I have been running this Cointerra miner about 6 months and it's started giving me fits.  It would just stop responding, so a power cycle got it online, but now that is no longer working.  I read through some of the big thread, but I think I need some specific help.  Here is what I have done so far

Opened the cover and tried booting, board 1 has green lights that come on, go off, then do the knight rider thing, I think that's what they are supposed to do?  Board 0 does much the same thing but the lights are orange, not green.  So I think I can assume my boards are not dead.

I switched the power supplies, get same result.  Checked voltage on both boards and they are getting 12v, so that looks good.

I reseated all cables on both boards, no change

The controller board underneath board 0 has blue lights on it, but I can't ping it at all any longer.  Should I work on getting the controller online?  Is that likely where my problem is and not the boards themselves?  I have looked the boards over very carefully and I do not see any burt chips or smell any burnt smell at all.  They appear to be in great shape.  Is there any kind of program I can run and connect to the boards USB with my laptop and check anything?

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing.  I took my time, stripped, soldered, and taped each lead very well.  I just plugged everything in a few min ago and she actually fired up!  Everything is online, running nice and cool now.  A bit more sloppy now that the PSU could not fit in the case, but who cares, she's running 1.1TH again and life is good.  I have plenty of shelf space.

While it was down, I pulled each blade, pulled the heat sinks, stripped, prepped and regreased each of the CPUs.  I'm not worried about building a PSU if I have to.  I'm very comfortable with a soldering iron.  I've done such tedious jobs as soldering CPUs to boards, tearing laptops of every brand down to the boards and doing repairs and done my share of high voltage wiring too.  Trust me, if I don't have to I won't but I won't back down if that's what it takes either.

Well, I opened up the dead PSU and all the connections are very well labeled.  I think I can snip the ties, label all the wires as to what voltage they need and solder them into a new PSU if I absolutely have to.

Here are the pictures.  First one is of the blades and the two 12 pin connectors that go there.  Second is of the 10 pin connector on the controller board.  I did a bit of homework and called Visionman.  Apparently these have not been produced in quite some time and they have no parts at all for them.  They forwarded me to their supplier, I talked to them and they are now doing some digging for me.  Hope they come up with something or I'll be breaking out the soldering iron 

I am not in the same location as the miner, I will try to get some pictures later tomorrow, but these are the connectors right off the old PSU.  There are only two of the larger connectors and the one of the smaller connector.  The larger ones plug right into the blades and the smaller into the controller board.  I will get pictures of the blade connectors and the controller board connector tomorrow and post them.  I'd hate to shell out so much money for a PSU then have to splice together my own cables.  That would suck.

Geez, that's double what I paid for the miner in the first place!!  Can anyone tell me what kind of connectors those are?  Sorry for my ignorance in advance.

Can anyone help me out?  I have a Visionman VP-1100 with a dead power supply.  Where can I find a replacement?

Apparently moving that diff number up to 1024 cut my performance from about 1.2TH to 100GH according to the pools status page, even though my device still showed running about 1.3.  I moved it back down to 16 where it was originally and my numbers are coming back up where they should be.  So, that begs the question, if I drop it to 4 will I get even better hash rates in the pool itself??  Hummm....

Ok, so that's how that works, makes sense.  Any suggestions?

This should answer both your questions.  I fired it up on 1024 because 512 was not an option (nothing between 256 and 1024).  Not that it probably matters from what you are saying

Got my first miner today, got it online and running, but have some questions.  It's an AMT-1200 and I can't find much info on it.  Config page has Freq Mod 1-5 which looks like where I can set the speeds of the processors, but then there is a "diff" selection with 4, 16, 32, 37, 52, 86...1024.  Can someone explain that setting to me?

Is that a 12ga extension cord rated for 15A?   

Of course SOMEONE is always paying the electric, but I've seen some REAL bad leases / contracts that give the farm away, and I'm talking a lot more than electricity.  I NEVER cease to be amazed every single day the total idiots I find out walking around "conducting business".  I swear you should have to have a license to draw up a legally binding contract.  I'm not out looking to hose anyone, but at some point when they refuse to listen to reason, I give up trying to argue with them and let them hang themselves.  I tried...I sleep real good at night.

Ok, perhaps a little Antminer S3 101 lesson is in order.  From what I read, you need to have all four PCI-e connectors hooked up to be able to overclock it, is that not correct?

The specs say power consumption is 340W, so I'm guessing that's for running at the normal 441 GH/s and if I want to push it to 500 GH, I'll need a little more, like 400W?

I'm looking at this one:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817148046  I can get $40 Amazon Prime.  It has four PCI-e connectors and 588W on two 12v rails, 276W on one rail and 312 on the other.  I could easily get four of those for the cost of a single EVGA 1300 G2 and power all four sufficient to run at 500 GH?  No?

Well, what do I know?  I just scored FOUR Antminer S3 units from a reputable seller for $340 to the door.  Now the search is on for a PSU.  In my noob mind, I am thinking I would like to pick up two power supplies that would be able to power my 4 units to normally operate, then down the road, pick up two more PSUs and overclock the units to 500 GH/s?  Am I still heading the right direction or have I gone totally off the rails.  Gee, my little data center is looking to power up at nearly 3TH/s by the end of next week!  I'm giddy!   

