Bitmain's Released Antminer S9, World's First 16nm Miner Ready to Order

[bitsink]

Received the "Feb 20 shipping" S9 miner yesterday....

I know you are all going to laugh, but this thing MAKES A REAL LOUD NOISE. It is unbelievable!!! Had I known....

Can somebody confirm whether it is "normal" that the fans run at about 4200rpm with an ambient of round 25C. Hash boards are at 77C and 83C hashing away at 4690 and 4680 Gh/s. There is a high pitched whistling sound.

[vancenkansas]

Received the "Feb 20 shipping" S9 miner yesterday....

I know you are all going to laugh, but this thing MAKES A REAL LOUD NOISE. It is unbelievable!!! Had I known....

Can somebody confirm whether it is "normal" that the fans run at about 4200rpm with an ambient of round 25C. Hash boards are at 77C and 83C hashing away at 4690 and 4680 Gh/s. There is a high pitched whistling sound.

thats about the norm for the s9 autotuners....they are all very noisy.

[allinvain]

Anyone noticed that bitmaintech's site is now unsecured. Their SSL cert expired? Any word from bitmain itself? Are they even aware of this?

--edit-- nevermind, it seems bitmain is not using the bitmaintech.com domain anymore that's why.

[bitsink]

What are the recommendations on pools for a single S9 miner at present? Eligius seems to be de-funked - it was a nice free anonymous pool with useful stats...

Bitmain's pool? They seem to have a charge. P2pool is not an option at the moment.

Thanks for any info.

[HagssFIN]

What are the recommendations on pools for a single S9 miner at present? Eligius seems to be de-funked - it was a nice free anonymous pool with useful stats...

Bitmain's pool? They seem to have a charge. P2pool is not an option at the moment.

Thanks for any info.

Kano or Slush for example..

[solteykr]

Kano or Slush for example..

What was your setup when you got this - #391994 at solo.ckpool.org ? Nice!

[HagssFIN]

Kano or Slush for example..

What was your setup when you got this - #391994 at solo.ckpool.org ? Nice!

I had only Antminer S1 and Antminer S2 pointed to solo.ckpool during that time, so it was extremely lucky.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Just *how* is an obvious failure of the hash board Vcore regulator  -- probably the MOSFET's shorting -- the fault of a PSU? Just what in a PSU do you assume could have prevented this?

The Bitmain PSU can supply up to 133A continuously and probably at least 10-15% more before tripping out, the combined maximum current rating of 3x PCIe connectors is only 81 amps. Vcore regulator blew, all power took the easiest path - through the short circuit - and so yes, the connectors and wiring smoked. For what it's worth, I have 25 of the AWP1300 supplies and have had ZERO problems with them. Don't know about the newer APW1300+ but the older ones are very well made.

Now should all miners have a fuse between the power sockets and Vcore? IMHO yes they should but that is just speaking as an Engineer with over 50 years of dealing with power electronics...

Yes sir.. My power supply is still working with 12v.. that's odd. With your years experience in electronics. what can you suggest? Do I just put a 80a fuse between the power supply and miner? How do I put it? one fuse for the positive, and one fuse for the negative?  I have 3 more S9's coming nxtweek. I can surely have a super advice from you sir. Thanks.

Not going to retyped it all again so ref https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1769399.msg17968291#msg17968291
Done that way each cable is protected plus easier to wire and fuses cost less.

[bitsink]

Thanks for the help on pools - Kano seems like a nice pool...

BUT managed to trash the control board somehow - it is not booting properly. Ethernet link LEDs come on, but neither the green nor red LED light up. The fans stay at their low idle speed. Disconnected all the hashing boards, and just trying to boot up the control board. The static IP is unreachable and the DHCP server is not seeing a DHCP request either.

Trying to recover the FW via SD, still figuring this out... or better by TFTP? The SD instructions seem old - they reference the S7 firmware, while the S9 firmware has a different file layout.

Has anyone managed to connect to the /dev/ttyPS0 console via the pin headers? Is this TTL 5V RS232 or "real" RS232? The speed seems 115200bps as per a previous dmesg dump in the thread.

If anyone has any hints, they would be appreciated.

[Biodom]

Thanks for the help on pools - Kano seems like a nice pool...

BUT managed to trash the control board somehow - it is not booting properly. Ethernet link LEDs come on, but neither the green nor red LED light up. The fans stay at their low idle speed. Disconnected all the hashing board, and just trying to boot up the control board. The static IP is unreachable and the DHCP server is not seeing a DHCP request either.

Trying to recover the FW via SD, still figuring this out... or better by TFTP? The SD instructions seem old - they reference the S7 firmware, while the S9 firmware has a different file layout.

