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

[Sweminer777]

Analyzing start-up log... sed: /var/log/initc.log: No such file or directory error code =
grep: /var/log/initc.log: No such file or directory Starting ASIC boards test...
InitA started in ASIC TEST MODE
BBB S/N: A335BNLT0A604013910873
LM75 OK. Temperature = 28.5°C
TPS65217 OK. Modification A, revision 1.1
Testing ASIC board #0... No board found
Testing ASIC board #1... No board found
Testing ASIC board #2... No board found
Testing ASIC board #3... error code = -12
Testing ASIC board #4... error code = -12
Testing ASIC board #5... error code = -12
Restarting mining...


What is this error?, Dies shows up,, cuve nr 4 and 5, hashes like normal.cube 3 dont hash.

what can it be?..............

[1715466818]

1715466818

[1715466818]

1715466818

[1715466818]

1715466818

[1715466818]

1715466818

[psycodad]

....

Since I have to take the whole thing apart to replace the pci-E connector, I would also like to add the DCDC heatsinks from this video. Does anybody know where to get these?
...

http://www.enzotechnology.com/where_to_buy.htm

http://www.aquatuning.de/luftkuehlung/passivkuehler/7045/enzotech-ram-kuehler-bmr-c1-high-profile-passiv

Thank you Tupsu! I could order the coolers in the 9mm high version as the 14mm have no delivery date at all in my country. As I am not planning to run them on full clock speed, I hope these are good enough.

Rosin core solder. I would highly recommend alloying the solder or using chip-quick to get the old ports off, the high temp ROHS solder used coupled with a lack of preheating coupled with the massive heat sink of the +12 and ground planes will make removal complex otherwise.

Only one socket. Older boards like Jupiters and some Neptunes had two pads.

Run it at 60-70mh tops. Don't go for 80 and you won't break the board so much.

C

Thank you lightfoot, I found out meanwhile since I have opened two cubes that there is no second pad. I tried the trick to remove the plastics body and clean the pins as some of you here suggested. Worked great on the first cube, disaster with the second. The second connectors plastic was in better shape and didn't break that easy, and as the great craftsman with two left hands that I am I also have cut off ~2mm of the head of one of the GND pins... The following loud swearing should have been audible around the globe...
After all the warnings I received to avoid replacing the connector, I am now really friggin scared to do it.
I will have a good rework station, vacuum solder iron, chipquik alloy and replacement parts - are there any more tips that those that did succeed in replacing the connector would like to share to give me some confidence back *lol* ? I mean it is actually doable with enough power in the solder iron and alloy, right?

To be honest I have no plans to run the cubes over 250/275MHz ever. If they ever will work all at that speed, that will be a good miner to me and given all the time invested to get there I can surely resist any temptation to even try 300/325MHz even for a minute or two at all. I want to run it 24x7 and the experience especially with the pci-E connectors lets me seriously doubt if it's a good idea when running it at >=300MHz.

One note for those trying to dismantle the pci-E connector: Most often when you have a burned connector on the PCB, the socket on the y-connector is burned too and needs at least some pins replaced, often the connector housing too.

Thanks also for all the help I received by PM, I'll let you know how my Titan adventure turns out and eventually document the path.

[Spike53]

Hi all,
Has anyone found a source for the LCD display panel on the display module?  I have not been able to find a part number on this.

Thanks for any assistance.

So I did find the part.  Digikey
NHD-C0216CIZ-FSW-FBW-3V3-ND

[hinvestmentgroup]

I pulled the connector off one of my cubes and replaced it.  Sorry for links instead of images, I haven't been around enough to post images.  Thought it might be worth sharing my experience.

