Sold, thank you all for your interest

It's a fair offer, I'll consider it accepted and with your permission I'll contact the escrow to get us started.

Going to find some quiet in my life and selling these noise and heat makers off before summer. They've been running and stable for about 20 months, several early defective hash boards were repaired through BitmainWarranty in Colorado and all are now 100% fully functional with low error rates. Requires 220v-240v @5a each.

3x Bitmain Antminer S9-B14 11.85THs non autotune @550
3x APW3+-12-1600 PSU Series

0.35 BTC OBO (Includes free shipping and escrow fees)
To lower 48 states US buyers only.
WILL NOT ship or sell internationally.

Sale will be handled through:
Escrow on this forum to protect both parties

Other highly rated escrow services are fine as well, let me know your preference.

SOLD

It's certainly possible to set whatever you want as the frequency but it's not easy.

Just changing the bmminer.conf file doesn't work because it has built in software that resets that particular file randomly and you'd suddenly have a screaming heat machine again if you ignore it for too long.

So you make a copy of that file say bmminer2.conf and have the autorun script call that one instead (Not really sure where it is, but should be in the /etc/rc? somewhere, I did my own custom script and renamed the run files, so I didn't actually bother to find theirs to modify it.

If you're really daring you might want to call the conf with your own custom start script and disable the existing one. Also renaming single-board-test and bmminer in the /usr/bin folder to make sure only your script calls them and they don't start by some other process. As running some of those in multiple can mess with your PIC firmware and you'd have to reset them manually (Another irritating process to be sure)

Please be careful and do so at your own risk I almost burned up an S9 figuring out how to do it properly.

I'm running two autotune R4s (@533mhz) and an autotune S9 (@425mhz) with my modifications, and they will be happily set to wherever I like them and retain those settings after reboot. Stays cool even in the hottest of the summer if you go down as low as @350mhz or so, and in the cold of winter @550mhz+ but I like to change them with each season just to keep them efficient.

If anyone wants to run a development bounty for it I'll develop the process and code changes into an easy to follow format and post it for everyone to use. Perhaps even a script that'll do it for you if the amount is worth it. Only for autotune S9s and R4s with any version of the firmware, I haven't done it with any other models.

Probably be easiest to connect the fans to an external controller and run them manually, you just need something that gives them the power they need.

Then plug them back in and power up the miner normally.

Yes you can SSH into the miner, use root as the username and your password that you set from the GUI web interface, or the default password if you didn't set one.

You'd probably have to be very good at some programming to make any headway though, there isn't much user friendly stuff in there. Even the bmminer program is an unauthorised license violating copy of cgminer. So you're not likely to get any help from Bitmain or cgminer on trying to solve the problem.

Bitmain won't give you any software tools or advice on how to fix it yourself, their only response is "send it in for repair". Although sometimes they link you to a different firmware version for a specific problem, might try contacting them first about the error and see if you get anything useful.

Your error is probably something wrong with either the controller or the hashing boards, the socket error means they can't connect to each other.

Could be a lot of things wrong, and it's going to take a lot of deep work to figure it out.

Good luck!

Yes everything is full load, like I said the only difference is build quality.

And yes you can still make money on them, there is still profit to be had, but the ROI isn't as rosy as the stats would have you believe. Reduce your hash rate calculation by 25% over the long term and calculate using that number instead, you'll be much more accurate.

This doesn't seem to work on the newest firmware, I haven't found a way to revert it, thankfully it was just on my test failed board unit.

Use caution if you upgrade the firmware now, because you might not be able to go back.

They are all pre autotune units running original firmware at the original clock rate. My fail miners (one r4 and one s9) hosting the failed boards were updated to the autotune software for giggles and testing purposes but that was after the boards failed running on their original hardware and software.

They are in a cool room with air temps under 80F year round, and a clean, dry environment with stable power. Let's just say I have a bunch of other equipment (About half a dozen servers and GPU setups) that have had a 0% failure rate in the same room on the same power.

Different equipment same conditions, one with an obviously higher failure rate.

Of course comparing the QC of a company like IBM or HP to Bitmain is kind of apples to oranges. One obviously doesn't put the same care into their product to test long term quality. I'd prefer they raise prices a little and raise the QC bar, but it's their business and their choice.

I'm sure if I get enough quality servers and GPUs I'll run into a failure at some point, it can't stay 0% forever. But those companies also offer much better warranties and servicing if that happens.

 

Lost another s9 board, this one had a lot of HW errors before it went, so at least I knew it was the next in line. Oddly enough it's hashing in my failed board miner at .4TH/s with 27 ASICS visible. Weird failure. I'll keep it powered for a week or so to see if it's condition changes, but it's not worth running as it is.

So far since last September (9 months ago)

Lost 3 R4 boards (out of 12 total) (One was resuscitated by reprogramming the PIC with a copy from a good board, one was repaired by BitmainWarranty, one is left as failed and won't be repaired)

Lost 3 S9 boards (out of 12 total) (One was repaired by BW, two are left as failed and won't be repaired.)

The low quality of their products does extend the ROI payback time quite a bit, so if your numbers are close to the line I'd suggest rethinking their products. A 25% failure rate in 9 months is far too high.

In hindsight, they seem to put a "bad" board into each miner to balance out the good boards. Once you weed out the bad boards and consolidate your good boards the remainder should do just fine.

Seems like Bitmain is happy to sell boards that normal companies wouldn't clear past any reasonable QC. by my estimate 25% of your boards are broken from the date they ship, and should have been rejected in the QC testing phase, if you're willing to accept that, then go for it.

Bitmain Warranty fixed another R4 board for me, faster turnaround and worked well.

