Bfl jalapeno failures and USB problems, SOLUTION FOUND

[abec]

I've blown 3 out of 4 of those power adapters, I've converted all my devices to just power from my ATX power supply.  One of the power adapters was so bad, any time I would plug it up, I would blow a fuse at my circuit breaker.  I don't trust those things at all.

https://i.imgur.com/GjDu2oC.jpg

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[lightfoot]

Nice picture; that solution should work for a normal jally.

C

[abec]

I'm trying to do what you're doing as well by adding more chips to the device ( eventually 6 ).  I made my own adapters using 16 gauge wire, is there any reason you'd think that I wouldnt be able to power 4 chips per device?

The ATX power supply is 1200 watts, and the cables are 16 gauge.  I will admit to have blowing a few breakers as well, but I cant see any reason it wouldnt be able to support 6 per device on a 16G cable.

[lightfoot]

I'm trying to do what you're doing as well by adding more chips to the device ( eventually 6 ).  I made my own adapters using 16 gauge wire, is there any reason you'd think that I wouldnt be able to power 4 chips per device?

The ATX power supply is 1200 watts, and the cables are 16 gauge.  I will admit to have blowing a few breakers as well, but I cant see any reason it wouldnt be able to support 6 per device on a 16G cable.

The only issue is voltage drop; I noticed the wire gauge on the jally cable was 16 or so, and the wires from my cheap-o ATX were 18. Running it off 18g wire at 100 watt draw (it's hungry) caused a 1.5+ volt drop, and would shut down the PS.

Tripling up the wires and shortening them dropped the voltage drop to .5 volts, which is much better. Running happily, but my noctura fan runs a bit slower, resulting in the bottom heat sink being back on the unit. Still looks good though.

C

[abec]

Most modern power supplies have a single rail ( or multiple ) that you can easily upgrade.  I changed mine out to 14G because I was powering 6 asicminer blades and the cables were getting HOT.

[lightfoot]

Well I got the broken jally in the mail today and it is *exceptionally* interesting to see what's going on here.

The power supply was blown of course, no output, output caps exploded. However what is interesting is that although the case was factory sealed, after opening it I can see that the power wires to the jally were either soldered by a junkie, or were done by someone who hit the output caps as well. Lots of solder, crappy job, pics to follow. No wonder it blew.

More interesting: Plug it into a big power supply, it fires up, lights the two chips, fails to talk. No biggie, waiting on my ftdi chips from mouser. Ground plane is intact, not that. However VERY INTERESTING THING I HAVE SEEN BECAUSE I HAVE COOL POWER SUPPLIES:

My power supplies are regulated output, 2amps max up to 52 volts. I set it for 13v, 50ma to start with. Hooked up, voltage drops to 3 volts, power LED barely comes on. Crank the current, at 1.5a it starts to come alive, the jally starts testing, and the voltage drops sharply from 12.9 volts down to 5. Then the jally fast flashes the front led.

This is something people see. In this case, the power supply can't provide enough surge power. So I ran the current up to 2.2 amps which is max. Tried it out.

Voltage drops to 8 volts unit flashes. So what's happening here is interesting: The jally starts up, pulls enough power to start, the pulls the power supply *hard* to bring the chips online. If there isn't enough current it will fast flash fail.

Which means if you get that error on a Jalapeno, Single, or Little Single, then the problem is the power supply is too weak. Don't return the whole thing, get a man's power supply and go.

Very interesting confirmation here. Edit: This is confirmed by hooking same jally up to my 500 watt corsair which drops from 12.4 volts to 12.2. So what I have written is a flat fact.

C

[lightfoot]

Update: Reflowing the FT232 chip did not help. To verify I heated each quarter with a soldering iron, then verified no shorts and good connections. Same thing, did not work. This is not a reflow problem.

Back to drawing board. Will swap out 232 chip this week.

[lightfoot]

Update: Took the old 232 chip off the board. You cannot do this with a soldering iron, the back of the chip is soldered to the board via a ground plane. Think air tools and temps of 450c+ for over a minute. That's a massive amount of heat.

