I think it is amazing to go to work when you feel like it and spend time with your family when you feel like it.
It is the most important thing to me.

If you are able to do so, I highly recommend it. dmward is setup well.

I'm not kissing his ass either, stating facts. There are many people here who aren't hurting. Look at many of the people here who are doing alright.

But I don't think those things are really anyone's business. Someone's doxx, especially digs about financial doxx are not welcome.

I do however understand you needed to reply with something to make an impact, but you would be better served by using facts, or theories of substance.
I understand you saying you feel some people may not consider your feelings about bitmain by coming right behind you with a positive post about bitmain that had nothing to do with your post and you were making a subject regarding something negative.

It will be that way. There will be people who do not even have the product being discussed and didn't place an order who will have twice or 30 times more posts about the topic, and there will be people who make a point at how great things are, again maybe even totally contradicting your opinion. They may also talk about their great aunt's lemon pie. Someone else is always there to respond.

If you don't even try to notice you will see people who have an initial reaction of disagreeing with anything you say automatically. I'm sure you know one-uppers, someone who always has one newer whatever, well internet is x10. We are all pros doing research.

It is the content of your post. The actual meat of what you are trying to say which must not be at that low of a level in taste here. You can curse, talk about off topic crap, call someone out for a scam, in generally most anything except lowball personal attach kinda stuff.

Again, I am not taking up for anyone, I still feel there are people trying to make their voices heard about their personal experience who are shouted down by some other people when you cannot take away that persons personal experience, and I think that is where the frustration we saw come from.

None of it is worth fighting like that between ourselves, unless it is with **gie.

Whatsup with the Bitmain account showing up like a Cali skater saying
"Hows tha overclockin dudes?" "Did you wreck some shit yet or waahahahaat?"
 

I didn't want to quote my who bit of ragamaro, and thanks for the kind words to the positive comments.

Swimmer63, I think most frustrations are directed at Bitmain, or, meant towards Bitmain but directed towards each other. I don't think most people will argue Bitmain can come through with a good product from time to time. The S7 is available, and has a top efficiency claim among us, and I imagine a whole bunch more people who never say peep.

I apologize if I generalized you with something I said, I did not mean it towards any individual as much as I meant these things to everyone. Some people may fall in those categories, well some people DO fall in those categories but I don't know that matters as much as no one argues Bitmain has at times had both good and bad support issues, but there are particular things people feel like they are being taken advantage of because it is the only choice.
My S7s are running great, but personally I've had tough experiences getting there, and with most other products. There are good and bad. I enjoy hearing good posts, about things going well, but there are negative ones.

Maybe we will see some choice before first quarter 2016, but will the halving scare people or will people mine as hard as they can all the way to the halving line and through it to see what happens?

As the others mentioned, tell us about your available power.
How many watts do you have available? Or, amps at volts?

Best of luck

Bitmain and Avalon probably discuss and price fix.
My pure speculation regarding Avalon, but not with Bitmain.

I do hope Avalon makes Bitmain work a little bit at least, come just one good price drop after the initial orders, then bam drop take enough for a couple of days and call shenanigans and mistakes then push price around again.
That would get Bitmain attention.

There is only so much money people are going to spend at current prices, but many more people will take a chance if they see a company with a solid reputation and previous solid products trying to take a chance with them.

This is why you see so many people who still praise Spondoolies. Even though the SP20 was a loser financially it was a huge win with the mining public for the most part. Especially people who can truly appreciate fine engineering.

If the Avalon 6 came out somewhere in between the engineering prowess of the SP20 and the price better than the Bitmain equivalent, or at least matching price, man look at how many people are ready to order. In the long run of the mining landscape this could play out extremely well for Avalon if they are not involved in discussions with bitmain. They could absolutely be neck and neck or even surpass bitmain with the right customer service, a solid product, and reasonable price. Show me tha money!

I have updated my S7 firmware. I used the 600 and I have been running 600. The main unit has run a week at a strong 4.85. I previously mentioned it was unusually steady on the average, but I wasn't and still not complaining, it is odd.
Anyway, I did not remove the checkmark to retain my settings. Once the firmware update completed everything looked good but my hash. It seemed pretty happy sitting around 200 ghs. I performed a cold boot, then a warm boot (as this has been my habit since I received my first S3) and everything came back up beautifully. After 10 minutes I'm sitting with 4901 on the average and  180 / .0025 on HW errors so we will let her ride for a while and check in later.

I wanted to throw my own 2 cents in here regarding the conversation to help determine cost. There are certainly many things to consider, and these guys have provided fantastic ways to help you learn to do such.

I use this as one of a few checklists when I am running through things. It helps me think of items I may not always consider. This portion in particular comes from another forum member, but I fail to remember his name and didn't catch it when I copied his list to my own sheet. I would say to use this section two ways.
1. As a specific list.
Yes you must use a calculator of some type to keep things efficient, accurate, and straightforward, and most of the time I use bitwisdom but I use theirs because it is convenient to other things of theirs I use regularly. Great site imo.
This provides you with real world items you may not think of, so use the list literally and determine if that line item applies to you.

2, Use the mindset to drive yourself in this train of thought. These items can be used to think of things which would only apply to you within your lifestyle or domicile.  Don't ignore that power bill. It can get ya. Think of what the other posters said the monthly cost for a single S7 is and be confident you want to go in. Use this list to contemplate items even experienced miners here may not consider. Also, it mentions taxes, and that is a huge decision in my opinion. I prefer not to discuss it myself, but you must consider it.

Overall, once you have the financials sorted, get your head back in the real reason you do this and figure out something fun you want to do with your fresh new S7 without voiding the warranty right away, and there is plenty to do without even touching her. Consider your mining environment. After all, that has the biggest impact along with your incoming power. What can you work on or tinker with whichever your stride which lights that fire and have fun.


So here after all this buildup is the list in its original incantation. It is not pretty, long, or at first glance all that informative, but think about where it is going and the things you may come up with that are outside the norm which may be factual items for many / most people.

"When we compare the price of mining devices, we believe we should take all these factors into consideration.

