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

[vinylwasp]

Heck, mine are in a datacenter with full AC, and can't keep them under 50c, even with the room temp at 72f.
Air is pretty clean here, no buildup of any kind. I think they filter the AC air before bringing it in.
Are you trying to run these in a household setting? That's gotta be pretty hard, since air will definitely be dirty in comparison.

I'm running them in an industrial building I lease. You're right about the air quality. It seems ok when you're breathing it  but in truth it's quite dirty, especially when you're piping 230CFM across those cards.

2-1/2 yards of G4 filter across my air-intake has fixed that little problem.  I may have to look at commercial filter panels at some point but for now I'm happy with my home made solution.

In terms of air temp, the ambient daytime temperature here is less than 72f most of the year, so why pay for HVAC when it's free. I will probably have to drop voltage and MHs on very hot days (25-30 C), but the key part of my design is exhausting the hot air into a totally isolated environment and moving it away quickly, like a modern DC with a hot and cold aisle. I'm also trying to maintain a pressure differential between these 2 environments so air will always flow down the pressure gradient. I'm not sure I have that perfected yet as the filter has upset the balance but they are running quite stable now.

[lightfoot]

If the question is removing/replacing the chip in the upper left corner it's doable, but will require air tools, good flux, and a preheater. I can do this with the tools I have if needed.

However I'm a bit surprised you can't just use a jtag programmer to re-flash the chip.

[Nowayz]

Hope so.. if a reflash is possible it could be an easy fix imo.
Im happy to try it if innosilicon provides the firmware and information.

[lightfoot]

Someone pls take a pic of both sides of the board and post to imgur. Also take a pic of the CPU chip on the board close up I want to see what other components are around it in the event we have to pull and swap parts.

[Longsnowsm]

Ideally, they should trade in defective B1/B2 gear for B3 (assuming it's reallyl "fixed").

EXACTLY!  Dumping their problems on the consumer does not fly!

B3 being fixed is still a question mark also.

I would also like to see these miners actually hash at the advertised rate.  On the pool side!  Not just what the miner reports.

Like this? "h=off d=65536"

100-B1
00:27
Megacoin
269.62 MH/s Megacoin
Difficulty: 65,536
Target difficulty: 65,536 (static)
Work restart delay: 2.446s
Current restart penalty: 1.000
Minimum network difficulty: 50
2hr share count: 454
2hr avg hashrate: 269.62 MH/s
Since first share: 18:41:49
Mode: Pay-per-share
Merge mining restarts: dynamic

107-B2
00:21
Guldencoin
271.41 MH/s Guldencoin
Difficulty: 65,536
Target difficulty: 65,536 (static)
Work restart delay: 2.553s
Current restart penalty: 1.000
Minimum network difficulty: 50
2hr share count: 468
2hr avg hashrate: 271.41 MH/s
Since first share: 03:37:16
Mode: Pay-per-share
Merge mining restarts: dynamic

Thanks for the feedback and input.  I really do appreciate the input.  I was just a little cranky yesterday with the news of requirement to either replace the STM or find someone who can flash it.  

I doubled back to retry the higher diff settings again.  Tried it again on zpool, but had restarts within 20 minutes, and it never ramped up to reflect anything close to the miner reported hash rate.  Only showed roughly half of the hash rate so that was a non-starter.  Just jumped back on Prohashing.  Those guys do a great job and have tried to tweak the pool for the A4.  I am pointing there right now.  Still seeing restarts there, but the hash rate looks better.  I will keep experimenting.

On the suggestion about the miner orientation and dirty air.  I hadn't considered the orientation of the cubes.  I will make those adjustments today.  I have been trying to figure out what to do about the air situation.  I just found some air conditioning filter foam on Amazon that I think I can cut to fit the back of the cubes and cut out around the plugs.  I will keep everyone posted how that works out and let you guys know what I bought if it works OK.  

If the A4's are super sensitive to ambient air temps then I will probably have problems going into the warmer months.  I have box fans blowing on the miners, and I have a big industrial fan that I use to move air during the warmer months, but the temps still get quite warm even when you keep the air moving.  So I am concerned about the ambient temps issue.  When I look at the 2 miners I have running I see one runs consistently higher temps than the other.  Both in the same location, same ambient temps etc.  I may need to try and blow some dust out of them to see if that helps.

