If we thought the instructions for updating software on the A5 through the TF card reader was bad. Wait until you see the instructions for the newest mandatory hardware update PDF titled "Mandatory hardware fix to avoid overheating in A5 dashmaster". It's actually hilariously poorly written.

Any other legitimate company would offer a paid recall of their product and fix their overheating hardware issue to maintain their reputation and trust. I guess since it has been made clear that all their customers are dissatisfied and angry at Innosilicon, I guess they figure they have nothing to lose by issuing their latest update requiring the customers to do it themselves.

Apparently their warranty seal means nothing if they are demanding that customers actually open up their miners and fuck with very intricate components Not that it matters to me because mine came with broken warranty seals anyways

I'm surprised that my A5 is actually hashing nicely at 33 GH/s. Everything they do is such a facepalm that it seems like a miracle that they actually managed to create the worlds most efficient Dash miner (commercially available at the time of this post).

Also, changing topic, more A5's are popping up on eBay. The one I saw today was selling as a "Buy it now" / "Free shipping" for $5300 US... Ouch.

Unbelievable.. You have made direct replies to two concerns from two different customers but addressed neither of them.

• The 'Innosilicon Support Centre' documents do NOT have instructions on what to do with the TF card once you flash the new firmware on it, as EdgeOfSanity had explained.
• Your advice to "please send the details in email to miner_support@innosilicon.com.cn" is useless because I HAVE ALREADY EMAILED over 3 weeks ago about my wire transfer and nobody had messaged me saying that it had been received, let alone any information about shipping or delivery dates.
• I am already running the latest HW version, it actually is running well, and I am incredibly grateful for that. It's more than what many other customers can say. So your advise about updating had nothing to do with what has been discussed.
• Not sure if you know this, but nobody from your company is ever online on Skype...

Perhaps there is a language barrier?

I was also wondering about this. The Instructions that Innosilicon provided to update the A5 through TF card reader is not clear.
I assumed the same thing you did.. I put the TF card into the reader, then did the browser update using the 'Update File' provided on their website.

Seems to work okay so far...

It seems that may people are having issues with the A5's. I've heard many others mention that they have dead hash boards, or missing TF card readers. I have also read many posts mentioning software issues people have been experiencing.

I cannot believe how irresponsible Innosilicon has been to their customers and the community. Comments on their Twitter page are tearing them to shreds, calling them out on all of these issues that they refuse to acknowledge any of their customers, then go on to advertise their newest A4+ on their page and pretend like everything is fine.

My personal experience with Innosilicon so far has been:
- Several months late on promised miner arrival time
- Very unclear instructions
- No response from support when I tried to email for clarification at any point
- Was promised free A4+ as compensation for late A5 delivery in one email
- They took back their promise in the next email, but then actually offered it again on the condition I wire them over $400 US for shipping charges
- I wired them the $400 over 2 weeks ago and still have not been able to get a confirmation.
- No longer answering any of my emails

Innosilicon has really screwed a lot of people on this product. If not for the missing TF card reader, it's the hash boards not hasing, software not loading or updating, horrible and contradicting instruction manuals, and all with customer support that seems to be non existent.

Your not the only one that has received a miner with no TF card slot. See below:

Somebody had a similar issue with one of their hashboards here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2454765.0
Although it doesn't seem like there was a resolution..

I downloaded the dash_r1.0.rar shortly after Inno had Tweeted it out on Nov 20th.
Here is the file download for anybody who wants it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wgeNDsknhz-ksfNaSJfxnXaZH6yDax1r/view?usp=sharing

I can't tell if it works any better because I haven't received it yet.  

The sad truth is that it doesn't matter. All X11 coins make the same profit unless their market value goes up. 99% of miners mine for profitability, not because they love Dash and refuse to mine anything else. Miners will mine whatever X11 coin is most profitable and saturate it to the point where is makes the same profit as what you would make mining Dash. Many pools mine the most profitable X11 coin by default and payout in Bitcoin or Dash already. Unfortunately, simply mining another X11 coin for more profit is not viable.

Everybody who bought a D3 need to keep in mind that Bitmain did not force you to buy a D3. Everybody had an equal opportunity to do their own research, and make their own decisions. It's not Bitmains fault that the network difficulty skyrocketed so much. They saw an opportunity to create a new miner for a new algo, and the made enough to fit the demand. They did a good job. People who bought the first batch of D3s either broke even or may have even made a small profit. If you did some research you would notice that the D3, while affordable, were already not as efficient as other miners in the market (A5).  If you have mining experience under your belt, you would know that buying a D3 would not work out in the long haul when something more than twice as efficient is available. If you did realize this, you bought the D3 hoping to get into the marker before the network difficulty skyrocketed, meaning that you managed to get their first batch or (possibly) second batch, and had the opportunity to make a profit before too many people were able to join in.

