Hacking a BFL Jalapeno to 32GH and beyond....(???)

[lightfoot]

On a side note, I just finished upgrading jalapenos for two clients: One with 4 chips and the other with 5. Both went well, and are hashing away before I ship them out.

If you would like your jalapeno to be upgraded, please let me know. Just buy chips off Ebay, the guy LentBT sells excellent chips and I have not had a problem with one of them, and send me your unit. My current rates for labor and materials are:

.10 btc for 2 chips added (4 chip unit)
.12 btc for 3 chips added (5 chip unit)
.15 btc for 4 chips added (6 chip unit)

Note that +3 chips needs a better power supply (power it off an ATX or something like that) and +4 chips means you will be running with the lid off and the fan exposed. Going beyond 6 chips is really going to require serious water cooling. :-)

C

[ManeBjorn]

Good to know. Once I get my 74gh/s setup next week I might be ready to send one to you for the upgrade. 

On a side note, I just finished upgrading jalapenos for two clients: One with 4 chips and the other with 5. Both went well, and are hashing away before I ship them out.

If you would like your jalapeno to be upgraded, please let me know. Just buy chips off Ebay, the guy LentBT sells excellent chips and I have not had a problem with one of them, and send me your unit. My current rates for labor and materials are:

.10 btc for 2 chips added (4 chip unit)
.12 btc for 3 chips added (5 chip unit)
.15 btc for 4 chips added (6 chip unit)

Note that +3 chips needs a better power supply (power it off an ATX or something like that) and +4 chips means you will be running with the lid off and the fan exposed. Going beyond 6 chips is really going to require serious water cooling. :-)

C

[lightfoot]

Thanks! Here's a picture of the 20gh unit I just did:



Note the heat sinks on the FETs and the 1850's. And that I put chip 5 in the upper left; that puts it's heat load furthest from the FETs, and also furthest from the FT232 chip. And oddly enough closest to one of the temp sensors, so if you overheat it will shut down the unit before damaging the board.

Little things I have learned during this adventure. I wonder if I'll do similar stuff to the 300/600 boards.

[ManeBjorn]

That looks great.  It makes sense on the shutdown before it overheats the quickest. I would have never thought of doing that. 

Thanks! Here's a picture of the 20gh unit I just did:



Note the heat sinks on the FETs and the 1850's. And that I put chip 5 in the upper left; that puts it's heat load furthest from the FETs, and also furthest from the FT232 chip. And oddly enough closest to one of the temp sensors, so if you overheat it will shut down the unit before damaging the board.

Little things I have learned during this adventure. I wonder if I'll do similar stuff to the 300/600 boards.

[lightfoot]

That looks great.  It makes sense on the shutdown before it overheats the quickest. I would have never thought of doing that. 

Pretty much. For four chips you want the star pattern or one to the left for maximum stability. Six chips you populate the top and bottom left. Seven and eight you populate the right ones, but by then you better have bottom cooling or the Atmel/FTDI will be warm warm warm.

Three chips oddly enough is a pretty bad number. The heat sink can rock forward without a chip to support it and put a lot of strain on the two side ones. Which is why oddly enough I don't do 3 chip mods.

C

[ManeBjorn]

That's like the old Athlon XP's cpu's that had that fragile, tiny core sitting up on top.  So many people would crack the chips not applying even presure when installing the heatsinks.  One slip and they killed the whole thing.
Have you had any that you could not resurrect?

That looks great.  It makes sense on the shutdown before it overheats the quickest. I would have never thought of doing that. 

Pretty much. For four chips you want the star pattern or one to the left for maximum stability. Six chips you populate the top and bottom left. Seven and eight you populate the right ones, but by then you better have bottom cooling or the Atmel/FTDI will be warm warm warm.

Three chips oddly enough is a pretty bad number. The heat sink can rock forward without a chip to support it and put a lot of strain on the two side ones. Which is why oddly enough I don't do 3 chip mods.

C

[Aseras]

Wow. Something is different. Just got my BGE bill, I pulled 873kwhr in December on my top floor instead of the normal 200kwhr.