1.   Cash cost
a)   Mining device sales price. This is the most obvious cost.
b)   Shipping cost. Shipping cost is trick, different shipping service will have different shipping time, and it will influence the time cost discussed in 2. Time cost.
c)   Incremental investment on PSU
d)   Tax: Some miners will have to pay VAT or other import tax.

2.   Time cost: We can estimate the time cost based on the projected gross mining revenue during the waiting time.
a)   Time on waiting period of pre-order. You know, shipping in two weeks.
b)   Time on shipping. Some shipping methods is much slower than our UPS shipping service, and the shipping time lost usually much larger the shipping cost we can save from choosing the slower carrier.

3.   Unstable cost: the unexpected downtime will cost the mining revenue. Usually a family miner will have full time job and family members to take care of. Hosting service will let the experts do the job."
 

Good Luck

Everyone take care of the hash board failure potential.
I don't care if the guy had a low post count, he is probably right on, and I made sure I checked file integrity, I was sure I was on the bitmain site by going to my own saved link, not clicking his.
Even if you do not want to update firmware then until you do clip the wire which is the feedback from the fan to the control board. On the S5 it was the blue one, check yourself on the S7 so you know and you are confident.

Somehow, someway, people don't fry boards because of the internet dropping out. Of course I am depending on the Firmware to have corrected the issue which isn't the most failsafe and we have went through many iterations of firmware which did make things worse. However, I'm at 4821.34 with .0028 and things are still looking fine and I wouldn't have updated until I saw some people I trust do so and report positive experiences. I am not saying you should update your firmware, I am saying it has worked well for me so far, and other trusted members have said so far so good. ...But, do something about the internet-drop-hash-board-burn.

This is a great question and one where I am familiar with the answer somewhat.

Thanks MC for your reference. Could you elaborate on how a ASIC relates to the context of dual core or multiprocessor and how we should view it relative to the load?
For example the Multiple cores tells us to view a higher load value as normal. What are the Asic chips considered in comparison to Single General Instruction set processors, dual core, and multi processors with single cores? I understand the relativity between the general instruction set configurations, e.g. a dual core is similar to physical single core actual processors.

I will use three of my currently running, separate generation, random miners:
1. An S3+ load is 2.10, 1.83, 1.77.
I have it clocked at: 250M/0750V with Hash Rate showing: Elapsed: 1d 14h 59m 38s | GH/S(5s) 514.96 | GH/S(avg) 504.10

2. An S5+ load is 1.22, 1.15, 1.14
I have it clocked at the factory settings: 325M / No option to set voltage with Hash Rate showing: Elapsed: 5d23h55m21s | GH/S(5s) 7,537.92 | GH/S(avg) 7,669.29
^-> Unfortunately this S5+ runs at this 7.6 range most of the time, but eh, it is running and has been a solid performer so I will keep it.

3. An S7 load is: 0.95, 0.83, 0.84
It has been clocked at the settings it came with from Bitmain. (I honor warranty requirements until warranty expires.) 600.00M / Again no option to set the voltage. Hash Rate showing: Elapsed 5d23h54m31s | GH/S(5s) 4,577.37 | GH/S(avg) 4,852.20

As the link you provided shows a clear correlation of what your level of concern should be compared the load amount relative to processor type and quantity. What is your understanding of the Asic comparison to General Instruction processor regarding the load values?

TYVM for your insight.

Phil I applaud you for making a post referencing this continued display of more of the same lack of respect by bitmain.
This is yet another huge example of how bitmain handles business. maybe now that you and so many others have spoken out more of the few people who completely ignore these facts when discussing bitmain as a manufacturer will include items such as this.

The main problem is communication from where it matters. Bitmain China is deadly silent. You can reach support in the US and have a fantastic experience, except, they cannot do anything to help unless you are willing to pay for it even when under warranty unless China tells them it is OK first. You will not receive a communication regarding your order for weeks. Maybe I have been lucky all my life in not being involved with a company who didn't do whatever it took to make things happen. There are always issues to be addressed, you cannot get a shipment of this, you have a person who made a huge mistake and it cost you thousands and an immense amount of rework time, but things happen. Maybe it is that I have truly had past luck, (I wish I'd been mining then) because I've worked with people where we work all night if that is what it takes, we spend obscene amounts of money to go the extra mile for customer satisfaction, and you cannot always make everyone happy, but there is a huge difference between someone complaining about a questionable issue versus a lack of communication for weeks when people have sent thousands of dollars, a lack of an explanation of why their was such a varying hashrate with the product which was shipped, and then without a peep go on vacation. To truly add insult to injury the continuing lack of proper communication, when people do hear something it is the compensation (which is not close to appropriate compensation in my opinion), and the same specific patterns have continued with people receiving batch 3s prior to Batch 2, some people are still receiving batch 1s as of a few days ago, and we make it to where we are today with this still, very upsetting lack of communication and what I consider to be a lack of respect as a customer.

Does anyone think that bitmain can't afford to have a customer service department who addresses these very real customer service related issues?
We aren't talking technical problems right now, we are talking ship dates, valid warranty part requests, serious billing or financial issues, and again, these items are first and foremost ignored with some offering the reason that they are too busy, and overloaded after the holiday. We have people who haven't even purchased an S7 commenting regularly and stating negative opinions about these things.

I feel for you Phillip and I have had these same experiences along with many others. This is not specifically an issue with any one of those things, this is a lack of communication and a lack of caring about your customer. These two things do not have to be together, even a business where people hit the door within a few seconds of quitting time have a way to communicate the why, how long, we are working on this, etc but the lack of being concerned about the customer experience or brand loyalty from a business perspective is unusual because very few can pull it off and be successful over a long period. I would say in the number of businesses who were / are successful with this here in the US are monopolies such as utilities and internet providers.

Most of us who have been exposed to monopolies do have a few examples of why they do not last. AT&T comes to mind and they are trying to become one again since being broken up. At least they will have to continue working for it. They also answer the phone and love it if you communicate via email. I am not comparing AT&T to bitmain as they are beyond comparison in too many areas and would be apples to oranges. I am comparing Bitmain to a company who was found to be a monopoly.

