[designs coming shortly, once i finish them!!]

DISCLAIMER: I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY
FOR ANYONE'S ACTIONS THAT LEAD TO LOST
EQUIPMENT, LIFE, LIMB, OR REAL PROPERTY

With the upcoming sale for Antminer S1 upgrade kits, I got to thinking:
what are people going to do with all those S1 blades?

And so i had the brilliant idea to begin designing 2 products to repurpose old S1 blades:

• a "hub" capable of controlling 4 S1 or 8 blades.
• a usb key, about the size of a Nanofury, capable of controlling 1 S1, or 2 blades.

designs coming shortly, once i finish them!!

=========================================================

Anyway to help me design said items, i began poking around the S1 controller's filesystem
and managed to corrupt the two standard c library files used by normal operation. This had
the effect of rendering my S1 a several kilo brick.
 
So i was going: well, sh!t! what do i do now?

I tried everything i knew of to reset the S1 to no avail. I took a look at the schematics, and
behold the controller has a debug/serial port broken out on a (not so conveniently placed)
3 pin header which was (of F**king course) unpopulated.


My next thought was: do I even have a USB to UART adapter? NO!!!
To Ebay I went and purchased this lil guy: CP2102 USB to UART module


About a week later (Monday, Sept. I got it in the mail, and promptly fired up my
windows machine for the first time in... wait was that date? 2012? dafuq?
anyway, I installed the drivers and opened it with putty using 115200,8,n,1,xon-xoff,
connected tx to rx and made sure it echoed.

Once that was set, I got to work preparing the controller by squeezing the four little
mounting clips to release it from the hashing board, disconnected all cables except power
(since i didnt have a 3.3V supply handy).

I searched through my parts drawer for a spare header of some sort. I ended up pulling
apart a 2x2 0.1" smd header to used the three pins at a 90deg angle. they dont need to be
soldered on, but it wouldn't hurt if you plan on doing a lot of poking around for whatever
reason like i am. I pressed the pins into the cables that came with the UART module,
hooked the module up and press fit the stubby part ( that would be soldered to a pad) of
the pins into the holes on the controller, minding the image above:

• module tx <---> controller rx
• module rx <---> controller tx
• module gnd <---> controller gnd

open putty with 115200,8,n,1,xon-xoff settings for the bridge, Flip the power switch on
the PSU for the S1, and a moment later text should go flying across the screen. This is
the controllers serial debug console. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I thought I was going to have to go through the tricky process of completely
reflashing the controller from the U-boot bootloader commandline using tftp and all
that bullsh!t.
But there is a much much easier solution using what is called fail-safe mode. It is a
special mode of the OpenWRT operating system loaded on the controller that boots from
a read-only partition of memory (which i obviously had not corrupted). To enter this mode
power cycle your S1 (no need to restart putty, all will be well) and watch closely as the
text scrolls by. It will pause once or twice. First time is almost immediately after power
is applied:
something like: Autobooting in 1 second. Hit p to stop autoboot.

This is NOT what you want so let

The second time will be during the linux kernel boot sequence. there will be several
timestamps along the left edge of the screen. It will pause and directly mention
Fail-safe mode:

type F then enter/return to start into Failsafe mode.

then it should look like a "normal" linux command prompt (if you've ever seen one, I sure
hope so if you're following this story guide). From here on it is "relatively" easy.

Type:

Code:

firstboot

let it finish, this is a software "factory" reset to a basic openwrt configuration.

type:

Code:

vi /etc/config/network

make note of the IP address!!! More than likely it will be 192.168.1.99 or 192.168.2.99
depending on which revision of the S1 you have.

Type:

Code:

mtd -r erase rootfs_data

This erases some semi-permanent data that could be affecting boot sequence. This will
restart the controller as part of the erase procedure. Let it scroll by and continue booting.
There may be several "errors" about flash storage. thats typically ok, though. It will then
reflash the flash storage with the factory image, allowing is to boot into a clean environment.
after it seems like activity has calmed down/stopped on the screen, hit Enter/Return.
This should activate the Linux Serial console. If it does and it says something like:

Code:

root@antminer

then we are back in business and ALMOST back in business. Go ahead and turn everything
off, clip the controller board back onto its retainer posts, reattach all cables ( wi-fi, enet,
flat data cables, flat power cable). Power on the S1. If all has gone well, after ~20 seconds
the lights on the ethernet jack should light up. Use a web browser to navigate to the IP address
you wrote down earlier (if its on the same subnet as your network, otherwise  Refer to
Section 3.1 in AntMiner Manual)

Again, if all has gone well, after navigating to 192.168.1.99, LuCI should load and present
the AntMiner Login screen. Password is

Code:

root

In another tab download the most recent S1 Firmware

Login to the S1. Click System Tab. Click Backup / Flash Firmware. Down toward the bottom
is a file upload section. Click it and select the S1 Firmware file and upload it (this will take a few)

The next screen is just a verification. Apply it. This should take you to a spinny screen while
the S1 applies the Firmware update. After this finishes, it should redirect back to the login screen.

