I work in a customer service facing role and i meet and chat to a lot of people

I was talking to a young man ( age 22 ) and he had mentioned he had made a LOT
of money on solana buying at 10c and selling a year later at $220 , he fully admitted
he just fell lucky and it wasnt through some magical strategy or great knowledge / insight

Anyways over the past year i have been asking people of all age groups if they are into crypto
and i have been SURPRISED by the result , this is no way scientific , and relying on the
general impressions of my memory , and a result of maybe a few hundred chats with people

Not met ANY females who said they owned or were into crypto
likely on 1/2% of people i chatted i would describe as young ( under 30 ) were into crypto

overwhelmingly MALE and over 50 seems to be the demographic i have met who said they
were into crypto

this all surprised me as i expected , this would be a young persons game

is their official surveys out there that back up my general feelings or have i been talking
to the wrong group of people :-) 

Your right i made assumption that the OP would be solo mining
Personally i pool mined for a while and came to realization that the equipment i use and the level of free
solar i can achieve i would skip the $500-$1000 a year i could make and go for solo

Im still learning and should likely shutup and leave ALL  the messaging to legeenndddaaarrryyyy folks like yourself

Thankyou for the SIMPLE but very useful heads up

I seem to have now identified the board causing issue , not sure if i will have ability to repair however
the unit is now running 3 hours without a " FULL ON FAN " issue

( and yes i installed braiins as i need ability to reduce power ( on dark rainy days ) , but increase power on really sunny bright
days as im running these units off of solar

is this a clue ?

2023-07-10T08:57:53.796686Z ERROR bosminer_hal::sensor: Sensor hb7[ii_hwmon::tmp451::TMP451]: read failed: I2C error: general error I2C controller keeps reading wrong address/register
2023-07-10T08:57:53.796753Z ERROR bosminer_hal::sensor: Sensor hb7[ii_hwmon::tmp451::TMP451]: Too many sensor errors, disabling sensor

Many thanks to everyone who helped

This unit is successfully hashing for 12 hours following firmware upgrade.

Two issues remain

1)
Overnight the "old" issue reappeared , the fans go on FULL PELT , full power
this is the issue that caused me to mess up the firmware in first place:-)
hashes fine continues working but fans seem to go full power mode ! and does
not stop until unit disconnected from power and restarted

i cant imagine this is a fan issue , can it be ? is this not a software/control board issue ?


2)
one of the hash  boards has been gubbed for months , is their a Uk repairer ?or
sales place for S9i hash boards ?
are the boards in S9 and s9i the same ?

Hurrah ! Hurrah !
Im up n running

still have fan probs though

Done check_asic_reg
Chain[6] Chip[244] pcb temperature=62
Chain[6] Chip[62] junction temperature=46
Special fix Chain[6] Chip[62] middle Temp = 77
Done read temp on Chain[6]
Chain[7] Chip[244] pcb temperature=56
Chain[7] Chip[62] junction temperature=35
Special fix Chain[7] Chip[62] middle Temp = 71
Done read temp on Chain[7]
Max pcb temp : 62
set FAN speed according to: temp_highest=62 temp_top1[PWM_T]=62 temp_top1[TEMP_POS_LOCAL]=62 temp_change=1 fix_fan_steps=0
FAN PWM: 72
read_temp_func Done!
CRC error counter=1002

Ok i gave up waiting on the lights going solid etc as they continued blinking simultaneously

I then MOVED the jumper back to R4 and i manged to log in

I have done the flash upgrade and it said success ! so does this look ok , dont want to
rebuild it until im sure all is OK


System
Miner Type   Antminer S9i
Hostname   antMiner
Model   GNU/Linux
Hardware Version   
Kernel Version   Linux 3.14.0-xilinx-g16220c3 #83 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jul 12 11:42:53 CST 2018
File System Version   Wed Jul 31 16:18:26 CST 2019
Logic Version   V2.87
BMminer Version   
Uptime   3
Load Average   0.05, 0.04, 0.02

Ah HA !

I seem to have moved forward a little .....
having moved the jumper to JP4 ( not R4)  and downloaded the S9 software
( as per https://shop.bitmain.com/support/download )

It was dark for about 15 secs then the red and green lights have started flashing
every second of so , seems promising , so i shall give it 20 mins half hour before
doing anything else

If its currently "writing " what should i expect , the lights go solid when its finished ?

heys thanks , Ok I can go try that in due course

but before i go further I really need to establish 101% which position for
jumper is flashing position

two pins closest to R4 or two pins cclosest to JP4

MANY thanks for time taken to reply.

