S5 board gone bad, options

[VirosaGITS]

Honestly the easiest option would be to sell it as a one blade miner and someone will probably pick it up for ~200$ and just use the funds to help purchase a fully working unit.

Its not a bad idea, i might even be interested in picking up such offer if the shipping to Canada is not too bad. If its available in one or two weeks i would probably pick up the deal.

[soy]

Honestly the easiest option would be to sell it as a one blade miner and someone will probably pick it up for ~200$ and just use the funds to help purchase a fully working unit.

No way.  I see no more S5's for sale by Bitmain.  To sell this perfectly working board running at half speed for money toward somebody else's 2 board castoff that in all probability would be a can of worms and nothing but headaches is not a smart idea.  If an S5 is working good who in their right mind would sell?

[VirosaGITS]

Honestly the easiest option would be to sell it as a one blade miner and someone will probably pick it up for ~200$ and just use the funds to help purchase a fully working unit.

No way.  I see no more S5's for sale by Bitmain.  To sell this perfectly working board running at half speed for money toward somebody else's 2 board castoff that in all probability would be a can of worms and nothing but headaches is not a smart idea.  If an S5 is working good who in their right mind would sell?

Okay so you have 3/4th a miner, not 1/2 of a miner. Would be more than 200$.

And replacing the board is strait forward and the go to solution when you have a dead board. But your is... half dead. Sound like it could go at any time. But not necessarily worth swapping it out yet, if the miner also run at the proper 3/4th of the power consumption.

Anyways the boards don't work together or anything, they are completely individual, they are merely two different miner running on one cgminer, so you can run 1, 2, 3 or 4 (or more) on a controller, you can even hack together a way to connect them through USB to use a miner on another OS to run them.

So buying a good board is exactly the same as buying a used complete S5.

[Exoskeleton]

Honestly the easiest option would be to sell it as a one blade miner and someone will probably pick it up for ~200$ and just use the funds to help purchase a fully working unit.

No way.  I see no more S5's for sale by Bitmain.  To sell this perfectly working board running at half speed for money toward somebody else's 2 board castoff that in all probability would be a can of worms and nothing but headaches is not a smart idea.  If an S5 is working good who in their right mind would sell?

Eh, it depends on the price offered. I think I'm about to put a few SP20 units that are giving me problems up for sale at a discount. They power up and all and I'm sure there is a way to fix them but I'm just fed up with working on gear. No time. I think I'll just put the money towards a new S7 which is what I would recommend the OP do if he can afford it. Someone else could probably get it back to 100% and then its a win/win for both parties.

[RichBC]

Selling partially working gear, or multiple faulty units, can often get a good price because of the "Gamble" value that people put on their ability to repair the faults.

Rich

[soy]

Sent the board back to Bitmain via US Postal Service Priority Mail on Nov. 23rd and it arrived in Miami on Nov. 25th.  Today was Dec. 14th and there has been no further movement in Miami.  It would appear the US Postal Service is not the carrier to use to China.

11/23/15 mailed, priority post

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11/25/15 package arrives at Miami

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12/22/15 package still in Miami.

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12/26/15 package still in Miami.

[soy]

1/1/2016, starting the new year and the S5 hashboard sent back for repair is still sitting in Miami at the USPS facility, there since 11/25/2015.  Wonder if the problem is that the Bitmain rep said to write on the package that the value was $20 or less which then begs the question why spend $17 on priority mail postage.  Or perhaps the USPS just doesn't want to engage in mail service to China.
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Put a trace on it yesterday.  It's still there tonight 1/6/16, 42 days since being mailed, no indication of having been moved from USPS Miami to US customs.

[soy]

January 11, 2016 and still no movement from the Miami USPS.  November 23, 2015 to present, 50 days.  And because Bitmain asked the value to be displayed as <$20,  if the USPS says they've lost it then guess what I'd get for it.  Probably would get postage refunded too tho.  That would be an S5 board with 2 ASICs dead for $37.

[soy]

And today 1/13/16, a few minutes ago, I checked the tracking number on www.usps.com and got the following notification:



    The Postal Service could not locate the tracking information for your request. Please verify your tracking number and try again later.


Perhaps a worker at Miami's USPS took umbrage at my unfortunately poor penmanship on the customs form.

[soy]

Well that's interesting.  This morning I checked the routing number again and it's back showing the hashing board to have arrived at a USPS Miami site.  Same tracking information as before the tracking number became `not found`.  When I got the tracking number not found notification, I notified Sherry.  This morning I received notification from Bitmain the parcel was received and the defective part has fixed well.  I've been given a figure to cover and am awaiting confirmation they have my correct address.

[soy]

So, how do Bitmain repairs work?  After sending the required btc and transaction ID, there are no new entries on my Bitmain page, just indication of the new miners I bought in the past.  It's been a few days.