I have no doubt Bitmain have customer service personnel who are extremely good, who can take care of issues, and in general have people on staff who do the best they can. This is a problem at the very top, the decision makers, and where they are using the resources. They need to assign people who will professionally engage each issue, a team to establish a proper online / forum presence, people who have the ability to maintain an appropriate business attitude, and these people must express positive ethics and morals relative to customer expectations. It does not resemble a company with the direction required to put their best and brightest, the right people, in front of the end users. I don't mean they need to have engineers out here making forum posts, but a professional set of accounts who have the ability and support to address the legitimate problems. You cannot put someone who has no clue about what they are doing in the public eye because you can pay them next to nothing.

I hope you see your shipment soon, and I think you may see it quicker than the average Joe out here, but I do not fault you for that. You have a great reputation and presence here on the forum and they should recognize such and get on the ball. I must say that in itself is unusual for a business who cares about customer loyalty. You would never let someone with a great reputation known by hundreds of other customers and potential new customers to go without word on money he spent. You would damn sure make sure the guy who can have such an impact is kept happy in the world I live in.

Good Luck Sir
The S5+ also came with only being able to email info@bitmain for warranty issues.

Edit:
I wanted to add that Yoshi has proven resourceful and helpful for many people many times. He either has the authority, or can speak with the right people to make the appropriate decisions and communicate with the end user. He is not perfect and he and I have previously been at odds, but overall I believe he has saved a great deal of business for bitmain and would be the reason people returned to bitmain in a competitive mining ecosystem. He seems much more in touch with what is right regarding a business relationship.   

As you are one of the most respected reviewers on this forum I do not believe any of the survey's were biased or based on inaccurate information. Nor do I think you made the questions to suit Guy. I think you have too much integrity to do so. Not to mention I do not think guy wanted anything but real world results.

I agree they should not have marketed the SP20 as a 1.7 TH unit. It was not in that neighborhood.

My remaining SP20s are running around 1.1 TH. I'd had them around 750 until the recent price pop. The worst thing to ever happen is on a power loss it sometimes takes one particular unit a bit longer to give me the gui. Two I purchased in the Christmas group buy and two from an outstanding forum reviewer were pushed extremely hard when I first received them because I want to know if I am going to have a problem.

I remember hearing from so many people about how pissed they were when the SP20 went out of stock. They were about to order more, and I myself was ready to pickup another nano farm, but I learned a valuable lesson in bitcoin mining.

As far as the quality of the product I think it was and still is a great, well-engineered, flexible miner. The operating life is still going strong due to caring about the end user ability to downclock.

As far as ethics, morals, and values, Guy and the SP team were straight up regarding what they intended to do, and that is what they have done. They are doing what most people here have asked why they weren't already doing, which why does a manufacturer sell to the public if they can mine for themselves? I have seen way more than a few respected forum members use this verbiage when explaining a scam to nubs or cloud mining. Granted there are some good reasons to sell to the public. I appreciated the honesty, but I don't think we have seen the last of SPT gear in our homes.

Unfortunately SPT are doing what other major manufacturers have done before them by going b2b and MOQ only and anyone reading back through this thread from January of this year can see how many people were scrambling to buy more of their gear.

Phil. thanks for your time spent, your candid opinions, and unbiased approach. When someone applies the same methods to their review style it lets us the readers know we are getting facts and you aren't swayed with money, coin, or free products to say something which isn't true.

When I initially purchased my S5+ I saw the single point of failure you mention regarding the SP50. Later I learned the modules were compatible with S7, even S5, etc. It is great to have that feature. Regarding the SP50 have you been privy to some information you can share regarding the control board / structure when you state they cannot do the same? Because I would agree, as someone who would love to have a single SP50 today, I would also want spare parts. I think if we look at the situation through SPT eyes they are going for situations where someone will purchase 15 and more, and in that vein it begins to be more reasonable to have an extra control board, hash board, etc. I see your point when looking at the situation through the eyes of a home miner, but in a real business it is the responsibility of the end user to have spare parts.

When people ask me what spare parts they should have so there is zero downtime (when they purchase my equipment) Jokingly I respond that they should have a full second machine. Seriously I have a list of the most common parts for my top tier customers who are the John Deere, Hitachi, Caterpillar and I have a list for the small mom and pop facilities who I know through asking them are not in a position to spend an additional 200k on top of the 500k they just financed. My point though is that we do what we can to engineer versatility and interchangeable items, we do everything possible to make it easy for the end user to pickup parts locally so they may stay running, but at the end of the day it is their responsibility to have those spare parts and unfortunately if we designed a fallback for every major component / situation we would price ourselves out of the market. Redundancy is a top priority.

Some people can afford to be down for a couple of days and do not even order parts to be sent overnight. If they are under warranty we cover the freight and send it overnight. We also guarantee to have a person onsite anywhere in the US within 24 hours or less, and intercontinental is generally a 48 hour guarantee, but there have been situations where we negotiate 72 hours because even in these modern times some places can be a bit unrealistic when it comes to travel.

If you look at what SPT have openly stated their business model is going forward, the results of your surveys, and the comments on the forum when SPT were selling to home miners, there should not be any question they held the title for best overall mining experience.

If we add in everything that has been developed since then I don't know if we are giving things a fair shot. I recall most of the respected forum reviewers giving SPT the top mining manufacturer title, even to the point of when they told us they'd lost money selling home miners people said it was because they had built such a quality product they priced themselves into that situation.

I think it is easy to come back now and bend the facts a bit, not saying you did Phil, but in general, say someone did have an obvious vendetta or reason to throw mud. Well, it is easy to do so, we have seen 3 or 4 models released this year from bitmain? It hasn't been the area where SPT have been working since the SP20 release. That is a great deal of time in the engineering world and I am speculating when I say the SP50 is a product made for a real business, they shared the intention of doing such, and they did it. From that perspective I don't see how anyone could say anything negative at all.

Personally I still wish SPT were making home miners and I wish we had a real competition going on, but unfortunately the land is ruled by one at this time as far as we as home miners can be concerned.
 