Has anyone managed to connect to the /dev/ttyPS0 console via the pin headers? Is this TTL 5V RS232 or "real" RS232? The speed seems 115200bps as per a previous dmesg dump in the thread.

If anyone has any hints, they would be appreciated.

1. reboot your router
2. did you wait for at least 30-45 min after you rebooted the miner before going all in?
This is how long it takes to start working-this is normal. It just sits there.
Before it was 15-20 min, and before 6-7 min (all times with different S9)
3. I am not sure that doing this with disconnected boards makes sense because controller actively interacts with the boards before starting them.

[bitsink]

Thanks for the help on pools - Kano seems like a nice pool...

BUT managed to trash the control board somehow - it is not booting properly. Ethernet link LEDs come on, but neither the green nor red LED light up. The fans stay at their low idle speed. Disconnected all the hashing board, and just trying to boot up the control board. The static IP is unreachable and the DHCP server is not seeing a DHCP request either.

Trying to recover the FW via SD, still figuring this out... or better by TFTP? The SD instructions seem old - they reference the S7 firmware, while the S9 firmware has a different file layout.

Has anyone managed to connect to the /dev/ttyPS0 console via the pin headers? Is this TTL 5V RS232 or "real" RS232? The speed seems 115200bps as per a previous dmesg dump in the thread.

If anyone has any hints, they would be appreciated.

1. reboot your router
2. did you wait for at least 30-45 min after you rebooted the miner before going all in?
This is how long it takes to start working-this is normal. It just sits there.
Before it was 15-20 min, and before 6-7 min (all times with different S9)
3. I am not sure that doing this with disconnected boards makes sense because controller actively interacts with the boards before starting them.

Thanks for the reply. It was idling for a while - maybe 30mins. Before this happened, the IP connectivity was available pretty quickly. The green LED (front) was on and it took a few minutes to initialize the hashing boards. Now there is no IP connectivity (ssh, ping or http), no green LED and obviously no hashing.

Going to try the "s9_fix_upgrade" via SD card - fingers crossed.

[bitsink]

Thanks for the help on pools - Kano seems like a nice pool...

BUT managed to trash the control board somehow - it is not booting properly. Ethernet link LEDs come on, but neither the green nor red LED light up. The fans stay at their low idle speed. Disconnected all the hashing board, and just trying to boot up the control board. The static IP is unreachable and the DHCP server is not seeing a DHCP request either.

Trying to recover the FW via SD, still figuring this out... or better by TFTP? The SD instructions seem old - they reference the S7 firmware, while the S9 firmware has a different file layout.

Has anyone managed to connect to the /dev/ttyPS0 console via the pin headers? Is this TTL 5V RS232 or "real" RS232? The speed seems 115200bps as per a previous dmesg dump in the thread.

If anyone has any hints, they would be appreciated.

1. reboot your router
2. did you wait for at least 30-45 min after you rebooted the miner before going all in?
This is how long it takes to start working-this is normal. It just sits there.
Before it was 15-20 min, and before 6-7 min (all times with different S9)
3. I am not sure that doing this with disconnected boards makes sense because controller actively interacts with the boards before starting them.

Thanks for the reply. It was idling for a while - maybe 30mins. Before this happened, the IP connectivity was available pretty quickly. The green LED (front) was on and it took a few minutes to initialize the hashing boards. Now there is no IP connectivity (ssh, ping or http), no green LED and obviously no hashing.

Going to try the "s9_fix_upgrade" via SD card - fingers crossed.

  Ha! This is an interesting one  - This is what solved the mystery:
https://enforum.bitmain.com/bbs/topics/3957

And here the chain of events:
1. Tried sliding out the controller board to look at components, but realized that it was not made to be slid out - so slid it back.
2. By doing so the "IP Report" button was inadvertently depressed and kept there.
3. When the board booted - it followed its reset routine over and over.
4. I noticed the rebooting over and over with the red "fault" LED on.
5. After resetting the router I noticed the stuck "IP report" button, which was then fixed.
6. The board failed to come back none the less.... until I realized what had happened and the solution as above.
7. A proper hard reset using the "IP report" button brought the board back to life.

The miner must have been stopped in an unlucky state and was unable to initially complete the reset procedure.

Now is it sitting there, waiting to start up the miner daemon, which supposedly takes a while sometimes. 17min and counting...

--edit---
Still nothing. The "single-board-test" program seems to hang. It ends up listening on port 6060, and does nothing after that. The /sbin/monitorcg script does not start the miner either. A manual start of bmminer detects the 2 connected hashing boards, but then reboots the OS? Confused.

