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

[helipotte]

Might be the lighting, but some of those large surface mount caps on the VRMs look to have gotten WAY hot.  I have noticed they change

color to almost a bluish when exposed to lots of heat.  When this happens sometimes they change characteristics (maybe tiny fractures) and

eventually short.  See it inside laptop computers all the time.  Personally I hate SMD ceramic caps.

[1714153476]

1714153476

[1714153476]

1714153476

[1714153476]

1714153476

[1714153476]

1714153476

[1714153476]

1714153476

[lightfoot]

Yup. Those caps short, and sometimes incinerate the whole power supply. I just fixed a Titan where two supplies blew up, one so badly the traces under the board were wrecked. Fortunately it can run that core at 150mhz on one supply now that everything is cleaned.

Just checked it, at 500gh/350mhz temps are 45c chip and 69c power supplies. Fine.

[lightfoot]

Interesting Neptune here: This one seems to have two dead supplies.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/137949766@N06/shares/6Hs3ES

DC/DC   Voltage (V)   Current (A)   Power (W)   Temperature (°C)
0   0.7839   37.0625   29.053   80.375
1   0.7826   37.6875   29.494   91.125
2   0.7809   39.0000   30.455   64.625
3   0   0   0.000   0.000
4   0.7819   37.3750   29.224   56.938
5   0.7826   38.0625   29.788   65.000
6   0   0   0.000   0.000
7   0.8092   0.0000   0.000   42.438

And hot on the bottom. Fair enough, standard bad connection/etc. Opened it up, and *nope* It's was better.


Oh yeah. Someone had torqued the screws down so hard they literally *broke* the aluminum base. Yes, another one was broken too. Yes, nothing was holding down the heat sink really. But was it KNC?


Nope. That's not their heat sink sauce.

So this unit was basically running without a heat sink and probably imploded two supplies. I'm going to declare this box a wreck, and see if I can get the board up on another box. Oh well, at least I know that you can't tighten the screws enough to break the chip.

Moral: Don't tighten the screws so much.....

[mmfiore]

Is there a way to do a soft reset to each Titan cube from BFGMiner?

[lightfoot]

Don't know. Tarkin has this all figured out, $50 is cheap for the work he did.

On a related note I know why my last two Neptunes are not working: The boards are literally curved like a taco chip. Apparently someone in the past tightened the screws down so hard the heat sink warped the board. Gets hot, connections lift, bye bye board.....

[mmfiore]

I do know about Tarkin but that software takes over the miner once every day and hashes for tarken for about 11 minutes. I am not comfortable with that. I don't mind paying the 50 bucks but I think its a bit greedy to keep extracting payments everyday indefinitely thereafter.

After further researching some more I found out that the paid version has the automatic switch over for 11 minutes disabled. Only the free version mines for Tarkin 11 minutes a day. Sorry for the confusion.

[lightfoot]

I do know about Tarkin but that software takes over the miner once every day and hashes for tarken for about 11 minutes. I am not comfortable with that. I don't mind paying the 50 bucks but I think its a bit greedy to keep extracting payments everyday indefinitely thereafter.

WHAT?

Really? First I have heard of that.

[mmfiore]

I researched this software before making a purchase and you really have to dig to get to the truth. Here is the passage from the Readme.md file.
Located at:
https://github.com/GenTarkin/Titan/releases

Download the link that says source code. Its not really source code it is a small text file called ReadME.md and read the file. In the file you willo\ see this.

 

Upfront payment of $50 for version which has daily donation fee disabled.. see  this post for details & questions:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg12194406#msg12194406
(vegasguy is handling processing & distro of the img for prepaid version)
TO PURCHASE go here: http://bitcoinlasvegas.net/kncminer-titan-custom-firmware-mod-paid-membership-page/

2. The version available for download as an img here on github in my releases, this has a built in .75% DAILY donation where your Titan mines for me roughly 11mins /day.

I bought the supposed version that is not supposed to have the code in it but I found it is still there. I would feel a lot better if they would come out and say that on the website. Maybe it is disabled and maybe its not. Who knows.

As far as I can tell at this point the free version has the donation code and the purchase version has it disabled. That is not as bad as I thought. I definitely do not mind buying it if it does not have the donation code.

This page explains it best.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg12194406#msg12194406

[lightfoot]

Ok, that is *very* different, and it might be good to modify your previous post. My belief is that information should be free, but ability should be paid for properly. In my case, I post the things I find here as a service to the community, but I charge for the work I perform. If someone else can also do the work then all to the better as we get more home miners.

In Tarkin's case, he took the time to write the code and you can either pay $50 for it (cheap as hell) or pay 1% mining fee (also cheap as hell). When I get the Titans running on Beaglebones I could probably charge as well, but to be honest I'll just post the basic steps. If someone wants me to reprogram their BB then I'll charge some bitcoin amount to do it.