Downloaded files described and added to desktop and extracted to 8GB SD card

removed all cables , inserted ETH cable* , inserted power


nothing , no blinking red/green lights on front

moved position of jumper ** , this time life however red/green lights permanently on , no blinking

waited at least 3-5  mins each time


* in the video the guy does not attach ETH cable
** might seem simple to those doing regular but its really not
clear in images which position is the flashing position , im guessing
moving to closest to R4 is flashing position

on the actual board there is a little bank of tiny LEDS , they are lit permanently except
one which blinks constantly

Hi Folks
S9i was working fine apart from sometimes it seemed to
break and fans would go FULL PELT for no apparent reason
so in my misguided wisdom i decided to flash firmware
and i seem to have bricked it

and it didnt work so i have tried all sorts of firmware and braiins
and im a bit confused and getting nowhere

so i want to start again with a clear head ......

Anybody prepared to take me through this in baby steps ?
 

Ok
i moved jumper im not really moving forward
I think its best to start new thread to ask for baby steps
going through this

if your doing it to earn some cash , its a tough gig , people out there have petra hashes of
kit running for years without catching a block , thats the first REALITY !

Personally i set up some solar to be in THE BTC lottery , and its been a fantastic learning experience
the stuff i have learned the past 4 months has made it worth it.

by sound of it you aint going to be running multiple petra hashes needed to make income
so its just the lottery factor , and the enjoyment of learning

if you buy a second hand s9 its pretty much plug n play , and if you install a software like
"braiins" you dont need to run it on full power , this is all my suggestion to experiment and learn

and like everyone else has said , if there is any "danger" at all legally from using the free electricity
its likely not worth it , its IMHO certainly not worth it in expectation of financial returns unless
you feel you are a REALLY lucky person :-)

but if you really can use the free lectricity legally , you need to move your headspace to
plugging it in is putting you in the "BTC lottery" , with virtually zero chance of catching a block

Typical , the jumpers are "just" out of reach im going to have to dismantle
the unit to access , likely need to wait to next week.

Is there any firmware i can put on an SD card that will start the unit from the card
without having to fully reflash at this stage ?

While you were typing that i was away trying something

i will come back and follow your instructions shortly


by going to bitmain an downloading " S9i SD card recovery image.rar"

i have now got a page that says "ALTERA board update portal " on the IP address

Currently i cant get IP address
but i have tried several different items from
bitmain support when the files that were supposed
to did not work , i will experiment further in due course
but currently its goosed

I do have a question that might help me as i am not sure about
it

when you copy the firmware files over to SD card , do you extract
them to the card or just copy them over
Even when i extract them over to SD card , some of the files
are still zipped on the SD card , its confusing

Hey thanks for reply !

ok thats clear , no doge mining :-)

I fully understand its a lottery at the TH levels im pushing , electricity is mainly
free off solar.

I have tried antminer official software and braiins install , both have failed to take
i think i have bricked it , not sure how to move forward

Oh ! thanks

i thought i read somewhere you could put different firmware on it to change it to scrypt instead
of sha 256 , maybe im wrong

Oh what am i going to do with this unit now !

anyone recommened any easy to install easy to download , plug in play firmware
for anything on an S9i

many of you may say WHY ?  

im playing - i have bricked this S9i ,
tried to reinstall antminer firmware and now just
get a page that says :

tried to install braiins , getting nowhere

so radical change of tact required , lets try a totally different
firmware etc , it was working pretty solid until i messed with
it except after a few hours it seemed "break" and fans would go
FULL speed for no apprent reason so i decided to reinstall firmware
and now its proper broke

anybody got time to help me through this

sooooo....
Old S9i - want to change to doge mining : HOW ?

Thanks for the many replies and condolences 

Its ok i only lost what i could afford , i am not homeless

I looked at what little i knew of market at the time and decided ALT coins
had greater potential , then i discovered TOKENS , that had plans to
be coins , even greater potential was the thought :-)

I was deliberately looking for high risk , high reward , and i took
a decent spread of tokens but many died and i targeted my favourites

I feel theres a chance still some of these tokens still alive might make it in
the apparent upcoming bull run , but rather than have millions of one
token i was thinking it might be better to have a million each of 3 tokens type thing 
spread the chances ....

thanks for the links and info provided i will study in due course