If I walked into your house and begged you to sell me your toaster and offered you $2699, and you were under pressure to make as a profit, would you not sell it to me? At the time of sale it seems like a win win. I am happy that I have a new toaster, and you are happy you made a huge profit.

Bitmain could of simply decided to only sell half as many Antminer D3s as they did just to prevent the network difficulty from skyrocketing, but they would be taking a huge financial loss, and disappointing tons of customers that lined up to buy the D3.

Take this as a lesson learned the hard way. Mining has risk associated with it. Nothing is guaranteed, otherwise everybody and their grandma would be doing it.

I know I may make many people upset with this post, but I feel that people have to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming Bitmain. Bitmain is only guilty of delivering what was in demand. They probably saw this coming, but they cannot assume responsibility for the network effects. They can only supply our demand.

Of course they could do thing better like shipping PSUs on time with the Antminers if they were bought together, or stop supporting a cryptocurrency aimed at centralization (BCH) but there is always room for improvement.

tl;dr = Take responsibility for your actions and stop blaming Bitmain for network effects. If you didn't know that the Dash network difficulty was going to skyrocket, you didn't do enough research before you purchased.

Just because the S9's have been out for a while, doesn't mean they are going to be obsolete. Yes, other mining companies will release more efficient Bitcoin miners in the future, that is inevitable. The only difference now though is, with Bitcoin, companies will not be able to release something that is twice as efficient as the Bitmain S9, maybe only 15% - 20% at most because Bitcoin miners are already hitting Moore's Law and the chips used inside mining machines are getting close to being as efficient and as small as possible already.

With Dash, I would not be surprised if they come out with a 64GH/s X11 @ 1000W miner next year, because they probably can. Unlike Bitcoin, Dash mining equipment hasn't hit near its full potential yet.

Even though the S9 has been out for a year and a half, I still believe that it will be more relevant / profitable than any X11 miner currently available just because of how far Bitcoin mining equipment has pushed the envelope already. The Dashminer A5 has a much better chance of becoming obsolete before the S9 ever does. I've been mining with an S9 for over a year and am waiting for my A5 to come in. I realized a couple months ago that I made a huge mistake. Like many others, I knew that the Dash difficulty was going to skyrocket eventually, but thought I could get in before it was too late. Had I known, I would have just bought more S9s.

Herein lies the risk associated in the mining game. There always has, and always will be these types of risks involved in mining crypto.

I'm not saying that it's impossible that the same thing won't happen with the S9 in the future, but I do believe the chances are much smaller that it will because of the fact that companies have been trying to make the most efficient Bitcoin miners for 8 years, where as companies that have been focusing on LTC and Dash had only gotten serious about it recently (of course LTC has been in it for a while.. but still relatively new) so the limit as to how much hashing power can be physically stuffed into one miner cannot yet be measured as well as with Bitcoin miners. The S9 uses (almost) the latest and greatest technology even by todays standard, using the 16nm mining chips that are the smallest, most efficient cost effective chips out on the market.

The mining chips used in Bitcoin miners have nearly hit the 'Moore's Law' Wall, meaning that exponentially more efficient mining chips are no longer possible to produce, meaning that what we have inside of the S9 is (almost) as efficient as they will ever be for a while. Yes, China has announced a bitcoin miner that uses 14nm mining chips (basically the smaller the nm number, the more efficient they are..) and yes, they will probably make a more efficient miner, but only to a certain extent. Right now it is much much harder / more expensive to create anything that would be efficient enough to make the Antminer S9 obsolete.

Even Andreas Antonopoulos has said that the chips will lead to extended shelf life of mining equipment because of Moore's Law.
http://blogchain.info/post/14nm-chips-will-re-decentralize-mining-says-antonopoulos

Yeah I agree that ROI might take a little longer with the A4+ compared to the L3+ but the point being is that the A4+ is still slightly more efficient. Whenever there is a more efficient miner released, the difficulty rate goes up pretty fast. Currently an L3+ can make net you about $10 - $15 USD per day after power costs in the US. I would guess they would be making $7 - $10 USD after the A4+ is released. Actually that's not to bad TBH, but then again, at that point, why not just buy an Antminer S9? It would likely be just as profitable for around the same price, and it's at the top of it's game for efficiency. There is less of a chance that there will be another Bitcoin miner released within the next year that would make the S9 obsolete. I can't say the same for the L3+, A4+, or Dash miners for that matter.