I am looking forward to hearing a follow up on the B3 miners.  It would be nice to know if the issues are actually fixed.

[bclcjunkie]

Anyone has a link to original stock firmware?

[Nowayz]

Batch 2 latest
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fuyz1r7cy4pkeir/G5-20-V1.0.3.rar?dl=0

[bclcjunkie]

thanks mate!

Batch 2 latest
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fuyz1r7cy4pkeir/G5-20-V1.0.3.rar?dl=0

[Longsnowsm]

Any news to report on the B3 miners?  Any improvements?

[Eyedol-X]

Any news to report on the B3 miners?  Any improvements?

I hope the silence is an indication that the rumors are true and that B3 has fixed the issues.

However, I have concern about how us B2 and B1 owners are going to get to that point.

Innosilicons silence on this issue is bringing about some hard questions as to why they are silent.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

-Warren Buffett

[bclcjunkie]

Well they've been silent from the beginning and i dont expect miracles even now. It looks like B1 ans B2 users are left on their own. Its either wait for custom jig which is weeks away from now and will be sent to only a few customers or start taking soldering/desoldering courses.

Any news to report on the B3 miners?  Any improvements?

I hope the silence is an indication that the rumors are true and that B3 has fixed the issues.

However, I have concern about how us B2 and B1 owners are going to get to that point.

Innosilicons silence on this issue is bringing about some hard questions as to why they are silent.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

-Warren Buffett

[vinylwasp]

I doubled back to retry the higher diff settings again.  Tried it again on zpool, but had restarts within 20 minutes, and it never ramped up to reflect anything close to the miner reported hash rate.  

Try not to think about the restarts. As some others have noted, the miners can reach 350+MHs for a few minutes after they restart, I've even had some report a 2hr average of 330Mhs from time to time, so I've ignored the restarts in search of 2hr Averages which is what I think matters and one of the reasons I've stuck with prohashing as the per miner stats are way beyond what you can get on Clever-mining or LitecoinPool. I pulled the plug on one just as it restarted the other day and you can see the last 2 lines of the cgminer.log read:

[date] Tan Restart by line goto Restart
[date] Tan Return 0

.. so there's definitely some kind of error control code in cgminer that hot restarts the cards (written by Tan who compiled the cgminer that's used). I have to say it got warm here today and my perception is that they were a little less stable than they have been lately so temp may play a role even though Inno have been reported as saying up to 65 degree's C is ok.

I'd still like to know how this works "Server Grid Reliability: Built-in high-procession temperature sensor for automatic chip protection and variable frequency operation to maximize chip life time" from http://www.innosilicon.com/html/news/13.html

I think that once this restart bug is resolved through the firmware update, we're actually looking at miners that may be capable of 300Mhs++. I'm speculating, but if the restarts are what's keeping the hashrate down and Inno can fix that, then they may get a lot closer to their original design goals.

It's a total PITA that we're lumbered with this, but early adopters are often unwilling test partners, that's just how it is.

[Longsnowsm]

Even if I ignore the restarts which is hard to do when the pool spends a lot of time getting back up to the reported hash rate of the miner.  My miners are not only still restarted frequently on Prohashing, but dropping cards a lot.  Which is just odd that on a straight pool like Litecoinpool that happens a lot less than the multicoin pools.  If I hadn't spent a lot of time watching the miners closely this weekend the miners would have been down 1 or in some cases 2 boards for a lot of the time.  And strangely the miner does not seem to act like it knows the board is missing.  It will keep running until something triggers the restart again, and in many cases it won't pick that board back up even with the restarts.  In most cases I have to stop cgminer, restart it a couple of times before it will pickup the board if I am lucky.  The worst case is having to go power cycle the miner.  I am still pointed at Prohashing at the moment, but I have to keep a close eye on things or they go sideways pretty frequently.  This is just hard to do when you have a day job and other responsibilities to be constantly babysitting these things.

I am starting to conclude that Inno fully intends to let us twist in the wind on this.  Email to Chloe has gone unanswered after I questioned this policy of having customers replace chips and reprogramming them and asked them to arrange for contracted support to get these B1 and B2 miners fixed or to have them send out the replacement boards.  I hope they are just busy fixing this and coming  up with a solution for their customers.  This is not keeping their promises to the community if you ship product and then expect the customers to fix their bad product which hasn't worked properly from day one.  It isn't like they weren't told right away.  This should be covered under warranty and fixed.  They acknowledge they have an issue now they need to step up and take care of the customer.

