GRIDSEED G-BLADE Overclocking 7Mh/s, improvements and repair

[kebabman]

I thought the same other day, to use to-220 you can cool it better and still can be almost at the same spot so you don't have dissapation on wires there is high current here.

Why they chaneg chips which are almost the same, only the price can be factor. They get chips for much lower price.
Did you find replacement for IRFH5301 also, to-220 housing?

I think I will order chips tomorrow because it takes almost 3 weeks to get it.

CryptKeeper's pod with IRFB7437?
he also did some modifications?
where is his topic?

He has blown ferrite beads, so he sent the pod to me to try to revive it.

one power mosfet was shorted, so I replaced it with IRFB7437.

You can see on the picture that when exploding, the ferrite beads have badly damaged the PCB near the solder points for the fan.

If you do TO-220 conversion, beware the Gate/Source/Drain could be misplaced.

So here comes Frankenpod







It works just fine, I disconnected it after a few seconds to avoid overheating the GC3355, but even the 7437 was hot. It will need active cooling with dissipator.

I have a gridseed pod with this exact chip burnt out, it's a MOSFET? I'm fairly handy with a hot-air gun/soldering iron, can you tell me what part to buy / where to get it so I can replace this frazzled chip please?

BTW the unit is still recognized as a USB device and seen by cpuminer, it just won't hash.

Thanks in advance for the info!

[kebabman]

I don't suppose somebody could tell me what FB28 and FB29 are right next to the barrel connector? FB28 just blew on me, I have a friend who might be able to fix it for me and I'd like to be able to approach him halfway intelligently on this since pcb are not my forte.  Thanks.

i think the ferrite beads are 300ohm @ 100MHz, 3A, 805 type, that's what I used to replace a burnt out one anyway and it worked.

[LoneWolf3574]

i think the ferrite beads are 300ohm @ 100MHz, 3A, 805 type, that's what I used to replace a burnt out one anyway and it worked.

Thank you.  This has been sucking for me since the g-blade this happened to was best to OC of the two I have and had the fewest HW errors.

Just out of curiosity, did your performance improve any after this repair?

[Pachech]

Hello
On Gridseed G-Blade burned microcontroller stm32f103rct6, can anyone have firmware for it

[racebyu]

Hello
On Gridseed G-Blade burned microcontroller stm32f103rct6, can anyone have firmware for it

Looks like you might be able to Jtag the microcontroller right on the board.
I would guess its locked, did you try and dump any code?

[Pachech]

Looks like you might be able to Jtag the microcontroller right on the board.
I would guess its locked, did you try and dump any code?

stm32f103rct6 short circuit.
I soldered a new microcontroller.
Firmware with Gridseed 5-chip not suitable.

Who has the opportunity to merge with the microcontroller firmware stm32f103rct6. This can be done using UART, through software Flash Loader Demonstrator



1 - 3,3 v
2 - RST
3 - Rx
4 - Tx
5 - Boot0
6 - Boot1
7,8 - GND

[txbeersnob]

Replaced the 33k resistor with a 39k and the miner is holding steady at 6Mh/s! Decided to go for a moderate overclock to keep power costs down and reliability up!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/war6763/ScreenShot2014-08-07at12453AM_zpse07c7f42.png

An old heatsink I found inside a plasma TV. I also replaced the fan to keep the noise down and removed the barrel connectors. In their place I soldered 16 gauge wire and added some Anderson PowerPole connectors.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/war6763/2014-08-07012733_zpsd16a6a3a.jpg

MOSFET Heatsink Temperature:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/war6763/2014-08-07012742_zpsbf342e2c.jpg

Switching Capacitor Temperature (Swapped for Low ESR Capacitors)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v293/war6763/2014-08-07012749_zpsfba4eb1c.jpg

[Freeman2000yes]

Hi ! Again! 

