New R-Box Upgrade Kit

[Real-Duke]

Just had a thought about selling my 2 remaining New-RBoxes these days but now I will wait a little longer and watch this thread 

[philipma1957]

Just had a thought about selling my 2 remaining New-RBoxes these days but now I will wait a little longer and watch this thread 

You have some free action for a while. 

I saw a really nice heat sink  for 12 bucks on ebay. I think I will get it and just hope these get built.

[ElGabo]

If I was going to do any production of these I'd have to get more chips. I've already emailed Bitmain about the possibility of getting more chips (which I was wondering anyway in case Compac/Amita sales were ridiculous). When the idea for this board was proposed, a one-off run was asked for which means a single batch of a few hundred boards, which I've repeated a couple times. The point is not to make it compatible with an S1, but to make it compatible with a New R-Box; S1 compatibility is almost a side-effect of convenience on my end. If you want a mass-produced product to stick on your S1, you want this thing's big brother the TypeZero Spec1 - which this thing would act somewhat as an initial prototype for since the base design would be almost identical. Depending how timing works out, I'd rather put new-gen chips on the TypeZero once some are known to exist. If Bitmain doesn't give us any info, Avalon might.

So, yeah. What Phil just said.

Ok, clear, thanks!

[spazzdla]

Perhaps, how hard would it be to do is the question.

Is rockminer still around... I can't find their site .

[TheRealSteve]

Is rockminer still around... I can't find their site .

They stopped selling products early this year, went cloud mining contracts.. think they pretty much disappeared when all the AM drama started.  rockxie hasn't been on since early March.  Continue discussion in rockminer thread? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=528464

[sidehack]

Anyway, If I could vote for which form factor you should reuse in this small miner market, I'd say try to make a Bitcoin only miner out of the old Gridseeds.  There are an abundance of those in the wild from my understanding, since it was one of the first scrypt asics on the market.  I personally, have about 150 left.

You know...

A 3x2 of BM1384 would run about 45W (including fan and everything) for 100GH. But with the top heatsink core as narrow as it is, 4 chip is probably the only real option. Amita regulator with a bit beefier inductor could easily drive a 2x2 of BM1384 and get you 85+ GH off less than 50W, down to around 30GH off probably less than 12W all in. Just uh... just throwing that out there.

[alh]

You know...

A 3x2 of BM1384 would run about 45W (including fan and everything) for 100GH. But with the top heatsink core as narrow as it is, 4 chip is probably the only real option. Amita regulator with a bit beefier inductor could easily drive a 2x2 of BM1384 and get you 85+ GH off less than 50W, down to around 30GH off probably less than 12W all in. Just uh... just throwing that out there.

This sounds a lot like the "Original R-box". That was a roughly a 4" cube with a fan sitting on top. It had 4 chips under the heatsink, and think they were BE200 ASIC's. This was roughly 32GH and maybe 40W at the wall with a 12V brick. I expect that the "New R-box" was essentially a different board with the equivalent set of parts from three of the "Original R-box".

It's kinda too bad that Rockminer re-used the name the way they did.

[sidehack]

It's specifically like the 5-chip Gridseed units, which the guy was discussing. Someone posted a picture of that 32GH R-Box on the previous page, and yeah they're built pretty similarly but I don't have one to take apart for actual comparison.

The "New R-Box" is basically half an AM Tube board. It's got four VRMs (TPS53355) with three BE200 per, voltage and clock pretty much the same. I think the volt-setting resistors on the buck circuit are even the same values but I could be wrong, been a while since I looked that close. Yep, it's really hard to talk about Rockminer products since they all have pretty much the same name.

[philipma1957]

It's specifically like the 5-chip Gridseed units, which the guy was discussing. Someone posted a picture of that 32GH R-Box on the previous page, and yeah they're built pretty similarly but I don't have one to take apart for actual comparison.

