Klondike - 16 chip ASIC Open Source Board - Preliminary

[daemondazz]

I believe BKK had some stuff happening offline, like getting flooring done in his house and needing to rearrange everything in the house. I'm sure he'll be back when he's able.

[southerngentuk]

I will be working via this git

**Edit: fat fingers




https://github.com/darktongue/klondike

Great, I'll post back any responce I get from marto. Lets see if we can get you a board to work from.
If Marto does not want to give his up, what components will you need ? Am guessing the most difficult would be the pic so if anyone has a couple please step forward..  

[southerngentuk]

I believe BKK had some stuff happening offline, like getting flooring done in his house and needing to rearrange everything in the house. I'm sure he'll be back when he's able.

Lets hope so.. I still don't think he will mind/or it would hurt   to have another few people working on this and contributing to each other.

[cardcomm]

Marto has populated the K16 but put it to one side whilst he finilizes his own hex16, maybe he will pick it back up when he has time however it really is not worth his while, he was planning to offer k16's so if the klondike is not ready we have an option to switch over. I am getting any chips not refunded sent to marto so I can go either way.
It is a shame I really want my Klondikes, however I do have my unpopulated original k16 final beta board.
Did no one else receive goods from BKK ?

You actually got a shipment from BkkCoins? I still haven't.

I'm kinda bummed, since I had ordered the picngo boards he mentioned as well as some extra PICs. Not so worried about getting the Klondike boards anymore, but I'd sure still like the PIC chips and picngo boards. :/

I do understand his apparent frustration and lack of motivation though!

[hf_developer]

I will be working via this git

**Edit: fat fingers




https://github.com/darktongue/klondike

Great, I'll post back any responce I get from marto. Lets see if we can get you a board to work from.
If Marto does not want to give his up, what components will you need ? Am guessing the most difficult would be the pic so if anyone has a couple please step forward..  

That would be it actually. Plan is once everything is ready.  I'll take vacation time and drive this out.

150 - 200 engineers hours should be enough to drive the klondike project to a working state.

[ionstorm]

Is this a failed project?  People are saying in steamboats threads that we don't have all 16 chips hashing or stability.  I need to know if there is any hope waiting or if I should bail out and request a refund.

[Bogart]

I've asked sensei/mittenmining to go ahead and ship me my 8 K16s in their current state (minus any he needs to continue debugging).  I expect I'll be receiving them next week sometime.

I'll look at them myself, and can also set one or two up for remote access via SSH to a connected Pi or something if that can help.

[marto74]

I will be working via this git

**Edit: fat fingers




https://github.com/darktongue/klondike

Great, I'll post back any responce I get from marto. Lets see if we can get you a board to work from.
If Marto does not want to give his up, what components will you need ? Am guessing the most difficult would be the pic so if anyone has a couple please step forward..  

Soo I have K16 populated, but we removed some parts of it in order to test our design
I've looked it today
There are 4 Avalon chips on it
also the voltage regulators are diferent and the coil is diferent due some test made here.
There is on more board without avalons and 2 bare boards.
Please pick someone that is going to continue development and I'll send all this to him.
I do not want any payment ( this had cost me about 1000 EUR 3 days order for PCB , components setup and PnP) , I'll be glad If this become a finished project

Just all of you decide and let me know

[bluefin]

Woooah,
I thought terrahash had a working k16 system!!!

Why cant you guys work with terrahash?

I will be working via this git

**Edit: fat fingers




https://github.com/darktongue/klondike

Great, I'll post back any responce I get from marto. Lets see if we can get you a board to work from.
If Marto does not want to give his up, what components will you need ? Am guessing the most difficult would be the pic so if anyone has a couple please step forward..  

Soo I have K16 populated, but we removed some parts of it in order to test our design
I've looked it today
There are 4 Avalon chips on it
also the voltage regulators are diferent and the coil is diferent due some test made here.
There is on more board without avalons and 2 bare boards.
Please pick someone that is going to continue development and I'll send all this to him.
I do not want any payment ( this had cost me about 1000 EUR 3 days order for PCB , components setup and PnP) , I'll be glad If this become a finished project

Just all of you decide and let me know

[LordTheron]

Is this a failed project?  People are saying in steamboats threads that we don't have all 16 chips hashing or stability.  I need to know if there is any hope waiting or if I should bail out and request a refund.

You may be out of luck with refund. I have already requested refund and being ignored completely. Bkkcoins was quick to take my money and now doesn't want  refund or ship my order. No reply to my emails or PM's. Whats wrong man?

[cardcomm]

I will be working via this git

**Edit: fat fingers




https://github.com/darktongue/klondike

Great, I'll post back any responce I get from marto. Lets see if we can get you a board to work from.
If Marto does not want to give his up, what components will you need ? Am guessing the most difficult would be the pic so if anyone has a couple please step forward..  

Soo I have K16 populated, but we removed some parts of it in order to test our design
I've looked it today
There are 4 Avalon chips on it
also the voltage regulators are diferent and the coil is diferent due some test made here.
There is on more board without avalons and 2 bare boards.
Please pick someone that is going to continue development and I'll send all this to him.
I do not want any payment ( this had cost me about 1000 EUR 3 days order for PCB , components setup and PnP) , I'll be glad If this become a finished project

Just all of you decide and let me know

Thank you sir. That is a very generous offer.