When making the decision to purchase something for my home versus business I expect to deal with a completely different list of requirements and quality. I also usually pay a great deal more for those things. When speculating about the SP50 I believe we must expect  to see a much higher level of quality, redundancy, and support in various forms. The SP50 specifications look bad to us as home users because we see 110TH with a single point of failure, or what are you going to do when you are done with it, but from a business perspective you would be looking at the density because floor space isn't cheap in a facility with the right power, you look at uptime forecasts, you evaluate how many you can fit in your facility, how quickly you can get replacement parts, you expect downtime and allott for it in your model, you evaluate the support structure, skype, phone calls, times it is simply a completely different outlook. It is professional. If reselling the unit must be done for a real business to make profits then you are not going to find many real businessmen interested. Keeping a graveyard of parts and old models is great to help yourself or provide your end users with more support options but a real business plan does not revolve around such.

The people purchasing 30 - 50 or more SP50s have a quite different list of expectations and I believe we should all consider such when evaluating the product versus maintaining our tunnel vision of the home miner. The SP50 or some variant is a / the future of mining and we will be required to adapt to it to stay in the game on a serious level. I am not looking forward to more light bulbs and 21s version of a revolutionary product. I love playing with my compacs and can't wait to see the pods, but when we are talking serious hashrate I want to see 10TH on 240 v as a minimum and noise is not a factor. SPT developed a product with a completely different end user in mind.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer those questions.
I am going to utilize some of it right now.

This is great information.

Thank You very much.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1219211.0

The guy who does hosting mentioned it in his thread, and it is making the rounds.
I think the speculation is coming from the pcfli message and he buys enough to be in the know about Bitmain.
The story goes something like bitmain is releasing a smaller s7 to compete with another company releasing a 3.5 or 3.x miner. What I remembered reading was that the other company wasn't shipping until January or something, so I thought. You should read the news stories and full forum posts to make sure I am not repeating anything incorrectly.

I cannot say on the firmware. I am waiting to see how others are doing with it.
If I were experiencing an issue I would probably give it a shot, but mine seem to be going along well.

I like this Kano. I am definitely a visual learner and displaying the luck this way works well for me.
I usually have a slightly difficult time trying to determine what some of the data means at the bottom.

I know you are working on making improvements, constantly, but if you ever want some help with a .doc, etc to explain what the values on each screen mean to an end user I would be happy to help. Or maybe I am the only one who cannot seem to determine a thing or two.

For example on the new Pool - Luck page, is it Month-day?/12 what is the 12? hours?
On the shift graph screen when I turn on the time what is the format? UTC, Military?
On the WORKERS-workers screen  what is the "Elapsed" showing me. For example at the moment I see 24m 23s, obviously minutes and seconds but since what? Shift start?
Is my share rate the actual number of shares I submit in X amount of time? What does X = ?
On the Shifts page, what does Inv Diff tell me? IT is a difficulty of some type. Individual? Hrmm INV and I got nothing, but the values can swing wildly for me in an inconsistent way. I might show 21.132k on one shift and then the very next shows 4.648k without anything changing. (To my knowledge at this point anyway)

Finally, how much hash do I need to rent to kick this block's arse? J/K, I know you can tell me how to calculate a good guestimate, but I stayed up all night reorganizing the miner rack. I decided to roll some dice for a few weeks and put all of the S3s and S3+ miners I'd planned to sell back online. I am going to upgrade them one by one today to your S3 firmware. Any words of advice before I start?
I usually do not tick the box to keep my settings and then just set it up again. That has been more successful with bitmain crappy firmware. It is a slight pain to get it back on my network since I have to login to it locally first, but I haven't bricked one in a while

Feel free to ignore my web site questions. I am betting you have answered all of these more than once. It is simply not that easy to use this boards search function. I think more people would use it if it as slightly more intuitive. I know I'd rather find the answers without needing to ask, but there is simply not a straightforward method to find: On the Shifts page, what does Inv Diff tell me?

Of Course there is always the possibility I am being thick headed. Or maybe I should insert "certain probability" over "possibility."

Seriously though, if there is anything I could do to help with explaining fields on the website, I would enjoy doing so, and would never ask for compensation, special treatment, home cooked meals seriously, nothing. It would be my pleasure, but I would need your guidance to get going. This offer is not me complaining in any form. I simply think a regular guy's guide to kano.is may help explain some things you do for us which people may not understand. Especially n00bcakes like me who really love to understand every little thing about mining.

Hell, I am still trying to understand what some of the values displayed  in a miner GUI mean. Other than the cgminer readme there are not many items documented. Which if you have been around since 2011 you probably evolved as these items were added so experienced each one, but if you started in fall 2014 there are many values which could mean something important.
 
Like, Accepted and discarded. In my general walking around thinking about it in an every day life comparison I would expect if things are working correctly the Accepted value should be much higher than discarded, but that is not the case. One of my S5 miners shows Accepted  at 655 and Discarded at 1,420. Where do I look to find what these things mean?
Or LSdiff and LStime. I understand they are difficulty and time values, but no clue where to look to figure out what the LS stands for, or Diff1 and DiffA. Obviously difficulty values, and DiffA is probably the accepted difficulty, but accepted by what, my miner accepting the pool difficulty, the pool?

These are real items I would like to understand, but I would rather learn to fish if there is a place to catch something around here.
Don't get me wrong, I would love it if you just answer a question about any random item, but I am probably pushing it as it is, so if you can point me to a resource, or part of the forum, or maybe I should be using a google search method to find these things easier on the forum?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
I better get hopping with some coffee before I am stuck like a rusted tin man in the wizard of oz. I hate it when I stay up all day, night, and next day, but man I get so much done, and it is hard to stop once you get that roll going.

and by the way, thank you for giving us this pool.
There is not another pool where I feel like I do not need to check on it. This is where I feel comfortable knowing you and CK provide us with the most stable mining environment around. I have no doubt that one day people are going to catch on to the facts of you two doing everything you do with the miner software, pool software, along with bitcoin community experience relative to the other pools available and realize that they need to park hash here and forget it for a few months.

