A4 Dominator - Pre-Order Group Buy - 280mh, roughly 1000w, $1800 + shipping

[Longsnowsm]

Well the A4 managed to stay up overnight.  I will just let it run and see how long it will go before it restarts.  I am still on Litecoinpool.  If it will run at least 24 hours then I may try my hand again on Prohashing to see how it reacts to getting it's feathers ruffled with coin switching... When I tried with the stock software things did not go well. 

My cables for the PSU didn't arrive yesterday so I won't get to play with the second A4 until Tuesday.  Was really hoping to get the second one online this weekend. 

[1715071774]

1715071774

[1715071774]

1715071774

[1715071774]

1715071774

[Longsnowsm]

Well I don't know what transpired, but I just looked over at the A4 screen and 3 boards were offline/missing.  So I don't know if they just stopped hashing, or if the miner detected a board going offline and restarted the miner and 3 cards just didn't come up.  I don't know.  I was busy with some other things.  So I just stopped the miner, restarted it, and 2 more came back online, stopped and restarted again and all 4 boards are back online.  

So clearly 1.0.2 does not fix anything.  I will leave it on litecoinpool until we an get something that is more stable.  No way this thing is going to stay alive for very long on a multipool.   So at this point all I can do is try to keep an eye on this thing and try to keep it running.  Not a good situation at all.  It is not ready for large scale mining farm deployment unless you have someone watching these things all the time.  

Anyone thinking about getting the A4's should hold off until we see if we can get these issues sorted out.  Unless of course you can babysit the A4's full time.

UPDATE: After starting the miner and getting all the boards online one of them died again and miner has restarted again on it's own.  This time bringing all 4 boards online and hashing normally at this point.  I have noticed a pattern when starting the miner that it appears to do this often.  So watch your miners closely when you first start or restart them.  It will take about 15-20 minutes for the failing card to catch the attention of the software and cause a reboot.  

UPDATE2: Yet another restart on the miner. 

[firehawk71]

Well I don't know what transpired, but I just looked over at the A4 screen and 3 boards were offline/missing.  So I don't know if they just stopped hashing, or if the miner detected a board going offline and restarted the miner and 3 cards just didn't come up.  I don't know.  I was busy with some other things.  So I just stopped the miner, restarted it, and 2 more came back online, stopped and restarted again and all 4 boards are back online.  

So clearly 1.0.2 does not fix anything.  I will leave it on litecoinpool until we an get something that is more stable.  No way this thing is going to stay alive for very long on a multipool.   So at this point all I can do is try to keep an eye on this thing and try to keep it running.  Not a good situation at all.  It is not ready for large scale mining farm deployment unless you have someone watching these things all the time.  

Anyone thinking about getting the A4's should hold off until we see if we can get these issues sorted out.  Unless of course you can babysit the A4's full time.

UPDATE: After starting the miner and getting all the boards online one of them died again and miner has restarted again on it's own.  This time bringing all 4 boards online and hashing normally at this point.  I have noticed a pattern when starting the miner that it appears to do this often.  So watch your miners closely when you first start or restart them.  It will take about 15-20 minutes for the failing card to catch the attention of the software and cause a reboot.  

UPDATE2: Yet another restart on the miner.  

What voltage are you running. And what is your stale shares percent

[Eyedol-X]

If you have the ability to run 1.0.0T I suggest switching to that, after switching back to that, mine is at least somewhat stable.

[Longsnowsm]

Well I don't know what transpired, but I just looked over at the A4 screen and 3 boards were offline/missing.  So I don't know if they just stopped hashing, or if the miner detected a board going offline and restarted the miner and 3 cards just didn't come up.  I don't know.  I was busy with some other things.  So I just stopped the miner, restarted it, and 2 more came back online, stopped and restarted again and all 4 boards are back online.  

So clearly 1.0.2 does not fix anything.  I will leave it on litecoinpool until we an get something that is more stable.  No way this thing is going to stay alive for very long on a multipool.   So at this point all I can do is try to keep an eye on this thing and try to keep it running.  Not a good situation at all.  It is not ready for large scale mining farm deployment unless you have someone watching these things all the time.  

Anyone thinking about getting the A4's should hold off until we see if we can get these issues sorted out.  Unless of course you can babysit the A4's full time.

UPDATE: After starting the miner and getting all the boards online one of them died again and miner has restarted again on it's own.  This time bringing all 4 boards online and hashing normally at this point.  I have noticed a pattern when starting the miner that it appears to do this often.  So watch your miners closely when you first start or restart them.  It will take about 15-20 minutes for the failing card to catch the attention of the software and cause a reboot.  

UPDATE2: Yet another restart on the miner.  