Kind of sad when one bad chip messes up the chain, but I suppose that's a tradeoff for the design. At least Denver has a faster turnaround and cheaper repair than going to China, plus no customs or international shipping madness. Much better.

Also patched the antbleed bug on my systems, hopefully that won't be an issue in the future either.

Part 1 of a scam is collecting the money

Part 2 is designing the system and covering your tracks to make sure no legal authorities can find you afterwards

Guess we'll see how good they are at part 2 over the next few years

People are just too greedy for a quick buck and will pay off scammers. If it didn't work at least some of the time they wouldn't do it

That's very helpful! I reset mine back to the default Aug 9th firmware using that method and it's much better now. One board still isn't reading properly (45 of 63 chips), but if I downclock it enough  (533mhz) the bad board gives me back about 1TH/s not quite as good as new, but at least it's helping. 5TH/s with one bad and one downclocked good board, vs 4TH/s with one 600Mhz good board.

Got the repaired board back from Colorado, took a little longer than expected, but it's running fine, and their service was informative and helpful the entire time.

Arrived at Bitmain warranty: Feb 23
Returned repaired: Mar 8
Cost $175 + $25 return shipping + $25 outbound shipping to CO

Have another dead R4 board to send, but you can't keep running the other half if you send one in like you can on the S9 (downclocked to 500 to keep the temp stable) Too much of the air pressure escapes on the open side. I suppose that space could be filled with something fire retardant to make it work, but I haven't figured that out yet.

So I either wait until another R4 board dies, so I can send in two at once. Or I send it in and power down the other board until it's fixed.

I think I'll wait and see. But at least we have a repair service in the states that works.

I'm pretty sure the firmware is the same in the S9 and the R4, it uses a different controller, but the base code is the same with the exception of the fan control.

You can load any S9 firmware with a Xilinx folder to an R4 and it'll do everything the same until it detects only one fan, then it'll shutdown bmminer. You can also load any R4 firmware with a c5 folder to an S9. I haven't run them for long, they don't seem to like the others fan configuration, but it works.

Also my S9 board is fixed and hopefully on the way back soon. It's been almost a month since they received it as it had more issues than they were expecting. Hopefully it runs without issue. They responded quickly and helpfully each time I emailed, so a big plus for that.

I'm not worried yet, I wouldn't have sent it if I didn't have at least a little trust.

While it's been almost a month since the process started, they only received it on Jan 23rd. So they've only had it for two business weeks.

If I don't hear back by the end of next week, I'll send an e-mail requesting an update.

I'm not in a rush, I'd just like it to go smoothly so I can rely on them in the future if needed. It might not be cost effective or time effective, but I'll certainly give it a try. It's better than sitting on broken boards anyway.

Assuming that one comes back working for a reasonable price. It'll give me the numbers I need to calculate a ROI based on the repair costs and time. If they are favorable I have more boards to send.

Yes, you can clone the data from one good PIC to another, but it only solves some problems with the boards. If it's a genuine hardware fault you're out of luck unless you have the equipment and experience to diagnose it.

I saved 1 out of 3 failed boards by copying the pic data. The other two boards have hardware faults that that didn't fix. And no the PIC won't self heal if it's munged up badly enough, but manually copying the data did work once at least. And no additional harm done to the other two busted ones.

Using a pickit3 reading from a good board and writing to a bad board seems to fix the boards that don't show up or communicate at all with the control board. Beyond that it's not so easy. Although you have to remove the little worthless warranty sticker to get to the pic header, so don't expect to get a worthless warranty after you try to fix it yourself.

Also it might be cheaper to send things to bitmainwarranty.com instead of for the warranty in Hong Kong. Not only is the full service cheaper than shipping back to China, but the turnaround is supposedly faster. As a caution I have one S9 board that's been out to them for almost a month now with no reply, so I haven't yet had a successful transaction with them. I still don't know if I trust them, but I certainly can't justify shipping back for a warranty repair.

That's the question, is it more cost effective to keep sending parts in for repair, or to spend that money buying better equipment with real support from elsewhere?

Can do a GPU rig that's 1/2 the raw income of Bitmain hardware, but it'll easy to fix and replace parts as needed, with a full 1 year warranty.

Maybe an Avalon rig too, not quite as good on paper as Bitmain, but if they have a lower failure rate it won't take much to make it worth it.

Bitmain has an initial productivity advantage, but it eats that away with failures and constant issues. Plus their warranty is essentially worthless, so there isn't much to recommend them.

One thing you might try is send the bad fan in with the other unit, and ask for a PAY repair on that part, or have them ship you a replacement fan. Anything other than shipping back an entire extra unit for a bad fan would be a big benefit.

bmminer crashes when the bad r4 board is connected, it segfaults somewhere during the board testing process and just sits there.

It fails immediately after this step:
Chain[J7] chip[12] get middle temp offset=-3 typeID=55

Was hoping I could get the 45 good chips to run, maybe if I knew the memory addresses it was failing on I could avoid them, but it's difficult to tell. I'm surprised they didn't engineer it to use whatever good chips are available, instead of failing the entire chain. But I suppose Bitmain isn't known for robust designs.

Oh well, sometimes you wish for the good old days with single asic USB chips, easy enough to diagnose anyway.

It's at least reading more than the dead S9 board was, so hopefully it'll be a quick fix when I send it it.

 

Realized I don't have any pre autotune firmware for the R4, so that idea is out! Can't find any of the old firmwares online so I'll probably have to leave it on autotune.

Have one board running in the R4 now anyway, the other one is having some severe issues so it's likely something in the hardware. I rebuilt it's firmware but it didn't fix it.

Oh well, another failure.