Quote from: sidehack on December 14, 2013, 01:18:40 PM

That Blade is actually someone else's that I'm attempting to repair, so I'm not allowed to "sell" it to anyone unless the actual owner chose to part with it.

I've tested four or five of mine in the last few days and all of them are write-protected. Also messaged FriedCat about getting a firmware dump, or at least a replacement PIC, with no word. Not unexpected.

I also read that thread about improving speeds on the BE, but figured all it was doing was messing with speed reporting because my hashrate numbers were erroneous/weird while WU and pool's estimates remained unchanged.

I see, well that's quite unfortunate that board failed in the only way that currently can't be repaired. If the owner decides to part ways with it feel free to keep me posted or PM, I've a very high ebay feedback and am verified on paypal.

I've a good idea that the only way we'll get a firmware is if we ship them a 18F Pic on a demo board that has a programming header, get it back, desolder it and populate the board ourselves.

I somewhat doubt they have a hot socket for programming as it's all setup for ICSP, and they likely see sending the firmware as a loss of potential revenue... even though they don't sell these asics anywhere and they're being phased out.

And yes, the software BE speed thing seems to be a fallacy, still have to change the oscillator to get real improvement.

Also I'm curious why when you overclock blades you opt for ~14MHz instead of 16MHz, too much heat to deal with or the PSU circuitry overheats? (or maybe the 10A limit on the stock fuse)

I only ask because if it's heat you should explore the idea of thermal tape and thin heatsinks, I've done this to mine despite not being overclocked ATM and my temperatures are around in the <50C range.