I said that I would personally stay away from the L3+ because if anybody was looking to turn a real profit, it would have been when the L3+ was first released. If you plugged an L3+ in now, you do still have a good chance to reach an ROI after a year, but expect to be making $2 - $5 a day if anything after reaching ROI. I think you would likely still come out on top, but I just feel that there are better things to invest in ATM.

Either way, I believe that mining LTC with either a L3+ or A4+ (once it is released) would have a better chance of making any profit compared to anything in Dash right now.

I also believe that mining good old fashioned Bitcoin with an S9 would be the most profitable out of all of the ASIC options mentioned above unfortunately.

More pictures and another video from a seller on AliExpress. I believe the seller is out of stock though.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/OUT-Stock-NEW-INNOSILICON-A5-Dash-Miner-X11-Algorithm-30-2GH-S-Dash-Miners-750W/32841122637.html

No I missed it, where in the video do you see a power meter at the wall?

Yes, it's more profitable to mine Bitcoin with an S9 or Litecoin with an L3+ than to mine Dash with anything. Right now it makes more sense to use an S9 or L3+ rather than mine Dash just because of how the network difficulty has skyrocketed in Dash.

Pretty much the only way to reach an ROI in Dash is if the value of Dash goes way up. And if this does happen, you will make more by buying Dash instead of mining it in the first place. With Bitcoin and Litecoin right now, you don't need to depend of a price increase to reach an ROI with an S9 or L3+, there is a good chance you can reach an ROI even if the price of Bitcoin or Litecoin were to stay the same.

Of course there is a chance that A5 owners could potentially reach ROI without a Dash price increase, but that would mean that we are able to mine Dash for about 4 years without more efficient Dash equipment being released, but odds are very against this ever happening.

This can easily change though... Innosilicon is releasing what I believe is the worlds most efficient Litecoin miner soon (Pfft soon... hahah) called the A4+.. so I would personally stay out of LiteCoin for a while because the network difficulty is now due for another major increase.

You might have better luck posting in the marketplace: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0

Expect it to get worse before it gets any better. People are just now starting to plug in their Innosilicon A5's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa8cw5aeIkQ (pretty much first hand look of the A5 in action that wasn't posted by Innosilicon)

By the end of the month, there could potentially be 1000's plugged in.

Nope. Haven't heard anybody who claimed to have received one yet. Although...

I did find a couple A5 videos popping up on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3qDZuRKHs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa8cw5aeIkQ

If you haven't checked Innosilicon's Twitter page, there is a short video of them in action.

The A5 appears to be quite a bit smaller than the Antminer D3, which I found to be quite interesting.
Also, from what I gather using YouTube's auto generated English closed captions (quite inaccurate I know..), the guy in the video claims that normal mode is in fact 30 GH/s, 32GH/s in 'esa' and 38GH/s overclocked. Not sure if 'esa' was translated correctly... if anybody knows please enlighten me. He also claims 750 Watts of energy consumption in normal mode.

He also states that the D3 is nosier than the A5, which I think is also a big plus for anybody who will be running the A5 at home or more likely in their garage.

When he plugs it in he ends up getting 33GH/s which is quite nice! If this is legit, then Innosilicon actually managed to hit their promised target which is good news. Not sure it will be enough to hit an ROI any time soon though  

Mining the shit out of Dash with D3s will put you more in the hole than coming anywhere near getting an ROI. I would either sell them, or wait a few months and see if the Dash mining difficulty decreases, which is not guaranteed

Unless you have access to free electricity, then you should seriously consider keeping the A5 instead of trading them for D3s. Once the A5s start getting plugged in, I think the D3s will be costing you more to run then they are going to make. At least for a while until people start to exit the Dash mining game and the difficulty becomes a little more manageable.

In what way do you think the D3s will be more profitable than the A5s? Instead of having 5 D3s that are going to net you either $0 or negative amounts for a while, or have 1 A5 that will make $4-$10 per day?

If your plugging straight into the wall, without using a PDU, make sure your cable (C13 to Whatever outlet your country uses) is able to handle 230V.

I believe most of those ones sold in the US and Canada are only rated for 120V. Usually it's the C13 to C14 cables that are meant to feed into a PDU that are made to handle up to 230V. Your country may have different standards.