[southerngentuk]

Sorry, I have been out of town a bit and still catching up.

For those who have missed this from steamboat.

We do not however have a fully functioning K16 at this time.

We have organized the collaborative efforts of ourselves, two Klondike based assembly companies, and several individuals within the community with software and hardware debugging experience to troubleshoot the design. As a result, we have determined the source of and corrected the hardware flaw resulting in proof of work not being read correctly, and the units are now hashing on a single bank of 8 chips at a time. We are actively troubleshooting the firmware issue which causes errors when both banks of chips are used at the same time. We will continue to debug the design until it is fully functional, and will be sending units to several people working on the project, in addition to those we have already shipped, for further troubleshooting. Currently updating the firmware does require a PIC programmer and does not support updating via USB.

edit :  and this from    TerraHash

Update on the K64: Individual K16s are working fine. Inter-board communication (I2C) is not yet functional because BkkCoins (from whom we licensed the design) never finished the firmware and is unresponsive for over a week. I am trying to fix it, and hopefully it will be up and running soon.

Would be nice if he could share it with the community.. (someone else ask him, I don't think he likes me)

[etch]

Update on the K64: Individual K16s are working fine. Inter-board communication (I2C) is not yet functional because BkkCoins (from whom we licensed the design) never finished the firmware and is unresponsive for over a week. I am trying to fix it, and hopefully it will be up and running soon.

 Individual K16s are working fine...  If so, why don't they process the orders from all the people who ordered?

[TomKeddie]

Individual K16s are working fine...  If so, why don't they process the orders from all the people who ordered?

Different answer for different values of "they". Most group buys seem to be abandoning this design and cancelling their orders with Bitsyncom.

As I understand it individual K16s only work with NOR gates from particular manufacturers.

[LaserHorse]

As I understand it individual K16s only work with NOR gates from particular manufacturers.

interesting - where was this discussed?

[AtomSea]

As I understand it individual K16s only work with NOR gates from particular manufacturers.

interesting - where was this discussed?

It was discussed here:

Hey Guys. Im trying to do some testing with ktest but don't seem to get any desirable results. At one point, I got the "W" command to work, but it resulted in a BAD response , which I would think should be accepted, if Im reading the code right using Below Var:

Code:

Work =   ["4375c3b7a27cc936f295a6140358e965319322e7cfd11e137df42ea60864a675", "218d522051d547d51a00c94e", "b2cc9f74", "accept"]

Now, I run W command (aftere restarting ktest) and I get no response at all!

Trying to find out if theres a proper method to using ktest or if there could be something wrong with the K16.

I added a small debug output in sendcmd under the dev.write line:

Code:

dev.write(0x01, cmd + chr(addr) + data, 0, 500)
          print "tried %s %s %s" % (cmd,addr,data)

Code:

python ktest
Klondike device opened
tried I 0

Version:10, ProductID:K16, Serial#:deadbeef
Cmds [WAISCE.Q]:
S

State:R, ASICs:16, Slaves:0
WorkQ:0, WorkID:04, Temp:158, Fan:0, ErrCount:0, HashCount:2048, MaxCount:2048tried S 0

Cmds [WAISCE.Q]:
w
tried W 0 Cu÷?|?6?X?e1?"???}?.d?u!?R Q?G??N

State:W, ASICs:16, Slaves:0
WorkQ:0, WorkID:01, Temp:158, Fan:0, ErrCount:0, HashCount:0, MaxCount:2048
Cmds [WAISCE.Q]:

Is there something I am missing here, or something else I should be checking out?

thanks

It is most likely a hardware bug in the circuit. During our testing we realized that the Dual NOR gates used in the design are too fast, and there needs to be some propagation delay. Using a cheap NOR gate chip from Fry's did the trick. We are still trying to see if this can be fixed in the firmware.

[alfabitcoin]

Is there anybody in contact with bkkcoins? Some of members should have his phone or personal email and ask him is his okay? God forbid but I am worried if something has happened to him. He might be ill or in hospital not able to say that we dont have to worry.

[southerngentuk]

Is there anybody in contact with bkkcoins? Some of members should have his phone or personal email and ask him is his okay? God forbid but I am worried if something has happened to him. He might be ill or in hospital not able to say that we dont have to worry.

I think this must be the case. I have exchanged quite a few PM's with him in the past and he has always gone out on limb to answer me. I find this extremely out of character for him, although I sensed he was under a lot of pressure towards the end and Avalon pretty much destroyed the progect, he was always hesitant to release work that was not quite ready but had his arm twisted to release items early, which he did so stating it was still beta ext...

Lets hope he is OK and will be back soon and the community will except and respect the hard work he has put into the klondike.

[fasmax]

I was looking at the PCB for the K16 and noticed that the PLL ground is connected directly to digital ground under the Avalon chip.
Does anyone know if this I how the Avalon reference design connects the grounds together?
The PLL ground lead on the ASIC is lead 8.

[Vl4dim1r]

So what is the overall state of the K16 project at the moment?

EDIT: Is anyone selling bare PCBs? I have all the components x 10 except for what BKKcoins sold on his website, as I was planning to get them there. And heatsinks.