I have no intention of supporting a F2pool / Discus, bitmain, or anyone else putting themselves above the network because they are too sleazy and selfish in their mining choices to make the changes needed.
Unless you and CK decide to close up shop there certainly isn't another viable candidate. I'd be forced to OGnasty and / or bitminter simply because I like doc and Og along with process of elimination. Elgius, hell no, never. I will never even use them as a backup.

Slush I did try, but no forum presence is so impersonal and the way they address your mining time is crazy. If you lose internet for a few minutes and the pool hits a block, nadda nothing for the miner. I understand he does it to push hoppers away, but it is counter productive. You cannot punish someone that much who just spent X amount of hours submitting work and then the miner needed a reboot and got hung up, or the internet provider decided to make a change and you are down for 20 minutes. The ramp down makes me sick. I missed out on 4 blocks within a couple of days and decided that alone was enough to get out of dodge.

P2Pool doesn't seem to have any consistent development or support. As you can tell, I need support haha. I sincerely love the concept, but it requires people staying on the forefront of current events, changes, in general anything happening to have a pool where I will invest this much time and money per month. I like OGNasty in the sense of doing business and talking with him. He seems like a straight up guy. The pool sounds like P2Pool, or an adaptation of such, and unfortunately way too low of consistent hashrate when I've checked. I don't think he is the developer either it is nonacompook or something like that who sounds intelligent, but I cannot see the P2Pool working in a modern (relative to how fast mining changes) fashion.

MMPool needs to move to a PPLNS payout system. I know you don't like the alts, but I enjoy playing with them. I don't think they are detractors for bitcoin I think they are like trading baseball cards. A side gig as it were, and nothing I take serious because of pump and dumps except I do have a thing for unobtanium. They have a great group of people driving the coin. Although there are always issues with the current developer it seems. MMPool uses DRM I believe, and I did not like that for a second, and they get DoSsed a good bit. I tried supporting him with a little bit of hash, but could not keep playing cat and mouse with the DoSser.  

That would be why I would always be at Kano.is or CK solo. If I lost those choices then I would move to bitminter and Ognasty to try it out, but if I didn't get on well there, I don't know where I would actually mine. I think I would go to P2Pool at that point versus the way most of the other pools treat the network and their miners.

Unless people do wake up and realize what is happening with SPV mining and empty blocks, not to mention the massive hash rate buildup in China the network will be corporatized and eventually the Chinese Government will own the bitcoin network security. Effectively having the ability to cause immense damage to the point of people turning away and turning off. It doesn't matter if it is an accident if you knowingly continue to perform the same actions but some people / pools like F2pool don't care about anything except themselves and making more coin. They choose this to the point of causing harm to what we love and blatantly, light-heartedly defend continuing to do so.
I don't think you are on the cutting edge of development if you are setting up yourself for failure. Just because it only hurts others is not a great business decision for long term product growth. I realized those guys were only in it for the quick cash when they commented after the fork happened that yes it happened due to their choices along with bip 66 being implemented and they weren't going to stop SPV mining. I would venture a guess we have seen an increase in 0 block sizes. They are making so much money they would rather continue to risk the long term stability of their pool, certainly their miners money, and reputation to continue SPV and 0 block mining.

This is eye - opening and great business school case study. Akin to the guy getting rich off penny stocks, no morals in business would always lead to a massive failure in a fair world, but I take consolation in knowing eventually they are going to do something which causes them to be on the wrong side of one of these decisions in a big way. It may be a giant fork where they start, then bitmain, then the btcchina start on a separate fork and the rest of the pools have to  start killing connections, nodes begin blocking them, and one day miner's begin to wise up to the fact that even IF you made more coin with either one of those pools it is not worth arming people who will harm something like bitcoin.

The bitcoin - blockchain is resilient and like a small child can fall down and get back up many times learning from it and evolving to meet it in the future, but if someone is causing that fall eventually the kid learns and does something about it or someone else steps in. We are at that point and baby bitcoin grew to toddler bitcoin and began walking. The fork knocked her down, and it isn't just those two pools, they happen to be one of the bigger problems today, but if people don't realize they will actually make more money at other pools, and stop following along like it doesn't matter we may very well never see little miss bitcoin through her juvenile years in the current form we know and love.

They cannot kill bitcoin with one specific action, but by allowing them to repeatedly knock her down we are endorsing such. If someone was at work and saw their boss push a kid in the dirt, saw them kick that kid in the stomach and that person kept right on working ignoring what was going on around them we as a society would condemn both the boss and the person, and both would probably be carrying an ass-whooping with them wherever they went. We need to figure out a better way to help people understand it isn't cool, it doesn't pay better, variance shouldn't be such a big deal (and there are other ways to control variance rather than supporting the wrong pool), and there will be long lasting scars which will be seen in various ways from their actions with the biggest leading to centralized mining and a laugh til you cry version of network security which no one will trust with their money. We need leaders who care more about the potential, understand what is at stake on all levels, and who aren't just after how much money they can make today.  

We can have all of the full nodes anyone ever would want, but if the hashrate is literally owned by two companies who admittedly work closely together the ecosystem will be damaged in such a way it will bring things to a halt long enough to start the snowball of failure leading to a massive amount of negative media attention which brings a lack of confidence in bitcoin. Once that level of a death roll begins it isn't going to be a technological thing which can be patched up, there will not be a hard fork to vote on, there will simply be an out of control spiral of a back and forth between selling, losing confidence, not only people selling their long term holding coin, but then other miners will sell equipment, leading to more discourse, more negative media, and each affects the other until it is a beaten down broken shell of what Satoshi originally thought he'd created. The thing we all fell in love with.

Killing bitcoin is like killing the internet, no one can do so, but, it can be made much less of what it is today by control and laws being passed by the wrong people and that is the exact scenario which will occur with bitcoin. Intentionally or not these guys are going to kick off an implosion for which there will not be a way back to where we are now. By the time the regulators and the media are done with it no one will touch it and they will keep happily using their apple pay, google pay. amazon coin, or whatever centralized piece of crap they see an advertisement for while streaming Dancing with the stars and going on with their miserable life without having given a proper chance or even showing that as even only one person they at least started mining somewhere other than a pool who supports the type of mining these pools do.