What voltage are you running. And what is your stale shares percent

Ok, I have lost count, back to back crash and reboots all day long now.  The settings in 1.0.2 is 815mv.  I have not changed it.  At this rate I will have to go back to the stock image.  The 1.0.2 is more unstable than the first build from what I am seeing.

[Eyedol-X]

Ok, I have lost count, back to back crash and reboots all day long now.  The settings in 1.0.2 is 815mv.  I have not changed it.  At this rate I will have to go back to the stock image.  The 1.0.2 is more unstable than the first build from what I am seeing.

it's been suggested to try 825mv -- might give that a go.

That being said, over 9 hours now on Prohash without an issue here using 1.0.0T

EDIT: guess I spoke too soon lol -- 1 card went down, not minutes after this post and the miner restarted itself. -- Now trying 820mv

[gk01]

45 day warranty?!

...and their website is offline?!

that's pretty sketchy!

what are people's experiences regarding mining with this machine?

[Longsnowsm]

45 day warranty?!

...and their website is offline?!

that's pretty sketchy!

what are people's experiences regarding mining with this machine?

This rig is TOO NEW to be able to give any kind of real performance metrics.  Those of us with these miners bought them as a pre-order before the miners were even built and we have only had them for a short while.  

Since it is so new there are some challenges that need to be figured out with the software it appears.  Reliability is yet to be determined.  My personal recommendation at this time is for people to wait until we sort out these problems.  Right now the miners are crashing, dropping cards, and not quite hashing at the advertised rates.  So if it were my money and I was looking to buy right now(knowing what I know right now) I would be saying wait and see if we can fix these issues that we are having.  Otherwise you are going to get yourself a full time job babysitting miners trying to keep them running.

I have seen periods where the miner runs fine for a while.  I think my longest run has been like 18-19hrs.  But once it drops a card, or starts the crash reboot cycle then things get ugly.  So it is hit or miss at the moment.  

[vinylwasp]

Ok, I have lost count, back to back crash and reboots all day long now.  The settings in 1.0.2 is 815mv.  I have not changed it.  At this rate I will have to go back to the stock image.  The 1.0.2 is more unstable than the first build from what I am seeing.

it's been suggested to try 825mv -- might give that a go.

That being said, over 9 hours now on Prohash without an issue here using 1.0.0T

I have several A4 miners from Mfg Batch 1 which run a firmware with no Version number. Batch 1 is not a shipping batch but as advised directly by Inno this is a different manufacturing batch, being built before 15th Oct. If you look at the tiny anti-tamper sticker covering one of your rear screws you'll see the mfg date. The Batch 1 miners I have run a firmware which has no version number. I just says LTC LIMITED--T SERIES with nothing underneath. They run stable all day long (24hrs +) at 1200Mhz and 820Mv but only hash in the 245Mhs-260Mhs range across a 2 hour average on Prohashing. It varies.

I also have some miners from mfg batch 2 (built after 15th Oct) and these were originally on the V1.0.0T firmware. These miners are problematic. Originally I'd loose a card or two like everyone else which required monitoring and a manual restart, but with the V1.0.2 firmware Inno seem to have built in some kind of watcher (probably polling the cgminer api) which is killing and restarting cgminer whenever it sees a predefined trigger event or threshold breach. I can't keep one of these Batch 2 machines running for more than 30 minutes no matter what voltage I try, what diff I spec, nothing works.

Chloe has told me not to run the Batch 2 firmware (1.0.0T and 1.0.2) with the Batch 1 miners as the hardware is different but I did inadvertently tried Batch 1 firmware on the Batch 2 machines with zero luck so I'm guessing the inverse holds as well. Cgminer appears to start but reports 0Mhs or maxs out at 1.5 Mhs per card.

There's some changes with the latest batch 2 firmware (1.0.2) which suggest they made these changes to try and eek some more MHs out of them. First of all there's 2 new Mhz settings: 1224 and 1248. They've also lowered the max Mv setting from 860Mv to 850Mv. When I start one with 1248Mhz and 820Mv, it will run at 280-300Mhs for about 10 minutes maybe more, but in the end it restarts for no apparent reason.

Whatever they did to improve Mhs with Batch 2, they've also made them a lot less stable. It sucks big time, but I'm trying to stay cool and be patient.

[Eyedol-X]

Ok, I have lost count, back to back crash and reboots all day long now.  The settings in 1.0.2 is 815mv.  I have not changed it.  At this rate I will have to go back to the stock image.  The 1.0.2 is more unstable than the first build from what I am seeing.

it's been suggested to try 825mv -- might give that a go.

That being said, over 9 hours now on Prohash without an issue here using 1.0.0T

I have several A4 miners from Mfg Batch 1 which run a firmware with no Version number. Batch 1 is not a shipping batch but as advised directly by Inno this is a different manufacturing batch, being built before 15th Oct. If you look at the tiny anti-tamper sticker covering one of your rear screws you'll see the mfg date. The Batch 1 miners I have run a firmware which has no version number. I just says LTC LIMITED--T SERIES with nothing underneath. They run stable all day long (24hrs +) at 1200Mhz and 820Mv but only hash in the 245Mhs-260Mhs range across a 2 hour average on Prohashing. It varies.

