I have the Z11, and have loaded firmware made by the manufacturer only.  Do I have to do anything special to load your firmware onto the miner, and do I have to do anything special to load a regular version afterwards from the manufacturer?  I haven't seen clear instructions, and I'm new to custom firmware.

I've always used a "non-native" wallet to mine to, or else Nicehash wallet.  I am just now starting to use a wallet where the blockchain is stored on my computer, while mining with an ASIC.  Do I have to keep my computer on and the wallet software open in order to mine to this wallet address?  I am specifically mining Pirate (ARRR) to an Agama wallet on Windows, using an Antminer Z11, and mining with Piratepool.io.

Why is the Zcash to BTC value always relatively stable since its inception, but every other crypto I look up has its gold line (in coinmarketcap.com) wildly swinging all over the place?  Also, the market cap is always way higher than the other two lines.

APW3++ only does part of the Z11 miner on 120v.  I'm using two power supplies.  An expert said it's not really worth it to use a transformer, unless you have this really big, expensive one, and even those top out at 2% efficiency loss.

I can't install anything permanent regarding 240v.  All I see are step-up transformers.  Are those going to lose significant efficiency?  Can anyone recommend a transformer that plugs into a 120v, 20 amp circuit, that doesn't lose more than, say, 1% efficiency?

I mine in my garage in the U.S., and have been for months on 120v, since the miners are only 620 w each, or less.

I have two A9 Zmasters, and they can go days without a restart, or sometimes they restart like once a day.  Is this normal and is it due to a network thing in the mining pool?  There are no temperature issues, max is about 72C in the middle board, 65 on outer boards.  Fan is only running about 15-40%, which should indicate that it is not overheating.

Bitmain recommends the APW7 power supply for the Antminer Z11, but with 110v it only supplies 800-1000w, which is significantly less than what the Z11 takes, at 1418w.  Am I missing something?

Randomly started having accepted shares just now.

Just today my 2 Zmasters started showing 100% rejection rate on Nicehash and in the web interface, where they were close to 100% accepted before.  Both started doing it at the same time.  I tried switching servers, to no avail.  Tried resetting router, modem, and both Zmasters.  Is there a possibility it could be something not on my end, like Nicehash's failure, or should I upgrade the firmware with possibly no chance of going back to the old firmware since I can't find it on the internet?  I upgraded a Z9 Mini's firmware once and it disabled all overclocking options, so I don't want some similar ridiculous change.  It's strange that it seemed to be close to the time that Coinbase's addition of Zcash was announced, within a couple hours.  I'm not seeing any news on Nicehash.com or Reddit's Nicehash page that would give me a clue about the problem.  The miners are also getting up to around 20 or so Ksol/s (50 Ksol/s is what they should be at), or about 10 minutes of running, then going back down to zero and starting back up, while still showing 100% rejection, and both doing it at about the same time.  Both miners have the same firmware with the filename b29+_20180714_035505 from July 14.
Any help would be appreciated.

Do ASICs such as Innosilicon A9 Zmaster and Bitmain Z9 Mini have the capability of auto-switching coins (all on equihash) when mining with Nicehash?  For instance, both ASICs are supposed to be able to mine Zcash and Zencash (Horizen), and one other coin, according to www.asicminervalue.com, which are all using Equihash.