Is the pinout for the BE100 posted or backtraced anywhere? Thanks in advance if you can help
Not seen anything anywhere, want to hook a logic analyzer to it but never got around to it. I just want to know the maximum junction voltage before it catches fire. |
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What did you use to insulate once you removed the thermal pad? PS - Holy moly 723MH? That's amazing! I found getting rid of the thermal pad made a big difference however I had to insulate the header on the back I was able to short some of them when I put them on the heatsink, actually the soldermask is thin is some places around the vias I get some errors if I tighten them down to much. when I get it done I have 3 on a heatsink running at 26 Mhz ea. of course just as much heatsink on top. I'll put some pics up when I get it done. They work separately at 26 Mhz but don't want to play nice all together.
fingernail polish, purple I think  still trying to get all three to run at once like this, I am using a single clock with a fanout (with a buffer) to the rest, think I am getting some noise or jitter . also the screw hole near the USB plug ( I removed those also ) has a +5v trace right there so over tightening a metal screw will short it out. |
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Something I noticed
1) if you have high HW error, resolder the R1 resistor. It seems like it is not connecting properly.
2) if your miner is not able to detect, resolder the crystal.
3) a overclocked miner uses ~6watts...
Hello, overclocked miner really need 6W???  Yes they can, mine is running at about 15W now of course a lot of modifications from stock. Here is a chart I made and it has power listed. I don't have 25 & 26 Mhz clocks on there yet is about it. I am sorry this is just the core power supply there still will be more power use if your using the stock regulator.  |
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OK, got 2 of 12 done using 16MHz and 1.35k. Looking good so far. On one, I changed the inductor because the stock inductor REALLY looks like a 2A version. However both are running fine, and I don't see a big difference in the temp of the step down converter. #8 and 11 if you can't tell  I'm machining some aluminum heatsinks to hold two each, as I can't imagine the stock heatsink can dissipate the extra power - is anyone with an overclock running the stock heatsink here? Are you guys using thermal grease, or finding the silicone pad is enough? Even with the new heatsink, the chip is quite a bit hotter. Definitely not as hot as stock crystal, stock heatsink, and no fan - that will freaking burn you - but still quite a bit warmer than stock setup with fan. Edit - by the way, I did my rework with a fine-tipped soldering iron. I have quite a bit of experience hand-soldering SMD's, and I would say its not too bad. My suggestions for those who may try it. 1) Make sure you know what you're doing. These are too expensive to learn to solder with. 2) First add some standard (lead based) solder to anything you're working on. The stock solder seems like lead-free, which melts a bit hotter. You'll find it easier if you "dilute" the solder with some good old lead-based solder. 3) You might as well remove C7 (little cap just below crystal) to give yourself more room to work with. Just remember to put it back later. BE CAREFUL! These caps are not very good quality, and tend to break the endcaps off with any prying or force. The value is 100nF, probably 6.3V if you need to replace it. The symptom of a broken cap is a device that is recognized by USB and bfgminer but "cannot be opened" 4) Blob some solder onto all four pads of the XTAL, and alternate holding the body of the soldering iron's tip on one side then the other. Soon it will slip free. Don't ram it in to any of the QFN chips, or you'll get solder on their pins. 5) Clean the pads with solder wick, then put a tiny film of new solder on them before placing the new XTAL. Gently hold it in place with tweezers or a chopstick, and blip a new little blob of solder onto each of the four connections. You may need to use flux to coax the solder into making a nice connection, but it should be pretty simple overall. 6) The resistor is a no-brainer: Dilute the solder with more solder, alternate sides until it begins to slip free. Clean the pads and place the new resistor. I found getting rid of the thermal pad made a big difference however I had to insulate the header on the back I was able to short some of them when I put them on the heatsink, actually the soldermask is thin is some places around the vias I get some errors if I tighten them down to much. when I get it done I have 3 on a heatsink running at 26 Mhz ea. of course just as much heatsink on top. I'll put some pics up when I get it done. They work separately at 26 Mhz but don't want to play nice all together.  |
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The Blade have a 12Mhz and 14 Mhz Oscilator. And yes. They could be changed.
