Well....

What I used was an aoyue 968 rework station. It's basically a pretty nice soldering iron and an air wand that can put out air at a specific temperature and flow rate. Costs about $160 on Amazon. I bought it a few years ago to fix SMD components on 90's era electric car controllers, think 50kw IGBT drivers that explode and need to be rebuilt.

http://www.amazon.com/Updated-Aoyue-Digital-Soldering-absorber/dp/B006FA481G/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1384876991&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=aoyue+962

Cripes, you could probably use this:

http://www.amazon.com/REWORK-SOLDERING-IRON-STATION-handles/dp/B004ZB9D4O/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1384877176&sr=8-24&keywords=aoyue

In addition I have an Aoyue pre-heater thing which basically puts out a fairly constant amount of heat and holds the board.

http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-853A-Infrared-Preheating-Station/dp/B000PGPU7W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384877226&sr=8-1&keywords=aoyue+preheater

For $20 more you can get a probe. Wow! Modern technology.

To be honest, it's not too hard. You need to put liquid flux on the board (use the no-cleanup flux, try to get some tacky stuff) then put the board on the preheater and bolt it down. Now spend a *LOT* of time with an eye loupe (4x) fingers, and a set of tweezers to put the chip on the board so that:

• The chip dot matches the dot slik-screened on the board. That's um. critical
• The chip is perfectly centered within the silk-screened square. I mean perfect. As in you can just barely see all four outlines around it.

Then you turn on the heat and check the chip again. I brought my pre-heater to 300F because Aoyue assumed I was stupid and didn't use celsius on the preheater. Oh well, check to see if yours is C or F, there is a difference. :-)

Then you get your stopwatch. And time things. After 4 minutes or so fire up your 962. Bring it's temp to flow level 5 and temp of 402C. Yes, that is hot as hell. Yes, it bothers me too. Yes, that's life. 250-300C doesn't do crap.

Check the chip again. It probably moved. If not good. Note the preheat has activated the flux.

Now hit the chip with the heat. I use the round nozzle that is about 80% the diameter of the chip. Whatever. The square one sucks. Put the nozzle over the chip and bring it down over 10 seconds to the point where it is right over the chip. Start the watch.

After 30 seconds I start moving around the edges of the chip with the nozzle. Blow straight down, if the chip blows off you're fucked-ish.

Watch the chip. It should do a little move when the solder melts and it aligns itself. Keep the heat on it.

Do heat for 60-90 seconds. If the board catches fire you did it too long. I felt horrified I needed that much heat but I haven't blown a chip yet. Yet.

Remove the heat, then turn off the bottom preheater. Wait a minute or two for the solder to cool. Then take the board off the preheater, burn your fingers, put on gloves, and walk around with it to cool it down.

Look at the chip. If it's not square within the 4 lines on the board you really blew it. It probably is.

When room temp, plug it into the Jally that you have already flashed with 1.2.9 with the LITTLE_SINGLE definition and made sure it WORKED and see what happens.

If 3 LEDs pop on the back along with the power led, power down immediately. You win.

If not, reheat and try again. Go a bit longer with the heat.

If the front LED flashes, power down, you shorted the 1 volt power supply. Thank BFL for the crowbar detection and come back to this thread. Or re-heat the board again, it might not have soldered correctly.

Anyway if it lit 3 LEDs then put on the heat sink, fire it up and check out the performance. Should be 12gh. Then keep adding chips until something melts.

C

Interesting. I wasn't sure if the 1 volt power supplies would hold past 6 chips. Looks like I'll be ordering two more from somewhere, then going the distance.

Could you share what type of heat sink with pipes you used? I've been looking around at sites like frozencpu.com, and there seem to be as many sinks as stars in the sky. Any that would allow this thing to run in it's original case?

Thank you!
Chris

Power supply came in, I'll fiddle with it later. Doing some calculations based on the Chili boards I think the BFL chips pull 12.5 watts each, so I should be able to go to six and 75 watts on the DC-DC power supplies. Worst case they should just crowbar and shut down.

I've ordered longer screws so I can screw the bottom heat sink to the top plate, and a set of small stick-on sinks for the hot FETs. If I get them by Wednesday I'll put the last chip on.

C

I have a pre heater and have been going.with 300f or so. I'll try removing all balls and.soldering direct to board.

THANK YOU for posting this. I have been working on boosting Jalapenos with extra chips and cooling on the board; I found that running a copper heat sink on the bottom of the board provides as much cooling power as the stupid AL one plus fan does on top.