Here is what my connector looked like:

http://imgur.com/IRFK9kw

Here is a shot of the old connector with the new connector next to it.  Notice I cut the pins before de-soldering.  This helped quite a bit because it allowed me to get in there and pull on the connector while de-soldering to get it out.

http://imgur.com/X9tl7Nw

This is the connector I purchased:

http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=WM10869-ND

Like the folks here are saying, pulling the connector is not a pleasant experience.  I had only ever soldered once before after watching a video on youtube and replacing several capacitors on my television.  I thought I'd be brave and give it a go.  Though people said it would be hard I didn't really realize how hard until I gave it a go.  I picked up the quick chip and after watching youtube videos of that in use it appeared it would magically just pull right out.  Boy was I wrong.  The first weekend I tried I gave up after a couple of hours.  I decided to try again the following weekend and finally was able to get them.  I don't have a fancy soldering iron, just a $25 iron off Amazon.  The iron I have did have a heat setting that went all the way up to 450, I cranked it all the way up.  I think the thing for me on my first try was that I was not patient enough.  Because the pins are so thick, I think it takes a while to get them warmed up enough.  Maybe a pre-heat that people mention would have helped me there.  Anyways, as you can see in this picture, I was able to finally get them all pulled:

http://imgur.com/zF7SpvT

After replacing the connector I went ahead and made the modifications for cooling in this video as well as replacing all the cables on all 4 cubes.  I picked up a pair of 16awg cables off ebay.  Not sure if they're any good?  But, seem to be working so far.  The one gotcha on the cooling mods was the place on the case where the screws screw into to hold the board on came out.  I ended up resolving this with a bolt and a new screw.  As people mention, be careful not to apply too much pressure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G_zcJ0vbOw

After the cooling mods my cubes run at ~10c cooler than they did before.  Just in time for summer.  All in all, I have no idea what I was doing and it may just be blind luck that my machine is still working.  Thought it may be helpful to share in case someone else gives it a go.  Good luck!

[Spike53]

I found that cutting the pins short on the connector side, leaving enough that I could grab with forceps after hearing the I could grab with the forces and pull out pretty easily. The pins heat much easier when cut short. I used an iron with about 780 degree f.   

[Searing]

It looks like you did a pretty good job, congrats

I stopped replacing the burnt pcie connector on the pcb, now I just carefully cut off all the plastic, clean the pins as best I can and leave it at that ... so far works pretty good

yeah...i stalled to long on looking at my connectors. Today had a plug burn out on the Y adapter side. So thinking it was JUST the y adapter (the plug to the cube was cool to the touch
and not brown looking at it plug'd in) I tried to take it off to replace the y adapter thinking that was it. When I did get the y adapter out it had melted around the pins and now I have
to do your mod.

Then again looking inside it was dirty as heck....so will just leave it off and do a complete repaste...no time due to work...so probably it will be off for the week as i dork with the whole
repaste/maxumark brackets/heatsinks/fan and this mod project

Anyway now that there was NO HINT that anything was wrong on the cube end of the Y adapter. I suppose I will have to go thru each cube (before my cube by cube repaste) and look
to see if I have others working ok ..with a 'melded' connector waiting to go on the cube end.

Anyway just an FYI I guess I should have looked at both ends at all of this stuff monthly (I replaced all the knc y adapters with new ones like 2 months ago)....guess more then monthly
now that summer is here..just pull both ends look put back kinda schedule from now on

On a side note have got a deal on server psu's 2500w platitnum 95% eff (my corsair 1200i's are 91%) with backplate etc...and I think he said 15 gauge wire ..so has a DIRECT connect

to the PSU end and he uses NO Y adapter just driect connect to the cube and no issues (in that load wise they are setup for this kinda thing) so anyway for the price of a new corsair 1200i

I can get these new ..what the heck....probably the next way to go on the works (or at least the 6 cube unit) a bit of overkill

[TriAxis]

I am having an unusual issue with my Titan, hopefully someone has an idea on how to proceed. 1 of my 4 cubes had the PCIE port fry and melt and it turned off. I removed this cube and ran on 3 cubes for awhile at a constant 240mhs with average heat. So I decided to reconnect the 4th cube and remove the PCIE plastic from the port and just connect directly to the pins that connect to the board. When I did this all 4 cubes got really hot within 3 minutes and dies started rebooting due to heat around 110C. I removed the 4th cube and the remaining 3 good cubes continued to get super hot and reboot.

