Thanks to folks most recent responses. As it turns out, the fundamental issue was the 4-pin cable. I had run a continuity check on the lines, but the problem is that it had two of the lines crossed. That is what was causing the "dongle" to reset on a regular basis. Now that I have a working configuration, with a fragile 4-pin cable, I can easily work issues from here. It's now hashing, and I can interact with the actual mining hardware.

Yan at BlockC helped me diagnose this. He indicated that during their early days, the cable producer would do this from time to time and hence they included additional 4-pin cables with their bulk orders to deal with any mis-wired cables.

For anybody else having a "regular dongle reset" issue, the 4-pin cable is a STRAIGHT THROUGH arrangement, no cross-overs between the ends. Once you know what too look for on the dongle in terms of LED patterns, it's pretty easy to recognize.

Do you have to pay the bills in fiat currency? I would guess that you do. I don't quite know how you'll remain anonymous once you go through some kind of exchange in order to convert the Bitcoins to "real money" that other folks will accept.

Also consider the heat and noise that will be produced by any kind of miner that will produce the BTC that you want. Just something to consider.

It's possible that the units are "new" given the loose definition of "new" for Bitcoin and Bitmain. If they haven't had a previous owner, they might have been sold as "new" even if they had been hashing for months. That of course won't really mean anything in terms of their condition or warranty.

Is this the first scam effort that is supposedly based in the USA? I am omitting obvious poor performer like BFL that actually tried to produce something, and did so at one time. The others I've seen in the last year were always in some country other that the USA.

Bitcoin Difficulty:    163,491,654,909
Estimated Next Difficulty:    159,148,837,957 (-2.66%)
Adjust time:    After 247 Blocks, About 1.7 days
Hashrate(?):    1,125,453,310 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 10.1 minutes
3 blocks: 30.4 minutes
6 blocks: 1.0 hours
   
Updated:    2:10 (5.6 minutes ago)

I am still confident that I have sign correct on my guess (i.e negative). It may not be quite as negative as I would like, but it will be a welcome relief from the other adjustments this year. With luck, it will land right on Phil's guess, which would be pretty much a win all around!

It also depends on your motivation(s). From a strictly financial point of view, there isn't much reason to run it. Not everything you do is based on financial outcome though. Just don't plan on making any money.

I am an infrequent, cheap coinbase user, and I think it's usually 3-4 days before the BTC shows as available to transfer or spend. I think if you are willing to incur higher costs, you can speed up that process.

If BCN were getting S7's for $100, they could make way more money by selling them for $400, and not need to worry about their facilities costs or BTC price.

The $100 price seems REALLY improbable......

I would agree with this as well. It's been "ages" since this thread has anything useful in terms of hardware. The SP50 miner seemed ripe for discussion, then nothing.....

P.S. I think @Searing is completely aware of the "home mining situation". Just read more of his posts on other threads.

I would be real surprised in BitFury pre-builds any of the "mining containers". Yes they most certainly could, but it's a pretty expensive thing to have "on the shelf" waiting for a buyer. If they actually have a buyer, then it will be coming back after it arrives wherever and gets plugged in......

I think the "short term cheap power" or "power cheat" story is more plausible.

Every day is one step closer to difficulty decrease!!!

I think very few people try and "supplement their income" via Bitcoin mining these days. To see where you are in terms of income (not profit) and your mining hardware, take a look at:

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

On the left hand side of the page, you'll see a set of boxes with 1  filled in for GH/s. You can over-type that box with 32, and all the other numbers will adjust. You'll see that your income will be about $.30 (30 cents) per week. If you spend 30 cents per week generating that, then you aren't really earning anything. That why the current bitcoin profitability discussion revolved around:

- Electricity cost where you are mining?

- The current price of BTC (i.e. how many dollars for BTC).

- The efficiency of your mining hardware (i.e. how many GH per watt of electricity used)

- The cost of the mining hardware.

- The upcoming "halving" (i.e. in roughly July the BTC reward per block will be reduced by half).