Currently I am running 5 chips, 65c temps, thinking about going for 6. The JP's 1 volt supply is only rated for 80amps or so and I think if I go over 6 we will be screwed. How big/high power is the DC-DC 1 volt converter on your device? Did you need to go over 100a?

Thank you again. Here's a pic of my latest.. project (20gh)



I'll order one of those heat sinks for a better top one. Then I can go to 7 if I can backfeed the 1 volt supply/based on your thoughts.

Chris

Unless you own a mining rig.....

Just a data point on shelved shares:

Back in early Sept I tried Eligus for a few days during apparently the "worst luck on the Earth". Not understanding I was upset that I only "got" 50% of my work so I switched. In October I figured out the concept and tried mining again. Through October I got every bit of bitcoin that was shelved back, and am running at 99%+ now.

So I will say that Eligus works, and that every shelved share seems to have been paid at the rate at which it was mined.

Thank you Wiz: You run a very. fair. pool.

C

So... If everyone thinks it will "go" to $1,000 then why would anyone do something as stupid as "spending" it.

Worse, why would I ever "buy" something with it?

What kind of moron would I be to "pay" someone with it for a service?

The problem with accepting bitcoin is either you need to nail a stake in the ground and deal (like mining companies did. Well, sort of), or constantly shift prices based on the moment, or have your prices disconnect from reality (really, someone is going to be a supporter here and get a cute icon for $2,500?)

I'll accept it for watch and clock repair, however I still have to convert it to dollars to buy tools and pay taxes. This leaves me vulnerable to a refund request if the price of BTC goes up and leaves me vulnerable to endless bitching if it goes down.

Is it worth the "trouble"? I'm not sure.

Thanks! Yeah, the heat sink on the bottom removes a lot of the heat; I think that's the point of BGA: because you have a whole bunch of pads you can drop the heat out the bottom as well as the top.

I'll get some solder wick and start removing the balls this week; I was thinking of just reforming the balls and not worrying about the missing ones, but it looks like some of the outside edge ones are gone and that is where the control signals are. Not too worried about the lack of heat sink; oddly enough putting it closer to the board will just source more heat out the back.

From a purely money-making point of view it's not very worth it; I'll make a profit of about $50 a chip over the next few months if BC prices stay constant. About as much as a pair of watch cleanings. But from a fun standpoint, it can't be beat :-)

Thanks for all the help in the other thread. Jallies may have been the only devices from BFL to actually turn a profit on mining, most other devices did not do as well.

Oh and the heat sink at the bottom? It was reading 90 degrees F with the unit at 65C. To warm up a chunk of copper to 30 degrees above room temperature takes a fair bit of heat. Once I drill the holes in it and get longer screws I'll put the whole shooting match on it's side or something to boost the cooling rate.

C

Update the firmware and you can take the chips from 5 to 7.5 or 8 or so. That's pretty well documented on the forum, searches will find that. Costs $50 for a Dragon programmer and maybe $4 for a cable. And some time. And Atmel software.

You can add one chip and get to 12 and still be able to run it in it's case (barely). Two more will get you to 16 and is about as fast as you can go without adding bottom cooling. Cool the bottom of the unit and we're in different territory.

C

Not yet. So far it is add chips and reflash the firmware. I'm running speed 7 with full error detection which is probably running me slower than I could by a gh or two, but with the benefit of lower power draws and temps.

You need to have the 1.2.7 or better software because the original chips were SMD chips on BGA carriers and couldn't run with engine zero. The newer chips are real BGA, but have engine 0 enabled by default (16 engines instead of max 15. cool). So grabbing the 1.2.9 software, changing the type from SINGLE to LITTLE_SINGLE (important) does the trick.

I think the limiting factor for going past 6 chips on the little single board is going to be the power converters for the 1 volt supplies. They are built to source "75 to 80 amps" and I'm guessing the original chips ran at less than 10 amps/watts each. However since each chip is boosting the power draw at the wall by 20 watts or so, I think they pull closer to 15 watts each. 15*5 is 75 amps, so I might be pushing the limit with 5 chips. But I'll try 6 for the hell of it, if it fails I'll disable or remove one of the crappy original chips.

Here is the diag output for my Jally as of now. The 1 volt rail is at .998; input voltage is 12.22 instead of 13.2 with 4, so I might be running up against the limits of the power supply or the 1 volt FETs.