C

[Drug5bitz]

Update: Took the old 232 chip off the board. You cannot do this with a soldering iron, the back of the chip is soldered to the board via a ground plane. Think air tools and temps of 450c+ for over a minute. That's a massive amount of heat.

C

Yes I floated the chip off like putting the ASIC on. Pre the area with some flux and heat again to flow smooth. Put new chip on, flow it onto the board. while its still hot put a little more flux and solder the leads on good. Clean up as necessary. (A short wouldn't make ya happy right?)

I think this was the hardest chip to put on yet. My forth jallie when given enough power by a 1500 Watt PSU lit the power LED for a sec and is now dead again. Hmm back to square one with out a hole in the chip this time. I want to know if anyone successfully reballed a chip yet. I don't have a problem with stealing the chips then.

[lightfoot]

Yes I floated the chip off like putting the ASIC on. Pre the area with some flux and heat again to flow smooth. Put new chip on, flow it onto the board. while its still hot put a little more flux and solder the leads on good. Clean up as necessary. (A short wouldn't make ya happy right?)

I think this was the hardest chip to put on yet. My forth jallie when given enough power by a 1500 Watt PSU lit the power LED for a sec and is now dead again. Hmm back to square one with out a hole in the chip this time. I want to know if anyone successfully reballed a chip yet. I don't have a problem with stealing the chips then.

Haven't reballed, but I have taken the solder off two chips, and will try mounting them to the next jally. I think you can do it without reballing, my problem is cz main jally is not going to take more chips. I think in your case one of the chips is shorted on the 1v supply. Fix it and mine like hell :-)

C

[Drug5bitz]

Ok, I've thought about this and the chip would sit at a completely different height look at your chips and the ones BFL put on. You can see with a flashlight and bare eye underneath. Theres a small amount of space created by the solder balls. If they say perfectly flat with solder those little balls would cover a lot more area. W/o the balls it will prolly cause heat issues from 2 things the heat not being dissipated into the sink right unless you shim, and the bad contacts on the BGA can cause numerous problems like the connection occasionally bridging or burning out. I don't even know what size balls these are or if they make a template for the masses to easily reball with enough time a template may not be needed.

As for the dead jallie I think you're right about it being a short. I don't know the places to look, I've literally stared at it for ever. It's a second rev board with only one JTAG so it may not lay it out as simple. I'm not following traces on the back of the board though. If I got a nice pic and started labeling board parts would you want to fill in where you can?   

[lightfoot]

Ok, I've thought about this and the chip would sit at a completely different height look at your chips and the ones BFL put on. You can see with a flashlight and bare eye underneath. Theres a small amount of space created by the solder balls. If they say perfectly flat with solder those little balls would cover a lot more area. W/o the balls it will prolly cause heat issues from 2 things the heat not being dissipated into the sink right unless you shim, and the bad contacts on the BGA can cause numerous problems like the connection occasionally bridging or burning out. I don't even know what size balls these are or if they make a template for the masses to easily reball with enough time a template may not be needed.

As for the dead jallie I think you're right about it being a short. I don't know the places to look, I've literally stared at it for ever. It's a second rev board with only one JTAG so it may not lay it out as simple. I'm not following traces on the back of the board though. If I got a nice pic and started labeling board parts would you want to fill in where you can?   

Well, let's think: What could cause a short? Your chips!

If you don't want to take them off, then get a light, put it on one side of one of your chips, and look through with a loupe or glass on the other side. See if all the balls are perfect? Then do the other axis.

Try removing your chips. Yes, you're gonna reball. Let's go halfsies on a reballing stensil and table, screw it.

Myself, I have a vial of balls from ebay, since there are only so many of the things and I have watch tools I am going to try putting them all on and see if I can make it go. Line them up, then low low low air and heat to see if I can melt them. If it doesn't work I'll get a stencil.

As for the first paragraph, eh I work with heat pads which can make up the height loss. I'll try one on the dead UK board once I bring it back online.