I am weary of "upgrading" the firmware, since the latest firmware in the BM download section is from November 2016, while my system seems newer: File System Version Tue Jan 24 22:42:36 EST 2017. Is there any newer firmware available anywhere?

Is it safe to flash the eg. s9-20160715-550M.tar.gz firmware from BM on the latest 13.5TH (shipping on 20/Feb) miners in order to under clock the miner?

[Sr.Urbanist]

... hard reset using the "IP report" button brought the board back to life.

The miner must have been stopped in an unlucky state and was unable to initially complete the reset procedure.

Now is it sitting there, waiting to start up the miner daemon, which supposedly takes a while sometimes. 17min and counting...

I'm glad you got may have it solved.  I did a couple accidental hard restarts and now it's hashing upwards 13.7 from 13.6.  Hopefully you'll have the same luck!  

Do you have a Kill-A-Watt or something to monitor the PSU? I assume it's getting 1600W ... when mine was idling it was only pulling 0.5A, then 1,2 and a spike to 12A and 1400W (on 110v) as it started hashing.

[bitsink]

... hard reset using the "IP report" button brought the board back to life.

The miner must have been stopped in an unlucky state and was unable to initially complete the reset procedure.

Now is it sitting there, waiting to start up the miner daemon, which supposedly takes a while sometimes. 17min and counting...

I'm glad you got may have it solved.  I did a couple accidental hard restarts and now it's hashing upwards 13.7 from 13.6.  Hopefully you'll have the same luck!  

Do you have a Kill-A-Watt or something to monitor the PSU? I assume it's getting 1600W ... when mine was idling it was only pulling 0.5A, then 1,2 and a spike to 12A and 1400W (on 110v) as it started hashing.

No measurements done yet. Still trying to get the thing to actually start hashing...

[Sr.Urbanist]

No measurements done yet. Still trying to get the thing to actually start hashing...

I'm just curious if it could be not getting enough power?    

[solteykr]

Not going to retyped it all again so ref https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1769399.msg17968291#msg17968291
Done that way each cable is protected plus easier to wire and fuses cost less.

I hope I got it right sir. Is this what I should do for my S9? Put a 35a fuse inline with the positive 3wires going to the Hashboard?

How about the controller? Do I need to fuse it also?

[tbonetony]

Anyone noticed that bitmaintech's site is now unsecured. Their SSL cert expired? Any word from bitmain itself? Are they even aware of this?

--edit-- nevermind, it seems bitmain is not using the bitmaintech.com domain anymore that's why.

Use bitmain.com instead.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Not going to retyped it all again so ref https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1769399.msg17968291#msg17968291
Done that way each cable is protected plus easier to wire and fuses cost less.

I hope I got it right sir. Is this what I should do for my S9? Put a 35a fuse inline with the positive 3wires going to the Hashboard?

How about the controller? Do I need to fuse it also?

Give that person a cigar, they got it right!

As for the controller, while there is nothing there using very high power and I don't ever recall reading about one catastrophically failing on an Antminer actually it *would* be a good idea to fuse it. Because the fans pull a fair bit of current - like up to about 2.5a each at full speed - I'd think an 8-10a fuse would be perfect.

[numnutz2009]

the batch of s9's that were slated for a feb 20th delivery run faster and quieter than previous generations as far as i can tell. so quiet in fact i can run one in my house without hearing it all the way on the third floor when its running in the basement! it uses a little more power but its just there to heat the downstairs during the winter so the trip to the washer and dryer isnt so bad (tile floors and bare feet suck in the winter time lol). the rest of my s9's run in temp controlled rooms with dedicated ac units but so far not one of my s9's has gone down except for one that tripped the breaker on one plug because it wasnt able to handle the power draw. after replacing the wall socket with a 20a socket with 2 plugs and hooking everything back up it fired back up and has been running great. others say they have issues with all generations but i havent and i have almost 30 s9's running and buy them as i get the btc from mining so my generations are all spread out.

[bitsink]

No measurements done yet. Still trying to get the thing to actually start hashing...

I'm just curious if it could be not getting enough power?    

Power is fine. After leaving it running over night, it actually started hashing. Not sure after how long and for how long (no stats available). Clearly this is crap and is not the behavior it exhibited before the hard reset. I am guessing there is a quirk in the recovery firmware, which needs fixing. Maybe a script or something. A timeout maybe (sleep 20s?). Has anybody ventured into the linux filesystem and looked at things in detail? For one it would be interesting to start bmminer manually and see what happens. The single-board-test program seems to do rather little.