Ooops. Guess these rigs are pulling more power than I thought. Might explain why I haven't had to run heat up there. But it does mean I need to start selling some bitcoin to pay the power bill.

Welcome to the big time.

Yeah, you are going tog get raided by thew cops for growing pot, or something soon, lol.

[lightfoot]

No one cares about pot anymore. Now my smart meter will rat me out for mining bitcoins to the IRS.....

All part of a plan. :-)

[ManeBjorn]

IRS is chomping at the bit to either get crypto currency outlawed or taxed.
I hope they are able to do neither.

No one cares about pot anymore. Now my smart meter will rat me out for mining bitcoins to the IRS.....

All part of a plan. :-)

[synapse]

This one that blew up had the older style chips. no 5v at the 5v test point.
Out of curiosity I checked my other Jally that has two of the new style of chip. That one has 5v present at the 5v test point.

Hm. I've seen that too. My weird jally didn't have 5 volts but it seems to be running well now. Maybe they put it in sometimes.

I think i'll just RMA it.

I have 5 ASIC chips on the way so i'll pop 3 on the replacement and two on my other one. (this is how i came accross this thread in the first place. I remembered the post with the blown u15 pics)

That sounds best. I've got 4 chips outside in the mailbox I think; I'll put one of them on my weird jally, taking it to 5 and the other on my other new jally taking it to six on an old-style heat sink. I think that might wind up being a problem, but my water block is not coming till Monday at the earliest.

And I get to look at another blown board. Fun!

Speaking of chip placements, put another one on a 2 chip jally for a friend, no problems. I'm actually waiting 5 minutes with preheat now, until I see the faint wisp of smoke/flux come up, then a count to 90 with the air tool at 450c. The hardest part is placing the chip perfectly on the balls, but I have had a 100% success rate since I started using a loupe to verify all the balls.

C

well dragging up an old post, I got my RMA replacements today. Pretty happy with BFL as they gave me two 10ghs 3 chip units with 1.2.9FW rather than two 5ghs! makes up for the stupid international prices Australia post charges.
Also regarding the power supply comments earlier on, i got one of the usual 13v 6 amp shit power supplies with one unit, but the other came with a massive 12v 10 amp supply that is about double the size of the other (and has an earth pin too)

And they show up as BAL's rather than BAJ's in cgminer.
Looks like BFL have been silently studying and taking notice of what this community is doing.

[lightfoot]

Really? Can you take a pic of the newer PS?

C

[freddyfarnsworth]

This one that blew up had the older style chips. no 5v at the 5v test point.
Out of curiosity I checked my other Jally that has two of the new style of chip. That one has 5v present at the 5v test point.

Hm. I've seen that too. My weird jally didn't have 5 volts but it seems to be running well now. Maybe they put it in sometimes.

I think i'll just RMA it.

I have 5 ASIC chips on the way so i'll pop 3 on the replacement and two on my other one. (this is how i came accross this thread in the first place. I remembered the post with the blown u15 pics)

That sounds best. I've got 4 chips outside in the mailbox I think; I'll put one of them on my weird jally, taking it to 5 and the other on my other new jally taking it to six on an old-style heat sink. I think that might wind up being a problem, but my water block is not coming till Monday at the earliest.

And I get to look at another blown board. Fun!

Speaking of chip placements, put another one on a 2 chip jally for a friend, no problems. I'm actually waiting 5 minutes with preheat now, until I see the faint wisp of smoke/flux come up, then a count to 90 with the air tool at 450c. The hardest part is placing the chip perfectly on the balls, but I have had a 100% success rate since I started using a loupe to verify all the balls.

C

well dragging up an old post, I got my RMA replacements today. Pretty happy with BFL as they gave me two 10ghs 3 chip units with 1.2.9FW rather than two 5ghs! makes up for the stupid international prices Australia post charges.
Also regarding the power supply comments earlier on, i got one of the usual 13v 6 amp shit power supplies with one unit, but the other came with a massive 12v 10 amp supply that is about double the size of the other (and has an earth pin too)

And they show up as BAL's rather than BAJ's in cgminer.
Looks like BFL have been silently studying and taking notice of what this community is doing.