C

[Drug5bitz]

Ok I've been looking around and can find no info what so ever on the chips ball size. What are you using? I'm fine with spending a few bucks but can't find any info. If I'm going to be putting on 144 balls on every chip I want to do it right the first time.

[lightfoot]

Um I forgot. However I put a new 232 chip on, nothing. Interesting. However a question: Do you see ground on any of the 4 USB pins?

Oh and 4 chip jallies with AL heat sinks? HOT AS HELL! Put sinks on the bottom like now.

C

[Drug5bitz]

I just checked on the dead one w/o chips. Using the usb housing as ground none of them were grounded. Do you want to know about the living?

[lightfoot]

If you can, please.

C

[lightfoot]

Jesus fucking Christ. You know, I think given enough time I could fix a rainy day.

Summary: This burned out jally with no USB response is fully operational. What happens is the USB FTDI232 chip burns out, and you have to replace it. For someone who has done Xbox repair this should not be hard. For someone like me who has done BGA and SMD work but not these stupid QQ chips it's a screaming pain-learning curve.

Removed the old chip with air tools at 450c with a 350F preheater under the board. Came off no problem. Put new chip on with same temps (2 mins at 450c) like a BGA cpu. Burned the fucking chip out.

Pulled it, put another chip on, 275c for 60 seconds with a 350f preheater (I buy 3 for shit like this). Chip goes on, comes up as a BITFORCE, all "J's" when I try to run diagnostics. Um, I think I need to reflow. Added solder balls, melted with the iron, cursed a lot, hit it with 300c heat for 60 seconds around the sides of the chip, and...

It COMES UP! It's a 6gh jally. It sucks, but it does run.

So I fire up the BFGMiner and it immediately screams that the chip is at 130C. Fuck again. Check the diags, S2 is at 130, S1 is at 30c. Um... Pull the heat sink. Note this one had a loose heat sink from the factory and it was banging around. Found that S2 was ripped off the board by aformentioned sink, and the pads were gone too.

Time for a lobotomy. So I went into the code, changed S2's AD channel to be S1 so the code will always read the working S1, put in a comment saying I know this sucks, but I had no choice due to bad assembly, compiled it, loaded it, attached the fan and...

It's hashing away at 6gh now. So it looks like a blown European Jally can be fixed with a $3.00 part, and a person who knows how to sweat chips on and off the board.

Go now, everyone. Fix your jallies, hash, and bring the difficulty up. I have completed this task, and if it wasn't 4am I'd say it's Miller time.

Fuck it, it's always Miller time. Off to get a cold one then to bed.

[lightfoot]

Update. Sunday night, still running, no problems. Glad this works.

C

[southerngentuk]

After a quick read thorough, my 2 cents worth.

Am sure alot of these units will have been pluged in using a US/Euro adapter.

The PSU I received is auto switching so voltage is not a problem.

I have seen many of these adapters that do NOT carry an earth/ground pin. In this case the PSU may technically fail safe but the adapter is preventing the fault path to achieve this, raising the potential between the chasis ( and USB GND) to the ground. OUCH. So the fault path becomes dependent on the USB connection to the PC, be careful plugging that baby in 

Easy solution, cut the plug off and put a local one on, seek advice on connections

Brown = Live/Active
Blue = Neutral
Green/Yellow = Earth/Ground

or

red 2 red , black 2 black and blue to bits   

[gourmet]

Thank you very much for your report, lightfoot.
The same thing has happened to my friend's Jala. Power adapter failure, and the unit not recognized thereafter. Booting normally, LED flashing first, than steady, two LEDs for two chips... So I believe the PSU has taken the USB chip with it, as you have found and verified.
It's not quite simple to obtain a new one though. There are several types & packages of FT232, but the HQ one is not frequent at all...
Mouser wants 40 euros (!) for p&p (or I've failed to find a better offer), maybe Farnell will be more acceptable, its shipping is "only" 150% of the price of the component itself... :-))) I've left this on the owner of the cube. I myself don't have one unfortunately...

BTW, what's Miller? A sort of beer, I guess? ;-)