I also have some miners from mfg batch 2 (built after 15th Oct) and these were originally on the V1.0.0T firmware. These miners are problematic. Originally I'd loose a card or two like everyone else which required monitoring and a manual restart, but with the V1.0.2 firmware Inno seem to have built in some kind of watcher (probably polling the cgminer api) which is killing and restarting cgminer whenever it sees a predefined trigger event or threshold breach. I can't keep one of these Batch 2 machines running for more than 30 minutes no matter what voltage I try, what diff I spec, nothing works.

Chloe has told me not to run the Batch 2 firmware (1.0.0T and 1.0.2) with the Batch 1 miners as the hardware is different but I did inadvertently tried Batch 1 firmware on the Batch 2 machines with zero luck so I'm guessing the inverse holds as well. Cgminer appears to start but reports 0Mhs or maxs out at 1.5 Mhs per card.

There's some changes with the latest batch 2 firmware (1.0.2) which suggest they made these changes to try and eek some more MHs out of them. First of all there's 2 new Mhz settings: 1224 and 1248. They've also lowered the max Mv setting from 860Mv to 850Mv. When I start one with 1248Mhz and 820Mv, it will run at 280-300Mhs for about 10 minutes maybe more, but in the end it restarts for no apparent reason.

Whatever they did to improve Mhs with Batch 2, they've also made them a lot less stable. It sucks big time, but I'm trying to stay cool and be patient.

Thanks for the clarification on the version types, great information.

On one hand, I'm glad they are trying to improve upon the design, on the other hand I'm disappointed in the fact they shipped something so untested/unstable. I'm wondering what changes they made, sure would be nice if they broke everything down and showed some disassembly pictures like Bitmain does with the Antminers...

It takes a long time to build a reputation but only minutes to destroy one. I hope what Innosilicon is doing is not doing that here, my gut says no but time will tell what kind of reputation the A4's are going to have.

For those saying the website is down, it's not -- the English site is messed up for http://www.innosilicon.com -- try http://www.innosilicon.com.cn and use translate feature in Chrome as clicking on English sends you back to .com

[gk01]

This rig is TOO NEW to be able to give any kind of real performance metrics ... 

Thanks so much for the info!! I was also looking at the new? Bitmain Antminer S9, but apparently they're already out of stock?! Now I have no idea what to do :/

[Eyedol-X]

This rig is TOO NEW to be able to give any kind of real performance metrics ... 

Thanks so much for the info!! I was also looking at the new? Bitmain Antminer S9, but apparently they're already out of stock?! Now I have no idea what to do :/

New Antminers are a waste of money, if you're going to buy one, buy one used as the difficulty on BTC is too high to make any real amount of money long term.

[QuintLeo]

Has anyone tried an A4 on LiteGuardien yet?

 I remember a LOT of commentary when the Alcheminer (and it's OEM versions/clones) first showed up about it being VERY flaky on many pools but a couple (including LiteGuardian) let it run reliably even in the early software versions for it.

[Longsnowsm]

Ok, I have lost count, back to back crash and reboots all day long now.  The settings in 1.0.2 is 815mv.  I have not changed it.  At this rate I will have to go back to the stock image.  The 1.0.2 is more unstable than the first build from what I am seeing.

it's been suggested to try 825mv -- might give that a go.

That being said, over 9 hours now on Prohash without an issue here using 1.0.0T

I have several A4 miners from Mfg Batch 1 which run a firmware with no Version number. Batch 1 is not a shipping batch but as advised directly by Inno this is a different manufacturing batch, being built before 15th Oct. If you look at the tiny anti-tamper sticker covering one of your rear screws you'll see the mfg date. The Batch 1 miners I have run a firmware which has no version number. I just says LTC LIMITED--T SERIES with nothing underneath. They run stable all day long (24hrs +) at 1200Mhz and 820Mv but only hash in the 245Mhs-260Mhs range across a 2 hour average on Prohashing. It varies.

I also have some miners from mfg batch 2 (built after 15th Oct) and these were originally on the V1.0.0T firmware. These miners are problematic. Originally I'd loose a card or two like everyone else which required monitoring and a manual restart, but with the V1.0.2 firmware Inno seem to have built in some kind of watcher (probably polling the cgminer api) which is killing and restarting cgminer whenever it sees a predefined trigger event or threshold breach. I can't keep one of these Batch 2 machines running for more than 30 minutes no matter what voltage I try, what diff I spec, nothing works.