[soy]

Perhaps in Miami they thought my poor penmanship, I filled out the customs form unexpectedly at the post office, was deliberate and for the inconvenience, after being contacted with the trace, sent the package on to China less tracking.

[soy]

So Bitmain has had my btc for the s5 hashing board repair for a few hours shy of a week.  To recap: I had sent Sherry an email asking about a repair.  Was given information on where to send the board.  I sent it via USPS Priority Post.  Tracking stopped in Miami.  I received notification from Bitmain that the hashing board had been received and repaired successfully and told I needed to send 0.1357btc to address: 1KwA4fS4uVuCNjCtMivE7m5ATbv93UZg8V, transaction ID is: c6d748a7053f3c26672503b04f09472a80032ea16442cc0087dac5422bc8ed88.
After a couple of days not hearing back after sending the btc, I sent an email asking for info and tracking on the return board.  No reply.  I only then opened a ticket on my Bitmain page and described most of the above including the transaction ID.  I got an email reply of a support ticket created on 17 Jan.  I looked at the support ticket on my Bitmain page on Jan. 19th but the ticket information was gone.  So I went to the support email and clicked the "here support ticket" to "view this ticket's progress online and update".  It was there and I added a note making myself more clear then a second addition later that night.  I just looked again and there's no movement on the ticket.  There has been no reply from Bitmain nor Sherry.  I have just sent another email to Sherry asking for info.  Also I stopped back at the US Post Office where I mailed the package last November and made sure they had all the correct information and phone number Sherry had given me for the shipment and asked them to make sure the trace that I had previously requested had all the correct data.

[soy]

Maybe a low level, nationalistic, worker in the Miami post office, viewing the man-made island in the South China sea situation, dead boxed the hashing board shipment in Miami.  Then in response to my email request to Bitmain, Bitmain lied about having already received the hashing board and just assumed it would arrive eventually and gave a typical replacement price and claimed my hashing board had been repaired.  But, when the hashing board still didn't arrive they decided to keep the 0.1357btc and continue waiting for the board before sending a replacement because they want to burn the old down to recover metals.

[soy]

Interesting.  Following the link in the ticket reply email I'm getting a Bitmian page, the person icon when the menu is pulled down says Welcome Billy Johnston.  The page has a left column saying My Tickets and below Solving 0 Solved (no digit), and the right page side shows one ticket, the title, the creation date and the status (waiting). 

Now I go to another machine and open up the Bitmain website and log in.  I look at the person icon and it says Welcome BillJ.  I go to the My Tickets page, where I had created the ticket that prompted the email in which I found the link which I followed above, and now it shows no tickets under the My Tickets.

So, I created a ticket as BillJ.  The notification of ticket creation went to my email address.  Following the ticket link in the email takes to to a Billy Johnston My Ticket page showing the ticket but the ticket on the BillJ page is gone.

Perhaps it's because the ticket was moved to Bitmain Support Center that it no longer appears under my central Bitmain account page where no record of it appears.

[coinhelper]

My S5 lost a board last night.  Chain 1 showed many "x"'s.  I changed supplies, no help, in fact chain 1 went completely dashes.  I swapped sides.  Chain 2 went all "x"'s.  I lowered the frequency to 200M.  Ten "0"'s and 20 "x"'s on the bad board!  I cleaned the board.  Now all "x"'s again.  Must admit the board had gotten dusty and the heatsink fins had accumulated dust at the intake.  My last try today was the newest firmware.  So, I believe the board has gone bad.  This is a Batch 1 S5 I bought in March, well beyond the 3 month warranty.  What kind of charges have others seen from Bitmain for this kind of board return and repair?  Thanks for insight.

I think that you can purchase hashing boards off sites like ebay.

This means that you can replace the board and get it funtioning quickly.

[soy]

No.  I'll never buy a miner off Ebay.  Repair or replacement from Bitmain will work for this S5.  Might not be profitable nor even break even but will help heat my home at a lower cost than my other miners.

[soy]

Maybe the Miami post office sees Trump making so much headway as a Xenophobe that they hope losing packages to China will boost the Bush prospects.

[soy]

Sherry has replied and will inform me of the tracking number in 2 days.

[soy]

Nothing new on the USPS tracking site.  Still showing nothing beyond having reached Miami.  I mentioned I stopped back a the post office and presented a printed copy of the destination data with phone number but I didn't mention that the gal at the counter said the postmaster was out until next week.  I was requesting that the trace I put on the package be checked to have all the data I presented with the printed page but apparently it was above her pay grade.  Not sure what day next week the local postmaster will be back.  Am considering going to another post office and requesting a trace, for instance from Peachtree City US post office.  My local post office is great in that there is rarely a line longer than 3 patrons and Peachtree City usually has a line stretching 10 or 15 deep.  But, PTC has a good number of major corporations while Hogansville has none.