DEVICE: BitFORCE SC
FIRMWARE: 1.2.9
IAR Executed: NO
CHIP PARALLELIZATION: YES @ 5
QUEUE DEPTH:40
PROCESSOR 0: 16 engines @ 267 MHz -- MAP: FFFF
PROCESSOR 3: 13 engines @ 262 MHz -- MAP: EFFC
PROCESSOR 5: 16 engines @ 245 MHz -- MAP: FFFF
PROCESSOR 6: 16 engines @ 259 MHz -- MAP: FFFF
PROCESSOR 7: 15 engines @ 240 MHz -- MAP: FFFE
THEORETICAL MAX: 19342 MH/s
ENGINES: 76
FREQUENCY: 274 MHz
CRITICAL TEMPERATURE: 0
TOTAL THERMAL CYCLES: 0
XLINK MODE: MASTER
XLINK PRESENT: NO
OK

I have an ATX power supply coming to provide a more solid 12 volt supply, might give it a go before committing to that next chip. Or I might just toss it on tomorrow.

C

Not quite. I'm using an Aoyue 968 rework station that I used to use for SMD rework on electric car drive trains. 50kw IGBT drivers blow out a bunch of parts when the gates float. I also have an Aoyue pre-heater that's nice to have, but I don't think it's quite mandatory for this work.

Anyway, that plus some liquid flux plus some time under the air flow seems to do the trick. I'll post the details in a write-up.

C

Actually an under 20% jump is reason to make me squeal with *glee*. Just bumped my Jally to 20gh; that will make up for the increased difficulty for the next few days.

Got to get it to 24 next. More speed....

Summary: We are going to turn a Jalapeno into a Jupiter. Or bust. Probably bust. But maybe not!

Being one of those people who spent $169 for a Jalapeno in January and got his... money's worth, I've been thinking of ways to keep it relevant as difficulty has been tottering up.

I'm going to start this thread to track what I have been doing, what's worked so far, and where we can go with this. So far I have managed to boost my poor little Jally from 4.5gh barely (it had crappy chips) to 7.3gh, then 12, then 16, and for the moment, 20. I've since taken one to 24gh, and will try for 28gh next.

Update: Yep, 28gh, 7 chips. Beyond insane. Heat issues get very funny at 7 chips, thinking about that before trying for 8.

Update: Yep, 32gh. A real, honest, 32gh from a fracking Jalapeno. Read the thread, think about if you really want. to. go. there.

(I have a house there)

I will talk about hardware hacks I am doing, software hacks from this forum, and thoughts on just how big I can make this poor little bastard of a device.

First, a word of serious thanks to the following people:

• Butterfly Labs: For releasing the source code to the little singles and also releasing the schematics.
• CK: Who compiled an elf file that allowed my POS jally to go to 7.3gh which is as much as I could get out of it. He showed me the way.
• Danattacker, who had the sheer balls to be the first to put 2 chips on his JP and showed that it was possible
  
• lentbt2, good seller on Ebay who has MORE CHIPS as of 12/19. http://www.ebay.com/itm/191006340017 is the link, note I have bought from him in the past and he's good.
  
  If you have a source or know of one please PM me. I'll take the risk of ordering one and if they look good I'll post it here.
• My uncle, who inspired me to fix watches which gives me the fine tools to pull shit like this off.
• Whoever runs this BBS/Forum, it's been a great place to read, chat, and think.

The parent thread for all this is at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236875.500, I posted a lot there but want to put the summary instructions and my future travails on it's own thread (and because I am kind of bogarting that thread because it's more software hacking and I am doing some serious hardware fuckery here)

Anyway, she's now running at 20gh, I'll post more later this afternoon, but first a few pictures of it running.

Here is the unit in it's current... configuration.


Here is the back of it with the extra lights on.


And here is the BFG screen.


On with the show...

C

And we are at *20*. This was harder, as the chip did not work after the first flow (base 300f, heat 400c for 60 seconds direct on chip), did after the second but then stopped working when heat sink put on (no base heat, 400c for 80s direct), then did after the third flow (base 325F, heat 400c for 120 seconds direct blast on chip at max airflow followed by fan to cool immediately). I think because this one is next to another chip at the point where the communications lines those balls were getting shadowed for heat and thus was not working. Moral is you need a metric fuckload of heat (as opposed to say an SAE fuckload of heat) to make these chips come down.

