Hacking KNC Titan / Jupiter / Neptune miners back to life. Why not?

[lightfoot]

No problem! I might give another talk at DefCon about hacking hardware, when I get out there this summer let's meet for a beer. And maybe rent a plane for a quick jaunt around, just not in that order :-)

C

[sobe-it]

If my controllers don't have a lcd, is it possible to retrofit one? It looks to be a 16x2 but I dont know if its serial or parallel. By looks of the controller board on google images it looks to be serial (jp 13?), that would mean 3 wires. Power, Ground and RX

[boomin]

You won't have to twist my arm!  I have access to a Cirrus Sr22.  My favorite plane to fly!

Thanks again man!  You are a gentleman and a scholar! 

Not to mention a great teacher and inspiration!

Carry on.

Boomin

[boomin]

If my controllers don't have a lcd, is it possible to retrofit one? It looks to be a 16x2 but I dont know if its serial or parallel. By looks of the controller board on google images it looks to be serial (jp 13?), that would mean 3 wires. Power, Ground and RX

It simply plugs in to the first port and also connects the the 10 pin on the left side.

I have some if you want to see a picture.

thanks


boomin

[Searing]

   




Hey figured I'd better ask 'supposedly' I have all the parts below to see if the old KNC 550gh Jupiter 4 port old style ...stacked LCD board works as a Titan controller or not
...but have a questions

Here are the parts that I was told (pi by knc back in the day) would work (its knc who knows)

1) New Raspberry PI B+ 512mb (seems to match the ones I have)

2) (1) Titan Clone Board from the 10 card run from Qberty.

3) KNC Jupiter 550gh 4 port Board (Oct 18th 2013 arrival) (and of course BBB shall be removed)

4) Left over from my NOW 6 port Titan Hashing the Titan LCD plug and play on my orig Titan 6 port board as such. I can now use on this card.

5) Ribbon cabless and y adapters will come with the cubes I have coming (1 full cube and 1 One  die working only Titan cube to 'sacrifice" to the ASIC God's on this project ..if needed)

6) To start an SanDisk SD class 10 with the default KNC last Firmware IMG then later if this all 'floats' Glen Tarkin's Firmware.



To my questions:

MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION BELOW IS (1)!!!! (no clue!)

1) IS there some pins/settings/dips I have to do on the PI BEFORE I snap it into the 4 port board via the titan clone bridge?

2) I don't need these at the present time..BUT are the KNC Jupiter 550gh cables compatible with the Titan ribbon cables?

3) Is it hard to put this titan bridge port with a PI on and also the corresponding whatever 4/6 port board? (ie any tricks to this)

4)  Anything else that comes to mind before I commit to this!

Thanks


I sent a copy of the above to Lightfoot but figured people might also have these questions so feel free to chime in also if you've
had any expience with say:

Adding a new PI to your Titan Board (any pin settings/dips etc Again is my most important question in all this)

The corsair 1200i replacement (they RMA'd it surpisingly) comes on Friday Feb 19th...just trying to get my ducks in a row

(should probably make video just to watch 'fireworks' and 'it go ka boom' ) I'm always available for my 'tragedies' to amuse others.

thanks

[lightfoot]

Searing:

Not sure, lot to read there. However someone posted that there is a crystal on the Titan bridge board, I haven't taken one apart but that might be needed. Someone with a Bridge would know a bit more.

And head deep in a Titan right now. Hm.

[lightfoot]

Hip deep in Titan thoughts here, a few things to note.

Today I took a look at what's going on with these things since no one can figure out what the fuck they are.

U17 is pretty easy to get to with a small heat sink, so I put a small sink on the unit and did some probing. Found an odd 1.0 volt signal on pin 1 only when the unit was hashing. Further screwing around found that when die 1 is on, there is a 1v signal there. When die 1 is off and any others are on, it's a 0 volt. Which means these signals are coming from the FPGA.

U19 is a bit different, it powers itself off pin 4 of the 10 pin yet U17 and the others power off pin *6*. That is interesting, I now know that pin 4 powers U17 and the temp/eeprom and pin 6 powers U17,U18,and U9. Why two power supplies? Fuck if I know.

So here is the latest map of the 10 pin interface.
Pin 1--U18 pin 1 (and 3?)
Pin 2--SDA signal
Pin 3--U19, pin 4
Pin 4--VCC, U19 pin 5
Pin 5--U17 pin 3
Pin 6--VCC 2, U17 pin 5, u18p5,u9p5
Pin 7--SCL signal
Pin 8--One side of those lines on each of the the CPU dies.
Pin 9--U17 pin 1, 1.0v only when die 1 is on.
Pin 10--Ground

I wonder what pin 1 looks like when running. Hm.

[lightfoot]

Interesting. Pin 4 also goes to the elusive and stupid U10, whatever that is. Big enough component to sustain a short, I wonder if it also has pin 6 going to it...

[helipotte]

These dingbats have a picture of it, but no description.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Transistor-IC-chip-SMD-6-pin-IC-THR-SOT23-6/32240467148.html

Bedtime.

For your unidentified part, try this:

http://www.ti.com.cn/cn/lit/ds/sces613i/sces613i.pdf

Looks like it might match.

