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Showing 5 of 5 results by papo83
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Re: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial
by
papo83
on 25/06/2014, 16:41:28 UTC
Hey guys thanks for starting this thread, seeing as Cointerra shutdown the forums this is the only place i can find help. I've been running an April batch for two months now and today one board did not come online. I opened it up to see why only one board was going online and noticed that LED D45 was red. Does anyone know what this means? and is there is a way to fix it?

Is D44 (yellow) also lit next to D45(red)? Did you ever fix your problem? see my latest comment what Cointerra told me, it might fix your problem!

I only have D45(red) on. I tried all the suggestions that have been given on this thread (used compressor to clean the board, submerged with 99.99 alcohol and lightly cleaned with toothbrush, disconnected the J11 cable) so far none have worked. The board powers up with D37 through D44 (yellow) and D45(red). When the miner starts working D37 through D44 turn off but D45 stays lit. I got a reply from cointerra asking to send them a pdf of my stat page which i sent and I'm waiting for a reply to see what they say.
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Board Hardware
Re: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial
by
papo83
on 18/06/2014, 02:58:07 UTC

No I did not get a better hash rate. The terraminers are designed to run at 1.6Ths regardless of temp until a core hits 120c then it reboots. I also noticed my miners would have one or two cores that where significantly hotter then the rest. I opened my last 3rd machine to cool it and noticed that many of the screws that hold down the cooling block where not even screwed in or they where barley screwed in leaving the cooling block lifted up and not having good contact to the core. Another fail by cointerra. Only apply the LiquidPro to the cores, not the cooling block. Just like the photos I posted.

FYI, my third machine when put back and turned on failed to boot up CTA1. Ive cleaned the board twice but still no mining. It has power but does not boot up and coming online so currently only CTA0 is mining. I will most likely pull this board again and give it a full bath in a last desperate attempt. I was so critical in doing this last cooling job just because of my previous experiences and still I fucked up with no idea how.

If you decide to open clean and cool with LiquidPro its a huge risk but if you can pull it off its well worth it

Hey Scriber how would you go about giving a "full bath" to the board? do you wash it with alcohol or something else? I'm asking because i'm in the same boat as you, I reapplied the thermal compound and now one board does not want to work. CTA0 is working but CTA1 powers up but does not do anything. I've looked at the board all over and don't see anything wrong with the board so i'm willing to trying just about anything to get it working again.
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Board Hardware
Re: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial
by
papo83
on 11/06/2014, 21:50:14 UTC

I have applied thermal compound about 5 times so far with different results each time. If you don't get enough paste on them they will get hot and to much and they get hot. If the chips get to hot they are going to shut down. So the board you have that's down could be from the chips getting to hot. Reason I say that is one time after I reapplied the paste I had a chip shut down as soon as the stats came up from getting to hot. I redid the paste once again and it came back. Finding the right amount of paste is the trick since the four die's are not level. I'm yet to get it right.

Thanks for the info. Ill give that a try and hopefully that solves my problem.
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Topic
Board Hardware
Re: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial
by
papo83
on 11/06/2014, 20:21:49 UTC
I thought I'd share my experience troubleshooting a very hot miner. Although temperamentally slowing down, this miner would perform at 100% after a reset, usually staying there for a day or so. I thought I'd replace the thermal paste with some arctic silver to see if it brought down the temperatures from ~90C. Long story short, it did not. Now one board isn't responding, and the other has overheating problems. Disregarding my extreme stupidity, it was a valuable education in the unit's operation. Here's a video I shot of it in operation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nqr9Dsli24

Note the orange and red status lights on each board. I'm assuming those are individual core hashing status. The "bad" board (on the left) would simply flash the orange lights as shown in the video, then reset itself (the fans go to maximum briefly then reduce in speed).

It would be really nice if they released the source code for the firmware used in the TI microcontroller they're using. I'm guessing they don't because yahoos like me would change some setting that would definitely fry the chips or electronics unintentionally. I don't blame them, but still want it. What the device does can be partly ascertained from the cgminer source code, but all that is pretty high level message passing which mainly involves reporting of values, and not setting of them.

I am in a similar situation as you. I applied arctic silver and now one board has the status lights on constantly. Is there a way of knowing what is causing the problems from the status lights?
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Topic
Board Hardware
Re: Cointerra Hardware Support **Unofficial
by
papo83
on 09/06/2014, 19:45:58 UTC
Hey guys thanks for starting this thread, seeing as Cointerra shutdown the forums this is the only place i can find help. I've been running an April batch for two months now and today one board did not come online. I opened it up to see why only one board was going online and noticed that LED D45 was red. Does anyone know what this means? and is there is a way to fix it?