Hacking Antminer S17's and T17's because.... are we up to these already????

[philipma1957]

Nice work. I suspected it was flawed from the getgo.

All in all I got about twentythree  17 variants.

a lot of s17pros. they have been very good to me.

but a few bad t17+ and or t17e units.

They need fixing.

We can figure a good way to nurse them along one at a time due to the higher earnings we will-get  coin wise. next jump.

I can see by my other s17 set to brains two boards must have some poor solder flow. also I have a board that dropped a heat sink.

All in all I think of 69 boards in 23 units.

I had two boards fully die out. I sold them
I had four boards become weak you just repaired one.

Which means 63 boards are good.  Still getting all gear fixed means a lot of earnings.

Crazy hot last three day 96+ each day.

[lightfoot]

Well this is an annoying step back: The boards ran, but would still drop out from time to time, always with the same chips. So chip replacement time which means I needed a new testing unit. Picked one up and asked for the T17+ firmware but instead got the T17 firmware for a 48 chip unit.

Warning: This is bad. When I plugged it into the boards it kept coming up finding zero chips, which wasn't making a whole lot of sense. Then when I plugged the board back into the Braains controller it refused to recognize the boards saying the checksums were wrong. Apparently the tester changes the firmware on the board, which is not good. More annoying, the code for the T17+ testing suite has errors in it that cause it to not work at all.

Back to the drawing board. Now I need to re-flash the chips which is a pain if you don't have the code. If the T17+ tester code doesn't work I'm going to have to send these into a repair center. Boo!

I'm starting to remember why I stopped fixing Antminers at the S9 level. So many versions, so many quirks, and not great assembly quality. Ah well...

However a warning for listeners: Make absolutely sure you have the right testing code running on your miner, don't trust the seller or anyone. The wrong test code can trash the boards.

[NoKeyboard-BTW]

S17's and such have a nice little extra feature: They have that copper top that has solder on it, remember?

Then take out the board and put the heat sink on. Remember, no pre-heat, put a bit of flux on the center of the heat sink, line up the sink perfectly (the flux will hold it in place) then low flow heat from the air tool to secure the heat sink again.

I'm a bit confused by this. If you put on a new chip and clean the solder off from the bottom of the removed heat sink. You don't need solder paste and just throw the heat sink on with a little tacky flux because that copper on top of the new chip has solder in it?

[wege12]

Would you guys recommend Antminer T17 at this point in time? I want to get into ASIC (bitcoin) mining and I know a local reseller that is offering them for $1200 used. I have read they can be problematic but that price point is appealing. FYI I pay 6 cents per kWh.

Thanks!

[lightfoot]

Honest answer: No.

Longer answer: I think the T series units are the "binned" chips and parts from the Antminer world. They put the best chips after testing into the S series units, and put the more "oddball" series chips in a lower performance box that is underclocked, undervolted, and call it the "T" series. Likewise I think boards that have mediocre solder jobs and the like are put into the "T" bin, matched, and sold as units.

Thus with proper firmware a T17+ could hash at a higher than badged rate. However those chips may fail in use under conditions that an S series box won't. This is why I've been merrily chasing chip failures on the T17's, sure you can replace a chip but another one is not quite so far behind.

Antminers are not quite the um.... highest quality things I have worked on. They blow up easily, solder isn't that great, and the difference between peak chip temp and the point where the chips fall off the board is not a whole lot of C. The cases are good, and the controllers are mostly good.

Another thing to watch is the earlier T17's and T15's used clips to hold the boards to the power supply rail while the later ones used real screws. Given the current draw on these boards I think the clips and loose screws could explain a number of burned top boards. Go for the screws.

If you're going to get one I'd recommend you do new (because everyone who buys one will run it with nuts firmware till it starts dropping boards, then sell it as "used") and run it with the supplied firmware (which is probably warrantied to work as long as the warranty lasts). Or run it with faster firmware, then sell it on Ebay when it starts tossing errors (just disclose it, pls).

Sorry, been busy for a bit here, will post some more observations next week including some pics of boards that had a bit of a.... shipping failure. :-)

[Artemis3]

this is good news in the sense that it will be reported as a bug.

also I am not sure if it was the december the april or the june firmware.

they may have fixed it already.

Well, I'm not up to reporting it as a bug, but even with *every* "Do not tune" option off, it still wants to shut down boards in the name of "tuning". When I run the boards at say 400mhz they will run at much slower hashrates even than what is "expected" (the nominal hashrate). This is enough to trip the tuner that runs every 30 minutes

By chance I just happened to read this thread, and I'm forwarding this info to the devs, thank you for your valuable feedback

[philipma1957]

Well this is an annoying step back: The boards ran, but would still drop out from time to time, always with the same chips. So chip replacement time which means I needed a new testing unit. Picked one up and asked for the T17+ firmware but instead got the T17 firmware for a 48 chip unit.

Warning: This is bad. When I plugged it into the boards it kept coming up finding zero chips, which wasn't making a whole lot of sense. Then when I plugged the board back into the Braains controller it refused to recognize the boards saying the checksums were wrong. Apparently the tester changes the firmware on the board, which is not good. More annoying, the code for the T17+ testing suite has errors in it that cause it to not work at all.

Back to the drawing board. Now I need to re-flash the chips which is a pain if you don't have the code. If the T17+ tester code doesn't work I'm going to have to send these into a repair center. Boo!

I'm starting to remember why I stopped fixing Antminers at the S9 level. So many versions, so many quirks, and not great assembly quality. Ah well...

However a warning for listeners: Make absolutely sure you have the right testing code running on your miner, don't trust the seller or anyone. The wrong test code can trash the boards.

Anything new on this?