I have to spend now more time on my study , so no time more for the g-blades...
Too much time I spent on it , with no benefit .
There are now Prototypes of 1024 MHS Miners in Q4 planed , and i think even if we push a Gblade to 10 MHS , it´s pointless. I have spend over 1800 USD on my both Gblades and countless hours in repairing and tweaking and for now I have only maybe 200 USD back if I´m lucky, and they allready reach the point to consume more than  they produce, with 0.365 USD / kWH in Germany, its allready painfull to mine. The only hope that I have is to hold some Coins like Doge and Litecoin in the hope , that they rise up at the end of year, but when the "monsters" are introduced in this game soon, like the 500 MHS and 1 GHS Miner, I don´t know if someone bother for something less than 100 MHS. And the most coins will die if they are only mined and imediatly sell. Only sell orders and no buy orders let the prices drop and drop until the coin is valueless. Like the Dogecoin , there are now some plans to realize merged mining with Litecoin , to save Dogecoin and stop it from slowly dying.
 
It was a pleasure for me to "talk" with you guys and I´m pretty sure that is the best thing to build a own miner , its a interesting plan to realize.
But for the moment i´m really disappointed of the situation and it´s hard for me to realize that i play a game with my own hard earned money , a game with no chance to win.
It´s time to face the truth. I have tried to get some investment back, in offering a repair of gblades or overclocking , but the blades are allready forgotten , so no chance to get something back.   

[Blisk]

People still think buying new miners will make them money, but will not, because more and more powerfull miners come out and dificulty raise exponentially. So what people do, buys miners and mine and when get something they buy more powerfull with that money and so on and so on.
At the end they don't have any profit from miner just buying new miners and that is all and they get no money out of it for them self.

Only one which benefits here and makes big money are companies which sell miners and that's why tere is more and more companies which sell them.

So the only way to get some money out of mining is to build your own miner, miner which can be upgraded to get more hash out of it.
Anything else is just wasting time and electricity.

[J4bberwock]

I thought the same other day, to use to-220 you can cool it better and still can be almost at the same spot so you don't have dissapation on wires there is high current here.

Why they chaneg chips which are almost the same, only the price can be factor. They get chips for much lower price.
Did you find replacement for IRFH5301 also, to-220 housing?

I think I will order chips tomorrow because it takes almost 3 weeks to get it.

CryptKeeper's pod with IRFB7437?
he also did some modifications?
where is his topic?

He has blown ferrite beads, so he sent the pod to me to try to revive it.

one power mosfet was shorted, so I replaced it with IRFB7437.

You can see on the picture that when exploding, the ferrite beads have badly damaged the PCB near the solder points for the fan.

If you do TO-220 conversion, beware the Gate/Source/Drain could be misplaced.

So here comes Frankenpod







It works just fine, I disconnected it after a few seconds to avoid overheating the GC3355, but even the 7437 was hot. It will need active cooling with dissipator.

I have a gridseed pod with this exact chip burnt out, it's a MOSFET? I'm fairly handy with a hot-air gun/soldering iron, can you tell me what part to buy / where to get it so I can replace this frazzled chip please?

BTW the unit is still recognized as a USB device and seen by cpuminer, it just won't hash.

Thanks in advance for the info!

Hi, sorry for the later answer. The upper gate power MOSFET on older blades is IRFH5302. It can be swapped with a csd16321q5c that will run coller. Add small dissipators as I postes on top of the heatsinks to. It will help.

[kebabman]

Thanks for the answer, I actually have a Gridseed 5-chip not a G-Blade, is it the same part?

i think the ferrite beads are 300ohm @ 100MHz, 3A, 805 type, that's what I used to replace a burnt out one anyway and it worked.

Thank you.  This has been sucking for me since the g-blade this happened to was best to OC of the two I have and had the fewest HW errors.

Just out of curiosity, did your performance improve any after this repair?

No performance change, it just works again.

[J4bberwock]

Yes, they use the same parts as power MOSFET.
In fact, the power circuit of the blade is the same as the one from a pod.
And you can't improve HW errors unless you have better cooling and, depending on the frequency you want, higher voltage provided to the chips.

[harpss1ngh]

Hi, I bought a Blade which is modified with 35v 220uf capacitor, 43k ohm resistor 0.1 +/-, 2 custom heat sinks attached on the rear of each power board, passive heatsinks on the all Mosfets and chokes.