Chloe has told me not to run the Batch 2 firmware (1.0.0T and 1.0.2) with the Batch 1 miners as the hardware is different but I did inadvertently tried Batch 1 firmware on the Batch 2 machines with zero luck so I'm guessing the inverse holds as well. Cgminer appears to start but reports 0Mhs or maxs out at 1.5 Mhs per card.

There's some changes with the latest batch 2 firmware (1.0.2) which suggest they made these changes to try and eek some more MHs out of them. First of all there's 2 new Mhz settings: 1224 and 1248. They've also lowered the max Mv setting from 860Mv to 850Mv. When I start one with 1248Mhz and 820Mv, it will run at 280-300Mhs for about 10 minutes maybe more, but in the end it restarts for no apparent reason.

Whatever they did to improve Mhs with Batch 2, they've also made them a lot less stable. It sucks big time, but I'm trying to stay cool and be patient.

I hope that isn't true about the differences between the 2 batches.  That would mean getting fixes for these miners may be tough for the community to fix unless everyone has both versions of the miner to test.  The A4 I have running came with the LTC Limited firmware, but I have it running the 1.0.2.  I don't know what the second A4 is running yet.  I had my LTC Limited miner crashing and dropping cards also.  So I didn't the the stability you are speaking of with my A4.

[BeerPimp]

Has anyone asked in the Minera thread if they will be adding support for the Dominator A4?

[Longsnowsm]

Has anyone asked in the Minera thread if they will be adding support for the Dominator A4?

Thanks for the heads up on Minera.  I just popped into that thread and asked the question.   

[nicky1088]

45 day warranty?!

...and their website is offline?!

that's pretty sketchy!

what are people's experiences regarding mining with this machine?

go to http://innosilicon.com.cn   they told me to use their chinese site until they get their english site back on



if you have a problem or wanna ask them just add them on skype (inno.miner)

[firehawk71]

Has anyone asked in the Minera thread if they will be adding support for the Dominator A4?

Thanks for the heads up on Minera.  I just popped into that thread and asked the question.  

Minera is a great program. I will pop over and ask also.. The more they see ask the better. I asked them if they would add the A2 a long while ago but no response..
UPDATE I just sent them a message.. I invited them to join this thread hopefully we will hear from them. I think this is a very good idea. Please everyone go and put in a request we will see if they can help.
They are here
https://getminera.com

[michelem]

Has anyone asked in the Minera thread if they will be adding support for the Dominator A4?

Thanks for the heads up on Minera.  I just popped into that thread and asked the question.  

Minera is a great program. I will pop over and ask also.. The more they see ask the better. I asked them if they would add the A2 a long while ago but no response..
UPDATE I just sent them a message.. I invited them to join this thread hopefully we will hear from them. I think this is a very good idea. Please everyone go and put in a request we will see if they can help.
They are here
https://getminera.com

Hello I'm the Minera's author. Can I know what's the problem with A4?
Then, what kind of miner software does it use?
If it can work with Cgminer or similar there isn't much problem, but if it has its own ultra-forked-wtf-you-did-miner I'm sorry I can't help much.

[firehawk71]

Has anyone asked in the Minera thread if they will be adding support for the Dominator A4?

Thanks for the heads up on Minera.  I just popped into that thread and asked the question.  

Minera is a great program. I will pop over and ask also.. The more they see ask the better. I asked them if they would add the A2 a long while ago but no response..
UPDATE I just sent them a message.. I invited them to join this thread hopefully we will hear from them. I think this is a very good idea. Please everyone go and put in a request we will see if they can help.
They are here
https://getminera.com

Hello I'm the Minera's author. Can I know what's the problem with A4?
Then, what kind of miner software does it use?
If it can work with Cgminer or similar there isn't much problem, but if it has its own ultra-forked-wtf-you-did-miner I'm sorry I can't help much.

Hello and thanks for stopping by. I am sure others will chime in here with detailed problems. But what is happening is the miner is unstable it will start off mining at spec then it will slowly loose hashrate and in most cases crash and need a re-boot. It does not handle coin switching pools at all. That will cause a crash for sure. On litecoinpool.org it will mine but not near the hashrate it is advertised at. The company that built it has sent a update firmware but it is nothing but a monitering process that when it sees hashrate drop does a auto re-boot.
The miner uses cgminer 3.9.0
It is advertised to mine at 280Mhs and about the best we can get is 245-250mhs. And it will not mine on prohash.com where they coinswitch that seems to crash the miner all together. I am sure others will chime in that have done much more testing then I have but this is the jist of the problem.

The other thing is I do not know what type of control board this uses. It is a SD card the program runs on but the box that SD cards goes into is not a standard rasberry pi. It has 6 ribbon cable inputs that com from miner. Each miner has 2 hashing cards with 2 ribbon cables for output that need to plug into the control board that houses SD card. The idea is you can plug 3 miners into one control board.