Unit is up. Holding at 19.8gh, temp 64-65 power draw is now up to 120 watts for the whole rig, so adding the chip added another 20 watts of power draw at the wall. Yep, these chips pull more power, I'm guessing 15 watts each. So 6 chips might be all folks.

Power supply is at 90F, highest temp on the board by the FETs is 126F. So it's holding. Note I have a 20 watt vornado fan with the cloth blades pointed at the power supply, then the copper bottom heat sink for some external airflow. That might be why it is not imploding. Yet.

We'll try that in another few days. In the meantime I need to order some slightly longer heat sink screws as the next step is going to be slather the bottom with heat sink compound, drill two holes through that copper sink, and run the bolts through copper sink, AL plate, jally, aluminum sink. Then I will find some 3mm bolts so I can mount the fan more properly and call this a done project.

Well, done till I decide to put on that last chip. Note: I think the reason why the temps did not go up much with this chip is because it's on the board in one of the outside center pads which is covered completely by the top heat sink. I'm guessing that the two corner chips are not completely covered, and thus are not dropping all their heat into the top sink. Because BFL switched to BGA, they can direct their heat *down* as well, thus the bottom sink is going to chernobyl temps. Except it's not anymore because I have massive manly sink on the bottom.

Holy crap, Eligus sees my holy hashrate at 20gh/s. I'm starting to feel the need. The need for more... speed.

I think I'll look at this last chip and see if it can be resurrected. If I'm right, BFL just has a massive copper plate inside these things that short all the grounds and +1's together. So if some of the balls are missing on the power connections it might be a "who gives a fuck" as long as all the balls for the communications stuff (like 10 lines total) are intact.

20gh from a Jally. Cool.

Note: I am going to start my own thread Hacking a BFL Jalapeno to 20GH and beyond since I am kinda clogging this thread with stuff.

C

So before I put on another chip today, I was thinking about this a bit more, specifically the FETs, life, heat, and why BFL shipped so damn late....

Here's the trick. Right now my JP is hashing away at full power and my whole stack (JP, X61 laptop, and two BE's) is pulling about 100 watts. Which is about the same amount of power I was pulling with 2 discrete jalapenos. My clock speeds on this one are about 271mh all around with one chip going at 248mh.

The problem here is not one of heat anymore (I have the dual heat sinks top and bottom), and not one of chip density. It's simply put one of power. Specifically 1 volt power, and how much we can pull before the system either crowbars the 1 volt supply (which seems to happen when I put the shorted chip on there, which is good; it can detect over current) or burns out the FETs (which are now rather warm)

So what do we have? According to the specs and the schematic, this thing had the capacity for 8 chips, and 80a coming out of the 1 volt converter. Fair enough, they were cutting it a bit close but the chips were supposed to pull only 10 watts or so anyway so it was all good. Remember when my Jally was delivered it only put out 30c temps with the chips clocked at 2.5 or so. Slow and low power. I went to 7.3gh and temps went up to 42c. 16gh and temps are at 60 with the super sink, 73 otherwise.

The big question then is how much power is each chip pulling on the 1 volt supply? Heat is the ultimate bullshit detector, and the fact that those FETs are warm-hot to the touch points out that they are pulling more power than expected for a 50% load. Also how much headroom did they build into the supply; I should be able to figure that out based on twelve FETs in the system (six push, six pull) except I see only 3 hot. Wait a second, maybe they only put half the FETs on this thing, why would they fully populate the fucking board if they are cheap...

Hm. Need to look at the pictures again. If all the FETs are not there then I need to add more and solder them on the board. Hm.

Ok, just checked the schematics, there are two sets of six FETs, the second set is barely warm, the first set is hot. Which means both sides are providing power, my guess is I may have laid out my chips so that three of them are being powered by one set, one the other. Will have to see if I can verify this, but it looks like everything is at least there.

Still, this brings up the 80a limit and the question: How much power does each chip sink? I doubt it's 10 watts, if 15 then we could get away with 5 chips (75 watts) but not six. If 20 then we are running max power now.

Anyone know? Also what is the formula for calculating the hash rate of a individual engine per megahertz? Maybe one solution is to slow speed down from 274 to 250, which may drop temps to the point where I can add these last two chips.

