OH WAIT!!!

The Maybe the S6 will finally make an appearance !!!   

I just scrapped a HUGE pile of old servers and ancient Chinese bitcoin mining rellics... I have fans up the ying and coming out the yang .... if anyone needs a few, let me know and I'll research the specs on these fans and post it along with a price ( cheap )....

Hmm .... I don't know what is more of an issue .... the unknowns of alien tech, or that nuclear generating station I'm building in my shed to power all my miners using the radioactive materials from smoke detectors....

 

 

 

LOL, obviously I'm just messing with ya ... You guess is as good as anyone elses.... only Bitmain R&D knows.

Then again, I predict an S8 or an S9... lol... obviously

Bitmain is releasing a miner next week that will make the S7 obsolete. Its based on a 5.75nm process, 250TH/s in the same footprint as the S1/S3/S5/S7 ... and only uses 50watts at the wall....

It comes down to how many amps of 12VDC per Molex pin. the more amps being stuffed through each pin increases the heat generated in the pin, the pin to socket physical contact connection and at the solder connections.

Lets say the unit uses 100A of 12VDC. You have 3 Molex 6 pin connectors per hash board x 3 hash boards. In the molex connector 3 are positive DC, 3 are negative DC. I have no clue how many amps the controller uses so I'll just focus on the hash boards. ANALOGY : Picture the power supply as a water pump in a bucket. You turn on the pump, water flows through one hose,that is positive, it goes to a water cooling block for a cpu, the hot water exiting the water block enters another tube and goes back to the bucket, thats the negative.... so each positive and negative pin is a circuit and can only pump just so much through the circuit. What I'm getting at is, even though you use two pins, 1 positive and 1 negative, you are NOT adding the amperage capacity of the two pins together, both pins are the same "hose", basically, what goes through one end of the hose comes out the other.

A total of 9 Molex connectors, That would be 27 pins for positive and 27 pins for negative. 100amps of 12VDC divided by 27 equals 3.7A of 12vdc going through each pin.

Now if you reduce the amount of pins by not using ALL the molex connectors with your power supply, you will increase the current going through each pin. Using 2 Molex connectors per hash board equals 18 pins positive and 18 pins negative. 100A of 12VDC divided by 18 equals 5.5 amps going through each pin.


Each pin of the Molex Mini-Fit Jr. connector is rated for 9A maximum. So the pin and the mating connector would handle the current going through the connector if using just 2 connectors per hash board. BUT, how is the circuit board designed? Is the circuit board designed to handle the additional heat generated  by just using 2 connectors? I would not think so since adding additional layers of heat dissipating copper in the layered fiber board would cost money and we all know Bitmain is in it for the cashola.  My guess would be that if you use just 2 of the Molex connectors per hash board, you will find that the circuit board will start to discolor and or the Molex connector due to the excessive heat generated. You will also find that the voltage will drop under load at the hashboard causing inefficiency.

The the heat sink issue, with them detaching and moving ... I wonder if a couple of pieces of good ol electrically insulating "fish paper" slipped between the boards would help keep them from shorting out the neighboring board and tighten up the space so they don't move around as much if they do come loose.

The fish paper cross section would be parallel to the air flow so any restriction from the fish paper would be very minimal.

I don't have my S7's yet so I can only speculate from looking at the pictures.

Ummm, I don't think these are UL listed/approved .... ;-P

Looks like I'll be building a current monitoring system with an emergency shutdown on the power system as well as piggybacking a couple fans that are ALWAYS on. A sensitive smoke detector and A CO2 or Halon fire suppression system probably would be a good idea also ...

Oh, and make sure your home owner insurance is in good standing ... lol...

Technically you can.... by electrical code and by practice, its dangerous.

You would need two separate 120V circuits but both of those circuits cannot be from the same side of the breaker box.

When the power comes in from the pole or underground, after passing through the meter, it enters your breaker box. There will be 3 wires, possibly 4 wires. There will be 2 "hot" wires, a neutral wire and a ground wire. The neutral wire is attached to the same bar as the ground.... litterally neutral is at ground potential and will be attached to the breaker box metal case via a ground bar with some screws.