So at this point I disconnected all cubes and booted up just 1 cube and it ran at 80mhs and heat was normal. But when I connected a 2nd cube both of them got super hot again. I then connected that 2nd cube by itself and it ran fine. Even the bad 4th cube ran fine by itself. For some reason any time I add more than 1 cube, all cubes get crazy hot. I tried using the reset button on the board and resetting it. I reflashed the card numerous times. I tried different data ports. Every cube works fine by itself on various data ports. But anytime more than 1 cube is connected they all get too hot to run. I am sooo confused, lol

[psycodad]

I finally found the time to replace the PCI-e connector on the cube where I cut one of the pins while trying to dismantle the plastic from the connector.
I didn't really expect it to take so much time, hell it's 6 pins. But all those that explained how much heat you need were perfectly right. What I found to be helpful is to have a hot air station + a soldering station (or a combined rework station). I did first heat the pin with the soldering iron so much I could apply some chipquik, after that I started to point also the hot air handle onto it and gave it 15-25s (more for the upper, longer pins) to get really hot.
Then I smoothly pulled with a plier on the pin until I felt they were completely lose and I could pull them out without resistance.

Spike53 was right: the shorter pins came out easier due not dissipating that much heat. I guess if you can't just throw ~100W heat at it, this is certainly a good idea to shorten them before trying to desolder.

While being at it, I applied new thermal grease (Gelid is great, but one syringe equals ~ one cube, so if you are planning to do more than one cube, get more than one syringe - I have to find a source where I get it in a little pot like in the video from Linus).

The warnings were justified, but if you have ever desoldered something and PCB and part were still usable, get a powerful iron and enough time and it will work, though as long as you can dismantle the plastics body, that is preferable. But when the connector is cut by an idiot like in my case or burnt beyond recognition you probably have no choice

What I would like to add as tip is to not use any force on pulling the pins out else you could risk to damage the via or pad.

Again thanks to all who helped with tips and links etc.!

[TriAxis]

Another question I have is can I replace my PCIE plastic power connector by just plugging in a new piece over top the existing pins? I pulled off the plastic PCIE ports on 1 cube leaving the metal pins behind. I found some new PCIE plastic ports online that do not have the pins embedded into them. So can I just plug these new pieces on to the old pins and be back to BAU? I haven't received the PCIE male ports yet. But it took me a long time to find the part without the pins embedded into them. So I am hoping this works, without going through the whole solder process.

[lightfoot]

Another question I have is can I replace my PCIE plastic power connector by just plugging in a new piece over top the existing pins? I pulled off the plastic PCIE ports on 1 cube leaving the metal pins behind. I found some new PCIE plastic ports online that do not have the pins embedded into them. So can I just plug these new pieces on to the old pins and be back to BAU? I haven't received the PCIE male ports yet. But it took me a long time to find the part without the pins embedded into them. So I am hoping this works, without going through the whole solder process.

I suppose. Just make sure they are clean, be gentle with the pins, and slow down a bit. The real nightmare is when you overheat the pins to the point where it breaks the connections inside the board. We can fix that.... :-)

Damn, litecoin is doing well these days. Amazing the value these Titans provide....

[Searing]

Another question I have is can I replace my PCIE plastic power connector by just plugging in a new piece over top the existing pins? I pulled off the plastic PCIE ports on 1 cube leaving the metal pins behind. I found some new PCIE plastic ports online that do not have the pins embedded into them. So can I just plug these new pieces on to the old pins and be back to BAU? I haven't received the PCIE male ports yet. But it took me a long time to find the part without the pins embedded into them. So I am hoping this works, without going through the whole solder process.

I would just make all the pins bare and do what the pic below shows...what I did recently...works slick nice tight fit ..no issues at all

Below is Maxumark hack that works just great for me

I just 2 days ago had a plug blow out for the first time on a cube....so I did the cut out all the plastic from the pcie plug and slid on a knc Y adapter as shown in pic below
(see link also)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.msg13872248#msg13872248




I'm also repasting the cubes as I go along they are dirty dirty dirty....yech....oil from those crummy rubber pads on the heat sinks...yech....so motivated now to do this


anyway the above hack works just fine ..the cube is back at 325mh and 10c cooler to boot

FOLKS YOU HAVE TO GET those fans from the Swedish guy video

these (also got his heatsinks from his source) are beyond frigging great!