I run my Blade at 1.2V and at high clocking.
edit: Proper cooling is needed at 14Mhz.
Yes, I have mine running on the 14 too and with high cooling as well. I was just wondering if anyone has tested them further than the 14MHz one. All of my cores are running around 1.201 as well. Has anyone tested their limits? I only have one, so I dont really want to kill it testing this out on it. If anyone else has sucess, I wouldnt mind trying it then... lol Just got myself all of the SMD rework station and all kinds of goodies in, just waiting on my assortment of Resisters and Oscillators to come in from China.... Next week hopefully. I will be modding about 30 units of the USB ones, and will have extra left over after to mess with the blade .... extra 3.8GH hashing here I come As for limits I am not sure, today I made the 25 MHz mark, 1.95V @ 6.5A, I am still using air cooling but a lot of heat sinking and pressure to hold it together. after 50 min. not to bad I don't think although the setup is a little out of norm, mostly for testing. ICA 0: │ 429.0/697.6/741.5Mh/s │ A:488 R:0+0(none) HW:12/2.4% |
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Good Tutorial, I would like to add the crystal does have a specific orientation. You can see pin one on the crystal in marked by the white circle (that iv'e circled in red) as it is with every chip on the board.  Your more than welcome to put that in the tutorial or modify it if you like. I just pulled it out of the data sheet and modified it in paint. A few other things, data sheet for crystal shows max re-flow temps around 260*C for 10 seconds (Personally I use around 290*C but I'm not a patient person  ) 380*C seems a bit high. Here is the data sheet for the brand I used: http://www.abracon.com/Oscillators/ASFL1.pdf look at the very bottom under "Reflow Profile". Thanks for putting the time into doing this I'm sure lots of people will appreciate it. Edit: Also your links at the beginning aren't working so I don't know what solder paste you linked to but leaded is easier to work with if your a beginner. I'm cheap so I actually just used regular solder, solder paste has a shelf life so I don't tend to keep it around unless I have a project going. I remember one time I put one backwards on another board I was working on, could not figure out what was going on but then all of a sudden the oscillator fell off, thought that was strange, well the reason is they get really hot when there in backwards! |
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As I stated before a tutorial on how to upgrade your erupters to 447 Mh/s be advised this is my first tutorial. and I want to thank all the hard work that went into me being able to complete this by everybody here. please send all feedback as a pm as if you find something totally fucked up about my tut I can correct it and reupload a better version. I hope this helps noobs like me do this mod and best of luck mining. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzJZeR-W87vKa2xXc0VkZVhnYnc/edit?usp=sharingDon't see any major problems, small thing I noticed was you mentioned red square on R1 and it looks brown, but small stuff. Good Job |
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if i dont get working asics for my demaged miners, i send you one pcb if you like. at the moment it looks good that i get some asics now for repair. but maybe i have then one pcb free to send to you. for now, i can make better resolution photos for you. most lines you can track on the picture... all the other lines in the leyer, i can tell you where it goes... the parts on the miner are easy to solder... (no bga´s) so its easy to desolder and resolder it back... its done in 5 minutes... when my demaged sticks are back to work, i use it for overclocking tests... then this tuned sticks will get blue led´s  i have already one modeficated with a blue led... looks mutch better then the green one. Yea It looks like a 3-4 layer board most everything is on one layer, going to try to capture all the signals at once to see what the MCU actually does, I hope it is as simple as I think, looks like serial to the MCU then the MCU does a 8 <-> 16 bit bus type thing. I would say the blue is neat, I found when I was working with it I had to put tape on the green was so bright would blind me Here is the top photo I made. I am impressed how much they can take, I wish I knew the maximum junction voltage, I have been to 1.9V trying to use 25 MHz but got a little scared.  |
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here in my tread you can see (bad) photos of my complete desoldered usb erupters. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270367.0btw. fuses are set... i cant read firmware dump from attiny. (but maybe there are some sticks with open fuses?) I wondered about the fuses, I guess it would be back to bus capturing, I was right about to do this when some people brought to my attention about the mining software being the issue with the slow down. Would still like to make a schematic of the device but until I kill one I guess I'll wait. |
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Well I hate to hear you killed them , but I am glad to see a photo with all the parts off, kind of what I thought was going on under the chips and since I have been lucky and not tore mine up yet I have not had a need to remove the parts yet. Yes I wish you could but the BE100s, I am sure you can most likely more than the whole stick would be my luck.