I'm using a 750w PSU to power it as well as 2 stock unmodified Gridseed blades. I only had it running for a couple hours when the PSU shut down. I looked at the modified blade and there are scorch marks between the Barrel connector and USB port, the chip that visibly appears to be fried is the one between the USB and Barrel port labelled AFR26.

Pics of the blades below:

http://i59.tinypic.com/50i9dz.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/10f6ip5.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/2udxgcp.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/212sq68.jpg


As the mosfets and chokes, etc all have heatsinks on them I can't see what else is fried from a quick inspection. Would this have been caused by overclocking too much? I set the clocks between 1000mhz and 1038mhz which the seller said they run stable at.

I can do a bit of soldering so if anyone can guide me on where I can get the components I can probably fix it myself. Also do you recommend I change anything else that hasn't been modified to improve it, i.e barrel connector, heatsink, etc.

Also one of the barrel power connectors from the PSU has its plastic melted slightly but the connector itself looks fine and there are no burn marks on it.

[J4bberwock]

The AFBxx and FBxx are ferrite beads. worst case, you can replace them with zero ohm resistors.
I bought 2 failed blades with the same trouble and managed to get them back to life.
The best way to solder  themthose parts is with an hot air station.
I posted a few pages ago a step by step guide to check what is failed on a blade.
Follow it, and post your results.
Obviously, you will need to replace the FB before testiong the usb part of the board.
You may also have to replace AME8805 chip.
If so, they are selling either on utsource or ebay for cheap, and I also have a few ones I can send for the price I paid them from utsource + shipping from France.

Worst thing that could have happened is the STM32 chip fried since we don't have the firmware for it.
I'll try to extract it, but not sure when.

when the STM32 chip is fried, you will get low voltage at the output of the AME8805 instead of 3.3v, and the capacitors next to the crystal will read either zero or infinite when using the ohm-meter. I can't remember which value it was.
Soldering the STM32 is not easy at all, i took me some time to get all pins correctly aligned.

If you got no reply within 2 days, just PM me, I'm quite busy at the moment.


And when/if you revive the blade, just lower the resistor from 43k to 39k, the extra power draw isn't worth it anymore.

[harpss1ngh]

The AFBxx and FBxx are ferrite beads. worst case, you can replace them with zero ohm resistors.
I bought 2 failed blades with the same trouble and managed to get them back to life.
The best way to solder  themthose parts is with an hot air station.
I posted a few pages ago a step by step guide to check what is failed on a blade.
Follow it, and post your results.
Obviously, you will need to replace the FB before testiong the usb part of the board.
You may also have to replace AME8805 chip.
If so, they are selling either on utsource or ebay for cheap, and I also have a few ones I can send for the price I paid them from utsource + shipping from France.

Worst thing that could have happened is the STM32 chip fried since we don't have the firmware for it.
I'll try to extract it, but not sure when.

when the STM32 chip is fried, you will get low voltage at the output of the AME8805 instead of 3.3v, and the capacitors next to the crystal will read either zero or infinite when using the ohm-meter. I can't remember which value it was.
Soldering the STM32 is not easy at all, i took me some time to get all pins correctly aligned.

If you got no reply within 2 days, just PM me, I'm quite busy at the moment.


And when/if you revive the blade, just lower the resistor from 43k to 39k, the extra power draw isn't worth it anymore.

Thanks for your reply J4bberwock. Ill look at the guide when I have a moment. I unscrewed the Blade and have inspected the pcb's. Photss are below:

http://i59.tinypic.com/mwctbl.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/vzfo13.jpg

From looking at the pcb ls with a magnifying glass I can't see any other damaged components other than the ferrite bead at AFB26. Can anyone confirm from the pics if that appears to be the case? If so can someone provide me with the part number of the replacement or the 0ohm replacement as mentioned earlier. Also can I have part numbers for the 220f 35v cap and 39k resistor to mod other blades

Also any other recommended changes? More heatsinks, power connector mod, etc? Im using a 750w enermax psu and 18awg cables it has a cheap connector however, one of which melted so any recommendation on the plug to replace? Also is it worth changing the barrel socket to a better rather than screw terminals or directly soldering, etc?