Don't be surprised if the picture pained by the number is pretty bleak in terms of earning money. Bitcoin is, and has been, become a more and more centralized production enterprise these days. While it's interesting to learn about and such, it's not likely to provide many folks much in the way of "profit".

Assuming the the "USB Dongle" is the AUC2 as mentioned in the Avalon documentation, there is mention of 3 LED's on the AUC2. I am assuming that they don't count the PWR LED as one of the three. They mention Red, Green, and Blue. I can observe a patern on those lights that looks like it roughly matches up with the failures in the "System Log" and "Kernel Log". I stared at it for a couple of minutes, and there is the pattern:

Red/Green both OFF . Blue is ON.
.....
Wait about 20-30 seconds
......
Red OFF. Blue and Green both ON for about 2 seconds
......
About 2 seconds later
....
Red OFF, Blue and Green turn OFF.
----
Red and Green remain OFF. Blue turns ON
----
Repeat back at the top of this sequence.

This looks to me like some kind of retry loop, either driven by the RPi, or possibly done by whatever hardware is on the AUC2. This might be why there is firmware mentioned for the AUC2. I also used my USB power meter, and the voltage coming out of the RPi USB port is spot on at 5.00V. The current is very low at about .01A when only Blue light is on, and it jumps to .05A for while and then falls back to .01A. This all looks like a very light load on the RPi USB port (i.e. no obvious overloads). I never saw the Red LED turn on or even blink when I watched it.

I'll probably try "ohming out" the 4-pin cable next, but I am getting pretty tired tonight. Right now I am pretty convinced that I'll need to get this AUC2 communication issue ironed out before I can really worry about anything else (i.e. the actual hashing unit).

When I apply the +12V to the hashing unit, the fan spins up and down a couple of time, until it finally settles down at a very low hum. I don't see any Red lights on the hashing unit, and all looks good there so far.  This just further leads me to think I have a breakdown somewhere between the RPi and the actual Avalon6. Even after I turn off the +12V and the fan spins down, the light flashing sequence, and the System Log messages continue. Never seen the Red light.

If anyone can correct or embellish my understanding of what I am seeing, please do so.

I am just stuck on actually getting hashing with my Avalon6. I seem to be getting into the Pi just fine, and I can see green lights on the hashing boards, and a Blue light (and a Green) on the USB dongle. I am pretty sure the USB dongle is a USB --> I2c converter. In any case. the Pi see kano.is just fine, but I never get any readings from the hashing unit itself. No temp, No Fan speed, no volts, Nothing. It really isn't seeing anything out there.

The following messages are in the system log, and look worrisome:

Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.368430] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 87
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.627728] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 88 using dwc_otg
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.751307] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=29f1, idProduct=33f2
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.759816] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.768746] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB2IIC Converter
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.774930] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: CANAAN
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2416.780621] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 20141122
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 daemon.err udevd[2542]: failed to execute '/sbin/modprobe' '/sbin/modprobe -bv usb:v29F1p33F2d0100dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Aisc00ip00in01': No such file or directory
Sun Feb 28 01:54:13 2016 daemon.err udevd[2543]: failed to execute '/sbin/modprobe' '/sbin/modprobe -bv usb:v29F1p33F2d0100dcEFdsc02dp01ic02iscFEip00in00': No such file or directory
Sun Feb 28 01:54:42 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2445.909561] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 88
Sun Feb 28 01:54:42 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.168853] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 89 using dwc_otg
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.292385] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=29f1, idProduct=33f2
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.300918] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.309820] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB2IIC Converter
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.316055] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: CANAAN
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2446.321746] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 20141122
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 daemon.err udevd[2558]: failed to execute '/sbin/modprobe' '/sbin/modprobe -bv usb:v29F1p33F2d0100dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Aisc00ip00in01': No such file or directory
Sun Feb 28 01:54:43 2016 daemon.err udevd[2559]: failed to execute '/sbin/modprobe' '/sbin/modprobe -bv usb:v29F1p33F2d0100dcEFdsc02dp01ic02iscFEip00in00': No such file or directory
Sun Feb 28 01:55:01 2016 cron.info crond[405]: crond: USER root pid 2566 cmd /usr/bin/cgminer-monitor
Sun Feb 28 01:55:12 2016 kern.info kernel: [ 2475.470652] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 89

These seem to just repeat forever, and actual hashing blades and fan are very quiet, though the fan is turning.