The difference between the crummy 'no name' fans that KNC labeled (orig batch) no way are those fans 2k in speed the below 3k fans blow easily 2x the air an hell

they are barely louder then the crummy knc fans..huge.huge diff imho

here is the link on newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9PV3Y64442&cm_re=nfa-14_3000-_-35-608-048-_-Product


using Maxumark's X bracket mod and the tall heatsinks complete the fix...man does it work well ...I think they were like 10 bucks! again clean clean fast airflow with fan and this

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1423042.msg14438879#msg14438879



but again the fix above uses the knc y adapter hack to the cube...and it is working well for me

Got to love how the community has come together and kept these knc '90 day wonders' up for all this time.......the X brackets the firmware mods by gen tarkin the hack above

whatever floats the boat...and 5.51 LTC sure don't hurt either (at least we 'outlasted' knc with their bankruptcy...heh...man did their timing suck)

later

[lightfoot]

Update in the not-so-good news category:

I picked up a high power dremel tool and a milling bit in order to finally isolate the die hotel power line that gets shorted from the rest of the dies. This should be do-able by cutting the double and one single traces from the capacitors under the board to the vias for the pads into the chip. Very tough to do with a knife because of the rather thick copper foil used on the board.

However a mill bit will work. Cut the traces checked the resistance, still zero. Checked a blank board to see what the resistance is, it's zero as well, which means those lines are common on the board and can't be separated out.

Why oh why did they do this? It really makes no sense in the world, but it means in practice that there's no way to isolate that power supply line from the rest of the dies. Which means boards that die with shorted pin 4 or 6 are dead.

Drat. Ok, back to the drawing board. Anyone know if I can buy the schematics for these boards from the bankrupt entity that is KNC? I'll offer them a litecoin.... :-)

[lightfoot]

Ok, back to the drawing board. I now have a dremel 4000, I can't use the jeweler's gravers because the board is way too big to fit in the staking tool. Oh well. So what's left?

We know the chip/die is shorted internally.
We know KNC bussed the connections internally to the board (fuck).
We know the vias are 1mm in size.

So I'll go in deeper and order two key items:

1) Drill press for dremel tool. Not as good as the staking tool but should get me there.
2) Some micro-bits for drilling pcb's.

If I can't use the dremel I'll use the big drill press. Goal will be to drill out the vias on the shorted chip side.

Unless I can get a massive bga stencil, this is the only idea I've got :-)

[Searing]

Ok, back to the drawing board. I now have a dremel 4000, I can't use the jeweler's gravers because the board is way too big to fit in the staking tool. Oh well. So what's left?

We know the chip/die is shorted internally.
We know KNC bussed the connections internally to the board (fuck).
We know the vias are 1mm in size.

So I'll go in deeper and order two key items:

1) Drill press for dremel tool. Not as good as the staking tool but should get me there.
2) Some micro-bits for drilling pcb's.

If I can't use the dremel I'll use the big drill press. Goal will be to drill out the vias on the shorted chip side.

Unless I can get a massive bga stencil, this is the only idea I've got :-)

As stated in PM ....anyone know who made these chips for KNC in China? They likely would give you the stencil/grid thing you want to refloat the die (man above my head)
anyway you know what I mean.

Only other thing is if you have a local University with an Electrical Engineering Dept (and say EE club) and/or a Vo-Tech for Electronics Tech Training...and ask around they
may help you for the fun of it and beer and pizza....kinda learning real world hack they may get into even at the faculty level

added:

I have a univ EE dept here..if you are really really specfic I could ask around for such ....but probably better you ask in person someplace near you....but hey I'm game
if that EE thing is not an option in your location..worse they will do is say no.

One other thing ...Qberty has connections to make those Clone Titan Bridges...maybe the folk he used to make them for us would have an angle on this ..anyway all I got

[lightfoot]

Not sure. Note I can repair the bridge boards for about .1btc (why not...) but you also probably have to replace the Rpi as that is what blows up in the first place.

Also I have a pair of repaired controller boards (just the baseboards) here that I'd be happy to sell for .3btc each. New FPGAs, both tested and running fine. Six plug units.