[kingscrown]

soon ill sell my gblade for EXCL

[harpss1ngh]

got same problem like harpss1ngh like i understand ferrite bead possible to change with 0 ohm resistor. correct?

PS: my Blade still not moded with 39k resistor, but all heat sink, cooling already done.

Only if you have a high quality ATX PSU and 18AWG power cable, (although that's what everyone should be using, not the crappy DC adapters.)

I do use an ATX PSU but I still ended up ordering a Ferrite Bead 100mhz@330ohm 1.5A of size 0805 from the bay to be safe:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181410119006

[J4bberwock]

got same problem like harpss1ngh like i understand ferrite bead possible to change with 0 ohm resistor. correct?

PS: my Blade still not moded with 39k resistor, but all heat sink, cooling already done.

Only if you have a high quality ATX PSU and 18AWG power cable, (although that's what everyone should be using, not the crappy DC adapters.)

I do use an ATX PSU but I still ended up ordering a Ferrite Bead 100mhz@330ohm 1.5A of size 0805 from the bay to be safe:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181410119006

The ferrite next to the USB plug is only for usb filtering, so your power supply doesn't matter.
It does matter for all the other ones next to the power plug.


I finally received my universal JTAG adapter, so I should be able to extract the firmware from the blade.

If I succeed, I'll post a link to it in this thread.

[J4bberwock]

And here is the firmware needed for the G-Blade

http://dl.free.fr/vLuvCPiD9

I'll make a quick detailed "how to" later with pictures.

Material needed:
-an USB to UART converter (CP2102 based is working for me)
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-1PCS-CP2102-Serial-Converter-USB-2-0-To-TTL-UART-6PIN-Module/623537804.html?s=p
-2mm spacing pin headers will make things easier
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10pcs-2mm-40-Pin-Male-Single-Row-Pin-Header-Strip/1982700728.html

Software:
STM32 flash loader demonstrator
http://www.st.com/web/en/catalog/tools/PF257525#

Connecting the CP2102 to the Blade:

With the Blade unplugged from the USB

-Connect pin 8 (Ground) with pin 6 on the 8 pins header next to the STM32 chip.
Pin 8 is the closest to the JTAG 10 pins header
Pin 1 is the closest to the hashing chips.

-Connect pin 1 with pin 5

Now, your STM32 is configured to allow read and write of the flash.

Next, connect the pin 3 (RX) of the Blade header to TX on the CP2102 header
And connect pin 4 (TX) of the RX on the CP2102 header.

You can now plug the USB from the Blade to a computer
And the CP2102 to your computer.

The Blade will be found as an "unknown device".

The CP2102 will be assigned a port number that you will find in the hardware manager.
If it doesn't, you might need to install the CP2102 drivers from Silabs

http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/pages/usbtouartbridgevcpdrivers.aspx

And uninstall anything you've done with Zadig earlier.

Start the flash loader demonstrator
and change the settings to match your com port
Baudrate: 115200
Parity: Even
Echo: disabled
Timeout: 10

Click "next"
You might be asked to unlock the device.
Do it, and don't bother with the note regarding erasing data since we will write a new flash anyway.

Your chip might be detected with 256k flash and say that "Target is readable"
All is good.

Select the target as 256k flash in the next window.
Click "next"

Choose the flash file to use, check the "verify" box, and proceed with the flash.

After about 1 minute, you should be good with your blade and happily hashing again.

You can send a few tips to my BTC or LTC address if this helped you.

[willumpie82]

Hi J4bberwock

Thanks for your procedure! I stepped succesfully trough it, only after the programming and verify succesfull, I powertoggled the device, removed the serial and boot stuff and connected it to USB again but still get the device not recognized warning, there are no leds on.

any thoughts?
is it possible that Gridseed protected the devices, so the binary is encoded and not poratble?

When the RDP (read protection) option is active, the only command that is allowed is the "Permanent Readout Unprotect" command (which erases all of the Flash).
So while the protection is enabled, it should not be possible to download programs to RAM and run them


edit: found the answer to the protection question