Hacking BFL Monarchs and servicing them while times are weird.

[BadgerHobbs]

Do your pumps work? you can test the pumps without powering the board.

All the pumps and fans are working fine.

[1714114762]

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[1714114762]

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[1714114762]

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[eroxors]

Anyone need parts? I have a few non-working units.

[aswithin]

Remember BFL_Josh?  Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[cbjarscoobs]

Anyone need parts? I have a few non-working units.

have an extra set of working pumps?

[eroxors]

have an extra set of working pumps?

Sorry for the delay. Yes I do and I need to get rid of some of these parts. PM me.

[dextronomous]

Hi there,
here i have 4 of them,
working but not being used.
https://tweakers.net/aanbod/2226242/4x-bfl-monarch-sha256-btc-miners-aangeboden.html

[epichaberdasher]

Is anybody still running theirs ?

I still have my 750GH dual water cooled unit in near mint condition in the closet. I collect rare computer parts so when i retired it i thought it was too well made and nice looking to get rid off.

Id like to fire it up again just to get the pumps and fluid moving inside, but i doubt it would work with any of the currrent versions of BTC miners or windows. And im not sure of the older miners that support the Monarchs will work with the current forks of BTC.

And i see lightfoot still has vast knowledge of these cards , he and kano helped me get mine running all those years ago. I really liked these, and I i really wish BFL was a better run company because they offered some truly unique products.

[os2sam]

Id like to fire it up again just to get the pumps and fluid moving inside, but i doubt it would work with any of the currrent versions of BTC miners or windows. And im not sure of the older miners that support the Monarchs will work with the current forks of BTC.

CGMiner will work just fine, UNLESS, your unit has the latest firmware which was made to explicitly to break functionality with CGMiner.  If so then you would need the old hacked version of BFG Miner.

You should be able to mine any Sha256 coin with it.

It will use an atrocious amount of electricity.  You would be better off getting the Gekko Science R606 which will surpass the Monarch in performance but use only around 100 Watts.  You would loose allot less money in electricity and have allot less noise and waste heat.

[epichaberdasher]

I think mine has the firmware that doesnt work with CGMiner.

Is there anyway to change it ?

I know its not worth using, i just want to fire it up for nostalgia reasons. Also back in the day i ran it underclocked at just under 400GH and i was able to run it on a ~300W PSU very quietly for almost a year.

[os2sam]

I think mine has the firmware that doesnt work with CGMiner.

Is there anyway to change it

Not that I'm aware of.

[lightfoot]

Oh let's see. I think there were three firmware versions.

The first Monarchs only seemed to work with BFGMiner 4.20 on Windows. It was weird, there were sync issues with all the little engines talking at once that blew up other versions with queue mismatch errors between requested work and produced work. I spent some time whacking away on the BFG code and I think I got it to work with later versions but it really wasn't worth the effort. Setting a very high difficulty helped here as the engines would not all be replying at the same time when they had a lot of work to do. But this caused stale blocks with P2Pool. Which doesn't exist anymore......

Second version was the best, worked with CGMiner and most others. I dont recall a third firmware version.

Changing firmware was not very easy, they made hardware changes through the runs and reflashing a Monarch board with different firmware would result in a bricked miner. Double fun was that the boards weren't easy to tell the difference from (other than when they went to the high frequency metal FETs on the later boards.)

I'd say just fire it up and let the pumps circulate to keep the rubber gaskets in those water blocks pliable. I still have the 4.20 code for the first generation miners if anyone needs it.

[epichaberdasher]

Thats good info !

Is there anyway of easily checking the firmware version ? I cant remember what stickers or anything being on the card. If its the second version i might as well fire it up on CGMiner just to get some heat into the fluid, if its the first version that only works on BFG 4.2, ill just power it up and let it run, is 4.2 even compatible with the current fork of BTC ?

[lightfoot]

If it has 2 power plugs its first gen. If three plugs (they could melt, I remember replacing those) it's later version and should work with CGMiner.

[epichaberdasher]

Mine has 3 power connecters.

I dont recall ever being able to get it to work with CGMiner, but i was using Linux and PCI-Express

Im guessing if you use Windows (10 ?) and USB it will work with CG Miner then ?

[lightfoot]

It should. As I remember, the 3 power units would also run on later versions of BFGMiner, which is nice cause you don't need to put in all those extra oddball drivers to make it work under Windows. Give BFGMiner a shot and see how it works.

[os2sam]

Sure, its worth a try.  But I was never able to get BFGMiner ,Mainline, to work with either of my Monarchs.  Only the original hacked version that BFL supplied worked.  It sounds like that's the version he has too so he should be good to go.

[lightfoot]

Sure, its worth a try.  But I was never able to get BFGMiner ,Mainline, to work with either of my Monarchs.  Only the original hacked version that BFL supplied worked.  It sounds like that's the version he has too so he should be good to go.

Did they only have two power plugs?

[os2sam]

Mine have three.  When I first got them ck worked with me a bit to get CGMiner to work with them.  Then they worked great for about 6 months and one died and had to RMA it.  When I got it back it had updated firmware and would never work with CGMiner again.  I tried the mainline BFGMiner and it wouldn't work either.  So I ran the BFL supplied hacked BFG Miner until I retired them in March f 2016.

And I was using USB on Win7.

[DaveF]

Just saw this on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Butterfly-Labs-Monarch-BPU700C-725-850GH-s-Miner-USB-or-PCI-E-Card-SHA256/183657624943

Does it belong to anyone of you here?

Was thinking of putting in a low-ball best offer, just because I thought they were cool back in the day and would just be putting in on a shelf, but figured I would check here 1st. Might be kind of useful next winter as a space heater too.

-Dave

[os2sam]

Not from me.

I was going sell mine for the price of shipping, but I was too lazy to get a quote and pack them up.  Sorry about that to whoever that was.