No doubt they are watching, this info is great stuff.
Since they are peeking in and being generous, I have a idea,,, Start reproducing these for the "little guys" and place them to compete in the USB asic market, at the right price.
$250 per 10GH would make alot of new friends, if they can/will do it.
We all gotta start somewhere, this thread gives me much hope

[synapse]

Really? Can you take a pic of the newer PS?

C

yeah sure, will do tonight when i get home.

[synapse]

Here is the newer larger PSU next to the old one.
looks like its still made by the same company though so it's probably shit.
12v 10 amp. The wires do look thicker coming out of it and it has a 90 degree connector on the end.

[ManeBjorn]

Those are generic laptop AC Adapters.
I used to order tons of those for the last company worked for.
Our mobile users were rough on their laptops.

[lightfoot]

That looks like a much better power supply, and if it has a ground then the caps can reference that instead of neutral. Should prevent the problems the 2 prong one has.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting that!

[oaksguy]

I'm using my first post on this forum to thank LightFoot for the great job he has done on this topic and for the work he did on my Jally.

I am one of the customers he mentioned in his post that he worked on this week.   In fact, I think the pictures are of my upgraded Jally.

I originally ordered my Jally in July as a 5Gh unit.   I almost gave up hope when it finally arrived early in December.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it hashed at 7+ Gh/sec. 

But, in the short time I've had it, its bitcoin mining rate has dropped from almost $4 USD/day to maybe $1/day.   Some of that drop was because the exchange rate was very high when I started and has settled, but most of the drop is because of the difficult rate increasing around 30% per week.    It was clear that I needed to upgrade soon before the killer 300GH and 600GH machines hit the streets in February or more likely March or later.

In following this topic for a few weeks, I decided that upgrading my Jally from its original 2 chips to 5 would be the best compromise between cost and complexity.  Going more than 5 sounded like I'd have additional cooling costs initially and ongoing.   The major change the 5 chips makes is needing an upgraded power supply.   Since my original one blew up after the 1st week and I had upgraded to a PC Power supply, I was ready.  So, I purchased 3 chips from EBay.

But, I wasn't certain I wanted to risk ruining my only miner and I couldn't afford to purchase a spare one to upgrade.   I noticed that LightFoot indicated that he would be willing to upgrade other people's Jallys.   So, early last week I sent him a PM asking for information, timing, and costs.   He responded quickly and I felt the price was reasonsable.   It happened to match almost exactly the amount of bitcoins I had successfully mined since December.   I decided it was a good sign and boxed my Jally up on Wednesday night a week ago and sent it to LightFoot USPS Priority 2 day.   Had my coins transferred to my wallet from Eligius and Eclipse and when everything was there, I sent him the coins on Thursday.

He let me know when the Jally arrived, kept me updated with messages and even pictures throughout the process, and was patient enough to answer my million questions.   Most of the time it takes is shipping, the next largest is testing/burnin before and after.  He was very careful and didn't do all the chips at once.  He tested between additions.

He sent the Jally back to me on Wednesday and it arrived today.  It has been running for almost two hours and is hashing away at 18.3Gh.   I think it will make it eventually to 19Gh.

One pleasant surprise for me is that the hardware error rate is much lower.   I was averaging 4%+ because one of the two original chips had an error rate of maybe around 8% and the other was under 1%.   I would see a new error at least every minute, so was wasting some of the hash rate on errors.

Now, I've only had 16 hardware errors total in the last two hours and the rate is .07%.   I believe this is because LightFoot does a better job than BFL does in installing the heatsinks and perhaps because the soldering of the new chips may have reheated and improved the connections and surface contact of the original chips.   I don't know if LightFoot has experienced this in his other upgrades, but I'm sure happy it happened on mine.

All-in-all it was a very pleasant experience and well worth it.   The hardest part was not being able to mine effectively for a little over a week (I had a couple antminers going to help keep away my withdrawal symptoms during that period).

Thank you LightFoot...   

