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

[Searing]

Is it possible to mine x11 on KNC titans or did that never materialize?

What I'd do is mine LTC (free pool) on www.litecoinpool.org they pay out at 103% ...so you are 3% ahead
then go to www.shapeshift.io at 1.48% conversion rate (last I did so) you can convert it to DASH or
whatever at a REAL mining rate of 101.52%....in that Titans are 'rock stable' on litecoinpool works well for the
pow scrypt coin you want to mine on a whim

and again....at 101.52% return on AFTER the conversion..you got nothing to complain about

I think about doing stuff but about the time I do...the diff drops on LTC pool as everyone goes the multipool

route..and I do the numbers and go MEH...in 3 days LTC diff will drop....yawn...too lazy

easier way to chase 'speculative' other pow alts is just do the above...if you get burnt

the coin you took from above machines on litecoin pool ...apply it back to LTC mining only instead and get full 103% again

going back to pure LTC mining

slick

[Instamined]

Is it possible to mine x11 on KNC titans or did that never materialize?

What I'd do is mine LTC (free pool) on www.litecoinpool.org they pay out at 103% ...so you are 3% ahead
then go to www.shapeshift.io at 1.48% conversion rate (last I did so) you can convert it to DASH or
whatever at a REAL mining rate of 101.52%....in that Titans are 'rock stable' on litecoinpool works well for the
pow scrypt coin you want to mine on a whim

and again....at 101.52% return on AFTER the conversion..you got nothing to complain about

Well, if the titans were like gpus their x11 hashrate would be 4x-5x + (been awhile). So for certain (probably most) coins x11 would be much more profitable than simply mining scrypt and converting.

[Searing]

Is it possible to mine x11 on KNC titans or did that never materialize?

What I'd do is mine LTC (free pool) on www.litecoinpool.org they pay out at 103% ...so you are 3% ahead
then go to www.shapeshift.io at 1.48% conversion rate (last I did so) you can convert it to DASH or
whatever at a REAL mining rate of 101.52%....in that Titans are 'rock stable' on litecoinpool works well for the
pow scrypt coin you want to mine on a whim

and again....at 101.52% return on AFTER the conversion..you got nothing to complain about

Well, if the titans were like gpus their x11 hashrate would be 4x-5x + (been awhile). So for certain (probably most) coins x11 would be much more profitable than simply mining scrypt and converting.

Ah but you have to have the x11 equip (don't see any A900's) and my Titan's are paid for ..no $$$ out of pocket...just saying how I would do it if I wanted to
mine any coin so to speak...with only pow scrypt as an option ..and again 101.52% with the free pool over just a staight LTC to X11 coin conversion NOT mining
its a wash imho

[Instamined]

Ah but you have to have the x11 equip (don't see any A900's) and my Titan's are paid for ..no $$$ out of pocket...just saying how I would do it if I wanted to
mine any coin so to speak...with only pow scrypt as an option ..and again 101.52% with the free pool over just a staight LTC to X11 coin conversion NOT mining
its a wash imho

XD the whole question was whether or not KNC Titans can hash the x11 Algo!

C'mon searing! 

I guess not 


I'm mining LTC right now, it's really not much profit with my low hashrate of 2 remaining functioning Titan cubes. I'm hoping that ltc might touch $100, then it'll have been worthwhile. lol

I have 3 busted titan cubes that I ought to pry open. I have a heavy duty soldering iron I just need to buy some capacitors.

[lightfoot]

Read all the posts on this stuff before whacking away with an iron.

In the meantime I wrote up a nice summary for testing controllers with cubes. For reference purposes I'll post it here.

For the cubes, the board is 100% good. However you can blow up the controller by plugging it into a very bad Titan. What I would recommend is this:

1) Unplug everything from the controller. Power it up. Display should come up, 0mh, and the green light should be on. This is the base state.

2) Power down. Plug in one 10 pin cable to a cube but do not plug in the 12v supply to the cube. Make sure the 10 pin cable is squarely on the cube's 10 pin plug (not just on the bottom 5, that blows controllers and cubes), verify this with the top of the cube off with the blue strip on the left.

Plug the other end into the controller. Remember the blue strip is closest to the display (pin 1 indicator). If the cam doesn't go into the controller you have the cable backwards, start over.