Either way far cheaper than either resetting your miner all the time (Tarkin) or spending $1k for a Titan controller (me)

[lightfoot]

Ok, so on both the Neptune and Titan pins 2 and 8 go to pin 1 on U14 and U16. Which are an LM75 (temp sensor) and a 24C32WP (Serial Eeprom).

Well, it's not pins 4 and 6 but it's a start. Hm. What were you doing KNC?

[Searing]

hey tripped over an ip direct address that works with kncminer site before they took it down (but not forums)


but all the stuff from 2013 or so seems to be on there if you want to archive it with a web archiver product

(i use winhttrack myself freeware on downloads.com


anyway it is something

this is on wayback machine

https://archive.org/web/

also i posted this and my thoughts on IF there is a way to merge the 12 or more snap shop archives of kncminer.com/forums/forums (see other thread below)

and MERGE them ...so that it is 'half assed' way to search knc forums yet...at least something

my thoughts on the knc Swedish asic miner thread below

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg13680898#msg13680898

anyway links etc hopefully it is useful to someone that knows how such merging works

if nothing else you can track their 'shift to the dark side' from the news forum ..that you can still get to via the ip (see above link)

(hey it is something)

[hawkfish007]

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

[lightfoot]

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

Yep, short, sure, send it in.

[hawkfish007]

lightfoot,

Need you address to send in my sick controller. Changing bridge and RPi didn't work. Controller still restarts every 2-3 mins, doesn't recognize any cube, LCD screen stays dimly lit w/ no bright LED or any LED.

Yep, short, sure, send it in.

Sick controller w/ an extra bridge on it's way. PMing tracking #.

[lightfoot]

Sounds good. Need to place an order with Digi-Key for some more FPGAs and power chips. And just sent out a repaired Titan, we're hitting a stride here.

[GenTarkin]

I researched this software before making a purchase and you really have to dig to get to the truth. Here is the passage from the Readme.md file.
Located at:
https://github.com/GenTarkin/Titan/releases

Download the link that says source code. Its not really source code it is a small text file called ReadME.md and read the file. In the file you willo\ see this.

 

Upfront payment of $50 for version which has daily donation fee disabled.. see  this post for details & questions:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg12194406#msg12194406
(vegasguy is handling processing & distro of the img for prepaid version)
TO PURCHASE go here: http://bitcoinlasvegas.net/kncminer-titan-custom-firmware-mod-paid-membership-page/

2. The version available for download as an img here on github in my releases, this has a built in .75% DAILY donation where your Titan mines for me roughly 11mins /day.

I bought the supposed version that is not supposed to have the code in it but I found it is still there. I would feel a lot better if they would come out and say that on the website. Maybe it is disabled and maybe its not. Who knows.

As far as I can tell at this point the free version has the donation code and the purchase version has it disabled. That is not as bad as I thought. I definitely do not mind buying it if it does not have the donation code.

This page explains it best.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg12194406#msg12194406

Just to clarify..... the donation version has been done away with long ago. The paid version DOES NOT do the daily mining fee and NEVER HAS. At one point I simply had 2 options of payment. Those who didnt mind donating a smll amount of hashrate to myself, or the pay up front version. Due to abuse, I got rid of the donation version.  You are correct to assume the donation code is still in the PAID version but its simply not enabled at all. I wasnt sure if I was going to bring the donation version back at some point so the legwork of the code was left - just disabled.

The reason the source isnt available except for people who purchase(which is my right as per open source licensing and the licenses used in this firmware) is to protect my code from simply being downloaded w/o payment. The source is free to inspect once you pay. The source code on github is a private repo, the public one I left available as a form of information about my firmware - it still has the release history & README files available to tell about the project.

If you are interested in purchasing my firmware ... my official website is http://gentarkincustomtitan.pcriot.com


Also, if you dont keep up to date on my news ... the latest is ... for the last 4 months I have been working on a release that automatically tunes all dies voltages for a given clock speed to optimize for the best effeciency possible while maintaing stability. I have invested much time into coding & testing this. Ive also added many features & fixes along the way for various things that came up in testing.

[mmfiore]

Thanks for the clarification GenTarkin. I think I would like to try the latest version. Thanks for the link. 

[GenTarkin]

Thanks for the clarification GenTarkin. I think I would like to try the latest version. Thanks for the link. 

NP ... hope ya like the firmware =) ... if ya do, feel free to spread the word =-0

[mmfiore]

Gen Tarkin - Just ordered and sent the bitcoin I will let you know how it works.
Thanks
Do we get free upgrades?

[GenTarkin]

Gen Tarkin - Just ordered and sent the bitcoin I will let you know how it works.
Thanks
Do we get free upgrades?

Yeahp, I believe thats stated on checkout =)
Thats why account setup is needed, so upgrades can be attained w/o having to repurchase.
Also, please dont confuse upgrades with additional Titan installations. Technically an additional half price copy should be purchased for each additional miner.