There will be plenty of distractions with the banks trying to split the blockchain from bitcoin, massive corporations taking an interest and even more "nothing but the bottom line right now" type of people. We should do more as a community to promote getting hash away from supporting bad people.

Hell, even if I'm wrong (which you may confirm the previous serious issues which caused forks on the main bitcoin.org site and via the F2pool pool and many other threads) is it worth the risk to our conjoined twins named bitcoin & blockchain?

I am so immature, and then you give me a visual like such!
I feel I must pass the crown   

Ummm, is it just me?
Or, does this chikurkey have nipples?

Congrats!
You gotta love those solo hauls.

I was able to see my name in lights after solving a block on kano.is a couple of blocks ago. I was fairly stoked to see that. I cannot even think of how excited I would be soloing here at the master colo pool with an S3.

Keep on keepin on... hashing

I am extremely curious to see what BW brings to the table to compete with Bitmain.
I was telling someone the other day all it would take is someone with the right mindset and money to dominate the home miner market. Especially if they buy market share.
If they bring a great product and have great customer service there may be a price war to live for.
The perfect storm for us little guys would be the .1 - .2 range in a 3 - 5 TH machine which allowed people to downlock or change the fans if they want. We do have many co-mining peers who need the ability to run without the noise from a big server psu and miner. Then there are also many of us who don't care about the noise and will blast at full rockin speed as long as it is efficient.

The holy grail would be something so efficient the cost of power didn't matter versus a reasonably low price of bitcoin. Even people paying 20 cents/KWH being able to mine and make good money due to a technological advance would equal great distribution because so many people would maximise power usage and fill any area with a miner. I know my shop, house, and any buildings I could get my hands on would be full  versus right now there is no way I would go that "all in". I have kiddos to put through college, help buy vehicles, retirement to think of in a couple of decades, etc, and oh keep my small part of the world turning and burning.

A fella can dream though, so he may as well dream big...

I would be happy with an S7 equivalent or better from a company where the policy reflects customer service first and throw in those couple of things with a price tag of around $950 USD. Talk about difficulty explosion.

I just hope it doesn't turn out like the Sfards scenario.  Everything looked great until they stopped talking. I am very surprised anyone bought a unit at their list price, much less a reseller charging even more. I sincerely hope the people who did purchase their Sfard's miners are on their way to a decent ROI via Litecoin and Bitcoin. Those kinds of things sound and look great, but I have heard from too many people it is a sales tactic, and I remember reading that even Sfards states to run one or the other and that even though it will run that way, it is far from optimal functionality and that you should stick with one coin at a time.

My S7 has been good to me so far. I've had it under power for a week today and it has a strangely consistent hashrate. I am used to all of my miners GH/S(avg) fluctuating much more than this S7. It is almost like there was a speed display hardcoded heh. All of my S3, S4, S5, S5+ miners deviate a much larger amount relative to my first S7. It is almost rock solid at GH/S(avg) 4,853.93   
It takes a couple of minutes to even see a change to 4,853.90.
Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about it. I am happy it is consistent and isn't jumping at the rate my S5+ does. The S5+ is usually in the 7,670.97 range. Sometimes I hit 7,700.00 ish, but rarely. Usually it is 7,670.97 to 7,500.00 ish.
As I mentioned, even my other S5s, S4s, and S3s deviate a great deal more than the S7. Again, a good thing, but with what some other people received for their 2 grand of btc for one miner I expected more inconsistency. The 5s timer hops around a bit more as you would expect, but the average is a hodler. I sincerely hope no one finds a legitimate negative reason for hashrate holding solid versus a 10 - 30 GHS variation per TH. When I see a miner sold to be 7.8 and it does 7.6 to 7.65 to 7.5 constantly bouncing around different average speeds it can get a little frustrating shelling out $2,500 bucks, but hey it is mining, it is a gamble. Believe it or not I do not point out every little thing about anyone's miner.
But yeah, please no one find a reason for this anomaly. It would break my heart and no one wants to see a giant cry

Someone in the marketplace subforum mentioned people are mining with every miner they have at the moment due to current BTC pricing. I better go mod and load up some S3s I was bout to sell so I can keep up with the Jones's, or, am I supposed to say the Kardashian's at this point in pop culture?

One last thing, and while trivial, I do expect better from our news, and what I assume is a news sit used by many people.
In the BW article they state this:

"Now it wants impact".

May I buy a vowel please? How about a T?  or, maybe an O?

You will never see me correct the spelling or grammar of anyone here or on any forum, mine is nowhere close to above average, much less right on, but man, surely they have copy editors, or at a minimum BW.com would proof it and request a change. WE need Professional people in our bitcoin communities. People who work at least 14 hours per day, 6 days a week, 362 days a year until they have things rolling with tha homies. They need to have a different person than who does the work, check that person's work. You shouldn't ever rely on one person to check their own work before it hits the streets. Just my two pops for the evening.

...and just to make sure there are not any doubts...
I said my S7 is running well and I think the S7 I received is not only the most efficient, but the most professional looking and operating Bitmain miner I have ran to date. For a small nano farmer like me this isn't a decent size sample from a large farm, but it is a large amount of data being compared from a small amount of miners and from someone who logs, watches, compares, and records a variety of information from every miner in my farm at least once per day.

Glad to see more people are receiving their remaining B1, 2?, and B3 orders. I sincerely hope people keep posting their results. We really need to see a large sample of every situation. Let us hear you if your units are running great like Prelude's, or, if not we need to hear those specifics as well.

A guy can dream, and if by some small miracle another company steps to the plate, lets have a decent sample posted here in the forum to help each other make more informed decisions.

I have a small stash of some of my favorite S3s and their are some S3+ units I still mine with.
Say I have 8 average or better S3s
What is your offer?
You probably know more about used pricing than me at the moment, I am just starting to look to sell several things.