Once you're sure everything is plugged in right turn on power to the controller only. Not the cube. See that the white light comes on, off, maybe on again, then off, then green solid with the display cycling IP address and 0mh. If the green light is not solid on the cube is bad, shut down and put it to the side.

Sign in. See you you can see the cube in the general settings display, you should be able to see temps on the cube but not change anything. If so power up the cube and see if you can set frequency. If the green light goes out, cube is bad, go to the next one.

Take it one step at a time.

[IstvanX]

HI, Ive been following these titan threads for quite a whie now, I have many cubes that I had fixed already with some info from these threads.  Ii just wanted to thank you guys for all your hard work! 

Istvanx

[lightfoot]

HI, Ive been following these titan threads for quite a whie now, I have many cubes that I had fixed already with some info from these threads.  Ii just wanted to thank you guys for all your hard work! 

Istvanx

No problem. Feel free to donate to the repair miners cause :-) The goal was to help the small miners keep in the game.

[Instamined]

Broken cube #1

Fan turns on, recognized when plugged in solo, allowed to adjust settings, but it doesn't hash even when restarted. Power consumption is only 4-8 Watts despite using same power supply as used on two functioning cubes.


Broken cube #2

Is the exact same.

Broken cube #3

Controller never stops flashing white light to head to main screen with hashrate. Logging in to the system the cube is not recognized. Fan works when connected to power.


If you have any tips it'd be appreciated.

Cube #1 and #2 have slight damage on the power uptake where a pcie melted the plastic which might have to do with the wattage issue.



Also if any of these cubes are connected in conjunction with the two functioning cubes none of them are recognized and it doesn't pass the white light flashing phase.

[lightfoot]

Broken cube #1

Fan turns on, recognized when plugged in solo, allowed to adjust settings, but it doesn't hash even when restarted. Power consumption is only 4-8 Watts despite using same power supply as used on two functioning cubes.


Broken cube #2

Is the exact same.

Broken cube #3

Controller never stops flashing white light to head to main screen with hashrate. Logging in to the system the cube is not recognized. Fan works when connected to power.


If you have any tips it'd be appreciated.

Cube #1 and #2 have slight damage on the power uptake where a pcie melted the plastic which might have to do with the wattage issue.



Also if any of these cubes are connected in conjunction with the two functioning cubes none of them are recognized and it doesn't pass the white light flashing phase.

So if you put cube 1 and 2 on a controller, fire it up, the light comes on then off then green on the controller and the display works, right? If so they can probably be fixed.

C

[Instamined]

So if you put cube 1 and 2 on a controller, fire it up, the light comes on then off then green on the controller and the display works, right? If so they can probably be fixed.

C

Correct, what do you think might be the issue? I'm willing to give it a shot myself. They aren't doing me any good as paper weights so there's nothing to lose.

[lightfoot]

So if you put cube 1 and 2 on a controller, fire it up, the light comes on then off then green on the controller and the display works, right? If so they can probably be fixed.

C

Correct, what do you think might be the issue? I'm willing to give it a shot myself. They aren't doing me any good as paper weights so there's nothing to lose.

buffer chips on the upper left side have probably blown out from plugging it into the 10 pin improperly. Signals can get to the power supplies but not the clocks inside the hashing chips (clock is provided via SPI signals.)

C

[Instamined]

So if you put cube 1 and 2 on a controller, fire it up, the light comes on then off then green on the controller and the display works, right? If so they can probably be fixed.

C

Correct, what do you think might be the issue? I'm willing to give it a shot myself. They aren't doing me any good as paper weights so there's nothing to lose.

buffer chips on the upper left side have probably blown out from plugging it into the 10 pin improperly. Signals can get to the power supplies but not the clocks inside the hashing chips (clock is provided via SPI signals.)

C

Sounds like it makes sense, any idea which precise buffer chip would be a suitable replacement?

[lightfoot]

It should be in the thread a few posts back. Everything that I figure out I have written in the thread, so the part numbers (Digikey) should be there as well.

Took me forever to find/figure out though.

[lightfoot]

Thank you LongandShort for the litecoin donation, glad the BeagleBone code is working for you!

[cabinetmaker]

mr Lightfoot.
would you mind posting or pm 'ing me with directions to your posts on repairing a titan controller board.

