Locating dead hashboard on S17/T17

[akagi82]

I have a dead hashboard on some T17 units that I would like to pull.  Unfortunately, the red status lights are hidden by the metal housing.  Is there a way to know which hashboard is failing in the unit based on logs or other information?  I am not on site and have to rely on people that are limited on techy skills so I want to make it straight forward.

Thanks guys.

[BitMaxz]

Access the miner through WebGUI then go to miner's status tab and then under the "Antminer" you can see the list of hashboard with "chain#" as the image below.

https://support.bitmain.com/hc/article_attachments/360020752313/mceclip0.png

As a sample on the image above it has Chain# 6,7 and 8 so if the chain# 7 is gone then the middle hashboard is the dead hashboard.

Or follow the guide on testing the hashboard one by one from here Test hash board one by one. So that you can find which one is dead or not.

[mikeywith]

It is pretty easy to do.

Step 1:

Find the bad board from the GUI, either by the following BitMaxz's method (keep in mind that his picture is for S9, where it labels the chains as 6,7,8 which is different from the new models that show 1,2,3) or by searching for these words in the kernel log

Code:

0 asic

copy the exact words, hit ctrl+F and paste it in the kernel log, let's say you get the following

Code:

2020-04-08 09:32:51 driver-btm-api.c:1010:check_asic_number_with_power_on: Chain[0]: find 30 asic, times 0
2020-04-08 09:33:01 driver-btm-api.c:1010:check_asic_number_with_power_on: Chain[1]: find 0 asic, times 0
2020-04-08 09:33:11 driver-btm-api.c:1010:check_asic_number_with_power_on: Chain[2]: find 30 asic, times 0

This means Chain 1 is bad.

Step 2:

Allocate the bad board in the miner, when you stand in front of the miner, facing the ethernet port they go 1,2,3 (left to right)



They can double-check the numbering by reading the label near the socket where the ribbon cable goes, disabling the board is an easy process too, of course, step 2 must be done while the miner is powered-off.

[akagi82]

Thank you for your responses to you both.  And thank you mikey for confirming their physical arrangement, as I am not on site.

I had assumed that on the control board, chains were logically in order (0,1,2 for the new generation of machines) from left to right. HOWEVER, I had installed over a hundred units that we purchased pre-owned, and their data cables were criss-crossed and their arrangement was very much random.

The units in question were purchased new from bitmain. So in your experience does bitmain always plug hash boards left to right, so that 0=left, 1=middle, 2=right?

Cheers.

[mikeywith]

The units in question were purchased new from bitmain. So in your experience does bitmain always plug hash boards left to right, so that 0=left, 1=middle, 2=right?

Cheers.

I have put my hands on a dozen of new mining gears, but i really don't have enough experience with the plugs arrangements, simply because i don't dissemble most of them, and since these are new gears i doubt anyone has seen a large enough sample to confirm the theory.

If i had to guess based on old gears at least, i would say "Yes", they come in order, but again it doesn't really matter, simply follow the ribbon cable from the hash board to the control board, i wouldn't risk "blindly" unplugging those because you might end up unplugging good working boards, everything is labeled on on the control board, it takes no skills whatsoever to know where does the cable from say chain 1 go to.