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this is the best read ever here. only other one that comes close is the "pictures of your mining rigs" thread. Kudos!
wonder how easy it would be to just whip another simple board up with the power and freq generator and wire it to a stick (or possibly multiple sticks).
ie, something external to the stick (with its own power supply and signal generator), with leads that you just solder to the stick(s). just need to cut some traces on the stick(s), solder some leads, pull some parts and off you go. something you could do fairly easily to a stock stick with no mad scientist skills needed. Im thinking 555 timer , LM317/mosfet skill level. (not those exact chips maybe but you get the idea)
course, need some cooling mods but thats easy compared to the work youve done.
My though was to just buy dc-dc converters off eBay, it is going to be hard to make a power supply that will work at these low voltages and currents, be cheaper also I think. If you did have many sticks you could use one clock and buffer it with like an 74act14 or something maybe. These make work for a power supply. I don't like the fact they are using aluminum caps but it is $7, plus I don't know how efficient they will be all the way at one end of their output range, might get some to test with. http://www.ebay.com/itm/180824739993?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649
I'm curious as to how much of an effect cooling would have on stability at those high frequencies? My suspicion is that those voltages could be a bit lower starting @ around 20Mhz if better cooling is implemented. Not that it really matters because there is no practical way to power it. I do have one of the AOZ1036PI chips I had contemplated epoxying a thin copper sheet in the pad area so that it contacted the bottom LX pad then the LX area on the board. That chip is rated for 5A and would otherwise be a direct replacement, although the inductor may need to be swapped out as I'm not sure what current it is rated for. That may be out of the scope of some but it's an idea.
Anyway, Great work and thanks for posting up your results. I can confirm that your results match mine @ 14 16 and 18 as those are the one I've tried. I haven't had 20mhz working yet.
Yes I am curious to, I think it would drop the voltages some and I am going to try to work on it a little more. Interesting idea on the regulator, I did look at those as for the stock inductor it might only be 2-3A I mean they most likely just cut it close. Edit - well I removed the thermal pad and used heatsink grease and now my errors dropped from 5.5% to 1.2% so a foolish mistake on my part not to just do that in the first place. Still has the solder mask of course. |
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I wouldn't mind going over 500  Someone earlier stated, 16.384mhz, 1.2kohm R1 gets you 440, is there an easy 2 part replacement to get to 500+ ? Edit - Ah just saw the chart. So, still only two parts to change, but you have to give it an external power source and ground ? While I fed the power directly to the chip, you will have to feed separate 5V to the usb stick if your going to keep the on board regulator, my thought would be to cut a usb cable and just solder the signal wires to the jack on the BE and feed power in the header on the end. I had the regulator pulled to no need to chop a cable. As for the other DC-DC regulator this one might work I don't know someone else could check and see. As for an inductor I am not sure. there is a ground plane under the regulator from ping 1 to 3 the solder mask would have to be removed and some kind of attempt to solder the pad on the bottom of the regulator down. As for how much power a rough guide would be to take the power column and divide it by 5 would get you a round amperage. I'll see what I can find for an inductor but it is most likely not going to fit. http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DKSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=135412759&uq=635133162195198885I'm interested in this project. Great job.