I am looking at some PSUs and even though they may be rated 750-800A, their 12v output is not.  The S3 is 340W so I'm assuming I need 700W on the 12v output of the PSU to comfortably run two of them?  Then is it safe to assume that one of those PSUs would run a single S3 for overclocking or would a strategy of finding a PSU, say 576W 12v output and just get one for each from the jump, which will in the long run be cheaper?  I hope my questions are making sense.  It's getting late and I have to get out of bed in 5hr and go to the gym 

Cool, thanks for the ideas.  Which pools to use is a huge concern.  Seems to be so many and so many different ways to pay out...  I have a LOT of homework to do there.  If I get to a certain size, I know it is much higher risk, but is there opportunity to mine directly from bitcoin?  I guess nothing but time and a lot of research and a little trial and error will answer all my questions about how to use all this power I intend to amass?

Pretty much unlimited on the power, as far as the scale of things I'm looking at.  The main electrical service into the facility is 600v 3 phase and off of that, I have 480 to the small building I am in.  I don't care about noise at all, heat much or power draw to a large extent.  I don't really have a budget, if it gets moving I can bring in one or two people and have some pretty descent capital to work with.  The only person I'm in it with right now, I've worked with for many years as his chief network engineer / officer / whatever you want to call it.  I probably spend $2,500-$3,000 / week on average just in equipment to maintain the existing network (it's big, covers over 8,000 sq mi).  So, I guess in short, no, $1,100 for a 5 TH/s machine (at 20 cents / GH) would be no big deal at all.

The ONLY reason I would not pull the trigger on that this very moment is that I have yet to mine at all!  I am a bit cautious and thorough, I would not have gotten where I am if I were not.  I'd like to get my first machine in the rack and generating revenue, then start adding 1-2 more units a week until I get enough experience under my belt to be able to optimize my operation to a reasonable level.  I already spoke with my assistant today and explained to him how we are going to map every piece of equipment in the rack, it's power load, what circuit it is on, what the capacity of that circuit is and the total capacity on the panel...  The room is already on lock down and I explained to him in no uncertain terms that once we get this thing going, NO ONE is going to plug so much as a phone charger in that room anywhere without prior, written authorization!  Only he and I even have keys for access but last thing I need is someone wondering in there and plugging in a drill and blowing out a rack and starting to lose me money!  I think uptime is pretty important in this racket?  Am I going too far?

Wow, thanks for the quick replies guys!  I picked up an AMT1200 for $230 to the door.  Seemed to be a descent deal from a reputable seller.  Now you guys are going to proceed to tell me how bad I got hosed 

I have seen a lot of these units out there that do not come with PSU, so I have to calculate that into it and it's kind of a pain.  I can be lazy at times and if I had my choice, I'd love to just slap rack mount units with integrated PSU at 2-4 TH/s each into my racks until I filled them.  Yes, I understand that's going to cost more than piecing stuff together and the almighty $$ will probably have me wiring up all kinds of crazy stuff up because I am cheaper than I am lazy.  I think it all comes down to a game of tracking down the deals on equipment.  I need to comb the forums and just hit the pavement and see if I can throw some offers around and see if any of them stick.

Hopefully I'm posting in the right place, I'm a total noob in bitcoin and bitcoin mining.  If not, punt my thread to wherever it should go 

I quite literally just started reading up on bitcoin Sunday, spent all day yesterday reading and coming the web for a feel of the land, so this will be my second fully day in the venture.  Let me tell you my special circumstances in regards to mining.  I have a small data center with free elec, free to me anyway, pretty ridiculous amounts of overcooling, and at least 120U of empty rack space at the moment.  Along with that, I also have access to a 200x200mb fiber optic connection and it averages 100mb free / available around the clock.  Maybe there is a more profitable venture than bitcoin mining?

Anyway, in my research yesterday, looks to me like in used mining equipment my target is about 20 cents per GH/s and I don't want to put anything in less than 1 TH/s.  I just don't want to mess with small stuff.  I have seen a couple units as low as 15 cents per GH/s but they go fast of course.  Looks more like the average is running between 35 and 50 cents per GH/s used and way more than that new.  I did score a 1.25 TH/s unit yesterday and figure my break even at about 90 days, so that's pretty great.  Again, with my situation, I don't really care how much power they burn, I'm most concerned with acquisition cost and capacity.  Any guidance on the types of units I should be looking for would be greatly appreciated.  My objective right now is to start with one or two units and figure out what pools to join, get everything up and running and use any revenue coming in to expand a unit or two at a time until I fill my rack space and hopefully have between 15-20 TH/s capacity, maybe more?

Can I make any money doing this in today's environment?  I understand I'm not going to get rich, but with bitcoin trading so low right now and people seeming to want to bail out on mining and sell me their equipment cheap, I hope to have a robust mining operation online already when it starts trading higher at some point in the future.  I have a lot more questions, but perhaps best just to start with this.  Am I way off base?  Out of my mind insane?