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so 1 of my S9's suddenly stopped showing one of the hashing boards.

https://i.imgur.com/IvCTYeG.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/IvCTYeG.jpg)

i searched online, contacted Bitmain , did a dozen of re-setting , firmware changes and tens of rebooting attempts but nothing worked.

so Bitmain asked me to send the miner back, and the best settlement was me sending the BAD hashing board, yet even with that offer it didn't make sense to me as the shipping cost from my country to china is kind of expensive and i just thought it was not worth it. so i was about to give up on that hashing board until something strange happened !

I for some reason flushed the autofreq firmware and suddenly the missing hash board showed up.

this is the name of the firmware > Antminer-S9-all-201711171757-autofreq-user-Update2UBI-NF.tar.gz  

can be found on bitmain website > https://service.bitmain.com/support/download?product=Antminer%20S9

now before you say it might be just my luck. i flushed back another firmware and boom ! hash board goes missing again ! :D

still until that point i thought maybe only this particular miner that has this fix work for ! so i searched for a used S9 with a board not showing "bought it for pretty cheap" i tried the firmware and damn ! it worked again :D.

I do not have any TECHNICAL or even REASONABLE explanation for this !

I just wanted to share this with you all , maybe someone find it useful.

Got any kernal logs before and after?

didn't really save any kernel logs but this is what i sent to bitmain for the repair request for the first miner.


as for now it shows the following


so i would assume the J8 is possibly board no3 out of 3 s9s boards was the missing one.

https://i.imgur.com/Crvq5H6.jpg (https://i.imgur.com/Crvq5H6.jpg)

for the second miner " image in OP it was J7 missing.

but from what i recall they both showed the same info of [Jx] has 0 asic

I have two s9s with dead hashboards still on warranty, but im afraid to do this and lost all the gear..

I do not think flushing  bitmain own firmware voids the asic warranty by any means , i also do not think that a firmware will harm a good running board. but again DYOR and do whatever you want at your risk . good luck

Flashing default firmware from bitmain doesn't void any warranty it is allowed to flash it but except for customized or modified firmware.

And I think what happened to your antminer s9 doesn't work with firmware auto freq and I think the other firmware is incompatible that is why you get missing hashboard so auto freq firmware solved your issue.

So, there is no hardware issue in your s9. How about the hashrate and temp.?

Other solution for hashing board you can reflash the hashboard with "Pickit 3" you can find the idea from here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032987.0

i do not think it has anything with the firmware being incompatible as it was running fine for a while in a passive state, nothing has been changed , the hashing board just gone missing for god knows why.

there is 0 hardware issues now and before , i seldom get any hw errors, temps never go pass 80c. the strange thing is, with this FW i seem to get a better hash rate on the pool side.

thanks for the link, my brother has some good knowledge regarding those programming case such as PICKIT 3 , so it may be a good idea to buy broken miners for very cheap and fix them to re-sell them or use them :D.

Mostly, November firmware solved this issues, but sometimes doesn't work so your thread will be helpful to someone if they confused which firmware they should use. Never give up if you feel that the issue of the miner is just a software program, not a hardware issues. Because I experienced on fixing hardware directly without trying to flash it first and then it becomes broken and never solve the problem. So, do everything first in software like flashing it from old firmware to the latest firmware and flash control board with working firmware and now a new tool called PICKit 3 can solve some hashboard issue by flashing it with working hex file. Before you go to the hardware, do this 3 method first because you can save as much as many miners from being useless and revive your miner from being dead. It's the basic thing that we should do before touching any hardware because without knowing which part is broken or damaged the problem can be worst.

Why not buy some broken miners and fix them for study purposes (honestly, it's a bright idea) and software program is a common issue of the ASICminer. I heard some members doing this here on the forum and fixing damaged and broken ASICminer and resell them for a cheap price on eBay or resell them in our local marketplace here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0) in the forum.

you are absolutely right, last thing one should try is hardware, in fact in many cases, resetting the setting only can fix many issues. but again this is a new field to most people , i mean the ASIC industry has very little information available online, see if you got a problem with a GPU rig you find thousends of posts on how to fix it, however on ASIC there is little to no information on troubleshooting.

as for the study purpose "of course" it's a plus beside making some $ Cheesy.  I will be happily posting any findings of mine to help the miners community.

Hi dear Colleagues,

I have several S9 and S9i ASICs with the same trouble of a hash board invisibility.
Could you comment if the next should work, please? I'm going to try to use s9 and s9i hasboards in the same ASIC (I mean here asic = controller + collers + box). Which one is better? Basically the S9i Antminer with 1-2 hasboards inserted and taken from older S9 looks reasonable. Or maybe better to insert the s9i hashboards into S9 ASIC?

Please advice.

Or this way I would force myself to buy Pickit 3 in the end?)))

Thans,
Egorrich

They're not even the same size, you can't just swap them in like that.

i do not think they will fit in the body, anything aside from size different should be the same, i see no harm in trying tho "at your own risk tho" , did you try the auto-tune firmware ?