I have IBM DSP2000BB 2000 Watt PSUs
I run them in pairs stacked with two 120MM fans on slow speed for cooling
I have two Gekkoscience Breakout boards to control everything. Fan speed, nice switches for on / off / auto.
I believe they are the best b/0 board for the power supply
requires 220
I paid $70.00 each I think for those, I'm not sure, I will check If interested.
I also have some great ATX power supplies. A few 1300G2, few other EVGA, 1000, 750, another 1000, Corsair AX1200, couple more corsairs. I have plenty of server and atx supplies. No ATX over the 1300. I moved to Server PSU, the 2000 and 2800 pretty fast.

I take very good care of my things. Nothing in this list has been overheated, clocked, or in any way harmed by rough mining.

I also have an electric drum set
A speaker box made for a chevy extended cab new in the box. It is molded out of some form of thick plastic and has a single 10" Woofer. The box and speaker are factory from MTX. I love that box, but haven't used it because the truck I bought it for was wrecked by my ex so...

I can probably put some cables together for the 2000BB GekkoScience boards. Fork terminals on one end and PCI on the other straight to the miner, but I always buy 36" cables. I can also hook you up with the person I get them from who does outstanding quality and uses quality components.
I have every single cable for each of the ATX units. They are barely used.

I may consider trades for Gold, Silver, other small things which carry nice value and is known to grow in value. But hell give it a shot with most anything. I am a tinkerer. I take great pride in my weapons, specifically guns.

Of course, bitcoin is king.
Shipping to the continental US preferred, but never say never.
I have no problem putting some pictures together with something showing the date with the products.
I also have no problem with escrow. I know OGnasty has a solid rep and I have handled business with him in the past. That is who I prefer to handle escrow.

Didn't mean to run this long, but wanted to throw some fresh ideas around.

Best to you,

Sloopy

No need to apologize to me, I was not speaking specifically about any one person. Reading back I can see where it could be taken as such. I saw the 240 conversation  and as you know that was one of the first things I did. I think people running 240 over 120 is right up there with exhaust and running at spec. I think you know we have both worked in different fields for decades and both are electrically based with many parts falling under the responsibility of an EE. Many times I am forced in that role due to various things.

The intention of my post was to stress how much each person must investigate each little thing for himself. They must have someone who can look at every circuit and make sure it is to spec. The NEC is there and code should always be followed except when the inspectors agree with something someone found which is an exception. There are many people who interpret things their way. I prefer to ask several people and you might remember me mentioning I have a friend who is a licensed electrician. He is a hardass. He isn't going to let me do anything shady "even though it would be OK" Oh he will say "Well, if that's the way you really want to do it..." "But, what I'd do is..."
I could not tell you what you and the other gentleman were debating at this moment. I had a few minutes to make a post this morning before leaving. I'd read some of the previous posts regarding a 220 / 240 circuit compared to 120 and wanted to chime in with my own opinion which in my mind at that moment had no bearing on one specific person. I am 100% serious regarding my previous post. People must be vigilant. Someone may see how happy we all are with our 240 and try to throw a breaker in, or someone tell them it is OK to throw the breaker in that wire will handle it, and they want to believe them so bad they do it.

I think some people are capable of following printed instructions and placing peg A in Slot B, but some people are not. I am confident everyone here has met someone who should not be plugging in a miner period. I want people to know the only thing they should do is have an electrician approve everything they do, or they should have an electrician do it and as notlist3d stated, they should ask a helluva lot of questions.

I also have no doubt there are plenty of people on this forum who know way more than most, have never been a licensed electrician, and from an understanding that is part talent, part experience, and maybe something shown to them a few times they understand how to create safe circuits. Unfortunately that does not mean it is code. The code is so screwed up in so many places, and the local good ol boy networks manipulate them as well if you do not have someone who knows their system sign off you may be asking for trouble.

I think if we took a poll we would find the people most qualified to hand out household circuit advice, or even laying out a full Main and sub with all circuits would not be so willing to do so, and be more of a mindset to tell someone to get their local electrician involved.

Maybe it is just me, but I seriously do think the electrical changes / work done by anyone who doesn't understand how power actually works and either knows the basic formulas or at least knows their meaning and where to look them up are people who are in need of onsite assistance.

Set aside the dangerous parts, losing your life, possibly killing many others, but in many, many places if you add a circuit without having an electrician OK everything and you have a fire because of what you added your insurance will tell you to kiss off. There are many of us capable of running circuits and calculating the load to the main or a sub to make sure we aren't exceeding it, yet that is the way. Where I live you must have a licensed electrician sign off on anything you do except change a wall outlet. You can't even add GFCI outlets without it, and while I think it is unfair for philosophical and political reasons (I think most would agree we have too much intervention from our governments and it is getting worse.) It is still a safer method.

It is anyone's choice on this forum to take matters into their own hands, just like it is anyone's choice anywhere. I do not feel as though we set a great example for many newbs. While it is their choice just like it is mine, I am also extremely safe, I usually get opinions from 4 or more people, I come up with what I think is not only the best current way, but plan for the future, and then take it all to an electrician. I have no doubt I would be fine to handle all of my electrical work, but that off-chance there is something I don't know about a particular breaker, I use the wrong box clamps or my main, or have a bone-headed moment I've had someone who knows the code, has the relationships with the local inspectors and utilities, along with being someone I've knows and trusted for many years.

I am recommending people truly do think safety first and  error on the side of caution. I would also recommend people who do know and are familiar keep telling people it is to their advantage to have an electrician visit. It usually doesn't cost to get a quote, and I love what the guy did with Craig's list. Picking up a good electrician that way should be easy, but look at credentials and insurance.

One last thing, liability can be a very fine line. Telling someone something is safe to do and a year later they burn their house down, well obviously it was their decision, but I know how I would feel as a person, and in today's sue sue sue world you never know what someone could pull out of a judge. It is too risky. So I speculate.

I hope this helps clarify and qualify what my opinion is.
Regarding you dmwardjr I think you have some great knowledge in many areas and the boxes you designed and built obviously teach some  of the very skills I mentioned in an excellent manner.
I do think if any of us are going to answer a question we should be thorough with safety first. It would be great if it was just another post, but there are serious ramifications with that information in the wrong hands. Along with that are disclaimers, I am not a licensed electrician, you should always confirm everything with a licensed electrician, and so on.