The two HOT wires are electrically phased 180 degrees from each other therefore when you take your voltmeter and measure across the HOTS, you get the 240VAC, if you measure from ether or HOT to neutral (ground) , you will see 120VAC

When the incoming wires are connected to the breaker box, one HOT is connected to 1/2 the MAINS breaker and the other HOT to the other 1/2 of the MAINS breaker. In the box itself, the buss then takes one HOT and feeds 1/2 the breakers, and the other HOT feeds the remaining half of the breakers

Your haphazard idea of using two 120VAC outlets to get 240VAC is possible if you can one 120VAC circuit from each 1/2 of the 240VAC HOTS

NOTE: If you find the two circuits, you would be limited to the amperage capacity of those breakers and the installed wiring which will either be 15 amp or 20 amp, then you will be further restricted by the extension cords both in wire size and length ( 14AWG can carry up to 15 amp and 12 AWG can carry up to 20 amp -- FOR A SHORT DISTANCE The longer the length cord, the more resistance;;; the more resistance, the more heat generated IN THE CORD;;; The longer the length, the greater the resistance equals less than 120VAC reaching the device. ALSO extension cords are not meant for CONTINUOUS MAXIMUM CAPACITY USE)

My suggestion is to either use your electric oven's outlet... if you have an electric oven or you don't do a lot of cooking... or if you have a gas oven, look in back anyways, you might have a 50A 240VAC outlet back there. The next location to look would be in the laundry room. An electric drier will use a 30A 240VAC outlet.... if you have a gas drier, that 30A 240VAC outlet would not be used-- plug into that outlet..... only a 120V outlet and a gas line is used for a gas drier.  

Those two circuits would be much more safer to use than extension cords and two 120VAC circuits.

Just my two sense.... but seldom anyone listens...

<shakes his head then beats it hard on the keyboard till the keys fly off >

I hear this sooooo much, not only from bitcoin junkies, but from these darn plug and play ham operators who are just over glorified screwdriver wizard CBers who memorized 35 questions to pass a multiple choice test but know only how to plug something into a wall outlet or a USB port.

I teach better in person, scary blue sparks and all maybe I'll make a video, to teach these slightly misinformed individules .... I never seem to get my full point across in text.

to be continued......

I wound up putting Ubuntu desktop on the server and got it to play nice... graphically quite slow, but data crunching, nice and fast. I then added the ppa for the bitcoin core and downloaded the wallet / core.... its syncing with the network ... 42 more weeks to sync. Once that is done I'll start with the hair pulling of trying to get the thing set up and talking for solo lottery style mining.

Thinking ahead, I put the blockchain data SOLELY onto a 300GB SCSI drive with RAID 1 mirroring to an identical drive.... I shouldn't have to download  the blockchain again and I shouldn't run out of drive space for at least another year ... lol.

The next rabbit I'm going to try to pull out of the hat is to use that same server to run another node for a different coin simultaneously and again do solo mining. Again with a RAID 1 mirror of the blockchain.

This hash board burning instance if the internet fails.

What is happening? Do the fans shut down when the internet is no longer sensed? If that is the case, it would not be hard to add a separate fan controller to keep the fans push/pulling air across the boards as a safety precaution while or if they ( Bitmain ) even bothers to provide a fix.

Sooooooo ...... What order date did they ship out today?

I ordered some S7 B3's  on 10/20/2015 .... I'll probably get some hobcobbled S7 B(whatever parts they could scrape up) and receive them a day or two before they announce the S8's ....... That would probably be about my luck, plus being the first time buying absolutely new Antminers, they are bound to fook over the little newbs

I thought of taking the easy way.... but I like a challenge and I like learning how to do things so I can possibly pass on my knowledge later.

If I cannot figure out how to set up a node with this new core and Ubuntu, I'll probably have to find a solo pool.

Pardon me for being abit duhhhhh ..... what is BW and what are they offering? I take it they are a hardware manufacturer?