I can't wait until there is a final parts list and instructions.
There are a lot of these usb sticks out there, someone could make some money starting a service that upgrades these little puppies.
This might be true I would be worried about them self destructing. I was just lucky to have access to good equipment to just see what could be done. I feel the regulator is going to have to be moved off board, that thing makes a lot of heat I am not having to deal with in this setup. Plus the stock metal slab while pretty just adds a little more mass and area I don't feel that it is very effective unless you want to burn you hand I have a plan that I want to build but if only we could but the ASICs, of course they basically already built what I had wanted to do with the BE Blade. I have two final plans on it going to be finding the maximum junction voltage I am sure trying to go higher and the other is to build a schematic of the board and move to a board with more area. I'll feel better if I can run it outside of the "lab" environment. |
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OK here is the chart I have been working on, green areas are possible with stock regulator , yellow I think I have found a replacement but going to have to change inductor also and red is external only. Now this is just for reference this is what worked for me, I did not go to far on the cooling aspect, no soldermask removal or anything other than the stock thermal pad. I am amazed that this chip can even handle this much power. Overview of the setup, not much fancy, 12 AWG wires from the supply to the board.  Close up, see the power and clock input, temp sensor in the heatsink.  Signal generator.  This had been pretty interesting , would love to make a schematic of the device and make a new board, a lot of "if onlys" Hope this data can help someone. |
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Well here are the stats at 24 Mhz. I cant imagine I am going to get much more w/o damage to it. 1.825V 5.748A. If we knew the point the gates burned up would be nice. Also I know lower is better what is an acceptable cutoff on hard ware errors?
Summary of runtime statistics:
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Started at [2013-08-28 08:52:58]
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Runtime: 3 hrs : 2 mins : 58 secs
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Average hashrate: 678.0 Megahash/s
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Solved blocks: 0
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Best share difficulty: 8.31k
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Share submissions: 1597
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Accepted shares: 1596
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Rejected shares: 1 + 0 stale (0.00%)
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Accepted difficulty shares: 1596
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Rejected difficulty shares: 1
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Hardware errors: 82
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Network transfer: 312.0 / 201.6 kB ( 28.4 / 18.4 B/s)
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Efficiency (accepted shares * difficulty / 2 KB): 6.36
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Utility (accepted shares / min): 8.73/min
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Unable to get work from server occasions: 0
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Work items generated locally: 3818
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Submitting work remotely delay occasions: 0
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] New blocks detected on network: 19
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] Summary of per device statistics:
[2013-08-28 11:55:57] ICA0 | 5s:400.5 avg:677.8 u:624.4 Mh/s | A:1596 R:1+0(.06%) HW:82/4.9%
[2013-08-28 11:55:57]
Well decided to try for 25 MHz needless to say I got to 1.875V and things went a little off. But going back it went back to working, I am sure I am right on the edge of smoke, unless someone knows how much voltage they can stand, I may have pushed my luck far enough in this run.
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Well didn't get as far as I wanted to today, I am running at 22.12 Mhz 1.65V and 4.8A going to let it run tonight, I want to get to 2x speed, I am worried thought the next step in the graph shows the voltage being 1.8V, Heat is the main problem, or I guess the area the heat comes out at, I mean the P4 heatsink I am using is rated for 125W and I am putting 8W in so it only raises 2 deg. F with the fan on but the area under the chip is quite hot. So far I really have tried to keep all as stock on the cooling, I have not removed the solder mask and using the stock thermal pad. I did try a peltier today but I feel that has to be watched to closely, something goes wrong you got either a fire or ice ball. Although I don't know if you could cool the heatsink the BE was mounted to if that would help. At any rate 1 Hr at 22.12 Mhz I have.
A:130 R:0+0(none) HW:11/2.2%
first time I have seen this
[2013-08-27 15:31:58] Staged work underrun; increasing queue minimum to 2
Maybe I will be done tomorrow.