By the way, I am not a licensed electrician and there are a helluva lot more people on this forum and many others who know way more than I about electricity. That doesn't mean when I say I love 240 I haven't done the research as to why it is better, and I have done everything possible to learn more and more regarding inrush for all types of products, my local and national code in specific areas, and I always try to oversize but understand doing so to an extreme may cause you many other problems. So make sure you work with someone who is able to not only make you feel comfortable, but provide something to show you they know what they are talking about. It can't be a bunch of talk, it should be a license, or some other paper like being bonded / insured. If they back out of that then no dice.

Be safe with electrical, but gain the knowledge so there is not a need to be scared. You damn sure should be scared if you are skating on 25% of what you need to know, and you think you know 95%.
We do not know what we do not know in most situations, and that is where we may cause some of our biggest screwups.

When you look through life and line up all the bad things we usually start assigning those situations to others. My Dad ruined my childhood. My so and so did such and such, but when you stop to consider the one person you really should add to the lineup, you might find that person is the one who caused the most pain, embarrassment, or seriously messed up situations. There was only one person who was there for all of them, and while some aren't your fault, look at how many are, while being honest with yourself. You will come out the other side more energetic and have a new confidence once you learn it happens, it is ok, and now that you know it, you have a choice and the ability to correct the situation.

There is nothing wrong with being a little paranoid. There is nothing wrong with asking several people how to do something and picking through what you are told while prioritizing safety, and there is certainly nothing wrong with admitting you need some help. Always consider you may not know what you think you do. Getting the right person for the job will always be the least expensive and most safe. You have to break down before you build up. It doesn't matter who does it or for why, but like any addiction, you have to make up your mind to do it and for some that takes asking the right people for help.

I hope everyone has a great evening. DMwardJR you should have PMd me man, which I will PM you as soon as I can in a few. I have to buy a dress.
(No it isn't for me - all you sick minds out there )


I would enjoy hearing how other people feel about safety being a concern. Maybe you disagree and do not think it is collectively our responsibility? I enjoy hearing other's thoughts, ideas, and values.

Roll Tide 

I received my first B1 09-09-15 order on Monday and it has been running 4850 since I connected and booted up. That is good.
I am not complaining by any means, but it would have been nice for Bitmain to share what the issue was which held off shipping.

.0021 HW error in a bit over 48 hours.
Temps at 54 - 60
power at the miner connection is 12.17 using a single 2880 to power the S7, along with an S5.

I am eager to see what an S7+ brings to the table along with other competition.
I do believe we will see other miners available, and I would like to see a 16 - 20 TH miner from someone with either prior successful sales to members we all know on this forum.  Say Phil for example. OR, they better begin building trust through transparency ala sidehack and novac.

I hope everyone see's their B1 S7 units ship by the end of this week so bitmain begins shipping the other batches.

While Bitmain lost serious points with many people for handling this situation the way they did, of course many will run to buy anything they sell. Personally it was a big relief to see my 3 kg shipment heading to the USA. I felt a bit taken advantage of, but they did ship me what they said they would.

I also feel like mainstream reviewers are scared of bitmain. When you tell the story of a product, tell it all. This was a serious example of a major fuckup in business.

The saving grace, and this has been their saving grace many times, is they do eventually deliver running systems. Even if you do not like bitmain for many other reasons, the majority of the hardware runs.

Maybe that is the approach of the mainstream reviewer. They do not want to say anything negative about a company, especially bitmain. So, they keep the review strictly hardware related.

In that sense I have to give bitmain great marks on the S7 for some simple things.

They sent a  quick start / rma guide, and while there were a few typos which are unfortunately common with that many words in a doc coming from certain parts of the world, it is a big step for newer and older miners alike. More so for newer.

They have a safety label on the machine, which in turn also makes it look more pro.
Most of us probably have safety information memorized and realized, but it never hurts to have that reminder in your face. I believe this is a big improvement.

The Aluminum chassis is awesome. I am worried about damage to the corner of the hash boards for those of us who enjoy different configurations and prodding. (once out of warranty of course)
They are closer to having a modular miner imo.

The used market will be a mess with speeds ranging from everything which has been posted in this thread.


What do you think is the best and worst about the S7?

I cannot speak for anyone else but for me, I am actually interested in hearing or discussing things relative to spondoolies new miner, regardless of anyone elses problem with them.

I believe most people know there are not any intentions of selling to home miners. Guy made that very clear a while ago in this thread. That doesn't mean someone has to be under NDA. Did Spondoolies state such somewhere? Please reference such with a link to a credible source.

I speculate there will be a used market, and that is how some people will get these in their garage or business.
I did not have a bad experience with Spondoolies and I believe there are many others who have and continue to support them. Obviously it would be nice if they continued to sell to individuals, but I do not believe many individuals would purchase an SP50 to throw in their basement, albeit there are some dedicated folks who would do so. I certainly have a place for one if I hear of it going on the used market or after SPtech fill their hall.

I also do not see a reason they couldn't start selling smaller units again in the future. I can see why they would rather sell B2B. More volume, less headache, and certainly overall less BS to deal with from people who have recently been posting.
I will let my sig speak to anything relative to off topic subjects.

Have a great day people, and I'm sure SPT cannot wait to read your words of support for scumbags. Please do not let them down.

Definitely go 220-240.

There are many pretend electricians around here and you will hear all sorts of things which may even make sense or sound true but it is someone you don't know who has an interpretation of the way things should be.
The only type of person to trust is someone who isn't afraid to backup what they claim with facts, pictures, and easily verifiable information. Items which can be verified through multiple sources.

We are talking about something which can burn down your house or business. When someone claims to have a training gig, or they know something because of something someone else taught them, bah, ask for a reference, but better yet, ask an electrician who actually has a license.

There are also electrician forums where those guys hang out and are happy to answer questions with references to back them up.
Be wary of someone who in an argument continues to claim they are right because they have previous experience in that area. To me, that is akin to claiming I am a fireman because I lived through a fire. Not quite the same is it?