Bill

[ManeBjorn]

That is great news.  I am saving my BTC to have him upgrade my 5gh/s Jalapeno as well.
Now I am even more chomping at the bit to do so.
 
Thanks for sharing.

I'm using my first post on this forum to thank LightFoot for the great job he has done on this topic and for the work he did on my Jally.

I am one of the customers he mentioned in his post that he worked on this week.   In fact, I think the pictures are of my upgraded Jally.

I originally ordered my Jally in July as a 5Gh unit.   I almost gave up hope when it finally arrived early in December.  I was pleasantly surprised to see it hashed at 7+ Gh/sec. 

But, in the short time I've had it, its bitcoin mining rate has dropped from almost $4 USD/day to maybe $1/day.   Some of that drop was because the exchange rate was very high when I started and has settled, but most of the drop is because of the difficult rate increasing around 30% per week.    It was clear that I needed to upgrade soon before the killer 300GH and 600GH machines hit the streets in February or more likely March or later.

In following this topic for a few weeks, I decided that upgrading my Jally from its original 2 chips to 5 would be the best compromise between cost and complexity.  Going more than 5 sounded like I'd have additional cooling costs initially and ongoing.   The major change the 5 chips makes is needing an upgraded power supply.   Since my original one blew up after the 1st week and I had upgraded to a PC Power supply, I was ready.  So, I purchased 3 chips from EBay.

But, I wasn't certain I wanted to risk ruining my only miner and I couldn't afford to purchase a spare one to upgrade.   I noticed that LightFoot indicated that he would be willing to upgrade other people's Jallys.   So, early last week I sent him a PM asking for information, timing, and costs.   He responded quickly and I felt the price was reasonsable.   It happened to match almost exactly the amount of bitcoins I had successfully mined since December.   I decided it was a good sign and boxed my Jally up on Wednesday night a week ago and sent it to LightFoot USPS Priority 2 day.   Had my coins transferred to my wallet from Eligius and Eclipse and when everything was there, I sent him the coins on Thursday.

He let me know when the Jally arrived, kept me updated with messages and even pictures throughout the process, and was patient enough to answer my million questions.   Most of the time it takes is shipping, the next largest is testing/burnin before and after.  He was very careful and didn't do all the chips at once.  He tested between additions.

He sent the Jally back to me on Wednesday and it arrived today.  It has been running for almost two hours and is hashing away at 18.3Gh.   I think it will make it eventually to 19Gh.

One pleasant surprise for me is that the hardware error rate is much lower.   I was averaging 4%+ because one of the two original chips had an error rate of maybe around 8% and the other was under 1%.   I would see a new error at least every minute, so was wasting some of the hash rate on errors.

Now, I've only had 16 hardware errors total in the last two hours and the rate is .07%.   I believe this is because LightFoot does a better job than BFL does in installing the heatsinks and perhaps because the soldering of the new chips may have reheated and improved the connections and surface contact of the original chips.   I don't know if LightFoot has experienced this in his other upgrades, but I'm sure happy it happened on mine.

All-in-all it was a very pleasant experience and well worth it.   The hardest part was not being able to mine effectively for a little over a week (I had a couple antminers going to help keep away my withdrawal symptoms during that period).

Thank you LightFoot...   

Bill

[lightfoot]

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad everything is hashing away, and I have a few more to work on this weekend.

Never dull.

[lightfoot]

Interesting. Woke up this morning to find that my 31gh jalapeno was down. Checked the power supply (it's a $20 cheap-o from Ebay) and sure enough it had failed.

Moral: Don't buy $20 cheap-o power supplies. Oh well, I guess I will wire up a PCIx molex plug to a jalapeno cable and run this off a BFL single power supply for awhile. They suck, but my 500 watt corsairs are running 430 and 480 watts at the moment.

Note, for a quick fix I shut down my 26gh 7 chip unit and plugged the 8 chip unit into it's supply. Letting the $20 cheap-o supply cool down seems to have allowed it to restart, and I plugged the 7 chip unit in. Died again as of 15 mins ago, so I guess it's crap.

C