Base unit 30
With Jally in, no power 45
With jally hashing full blast 100

So that points strongly to 13.75 watts per chip *at the wall* (measured with P3 meter). That includes external POS supply inefficiency, they might only be 12.3 watts each. Which is why BFL had to abandon the single model, the chips put out too much heat and six chips would pull 74 out of the 80 amps they could budget for. So they went to a whole new board, and sold all the little single boards as Jalapenos.

THAT is why jallies shipped so early. They had to totally re-make the damn single boards and so they stuck two chips on a JP board, crippled it, and sent it out.

Now with a theoretical max of six chips I should be able to get 24gh out of this thing. But I think that is going to be the absolute limit, no sense in building an atomic-level cooler as boosting the clock will throw the unit overboard, and there will be no more than 80 watts of heat to dump.

HOWEVER and this is important: I need to figure out which 1 volt power supply is powering which socket. Reason being I think they are powering different sides of the board (or why would one be hot, one cold) and if I put another chip on the hot side I will overload its' FETs. So now I need to see if I can trace out which chip is which and what sources what here.

Edit: Hm. All the schematics point to VCC_D and GND to being totally agnostic. Which might be a problem if one set of FETs is getting hot and the other is not; I seem to recall that curtiss controllers ran large amounts of FETs in parallel and they didn't always share the load evenly. The fail mode was that some got hotter, which caused them to sink more power which....

Hilarity followed as the FETs would all explode down the rail. At 200 volts it was kind of cool; that's why we went to big-assed IGBTs. Well if they blow I might replace them with 60a MOSfets on a custom external board. Or I wonder if I could just have the gate drive a 400a dual IGBT. Granted it's as big as the JP but it would provide a lot. more. power.

Interesting. Final result may be 6 chip jallies and that's it. I'll get a thermometer, do some measures, then put chip 5 on today. And some small bolts.

As you're watching this bubble, check out the "stupidity forum", specifically Ebay. When old BFL FPGA units go from selling for $70 to $150+ for an 800 MH unit, you know people are being stupid.

When Crock Erupters go from $8 to $20+, you know people are being stupid.

Mining contracts? Yep, stupid.

Myself? I picked up 4 bfl chips for about $100 and am putting them on my $169.00 Jally. Got two on, hashing 16gh now. One more tomorrow, one more after I drop $20 for a set of heat sinks for the FETs.

Smart. 18gh or 800mh or 1.8gh. Where do you spend your $120?

C

Hey there! Welcome to fun-land! I'm glad to see more people doing this :-)

Question: When you flashed the 1.2.9 code, did you select jalapeno, or little_single? The difference is that the code will lock to speed 1 (200mhz) for Jally and will go for 260+ for little singles. Try that, leave the diagnostics alone, and see what you get.

How did you reflow the chips? I have two more here to put on; one is new, the other is the one that I shorted solder. I've been working on cleaning it up with the heat tool, no idea if it will work when I put it back on. Tomorrow maybe.

Yes, the stock power supply is the pinnacle of garbage. That may be the limiting factor here. I have an ATX supply on the way, should get here *eventually*. Might just have to wait till then before doing the final two chips.

With the copper heat sink on the bottom I have solved all of my temp problems *except* for those three chips Q5,6,11. I'm guessing those are the three power MOSFETs. They weren't hot with two chips, they are warm now with 4....

I think I'll measure them tomorrow, and order some small RAM chip copper heat sinks for them. No reason why not, and that could allow them to go up a bit... higher...

And in the meantime, here is a picture of this monster.


C

And in the category "I did what!" I just lowered the temps to 60c.

How?

Well, I thought about that other guy who put the cardboard shim between board and bottom heat plate and lamed the performance on his JP. Removed it, put plate against unit, works again.

How about if you put a heat sink *under* the now open Jally?

Well, I did it. I found an old IBM X366 heat sink that is about 2 square inches of copper base, fins, and all that. Used a drill bit to drill out two dimples to fit the bolts that hold the aluminum plate to the bottom of the jally, put some heat sink compound on it, and sat the JP on the sink. Put a little vornado fan pointing at this unholy mess.

From BFG miner I see 56 degree temps with the side fan *off*, 61 with it on. It might be that the bottom of this thing dissipates a *lot* of heat, so going with a good sink could be the right thing to do.

Next up? I'll think about getting some longer bolts, drill through the IBM sink, and make this a snugger fit. I am still going to keep that spacer on there, as keeping the copper plate *off* the back of the unit is critical now, and I consider *it* to be a good spacer.

Anyone know where I can get a real heat pipe heat sink and fan that came with the older jallies?

Chris