Login, go to Miner configuration, Enter your particular credentials, Apply & Save, Hash away!!!

So just out of curiousity, how many people do you think have repurposed gpus in an attempt to crack DPR's "seized" Bitcoin address?

and for what reason?

• Personal gain?
• Thrill of subterfuge?
• Taking back what belongs to the community?
• Lottery?
• For shits and giggles?

post your thoughts below after you vote.

[H-CARD Mini:]

H-CARD Mini:
    The h-card mini is the OSHW offspring of a wonderful forum member here, Kaerf. to summarize their efforts: they had received a few regular v1.2 H-cards with several dead chips. instead of mailing them back for RMA, they used the available schematics from MBP/BFSB for the v1.2, which normally holds 16 Bitfury ASICs, and redesigned it to hold 8 ASICS and accommodate mounting holes for standard 40mm² northbridge heatsinks.

Images courtesy of Kaerf

Album
http://imgur.com/a/5Ebiw

Blank board


Standard 40mm² heatsinks



What am I proposing?

I am gauging interest to see how many folks out there in the community with unfilled m-boards who would like to fill them with something now that MBP/BFSB are both out of stock on these cards.

Who am I?
I am a frequenter of the forums and partaker of several past group buys from distributors such as kosmokramer, Bitcoinvalet, Xian, and the well known designer of the Nanofury devices, vs3.

Ive been on the purchasing end of group buys before but this is my first venture into leading one.

Hey all. I have a BPMC Green Fury that i would like to trade for 1 nanofury.

average i have had is ~2.5Ghash/second

Reason for trade: like NF1 looks more

[the image below is a very rough first draft only to get footprints on the board. not all items are in final positions. As this is one of my first forays into serious PCB design, I am probably over-engineering or doing something wrong. if anyone sees something glaringly wrong please point it out. I want to be the best i can be.]

Hello all. Now that ive had some free time to collect my thoughts and start throwing together a rough protosketch, i would like to unveil PiFury.


SPECS:

• same footprint as RPi
• mounting holes aligned with model B Rev 2
• GPIO interface similar to M-board design (uses RPi designated SPI pins)

• • therefore should be compatible with *gminer or possibly chainminer

• 1 to potentially 4 bitfury asics
• powerful TI TPS54821 8A regulator tuned to 0.865V (can be adjusted)
• TI TLV70233 & TLV70218 provide 3V3 and 1V8 lines to drive TXB0104 level shifter
• externally powered (requires 5V@~2A)
• Power ports for microUSB or 5.2mm Barrel jack

the image below is a very rough first draft only to get footprints on the board. not all items are in final positions. As this is one of my first forays into serious PCB design, I am probably over-engineering or doing something wrong. if anyone sees something glaringly wrong please point it out. I want to be the best i can be.

revisions  and updated images will follow

wondering if anyone has tried to dump it before and reverse engineer it? if not, have they set a security bit or just no interest?

History:
    Back at the beginning of 2012 in january, i closed out a 24 month CD at my bank, withdrew the 3500USD and went on to spend it as usual ( I was no money crunch, I just didn't want it tied up any longer by letting it renew). and now I'm continually saddened by my foolishness. I say this because about 6 months prior to that event, I HAD heard of BTC from a MUCH more techie friend than myself and he had told me to buy in. I was interested in the concept but relinquished it.

Point:
    At the time i closed the CD, BTC was ~4USD per coin. Since i had no immediate need for the cash, had i invested it in BTC @ 4USD each, receiving 875 BTC, and sat on it until avalon launched their bulk chip orders and ordered 10K on the first day. I would have 10000 chips now and using Burnin's Bitburner XX OC'ed to 450Mhz, I would be sitting on 4.5TH/s, churning out 4500USD a day at current difficulty.
the Manufacturing cost of ~150USD per board from burnin * (10000/20) = 500*150 = 75000USD. while i dont currently have the money to have them made. im sure burnin and i could have arranged something ( the first x days mining profit are payment)

Conclusion: i whiffed off the easy life, over the next 5 years, i could have expected that theoretical rig to net almost 3million USD in BTC.

Just curious if the X6500 FPGA project has been open sourced, since i remember fizzisist contemplating the idea.
 -Taug.