The "New R-Box" is basically half an AM Tube board. It's got four VRMs (TPS53355) with three BE200 per, voltage and clock pretty much the same. I think the volt-setting resistors on the buck circuit are even the same values but I could be wrong, been a while since I looked that close. Yep, it's really hard to talk about Rockminer products since they all have pretty much the same name.

r-box-little = older smaller one

r-box-big   = newer bigger one

[TheRealSteve]

r-box-little = older smaller one

r-box-big   = newer bigger one

Might be easier to label them that way, yeah.  Not sure why they ended up calling it the 'New R-Box'.  It wasn't just a small change a la the U3 batches.

Just as slight clarification:

	R-Box (r-box-little)	New R-Box (r-box-big)
	not it	it

I would be more interested in a podminer ( gridseed orb / r-box-little / U3 / zeus blizzard  / hashbuster micro / bfl jalapeno (...) / oh-geeze-now-I-gotta-count-AM-cube-too-I-give-up ) as an intermediate solution between a Compac and a full fledged type zero board.

There's pretty high-res shots of gridseed boards on the 'net and dogie's got good shots of both the U3 and the r-box-little.  Can't say I've looked at topology, but except for the LTC side of the Gridseed, they're bound to be pretty similar anyway.

[sidehack]

Novak's got a disassembled U3 on his desk, and I just took apart a Gridseed pod to look it over. We don't have an R-Box pod to play with.

Either a four-chip pod or a 12-18 chip NRB board would demonstrate string and software. A 2x2 like the pod would be built off Amita power systems, not really useful for a larger board with different requirements, but would probably need firmware and driver stuff for command-line volt and frequency changes.

So maybe I should ask who'd rather have a 4-chip pod upgrade over a NRB upgrade? It'd certainly be cheaper to prototype.

[wlefever]

I would rather have a 4 chip mod. Also do you want an R-Box to play with? I could possibly send one I have laying around.

[Mikestang]

Since I have a couple U3s and no R-boxes, I would vote for the 4-chip as well.

[SEGMining]

Novak's got a disassembled U3 on his desk, and I just took apart a Gridseed pod to look it over. We don't have an R-Box pod to play with.

Either a four-chip pod or a 12-18 chip NRB board would demonstrate string and software. A 2x2 like the pod would be built off Amita power systems, not really useful for a larger board with different requirements, but would probably need firmware and driver stuff for command-line volt and frequency changes.

So maybe I should ask who'd rather have a 4-chip pod upgrade over a NRB upgrade? It'd certainly be cheaper to prototype.

I would def prefer a 4 chip board, because I have a ton of gridseeds covered in dust.

[AJRGale]

meh, if i could strap down an intel BGA775 sink to it (or any of them multi-socket heatsinks), i wouldn't say no. some little 60-100GH/s pod would look nice.

I do have more NBRs over U3/Grid/Rboxes. but if fitting a stock cpu heatsink to them with little mods, i have little problem buying up a handful.

[philipma1957]

meh, if i could strap down an intel BGA775 sink to it (or any of them multi-socket heatsinks), i wouldn't say no. some little 60-100GH/s pod would look nice.

I do have more NBRs over U3/Grid/Rboxes. but if fitting a stock cpu heatsink to them with little mods, i have little problem buying up a handful.

4 chip units work  I am looking at my heat sinks and I think I could rig something up.

[zsmith]

I'm interested in 2 upgrade kits for the R-Box and I have a friend that might want 2 as well.  It won't let me vote in the poll because I don't have enough posts, I guess I should spam up the forum more.  And depending on price, I'd also be interested in 2 sticks from this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995675.0

[WBF1]

If were now talking 4-5 chip "pod" (or "ufo" like I used to call them), vs. 12-18 chip box, I vote pod.

While we're on that subject, what kinda price would we be looking at? 35-ish?

[Jake36]

I would try a handful of the 4 chip/pod board's also.

[sidehack]

If were now talking 4-5 chip "pod" (or "ufo" like I used to call them), vs. 12-18 chip box, I vote pod.

While we're on that subject, what kinda price would we be looking at? 35-ish?

The Amita (two-chip stick) is coming in about $35. This'd have an additional two chips ($7) and a microcontroller for voltage adjustment and temp monitoring, so add at least another ten bucks.