All done! Got the parts today and put them on the board.



For getting the solder out of the holes start with a solder sucker, then use solder wick to get all the old solder out. Not only is it neat but it protects the vias from being damaged by forcing pins into the holes. I have found that putting some flux on the solder wick will allow it to really suck up all of the old solder and make a neat hole.



Then put some flux on the pins of the plug before inserting it.

Heat up the board with the pre-heater, then solder the pins. You should never have balls on the pins, the solder must flow completely into the hole to make a good strong connection.



Then it's off to test it on the bench. I don't have an R4 code load, but an S9 one works well enough.



Board pulls a good 300 watts under load.



And is hashing test nonces.

Time to box it up and send it on its way. Hope this write-up helps other people if they decide to do it. But if you need someone to do it drop me a line.

My standard death plan holds:
1) Have Alcor cut off your head and stick it in a freezer.
2) Have tattoed on your forehead "Inside this brain is a wallet password for 10 bitcoins. Defrost me and it's yours"
3) Wait until bitcoin is worth the wealth of a good sized country.
4) Enjoy as everyone develops tech to revive you to get the coins
5) Give them the password for the 10btc wallet.
6) Cash out the other 50 btc wallet in your head.

Simple.

No shit, be buried with a BIG WALLET!!!

Basically HP's message was nothing of man will save you. Love will not save you, being clever will not save you, being loyal will not save you, magic will not save you, the Gods will not save you. If you live it is only through the cold indifferent hand of fate.

And that's how the story ended. Well done adaptation, I promptly went mad.

Understood, I tend to get a little grumpy at the "but" thing.

And since I mentioned "but", #nohomo :-)

1) I do agree that China needs a serious review of many of their internal and external policies. Things that worked great in the old days (improper food handling, no government regulations, no proper standards of hygiene that are enforced, no real quality control or oversight) seem great when populations are small and stakes are low but wind up causing serious issues when populations grow.

This is an old issue, I think of it as a "shitting in the streets" sort of problem. When there are very few people in a location, shitting in the streets is not a big issue. Once you pass a critical mass of people living in an area then doing so starts to spread major diseases. Which is why you have "governments" formed to outlaw shitting in streets and why you then have people jumping up and saying "I always shat in the streets and I will defend my right to shit in the streets to the death" or whatever. Thus forms the first political parties :-)

Note: This is not unique to China. Check out the recent spate of problems in the US with vegetables being contaminated with what appear to be human feces. This is an interesting problem. My theory is that in the old days illegal immigrants picked the vegetables and being experienced learned not to shit in the fields. When they were removed and replaced by less experienced domestic laborers these new employees did not recognize the importance of not shitting in the fields and.... shat in the fields. This can be fixed with proper training, field port-a-potties, and breaks to shit in a box however that will drive up labor costs. Such is life.


2) Anytime one says "I'm not a (whatever), BUT" the addition of the word "BUT" tends to invalidate the first part of the sentence. It's a cheap and pointless way to try and say you're not an "X" while saying something that could be construed as support of "X". Just say the statement and be done with it.

So just say "Given what's happening and what BLB posted (live rat eating), I thing that China has got to do a thorough house clean-up and get their act together ASAP..." and be done with it. :-)

True. Just watched the movie "The Color of Space". It brought back that good old Lovecraft feeling that nothing you do matters, that love will not save you, science will not save you faith will not save you, actions will not save you. You will only be saved by random capricious fate.

I'll have wonderful nightmares when I go to sleep later today.

Hm?

Based on H5N1 (which is really bad) it should take about 6 months tops.

You don't want to have your body already weakened by other crap when this comes in. IE: Be as healthy as possible.

Not quite time to man the 50 caliber machine gun yet. This should be interesting to watch. Besides our government is staffed by competent scientific

minds

that

oh fuck we're doomed. Ah well.

Hardly. it will probably kill old people which will finally get rid of the whole Boomer problem. :-)

Stay healthy, stay up to date on immunizations and the like and rock on. Or ignore science, pray to an ignorant god, and go from there.

Hm. Wonder why the second and third pictures aren't showing up. Anyway took the bad plugs off this evening and cleaned up the board. One of them burned right through the connector and into the board. Fortunately there isn't a ground plane short, so I'll clean it all up tomorrow and wait till the parts come early next week.



The plugs off the board. Typical mess, what happens is when one pin fails the rest of them have to carry the full load. As more fail, the remainder get hotter and hotter. My guess is the center one on the really burned plug was the "last to go...."



The board after removal. The top pad is warped a bit from the plug burning out, but as I mentioned there is no ground fault so it should be ok.

Next up: Putting shiny new plugs on, next week.

* Note: My personal philosophy is that information should be free, but skills should be paid for. That's why I like to write up and take pictures of this stuff, other people should be able to do it, and if they do they should charge based on their skills, not on hidden sequestered knowledge.

Just wish mining companies did it as well, reverse engineering some of this is a real pain :-)

Board came in today and I'm taking a look at it. New plugs are on order (as I said I like using nickel plugs instead of brass) but in the meantime I thought it would be neat to post some pictures. I'll ultimately add this to a new thread on R4 repair* but unless people don't want me to I'll also post a few pics here.

The board itself:

https://i.imgur.com/tHh64Tj.jpg

R4 boards are interesting. 64 chips, a choke, and the pic circuitry. Nothing complex, but a very long board so the air can roll across it without all the resistance of a normal S9 board. You can also see some of the heat sinks are slightly mis-aligned, but worse things have happened....

https://i.imgur.com/HSsSJOl.jpg

Close up of the end of the board: All three plugs are badly burned. Also oddly enough it's the bottom pins that melt first, which is *very* bad. That's the ground pin, and if all of them open the board will suddenly have +12 and no ground. At which point the electricity will seek a ground and will find it in the signal cable. Which will then burn open, damaging the board's circuitry and possibly the controller. Yuck. You can also run into the situation where the ground vias are burned to the point that there is no conductivity, in which case one has to build a new ground plane. Do-able but a real pain in the rear.

https://i.imgur.com/JKr2Yr7.jpg

Top view, close up where you can see the heat damage to the circuitry on the end. This pin set was really getting hot, the bubbled plastic tells how warm everything got. Check your plugs: If they feel warm then they are too hot and you need to either slow down your miner or get a better power supply.

I'll pull the old plugs this weekend. OP did this board still hash or did it shut down? What's the other board look like, and were they all on the same power supply?

Ladies and gentlemen!
Boys and girls....



Dying time's here....

Never trust anyone with less than Legendary.

On that note never trust anyone with Legendary.

It's just FOMO HOMO.

Great point! I didn't even think about linking it into the marriage certification process. It's like breeding wolves into nice obedient dogs.

Hm...

Pretty cool concept: Government can just round up the troublemakers with little effort.

For what? Some garbage fiat offered by a corrupt government to play their game?

Sorry, bitcoin is the only game in town.....


Edit: Oh your info came from a real bitcoin trader! Well that's different, run for the hills!!!!!