[lightfoot]

Well that's weird. Is the second part similar, this could explain why they have different parts. Still, what the heck are they and how did you find this much?

C

[NotFuzzyWarm]

These dingbats have a picture of it, but no description.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Transistor-IC-chip-SMD-6-pin-IC-THR-SOT23-6/32240467148.html
Bedtime.

For your unidentified part, try this:

http://www.ti.com.cn/cn/lit/ds/sces613i/sces613i.pdf
Looks like it might match.

Just popped in out of curiosity but level translators are use to translate I/O to-from core logic levels typically these days less than 1v, back in those days maybe as high as 2.2v, to-from data bus coms levels, usually 3.3v or up to 5v.

[lightfoot]

Just popped in out of curiosity but level translators are use to translate I/O to-from core logic levels typically these days less than 1v, back in those days maybe as high as 2.2v, to-from data bus coms levels, usually 3.3v or up to 5v.

Now that I think about this it could make sense: The logic levels on the FPGAs are pretty low, there are only a few 3.3 volt capable lines for stuff like scl, so using these as relay amplifiers could make sense. They're not switching the power supplies, those are generic sda/self powered stuff.

Which leads the question: Just what *are* they powering?

[lightfoot]

I need to keep reminding myself that I am doing high level logic and circuit analysis on boards that I have no documentation on, no schematics, no board layouts, no prior art to compare to, no source code, no logic trees, hell I don't even know what some of the PARTS are, and to be quite honest a very limited supply of units to even try to reverse engineer most of which are screwed up in some fashion or another.

Not to mention a company who doesn't say a peep.

Given all that I think I'm doing pretty well here. Just need to remind myself of that from time to time....

[helipotte]

I need to keep reminding myself that I am doing high level logic and circuit analysis on boards that I have no documentation on, no schematics, no board layouts, no prior art to compare to, no source code, no logic trees, hell I don't even know what some of the PARTS are, and to be quite honest a very limited supply of units to even try to reverse engineer most of which are screwed up in some fashion or another.

Not to mention a company who doesn't say a peep.

Given all that I think I'm doing pretty well here. Just need to remind myself of that from time to time....

Felt the same way when I troubleshot my SP31.  Even emailed Spondoolies and asked about schematics.  That when exactly as expected, nowhere.

Most of what I now know about it I found out thorough experimentation.  Managed to get a non-working loop back, minus one noisy ASIC.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Just popped in out of curiosity but level translators are use to translate I/O to-from core logic levels typically these days less than 1v, back in those days maybe as high as 2.2v, to-from data bus coms levels, usually 3.3v or up to 5v.

Now that I think about this it could make sense: The logic levels on the FPGAs are pretty low, there are only a few 3.3 volt capable lines for stuff like scl, so using these as relay amplifiers could make sense. They're not switching the power supplies, those are generic sda/self powered stuff.

Which leads the question: Just what *are* they powering?

Powering would not be the right word. Talking/listening-to would be better If I'm right. My guess they are the interface chips between the core logic and the data transfer bus. SPI and most other common com protocols run at 3.3-5vdc on the signal lines.. The core logic - FPGA's in this case - want a lower voltage, preferably the same voltage as the core runs at. The AMT/Bitmine.ch A1 ASIC hash boards I did forensics on used them for that.

[lightfoot]

Another controller board fixed, this one was a bit more interesting: The light came on but the SPI busses were down and the FPGA was hot to the touch. Swapped it out, board now 100% happy and hashing again.

Back to Titans.

[lightfoot]

Mini breakthrough: I finally found the source of the pin 4 shorts, it is one of the paths to the hashing chip through those little chips. There are two 0 ohm resistors, one of them is ok the other has a short. Opening that resistor fixes pin 4. Now to find the source of pin 6 shorts and I am in business with *something*

Hm.

[sobe-it]

Well I cannot play along......... It seems that these are Jupiter boards. I haven't even bothered to try the 3 controller set ups, kind of upset. (How the fuck does one get thermal paste all over controller boards)  Also holy fucking hell, thermal paste, duct tape, crud and who knows what else is on these asic boards. It also came with 10 ribbon cables and 5 heat sinks..... 1 of which looks like the bottom of the copper pipes was smashed with a hammer about 5 times so its useless. Can you use anything off these boards?

[mmfiore]

I contacted KNC support to see if they could give me some clue as to what the failure mechanism is for the 3 Titan cubes that I have. So far they have not gotten back with me. They have been pretty good in many other communications that I have had with them so my hope is they will give us an indication as to where we should be looking.

[lightfoot]

Well I cannot play along......... It seems that these are Jupiter boards. I haven't even bothered to try the 3 controller set ups, kind of upset. (How the fuck does one get thermal paste all over controller boards)  Also holy fucking hell, thermal paste, duct tape, crud and who knows what else is on these asic boards. It also came with 10 ribbon cables and 5 heat sinks..... 1 of which looks like the bottom of the copper pipes was smashed with a hammer about 5 times so its useless. Can you use anything off these boards?

Jupiter controllers should work with Neptunes and TItans if they aren't damaged. Load up Neptune 1.0.6 release and see if they light the LED then green LED. If so they could be fine.

jI've thought about trying to reball the FPGAs if they are good, might try it....