is up and hashing at 54gh. Sometimes I think I can fix a rainy day.

I submitted a paper for DEFCON, we'll see if they go with it so I can do a talk about all of this. One thing I will put in: No matter how fucked up things may seem take your time and just never give up.

One step at a time. One step at a time.

C

Been a day. This morning the Chili was down again with no lights and a sick in BFGMiner. This evening I tried plugging it in, got 4 LEDs on the right side of the set of 8. Not good. Tried cleaning the CPU again, still no dice.

Took the cooling block off it and started to work with the loupe. With the chips exposed I could see that the back set of pins for the CPU were still corroded, so I cleaned those with alcohol. Also saw that the chip on the side of it was also gunked, cleaned that as well. Then fired it up one last time.

Two left LEDs came on and I unplugged it *INSTANTLY*. Reflex, then I felt the wash of heat come from the chips. Man those things run beyond hot.

Put the water block back on, assembled it, she's up and hashing again at 30gh (I have the low power firmware on it now. 120 watts at 30gh is better than 230 watts at 38gh). Moral is that water damage is a *bitch* on boards, and you really should clean them up well.

Next up the single, which checks out otherwise, just need the FTDI to arrive. That should get me back to 900gh; this puttering around at 800 is for the birds (now 830).

Take your time, and things can be fixed.

C

Well, I got the Chili working, looking at the CPU under a loupe I could see that there was copper sulfate on the CPU chips which meant it was wet and running for a time period before the power supply blew. Must have been one hell of a storm. Cleaned the chips with isopropyl alcohol and it comes up sometimes when fired. Running now on a BFL single/30 supply, will see if it holds.

Also tried replacing the fuse on the PSU and the house breaker tripped. Wow. Took the Corsair power supply apart and I can see damage on the underside of the power board by the HV switching capacitor. Looks like water pooled under the board where the components were, aided by the plastic insulator, and blew things sky high. I'm guessing the FETs shorted, wow.

The Single is operational but needs the FTDI chip replaced. That's the project for tonight. However since I am one PSU short, running it is going to be a trifle complex. Hm.

Since the shed is on the plat documents (it's actually from the 1880's) and everything is above board that's not a problem. It's also insured but I'm not going to bother with that for a dead miner.

The solar system is doing well: I just checked and it's putting out a total of 6.6kw per day which helps to offset the miners to an extent. Likewise all 10 miners in the shed are running normally, pumping 380gh into the blockchain.

I'll start working on the miner this evening. Might as well take a look.

C

Agreed. If you burned down your house wire then either the utility is nuts or you are pulling way more current than the line is designed for. Power factor may be an issue here, but that's your problem, get a big bank of caps.

Overall the utility should provide the power they agreed to provide to your house. If you have 60a service and have hot-wired 200+ amps of miners then you should pay. No free lunch here, and as a libertarian myself you should be happy to pay for what you use.

C

Sure, I'll post them tomorrow or something. It's just a tangle of wires and such in a work shed, but the solar panels on the roof are cool (1.5kw on the main shed, 1kw on the second shed, Sunny Boy 1800/700's doing the grid tie)

Not sure. The Corsair has a faint smell of burned inside it, I've got it in front of the fireplace insert for the evening to dry out. Will see tomorrow.

The miners were not wet at all, what I think happened is that the 750 either threw 120 volts onto the 12v line briefly or something that caused the units to go to ground through the USB lines. Which makes no sense as the Corsairs are pretty high quality power supplies, and I have everything plugged into GFCIs explicitly to catch a ground fault before it exceeds 10ma. All GFCIs are tested good. Also odd that two jalapenos were plugged into the same supply and are fine. Odd.

Not a BFL issue as the Chili is even more screwed up. I can fix the Single pretty easily, just pull the FTDI chip and replace. However unlike BFL Mr. Teal has not released any schematics or code so I can't easily troubleshoot the Chili.

Perhaps, however given the residual value of the miners and my "I'll deal" sentiments I'll eat the damage. I will however consider reloating any future miners under the bench or something :-)

Well, it was bound to happen. I have moved about 300gh of my mining power out to my solar powered shed to take some of the heat load off the house. Today we had massive rain and snow in MD, and in the afternoon I got a note that the shed miners were offline. Figured they tripped the GFCI.

Nope. Shed door had blown open and rain blew in. Got one of my Corsairs wet (had to be the 750), it's dead as a doornail. Not sure why. However when I moved a spare power supply in, two of the units didn't come up: My Chili and one of my 50gh Single boards.

The Chili is dead, barely starts the fans, no lights. The Single comes up but no USB. My guess is the power supply faulted and took out the FTDI chip somehow, which is odd since the PSU is grounded and everything is on GFCI's. Great, the 100gh of hashing and $80 power supply failed to protect the $5.00 GFCI socket.

Everything else is up and running again and I have latched the door. 32 degrees out now, I'm sure it will be in the 80's tomorrow. Gotta love climate change....

By the way I tried loading the lower power hex file on my Chili this afternoon. I also have P3 meters so I can measure power draw, and a 500 watt Corsair supply to dedicate to it.

With the old code, it took 5 minutes to come up to speed, ran at 36gh, and pulled 240 watts at a frequency base of 303.
FIRMWARE: 1.2.14e
THEORETICAL MAX: 36.36 GH/s
ENGINES: 120

After flash
FIRMWARE: 1.2.14x
THEORETICAL MAX: 31.27 GH/s
ENGINES: 126

Holds about 31gh, but with only 137 watts. 4.4w per gh

So the unit went from 6.6w/gh to 4.4w/gh and the cost of that extra 5gh was literally 100 watts. Big difference, it's still high compared to a BFL Single (50gh for 190 watts is 3.8w/gh) but a whole lot better.

If you have chilis I would recommend this firmware change. Now to work harder on lowering the voltage on BFL singles to .85v or so.

Chris

Edit: Note this does include the water cooling block and pumps and fan and such. Runs way way cooler too, 55c which is cooler than a 7 chip jally running a sedion small water block and a bit warmer than an 8 chip jalapeno running a Corsiar H100 large radiator block.