Woody Has Done A Video About The Chip In The 6000 Coils

[phrunt]

Woody's done a decent video on the chip in the 6000's coils.

It's there for absolutely no reason other than being an authenticator to prevent unsanctioned aftermarket coils.

You can read about the security chip here at the manufacturer's website.

Video is of the newer model.

This video shows how they program the chips, all very interesting stuff.  There were rumours flying around Nugget Finder did this wrong when the Xceed coil was delayed, no idea if that was true, probably not.
 

It's really not all that hard to do a dongle using the chip, the only thing different to the GPZ is you have to cut open the coil to make it a donor coil rather than just chopping the cord like the GPZ, the coil can work on the dongle without a chip in it so can still be used but I think many aftermarket coils are more likely to appear once GPX's are out of warranty and the stock coils are prone to failure so once people have a heap of dead genuine coils what other use do they have other than dongle coils 🙂

It's a shame Minelab are so against aftermarket non-sanctioned coils, they're holding back their detectors doing this, I suppose it makes life easier to bring out future models by doing so with self-imposed performance restrictions though.

The funny thing is another common use of that chip is printer cartridge authentication to prevent people using aftermarket printer cartridges.  We all know the agony of buying printer ink.  There is big money in printer ink, Minelab gold detectors feel like they're worth their weight in gold, printer ink actually is worth more than its own weight in gold :)

[Dutchman4]

I am very familiar with the inner workings of the HP Inkjet printer cartridges  and their authentication chips.

I worked as a Semiconductor Test Engineer for STMicroElectronics in Rancho Bernardo, CA.  The wafer Fab at that location was a foundry for HP and made the main chip inside Inkjet cartridges.  Very interesting, high technology that could not be easily cloned because of the complex nature and the authentication circuitry native to each cartridge.  Because of this circuitry is why only the original HP cartridges could be re-filled with ink.  HP caught wind of the refill business and tried to make even that more difficult with warning messages once the printer detected what it thought was a new cartridge but using a previous ID code.  Usually with 2 or 3 retries you could have success with a refilled cartridge.

Any way the technology behind the Inkjet cartridge print head is special.  The print head chip is a semiconductor chip that has a x,y array of 192 very small resistors that are individually addressable with a row and column technique.  A thin metal orifice plate is bonded on top of the resistor array.  Ink is side fed into the orifice plate so each microscopic orifice is filled with ink.  Now you have this array of orifices filled with ink with a microscopic heater resistor under each orifice.  The printer can then select a row and column address to turn on the heater resistor for a few micro seconds.  The ink is formulated with a certain water content that causes it to come to an instantaneous boil and like a volcano, a microscopic dot of ink ejects from the orifice and shoots onto the paper.  This all happens very quickly as the print head is moving across the paper and all these ink dots are being fired onto the paper.

HP was the only company to use the Inkjet technology, I think Cannon and Epson and others use a piezoelectric method to shoot ink dots onto the paper.

So HP made little to no money on the sales of printers and some were offered for as low as $100 at the time because the cash cow was the sales of inkjet cartridges and HP made a lot of money off of them for years.  I have owned many HP printers over the years and spent a lot on cartridges but a few years ago I bought an EPSON EcoTank ET-2850 printer that has ink bottles you pour into the printer and no more cartridges thank god.  I don't print often but I still like to have the capability at home and the Epson EcoTank makes this affordable again.    

[Aureous]

Much of the info from what Woody achieved is from @Chet. His hard work laid the foundations for what Woody just showed. But at least he made reference to Chet in his earlier videos. As I said years ago now, the specs of are the coils are exactly the same as all other ML coils....no different. Only the handshake chip is the barrier. Plus the separate shield wire which adds a small amount of noise negation. Easy to achieve this as Woody showed. Why X coils made such a big BS issue about copying this method and not making dongles and coils to suit is baffling.  

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

22 hours ago, phrunt said:

Woody's done a decent video on the chip in the 6000's coils.

It's there for absolutely no reason other than being an authenticator to prevent unsanctioned aftermarket coils.

Maybe now we can use the rectangular wound MK-2 Sadie NF coil on the 6000 since we never saw the promised NF Exceed 8X6 coil which has not been released so far. I hope Chet will mention again what problems he ran into with the legacy GPX coils when he used them on the 6000's with their timings. 

[phrunt]

X-coils are only not making 6000 coils as there is little point when both Coiltek and NF make them, it has a full range to suit its strong points already and they're using the semi spiral designs anyway.  They were the first to make an adapter and coils to suit for the 6000 well before anyone else, they just never went to production, concentrics don't perform well on the 6000, and larger coils don't benefit it much at all, and when they struggle to keep up with the sales of 7000 coils it's just not worth it with the adapter being more of a challenge to make by cutting a hole in a coil, the adapter guy that does all the 7000 adapters was happy to take it on, but to them it's not worth it, if sales of the 7000 coils slowed down ever they'd do it I'd imagine but when they can't keep up already and people have to go on waiting lists then there is no need to mess around with the 6000, they don't particularly like the 6000 themselves either which doesn't help, they want big deep gold in their area, not crumbs.

The earlier GPX coils don't work well on the 6000, yes, they work, but not well, you have to take them out and use them not just air test them.  If they worked well, I would sure be using them, I have plenty of them and access to an adapter if I wanted one.  If anyone's confident they work well, make an adapter and enjoy your old GPX coils on the 6000, I'll stick with coils designed for it.

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

Part 2 video 

[phrunt]

Odd he thinks now X-coils will rush and make coils that he's discovered how to make a dongle, they did it over 3 years ago.

I just asked X-coils to clarify why they've always told me not to bother with old GPX coils on my 6000, it's because it takes away what the 6000 is good at, small gold at depth turning it more into 4500/5000 like performance, so why use a 6000?  The those hoping to use big 5000 coils on a 6000 may as well just use their 4500/5000 as it can do better.  

They think I'm better off using coils designed for the 6000 and sticking with my older GPX coils on my Algoforce and 5000.

So while they do work, are they worth using? I trust their judgement and don't want to use my older coils on the 6000, and I have my Algo and 5000 to use them for best performance and to take advantage of where they're strong over the 6000.

Its in their interest if heaps of people start getting adapters to run older GPX coils as they could then start selling 6000 coils as adapters would be everywhere, yet they don't think 5000 coils on a 6000 is a beneficial thing to be doing.  A shame as I'd love to have all my GPX sizes of coils on my 6000 without having to buy new coils.

 

[Reg Wilson]

You can be forgiven Simon for knowing sod all about big gold and how the 6000 performs on real nuggets, so let me just assure you that the 6000 is not just a fly poop machine. I have learned this through experience.

Ilya and the Xcoil crew share your experience in this field as they hunt relics not gold.

[phrunt]

1 hour ago, Reg Wilson said:

You can be forgiven Simon for knowing sod all about big gold and how the 6000 performs on real nuggets, so let me just assure you that the 6000 is not just a fly poop machine. I have learned this through experience.

Ilya and the Xcoil crew share your experience in this field as they hunt relics not gold.

You're mistaken Reg, Ilya isn't one of the people that make the X-coils, he hunts relics and does really well at it with his GPX 4000, The X-coils guys primarily hunt big gold with the GPZ and find some great nuggets but don't display their finds to the public.

Great to hear you're continuing your big gold legacy and finding it with your 6000 though Reg.  You got that lighter machine you've been after! 

You may have misunderstood me too Reg, when I said the big 4500/5000 coils do better, it was they do better on the detector they were designed for, not working as well on the 6000.