Thanks
Update. Latest test run
Summary of runtime statistics:
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Started at [2013-08-27 14:42:40]
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Runtime: 5 hrs : 23 mins : 20 secs
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Average hashrate: 631.1 Megahash/s
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Solved blocks: 0
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Best share difficulty: 10.1k
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Share submissions: 702
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Accepted shares: 701
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Rejected shares: 1 + 0 stale (0.00%)
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Accepted difficulty shares: 2792
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Rejected difficulty shares: 4
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Hardware errors: 63
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Network transfer: 462.6 / 110.7 kB ( 23.9 / 5.7 B/s)
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Efficiency (accepted shares * difficulty / 2 KB): 9.97
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Utility (accepted shares / min): 2.17/min
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Unable to get work from server occasions: 0
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Work items generated locally: 6782
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Submitting work remotely delay occasions: 0
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] New blocks detected on network: 35
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] Summary of per device statistics:
[2013-08-27 20:06:00] ICA0 | 5s:374.2 avg:630.9 u:618.1 Mh/s | A:701 R:1+0(.14%) HW:63/2.2%
[2013-08-27 20:06:00]
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So you need to run thous with cgminer 3.1.1 and use --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing short. Can you run it on newer?
I have not tried it, I am using bfgminer 3.1.4 using the "-S all" option seems to be automatic after that point. |
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Yes power is going to be a problem (well one problem) , I found a replacement regulator for the one on the board , going to need a new inductor also. The new regulator has a ground pad so that works out have to take off the silk screen but it *should* be a drop in replacement, the inductor not sure yet. I have been running it at 20 MHz for 5 hours now and the stats are
A:641 R:1+0(.16%) HW:39/1.6%
The bad thing that is at 1.525 V and 4.004A so it would be max on the new regulator, most all the other regulator chips either have the pad as output or different pin out. If the chart holds up were going to be at 1.75V and 5.5A for a 24 MHz run, if it will. I am going to put a heat sink on top of the chip tomorrow, running about 137 F now on top.
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Friedcat said at higher speed there is a chance that the micro is not capturing the nonce which would explain why speeds may not be as high as they should. I'm hoping he may post some more info on here.
I never tried 17mhz but I have a 18mhz installed and it will not run @ below 1.4v.
Well a 17 does not exist most likely I am using a signal generator, however I am going to have a nice chart to post, so far I am at 20 Mhz however were getting up there on voltage and heat density is making me worry. I can tell you so far were looking at 1.50V @ 3.992A for 20 MHz. I started at 12 MHz and made a chart with the common available oscillators and worked with each one until no HW errors in 5~10 min, long term hard to say. Should be done testing by tomorrow, maybe the fan wont quit in the middle of the night and a fire break out Although so far at this test there are 4% HW errors. Is the maximum that everyone believes 1.8v? I think it is going to take a peltier to go to much farther then that adds another level of something to mess up. As for the 1.4V at 18 MHz that is right on with what I have at that point. |
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Well I am not sure, was running it from a lab supply while I was experimenting, I remember it was right around 1.4v although it was over 3A so it wont work the the current regulator, however now that it works I might not need so much voltage before when the software was not working I spent a lot of time "trying everything" finally just left it. Monday I plan to do a better job working on voltage/current/speed parameters. Been running 4 hrs or so.
A:567 R:0+0(none) HW:14/.61%
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...
Tried cgminer 3.1.1, didn't detect the BE
With this old version you have to specify a device, this should work: # cgminer -S /dev/ttyUSB0 --icarus-timing short However, good to know you got the BE hasing. I think that would have worked however after you run it with the latest cgminer I found out the /dev/ttyUSB0 goes away Aug 23 09:03:52 (none) kernel: [ 51.436923] cp210x ttyUSB0: cp210x converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0 and does not come back until you reboot, it stopped bfgminer from working at first until I saw that, of course cgminer will still work so it must look for something else also. |
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