Any thoughts on what to look at? I have tried various cable swaps that I can do (i.e. the usb cables and RPi power supply and such) all to no avail. I only have the single 4-pin cable for the A6, which I expect is essentially an i2c "cable".

I noticed aways back mention of additional kinds of firmware for other bits (i.e. AUC, MM, Fan, etc), but I have no idea how I would check them and/or change them. Are those items flashed separately from the RPi image? How does one inspect those bits of firmware for their version?

Thanks for any of your thoughts.

I am gong to assume the hash stays missing as well:

-2.9 = alh

Since I acquired my Avalon6 used and without a Raspberry Pi, I have been fiddling around a bit with getting all setup. I have found out a few things that I thought others might find of value, since I haven't seen them mentioned elsewhere.

1) The various Raspberry Pi firmware images I expect use the original OpenWRT setup in terms of networking. This means that they have a static IP address and won't try and use DHCP to get an address. This makes some sense if it was actually a router, but it's not. The one image I looked into had a static IP address of 192.168.0.100. If you use the image that Notlist3d created, then it has DHCP already set.

2) The base image from ehash.com is actually quite small. It would almost certainly fit on a 1 Gbyte card, if that's what you happen to have. No need for an 8GB card.

3) As downloaded, the initial login is root with NO PASSWORD. Once you are in, you can add a password to root, and also enable ssh.

4) It appears that OpenWRT doesn't use the usual Linux shutdown -h command to shut down the raspberry Pi cleanly. Instead it appears you use "poweroff" from the command line (i.e. ssh in), and wait about 10 seconds. I am always nervous about just yanking the power on a running Pi, to avoid SD card corruption. Yes, it's inconvenient to have to ssh in, but it sure avoids the anguish of  corrupted SD card.

The ehash website has some documents that aren't specifically for the Avalon6, but are for an earlier generation of the Avalon seies, The basic items mentioned above are in there I think. They haven't done much to change their basic strategy for OpenWRT setup since earlier generations. You can also observe the kano.is pool address in the download image. It's unfortunate they don't also switch to DHCP as well.

As with most mining gear, the primary beneficiary of these gadgets will be the sellers them selves (i.e. Bitfury and 21 Inc.). Buyers won't make a dime on them. I'll furthermore suggest that 21 Inc did their "miner" as much to help them garner $116M in Venture Capital (VC) money. Hard to know what all they did with that money, but I'll bet it was a small sliver that went into the Raspberry Pi "Bitcoin Processor". They don't actually call it a "miner" in the classic sense.

I wonder if either one will do as well, or as poorly, as the Antminer R1.

Then I would suggest you don't change your title to "Audiophile"..... 

While I liked the Firewire disk devices that I had, it's day is long since over. The USB universe has completely run roughshod over Firewire. Hubs, ports, cables are way more available and less costly for USB than Firewire.

It would be nuts to have your hashing hardware require a Firewire port for correct operation.

It would probably be good to clarify what is meant by "profit". It can mean earning more than it costs to run (aka Operating Profit). To some it means not only an operating profit, but also pay for the original cost (i.e. the over used term ROI).

With zero actual electrical cost, then it's almost a certainty you can earn an operating profit, since the primary operating cost is electricity.

Actually earning more after operating costs and subsequent sale of the hardware, is much harder to do, and influenced by the size of the operating profit, and original cost of the hardware, and how long you hold onto the hardware before selling it. Obviously if you hold onto "forever", then you get $0 when you stop using it.

Is it just me, or does anybody else think that it MIGHT be a tiny negative adjustment? The bitcoinwisdom trend lines all suggest that could happen, although with nearly 11 days to go, almost anything is possible still.

The change is just stunning from a week ago.