Is your S5 miner plugged into a network that has a DHCP server? Presumably a network with your router?

I would suggest the following:

1) Turn off as much stuff on your network as is feasible, except for the router and your usual computer. This includes the S5's. Don't forget Wifi devices and such.
2) Assuming you have Windows, use the "IP Scanner software" to scan your network and record all the IP address and whatever else it tells you about each IP address.
3) Turn on ONE of your S5 miners, let it settle for at least a minute and then repeat step #2. You should see something new. That should be the S5 you added.Once you can log, you should be able to regain control and do some debug work on actually getting it to connect to a pool and doing the mining.

Usually most routers have a way to log into them to configure and check their status. Most will have a way to display the DHCP configuration, and which IP addresses have been assigned to who. Work on one miner at a time in terms of getting control, get the right image flashed, and then tinkering with it to actually connect to a pool and mine. You might also want to consider trying different pools until you can see what's up with your pool specification. Keep your network as small as you can until thing appear under control and then start to add things back. You''ll eventually see something that triggers things.

It may appear to be frustratingly slow, but until you have some reasonable control of you S5 "network", you'll be fighting this for a long time.

I can't comment on the C1 -vs- S5 firmware, but it only makes sense to use the S5 firmware for the S5.

Maybe Phillip should lock this one?

Late update before bed:

Bitcoin Difficulty:    47,643,398,018
Estimated Next Difficulty:    48,687,107,184 (+2.19%)
Adjust time:    After 25 Blocks, About 3.9 hours
Hashrate(?):    351,779,589 GH/s

BTC price: 237

As I recall, 48V was the classic Telephone Company standard for power within their switching centers. I think that may have also been what was actually on the line out to the customer. I know that within some generations of Cray computers, there was a 48V set of bus bars for the cabinet, that was then stepped down to 12V on the blades with the processors and memory.

If you still have an urge to spend some money on mining equipment, check out one of the group buys. There is one that's trying to get organized. The current theory is that the S5 is "too old" and they want to accumulate funds for "the next Bitmain thing". I have no idea how much they are accumulating, and they don't know anything about what they'll buy, just that they "want to jump on it when it comes out".

Sounds right up you alley, no? 

This is all based on your recounting of your past experiences. Please don't take this seriously as it's compounds risk on un-announced nothing. I am just being flippant in what looks like an attempt to buy something NOW.

Is it just my imagination, or has the overall pool hash rate doubled over the course of 24 hours?

I haven't looked at the orders, but I haven't seen my SP20 flip on and off of Westhash this much before. I really liked that April run where it was solidly 10% over nominal. Today it's been as much +8%, and then -3% less than an hour later.

Yeah, it looks like the folks that picked a decrease are out of luck this time. I am beginning to wonder if this is more than just variance. For some reason it almost feels like something real got added. Nothing real to back that up, just that it seems like this may be a permanent +2% addition, rather than a transient one.

On the upside, I am in the running for a win this time!

So this is roughly an "Avalon based Rbox" with much better power consumption figures. So the real big unknown then is it's price. What I saw from the PDF's suggest it's a straight 12V power input, probably a single PCIe connector.

An interesting development. I just hope it doesn't follow the Avalon 4.1 pricing model.

I'll go poke around a bit, but maybe somebody here knows: How many A3222's are on each board of the existing Avalon 4.1 miner? That miner as I recall has 2 boards, of N chips each, right? Any body know what N is?

While it's quite possible that all the Bitmain gear has enough PCIe connectors to never draw more than 150W through a 6-pin connector, that's not universal. My experience is that the power supply is usually a better long term investment than the actual ASIC mining hardware. It seems short-sighted to use 18AWG wire instead of 16AWG wire. Of course maybe this will just be an opportunity for somebody else to produce a "kit" that upgrades the Bitmain power supply to replace the 18AWG wires.

Bitmain should reconsider this choice, or offer a "heavy duty" version with 16AWG for a $5 more (IMHO).

You might even want to consider taking a working device with you at that time. Kinda like the old COD (Cash On Delivery) model for items. Or like a real store where you buy stuff and pay for it at the time you pick it up.

Has there ever been a miner vendor like that?

Fair enough.

Has anyone seen anything related to their "USB Charging Hub", mentioned for the first quarter of 2015. I didn't get anywhere with their website, which seemed to require an Email address which I was unwilling to provide.

In other words: Kinda like solo mining?   

You may well be right. Ignoring the fact that it's Bitcoin, there are a bunch of Venture Capital firms that invest big money (e.g. millions of USD) into a startup, and get back 10 cents on the dollar (if that) when it doesn't work out. The VC firm knows that and relies on a few "home runs" to make up for their "strike outs". The Bitcoin marketplace is littered with folks that "invested" in a Bitcoin miner company (who thought they were customers), that lost big. Big money isn't always smart money.

As LordPaco points out, the automatic difficulty adjustment just destroys the theory of "mining the crap out of Bitcoin" because two weeks later (or less) the difficulty adjusts up by 30% or more, and boom your great big plans go poof.

Of course we'll be able to find out how this plays out in 18-24 months, if that long.

I read in more detail the article you referenced. To me the target audience wasn't anybody currently involved with Bitcoin, but rather potential investors in their company. It all looks wonderful on a set of Power Point slides, until somebody starts to ask questions, and then it start to unravel.

While I guess a Router or a game console could accommodate an ASIC, I don't know if either has the built in margin to deal with another ASIC being added. The rest of the infrastructure (e.g. Internet access) is in place, but that's about it. The router is the only one that's likely on 24 hours a day.

I also noticed the $7.45 cost to produce a Bitcoin. I'd swear I read an article that suggest that the price of a Bitcoin will gravitate towards it's cost of production. Think about that for a moment.

I am completely unimpressed.

I have my doubts about what they have actually done with Intel. If they have done something, obviously they aren't actually deploying hash in any significant way at the present time. The network wide hash rate has been essentially flat for two months. I guess if they had a significant amount of hash at the end of 2014, they could be quietly replacing it with more power efficient chips, but that's it. You can't just secretly mine without being visible to the rest of the Bitcoin universe (at any significant scale). Maybe they have some really super-duper chips, but they most assuredly haven't deployed them in large numbers except possibly in replacement of something else.

There are so many other opportunities that Intel has passed on in terms of fabbing chips, this just doesn't seem like it's all that "real". I just don't see Bitcoin being big enough for Intel to care about Bitcoin ASiC production.

I am pretty sure that in the cases where Phillip rented hash, it was to SOLO mine, possibly using CK's solo mining "pool". The point was to collect virtually all of a 25BTC reward for a block.

Simple economics would suggest that as the cost of something approaches zero, the demand for it approaches infinity.

Sounds vaguely like the promise of Nuclear Power in the US during the 1906's:

"Too cheap to meter"

What nobody made clear was that the first 100 watts produced by a nuclear plant cost a billion dollars. The "last" 100 watts were essentially "free".

If you want to sell an "ASIC based" 500 Watt heater, it can't cost 3x the $39.95 non-ASIC version, or it will never sell. I also would be surprised if it ever ran more than a few hours straight. Most people don't buy a space heater in order to run 24 hours a day. I expect they will also wonder why their "heater" wants to access the WiFi in their house, if they even have WiFi.

I think a specialty niche "ASIC based" heater might appeal to a few folks, but it won't have mass adoption, nor will it pay back much if anything to the manufacturer if it only gets run 10-20 hours in a month (like many small space heaters do).