Hi all, a couple of weeks ago I purchased from Ebay a Butterfly Labs 60GH/s Asic Miner. It arrived Monday, but since then a nightmare has started.
The PSU was not the original one that can be seen on several YouTube videos, but looked like a normal ATX PSU with the required two PCI-E connectors. Never mind, I tried and connected it to a power plug, but I didn't realize that it was only compatible with USA voltage (110-120V). I live in Italy (220V). The PSU died in a couple of seconds.
OK, I should have checked, but I had never seen a PSU which wasn't compatible with the 100-240V range, and I didn't imagine that such things could be shipped by a vendor who sells worldwide...
Anyway, my worry was that the miner could have blown up as well, so I tried to buy another PSU. At a computer shop they kindly helped me doing some tests with a candidate PSU. We first tried connecting it to a motherboard, since the ATX PSUs do not even start if the MB connector is not closed. Good news, the miner turns on, bfgminer starts and sees it, going steadily at full speed for at least 10 minutes. The USA PSU had the MB connector closed with a handmade bridge between the main power pin (sorry I don't know the exact English terminology, however, it is the green cable) and a ground (black cable). We tried to transfer this bridge to the new PSU. Apparently it worked, because with no device connected it started seamlessly, but when we turned it off, and tried it with the miner plugged in, it just managed to turn on for a couple of seconds, and then the PSU auto-switched off. A quick search over the internet suggested that the possible cause is that some PSUs need to feel a 5A load on some pin of the main connector, but now I'm stuck since it's nonsense to buy a motherboard only to make the miner work, and I cannot try to put the PSU on a desktop PC since I have only laptops.
Can someone suggest a way to make this PSU work anyway? Or alternatively whether there are other PSUs which are known to work with the BFLs devices?
Thanks in advance for any help.