Can help fund the "buy drill bits" repair fund :-)

[lightfoot]

Your Titan board is a different class of problem: What is happening isn't a traditional short in any sense of the word, it's more like the board has gone insane and is chattering all over the place on the SPI bus.

This doesn't happen when the board is powered down on the 12 volt side, which indicates that the problem is not in the LM75 or EEProm chips. Likewise there is no direct short from the +12 line into the SPI bus or the SPI power bus either. Nor are there any identifiable shorts from the supplies into the board.

When powered up the SPI bus to all cubes "freezes" with gibberish.

Did this board ever work, or was it dead from the factory? I see no evidence so far that any of the supplies have failed, but it might be an internal error.

C

[lightfoot]

No prob, based on the lack of any sort of heat damage, arcing to the power connectors, or any general screwage I'd chalk it up to factory bad components.

The fun question: Which component.

[Searing]

I saw 10c or more drop in temp and it is 84F in basement on this
with the Maxumark brackets replacement for knc heatsink and  this just plain kills it ...mainly it is the no clunky knc heatsink blocking air flow due to the Maxumark brackets
with these 3000 rpm fans it is like a frigging wind tunnel ...and the individual heatsinks..but man the fan is the key imho

NOTE: the fans are NOT that much louder then the original titan unit fans I had.....maybe 20% louder or so imho....was pleasantly surprised....so not an issue in my basement

I really doubt the knc fans (orig 1st batch) were 2000 rpm this 3000 rpm replacement I used seems 2x more air flow...(heck they lied about everything else so
probably the fan speed too)


here are the links to the titan cube mods I use from the Swedish guys repaste video along with your Maxumark replacement  brackets. (see thread or pm Maxumark) are best prices
from what I could find...so far this is always the case at least over the past 2 months as I picked this stuff up bit by bit or where available

Maxmark's thread on his X brackets they are only $10 bucks each and work great!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1423042.msg14395660#msg14395660

Newegg best price found $27 nf14 3000 rpm fan

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9PV3Y64442


Ebay best price found Gelid gc-extreme thermal paste 10g size large

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GELID-GC-EXTREME-10g-Big-Thermal-Paste-Compound-Grease-CPU-GPU-Chipset-Heatsink-/181852749369?hash=item2a5744be39:g:~lcAAOSwDNdV5EfM

Ebay best price found worldwide (other cheaper prices but shipping is like 7 bucks so too high thus this choice) best price with shipping
for the SWiftech spiky mc14 bga Memory Heatsinks

http://www.ebay.com/itm/262260737940?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Ebay best price for KNC Titan data ribbons (you probably don't need any but here they are he has a bunch

http://www.ebay.com/itm/112027952881?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

that's about it just figured you'd want the links of the stuff works out better then the stuff you got for fans/heatsinks etc

oh..almost forgot if you want to water cool something lol

How to do a Titan blog water cool instructions below link

file:///C:/My%20Web%20Sites/KNC%20Titan%20Water%20Cooling/cryptomining-blog.com/tag/knc-titan-water-cooling/index.html

Silverstone Tundra TD02-SLIM AIO water cooler – dual 120mm slim radiator with two silent slim fans best price I could find w/shipping new
lots of out of stock on newegg  etc

Ebay best price $92 I could find one only place in stock...fyi for now anyway prob the td03 version works etc

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SilverStone-TD02-SLIM-Tundra-Series-All-In-One-Liquid-CPU-Cooler-/252427836323?hash=item3ac5df1ba3:g:3vwAAOSwnNBXYw~B

But in all seriousness my basement right now is 84F and the cubes done so far (4) are in the 50c and 60c range where they were in the 70c and 80c range so at the minimum
I have knocked off 10c of heat on each die...maybe as much as 15c on some dies..I mean this stuff with the Maxumark bracket just kills....like a frigging cleared out wind tunnel

out of 4 cubes (1 cube only 1 die working and 1 cube with 1 die off) I've knocked up my total hash rate from 1000mh to 1010mh ..hey every little bit helps (the cubes were
also way way dirty...main problem imho was the rubber heatsink pads (only ones I left in were on bottom to support the board) they after 20 months deteriorate and oil film
on everything a mess to clean up with alcohol and Q tips So if no other reason then that you need to do the above mods.