Mine seems to have had a problem.
(and what a time it chose to putz out on me)

Turning  it on, as you said, with only the 10 pin cables (2) plugged in, it only says "kncminer 2.02" "spmux".
The lights come on, as they should, it only goes to spmux and stays there.
3 leds on the left side of interface card, not 6 as it maybe should be, red led comes on as does the green (after turning white a couple of times)

adding the power supply to the units turns the fans on, as they always have.

The 2 units I have, are both kept extremely clean and do not have burnt 6-pin connectors.

I am most adept with a soldering iron and have a desoldering station along with smd removal tools, (heat blower pen, etc)

I went back several pages and cold not find a definitive guide to testing and repairing these.

I, also, bought a jupiter (6 slot) board, in case this works, by adding the titan interface card and raspberry pi, display, etc..

I tried a new sd card and that does not work.

It seems like it tries to kick in, after is goes to spmux once, but then goes to spmux again, (kind of blinks, one time, slowly) and stays there.

any ideas?

Thanks,

[lightfoot]

Let's see. If nothing is connected to the controller, the light on the side (white, super bright) comes on, then off, then on then off, etc and does not go green then you have a bad FPGA on the board. Remove it with your usual SMD rework tools (flux, preheat, heat, pull straight up with a good picker once it just moves a bit when touched with a tweezers), remove all of the solder from the pads without hitting any of the capacitors, cool, clean off the flux with 95% isopropyl alcohol.

Then test the board. Fire it up with a bbb running the neptune code (a titan will try to reboot), log in and type io-pwr init as root. See if it comes back with OK (the TPS chip is good) or with a bunch of errors (you blew the TPS chip, replace that too, pain in the ass). Need to do this because there's nothing as fun as swapping the FPGA to find the TPS is bad as well.

If TPS is bad, replace it, then test board again to make sure it comes up ok. If not, keep working on getting the tps working. Soldering QFN is a pain IMO.

Then replace the FPGA making absolutely sure to line the balls up perfectly with the pads. This is why you removed all the solder, needs to be perfectly flat.

I normally do this for about .2btc+shipping (was .3 but bitcoin prices are up as are litecoin so .2 is fair). You can blow the FPGA by unplugging the 10 pin while powered, plugging it in wrong so only 5 pins are on the titan, it's a fragile interface because they don't have optoisolators or buffer drivers. Oh well.

Then follow my post on testing titans one at a time. Look for shorts on pins 4,6 to ground especially, those are the worst.

Or just put the Titan Pi and BB on the Jupiter board and fire it up. Success is white light on then off, then green with 2.00 or better Titan code.

C

[kncler]

Hi everybody, need some feedback,

Today I stumbled on a couple of articles about keeping your miner cooler. So I developed a Heat sink kit for the KNC TITAN. It is not milled yet, but looks promising.
So what do you think about it.

1. The Large Sinks goes on top and pulls down the original Large Heat-Piped Sink. I added some airflow slots to further dissipate.
2. DCDC from Ericson got my attention with a large sink on the coil and a small sink on the switches, which actually nobody has (why?)
 
I will cnc mill it out of an aluminum block with the size of 100x100x10 (mm). All at once

Image:

https://preview.ibb.co/dtbQd5/SinkPack.jpg

[Instamined]

Hi everybody, need some feedback,

Today I stumbled on a couple of articles about keeping your miner cooler. So I developed a Heat sink kit for the KNC TITAN. It is not milled yet, but looks promising.
So what do you think about it.

1. The Large Sinks goes on top and pulls down the original Large Heat-Piped Sink. I added some airflow slots to further dissipate.
2. DCDC from Ericson got my attention with a large sink on the coil and a small sink on the switches, which actually nobody has (why?)
 
I will cnc mill it out of an aluminum block with the size of 100x100x10 (mm). All at once

Image:

I have air vents in the trimming that runs perpendicular to the floor. So for me, cooling is a breeze. Cold air flows directly into the fans which is perfect.

[kncler]

Hi, isn't the problem the dirt which resides on the floor? so you clog your miners within a short period of time.

[Instamined]

Hi, isn't the problem the dirt which resides on the floor? so you clog your miners within a short period of time.

are you talking to me?

I live in a house, there is no dirt on my floors lol.