Avalon 6 .... what is the website URL for that one too?

Actually, that looks like an old Avalon or Avalon clone. Look at the chips, if its an Avalon of Avalon clone, the chips will say Avalon.

Being only 2 modules, I'm thinking 120GHs.... but it depends on wether its an Avalon 1 or Avalon 2

I actually still have my Avalon 1 and a highly modified Avalon 2 clone....

CAUTION THOUGH.....

These relics push the limits on the molex connectors. The molex pins can only handle so much amperage per pin and these units go right to that edge. They will start smoking, they will melt, they will cook the circuit boards leaving you to have to modify the boards because the solder traces separated from the circuit board due to excessive heat. Not to mention since it is a plastic melting, its right next to starting on fire...

I can find plenty of the how to guides on how to set up a full node and solo mine Bitcoin with older versions of Ubuntu and the older Bitcoin core's, but nothing recent. I have set up a full node in the past, but that was with a far older core.

I've tried wiggle my way through the process but always come up with some RPC errors that say something about RPC is not used anymore, use Bitcoin-CLI....

Soooo, I'm looking for a ~How To~ guide with step by step instructions ( preferably with the actual cli commands since I'm not a total Ubuntu/Linux guru ).

Now before you say - its un profitable to solo mine..... The node I'd like to set up is for one, to support the network, and two so I can solo mine with a single miner lottery style..... and for the education since bitcoin core has changed abit.

For reference, I would be using Ubuntu 14.04 64bit server since this is actually being installed on a Dell PowerEdge. The desktop version of Ubuntu is just a little too clunky on a server.

Thanks in advance....

My price is crazy?  No, the price you paid was CRAZY low. Good catch I have to say!

Going by what I see them advertised for and then selling on Craigslist and on Ebay, at an ASKING price of $200 an S2, I'm right in the average price range. But ALSO, my price is an ASKING price.... a purchaser can negotiate.

However, I'm not so certain that I want to sell them or recycle them though. I had a mad scientist moment last night and farted around with some clockrates, voltages, components and whatnot... at one point I had an S2 running at roughly 0.6W / GHs for an hour, stable. Obviously the hashrate was lower than 1TH but it was more efficient than in the factory configuration and using the coinwarz calculator, if I had a power supply that could handle continuous use (I have a lab supply that I adjusted lower than 12vdc), I would be able to pull a profit again with these using my home electricity. I had to abruptly stop the testing because I was starting to smell my power supply cooking.

Now, if you rent an office or storage unit for $100 - $200 that has electricity included in the rent, ( That what I was doing with these S2's, they just came home after my lease expired ), you automatically pull a profit. At my asking price, with no modifications, stock 200Mhz config, running 4 of the S2's, ROI for the purchaser is less than 6 months. Try to lock in a 1yr or 2r lease and there you go...

That is probably what these S2's are good for now ... find the free energy and you have your beer money for the month.

BUT, if I can get consistent better efficiency with the changes that I'm making, I think I'll keep them and make a "How to" article ....  How to say The S2 .... IT'S ALIVE!

It was at a Goodwill ~outlet~ / warehouse, not at one of their retail stores.

The outlet is the last chance to get things before its recycled for materials.

Once in a while you can find some real interesting stuff there. For instance , one visit I picked up a laboratory autoclave and a Baush & Lomb microscope for that same $.89 /lb ...

I think its something like the batch 2 being the rejects from Batch 1 except even more unstable at higher freqs than the batch 2's... therefore they have to really drop the clockrate to get the 3.5TH/s and stability

Those units that do not make the advertising claims of 4.8TH/s are money thrown out the window if they don't make them work somehow. So it would make sense to throw them through a rework process, if they still don't preform, then lower the clock rate and look for the stability sweet spot and sell them as a de-rated S7.

The S7 B2's were de-rated to 575Mhz clock, maybe the S7 B5's are the real flunkers and are clocked for stability at 500Mhz clockrate.

Before tossing the ones that don't meet spec into the hopper and take the loss, I would re-work them and look for a workaround to recover some cash from the QC fail units.