Anyway hope the above links are of some use to folk....10 cubes for me to go on this yet...sheesh...

fun fun

[Searing]

Those 3000 rpm Noctua fans are nice, but after running them 24/7 for over  a year I have had 3 of them fail

I didn't think the batch 1 fans with 11 blades were too bad, however the batch 2 fans with 7 blades were really bad -- it really depends on the ambient temp -- One rig in my bedroom with A/C runs fine with batch 1 fans, however the ones that run in unconditioned space all have the noctua fans.

I have found that airflow is the most important thing, below 88f I can run the exhaust fan on low, above 88f I have to run it on high to keep gentarkins firmware from throttling a few cubes -- hottest this year is 97f 2 days ago(it'll get hotter) -- Thinking of putting a second exhaust that will auto start on high speed when temps reach 88f, plus that"ll give some redundancy in case the first exhaust fails -- gotta keep that air moving!!

My airflow is beyond good I think. See here my setup

lostgonzo.imgur.com

Temp today was 90F outside and humid. In the Basement it was 86F which is beyond good considering I'm kicking out at 705 mh at 2850 or so watts!

Other 300mh hosted recent 3rd Titan) So heck that is covered. They have not yet been modified. I have 6 more to modify in basement yet as well.

Not sure about the  Noctura Fans dying thou...I have original first batch Titans (Nov Units) plus 2 cubes I got in Feb (1 cube only 1 good die) also Nov unit and they all had some
half assed labeled KNC brand fans...looked generic as heck. Still state NO WAY as was stated on KNC forums back in the day these puppies were 2000 rpm
they were likely 1500 rpm. There is just too much air flow if the ones I just put in are 3000 rpm don't ya know.

But taking into consideration your 3 noctura fans died in a year..that is some concern...I have the Gen Tarkin Firmware that guards against that kinda thing (had one fail from knc 1/2 year ago) but I just LOVE the conversation on here that NOW on NOV 2014 units (all 3 titans 1 orig price 2 used priced) we are really saying and really having this
CONVERSATION on this date of 6/20/16 that we MAY have a problem running KNC Titans SOMETIME NEXT YEAR on the same date 6/20/17 because perhaps 3
of these new noctura 3000 rpm replacement fans MIGHT croak! I wish I'm so LUCKY as that to happen. Yet another YEAR of life in my Titans!

Man I got to sit down ...considering when I got my 2nd Titan March 2015 and with all the NEW bigger badder scrypt miners that were supposed to come
out (Volcano/alpha tech/flower tech etc) that the best I could see was MAYBE I'd mine into JULY 2015 and then just play with crummy scrypt alts hoping
for a hit there after eating electric costs)....man 1 more year of these these raspberry pi 8th grade science project Titan miners is beyond my wildest dreams.
I mean really......2017....that would be Nov to Nov THREE SOLID YEARS. The mind boggles.

But again I take your point on air flow ...I did try putting in floor push fans...but in my setup the air rising up to the ceiling and the push fan at the other end
of the basement giving a flag waving wind up there 24/7 seems to just grabs the heat migrating to the ceiling and just shoots it out the exhaust shutter fan
in my above picture link.When I added  Big Floor with wheels push fans  on the floor to get more direct airflow it seemed to just MIX around and just kinda made the temp 2F worse
I suppose I could run flexible duct work to be more precise...but heck if it is 90F outside and 86F in the basement...it just seems that in my case it is pretty much as good as it is gonna get airflow wise, considering I'm running the equivalent of 24/7 2850 watt 'space heaters' heh

But I surely wish the only issues I have after my re-pasting and fan improvements dwells into NEXT YEAR is me wearing the fans out from too much use. But
I will watch for such. (Also I plan to clean them out like every 4 months ..the cubes I mean....don't be me and wait 22 months or so ...it was terrifying to look at!)

anyway .......still want to run my 1 cube with 1 working die on my previous posted message with links to water cooling.....see how fast a guy could make 1 die
scream...(man I need a life)

[lightfoot]

Well it's not the level converters. Oddly enough it looks more like 1.8 volts being placed on the SCL bus. Odd.