KnC Neptune Cube and Raspberry PI???

[Hockeymike15]

hello i just wanted to start off by saying i bought this cube very cheap with no controller.  I figured if i cant get it to work, i didnt lose much money on it.  I cant seem to find any controllers for these things out there in the usual places.  I know PIs are used for controlling so miners but is there is a way for it to be a controller for the Neptune Cube? Has anyone tried? Does anyone have a board to sell??

[lightfoot]

Wow. In  a small nutshell the KNC miners had all of the polling of chips and data management handled by a board that did the magic with a FPGA to talk to the miners and either a Raspberry Pi (for the Litecoin KNC titans) or a Beaglebone Black (for the Neptunes).

I still have a few of the boards, and could send you one or two (without the BBB, they are useful other places) for the cost of shipping and a beer if you'd like. Do you have the 10 pin ribbon cable too?

[DaveF]

lightfoot if you do ship can you take a picture of the BBB before you ship it. I *might* have one, would have to check the parts box and it's easier looking for something if you know what it looks like instead of reading each board one at a time...

-Dave

[lightfoot]

It's one of these.



KNC used ones without a power connector or USB connector and used a 4gb SD card. It gets the power from the controller board.

[DaveF]

I found 1 so far, but it's labeled antminer, BB_Black_V1.6
Are they re-programmable enough to work with KnC?
Never tried as I never had and KnC equipment.

Don't even have a way to test it now.

-Dave

[lightfoot]

Yeah those should work. Miners all were using BBB's at the time, I think KNC went to the Pi's on the TItans bc stocks of BBB were low.

[spydr622]

I know this is a very old miner, and an unexpected necro, but i also just picked a neptune cube up on the very cheap with no controller. I cant find a controller to save my life, can I use the image of the firmware on it from github and turn a BBB into one? are there other variants thats will work as well?

[DaveF]

I know this is a very old miner, and an unexpected necro, but i also just picked a neptune cube up on the very cheap with no controller. I cant find a controller to save my life, can I use the image of the firmware on it from github and turn a BBB into one? are there other variants thats will work as well?

Yes, after lightfoot posted someone bought a few of my old antminer ones to use in neptunes like you and the OP have and they did work.
Not sure how, but I know he got them going since he bought more after he tested the 1st one on his 1st batch of cubes.

Keep in mind as has been said main times unless you have free power you are going to loose money mining with them.

-Dave

[lightfoot]

Also note you need more than a BBB: There is a card that comes with the KNC miners which connects to the 10 pin ribbon cable from each mining cube. That card has a pretty expensive and fragile FPGA on it which interrogates all the little engines on the cubes for the work and routes only the solved block-lets to the BBB.

I have a few of those cards, but am now using them for my old Titan cubes which amazingly enough can still mine litecoin at a profit. That boggles my *mind*, a 7+ year old chunk of mining gear is still making ROI....