Looking for advice on repair kit for S17, T17 and other miners

[BitcoinIntern]

Hi Folks,

I am looking for advice on various repair kits and equipment needed to repair the hashboards. The T17 and S17 miners are not as reliable so looking specifically for those. I have looked into Zeus mining gear in the past and looks very makeshift.

Is there something better out there in terms of speed, quality, performance and support? Thanks in advance.

[mikeywith]

Is there something better out there in terms of speed, quality, performance and support? Thanks in advance.

The only 'mining-related" tool you will need is the fixture tool, it's on aliexpress/Alibaba and Zeusbtc, the other option would be the Russain Asic repair, I believe this is the official website > https://tester.asic.repair/en, this tool is a lot more expensive but it's faster in diagnosing, although the two probably lead to the same results.

As for the other tools, you can get them locally, if you don't know what tools you need - check this post.

[BitcoinIntern]

Thanks Mikeywith.

The Russian one you posted looks more robust. Have you personally used it or know people who have used in the past compared to the zeus makeshift one?

Price is definitely very high but if the Russian device does the job then I guess its completely worth it.

[mikeywith]

The Russian one you posted looks more robust. Have you personally used it or know people who have used in the past compared to the zeus makeshift one?

Not sure about the robustness part, essentially all that these tools do is see where was the signal interrupted and point you to that chip, the other thing they do is they would keep feeding power to the hash board so you can measure it unlike how the firmware which you use to mine as it will stop feeding the hash board if it doesn't show all asics, in fact, there was a repair firmware for the S9 which you could flash into the control board and it would do exactly what these fixture tools do.

The Russian tool is faster and more user friendly, you can access it via the browser I believe so you can use your phone, and it has a nice GUI on it, unlike the other fixture tool which by the way, I believe it's the official bitmain fixture tool, zuesbtc is just a reseller.

So to sum up, these tools are only for basic diagnostics, don't expect much of them, and yes, I know people who used the Russian tool, wndsnb is one of them, he is professional in fixing hash boards and has a ton of knowledge regarding the subject, I believe by looking back at his post history you will probably learn everything you need.

[wndsnb]

The Russian one allows you to work much more efficiently. It allows you to hook up and start running a test in seconds, and then it will continue to exercise the board indefinitely so you can measure the test points on the hashboard without having to re-start the test over and over. The standard Bitmain tester like Zeus sells will attempt to get the asic count 3 times and then stop, requiring you to wait 30+ seconds for it to finish its cycle and before you can tell it to start again.

The Bitmain one does run a test pattern through the chips at full power to test out the actual hashing at speed, the Russian one does not do this. So if you want to detect low-hashing chips, you'd need to run the board in a miner with aftermarket firmware that will show the performance on a chip-by-chip basis (like vnish).

I use the Russian one >95% of the time, and just occasionally use the Bitmain one.

Also, the Bitmain style tester is just a S17+ control board with special firmware. The display screen and button on the test fixture they sell are not needed. The button is just hooked up to the reset button on the control board, and the screen doesn't show anything more than you get from the terminal output. So you can save yourself some $ by just buying a control board and getting the test firmware. You just need to get a serial to USB adapter like this https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15096 and hook it up to the serial signals on the control board.

One last thing, I think many people might think that the test fixture will tell you what chips are bad, and then all you need to do is replace the chips it identifies. That is not the case. Occasionally it might give you a clue as to where an issue is, but most of the time it will just tell you it found 0 chips. The main purpose for it is to exercise the board so you can go in and trace signals with a DMM or Oscilloscope to locate the issues.