If they come through and take care of us then I will buy more miners.  Right now I won't spend any more money with Inno until they take care of this. I need to buy some more miners, but it looks like at this point I cannot with a good conscience place another order with Inno when I don't know what I am going to get or if they are going to fix an of it when there is something wrong.  I would rather keep my business here with Inno, but they are making that very difficult to do at this point.  I will have to make that call in the next few weeks as I need to buy and stand up some more rigs so I hope we get some clarity and resolution from Inno before then.  I am not holding my breath at the moment.

Inno needs to speak up and let us know what is going on.  And they need a customer focused policy that fixes the stuff they already shipped that is broken. 

[Eyedol-X]

I hope they are just busy fixing this and coming  up with a solution for their customers.  This is not keeping their promises to the community if you ship product and then expect the customers to fix their bad product which hasn't worked properly from day one.  It isn't like they weren't told right away.  This should be covered under warranty and fixed.  They acknowledge they have an issue now they need to step up and take care of the customer.

If they come through and take care of us then I will buy more miners.  Right now I won't spend any more money with Inno until they take care of this. I need to buy some more miners, but it looks like at this point I cannot with a good conscience place another order with Inno when I don't know what I am going to get or if they are going to fix an of it when there is something wrong.  I would rather keep my business here with Inno, but they are making that very difficult to do at this point.  I will have to make that call in the next few weeks as I need to buy and stand up some more rigs so I hope we get some clarity and resolution from Inno before then.  I am not holding my breath at the moment.

Inno needs to speak up and let us know what is going on.  And they need a customer focused policy that fixes the stuff they already shipped that is broken. 

Agreed and x2 to this, I had issues immediately and spoke about them here well within the warranty period.

[citronick]

Even if I ignore the restarts which is hard to do when the pool spends a lot of time getting back up to the reported hash rate of the miner.  My miners are not only still restarted frequently on Prohashing, but dropping cards a lot.  Which is just odd that on a straight pool like Litecoinpool that happens a lot less than the multicoin pools.  If I hadn't spent a lot of time watching the miners closely this weekend the miners would have been down 1 or in some cases 2 boards for a lot of the time.  And strangely the miner does not seem to act like it knows the board is missing.  It will keep running until something triggers the restart again, and in many cases it won't pick that board back up even with the restarts.  In most cases I have to stop cgminer, restart it a couple of times before it will pickup the board if I am lucky.  The worst case is having to go power cycle the miner.  I am still pointed at Prohashing at the moment, but I have to keep a close eye on things or they go sideways pretty frequently.  This is just hard to do when you have a day job and other responsibilities to be constantly babysitting these things.

I am starting to conclude that Inno fully intends to let us twist in the wind on this.  Email to Chloe has gone unanswered after I questioned this policy of having customers replace chips and reprogramming them and asked them to arrange for contracted support to get these B1 and B2 miners fixed or to have them send out the replacement boards.  I hope they are just busy fixing this and coming  up with a solution for their customers.  This is not keeping their promises to the community if you ship product and then expect the customers to fix their bad product which hasn't worked properly from day one.  It isn't like they weren't told right away.  This should be covered under warranty and fixed.  They acknowledge they have an issue now they need to step up and take care of the customer.

If they come through and take care of us then I will buy more miners.  Right now I won't spend any more money with Inno until they take care of this. I need to buy some more miners, but it looks like at this point I cannot with a good conscience place another order with Inno when I don't know what I am going to get or if they are going to fix an of it when there is something wrong.  I would rather keep my business here with Inno, but they are making that very difficult to do at this point.  I will have to make that call in the next few weeks as I need to buy and stand up some more rigs so I hope we get some clarity and resolution from Inno before then.  I am not holding my breath at the moment.

Inno needs to speak up and let us know what is going on.  And they need a customer focused policy that fixes the stuff they already shipped that is broken. 

My Batch 3 arrived last week and I done several test on pools that I want to mine on. I am convinced.... that even with v2.01, the miner cannot handle multi-coin and profit switching pools well - like Prohashing, Zpool, Nicehash.... Unlike the A2s - no issues with those pools..... BUT.... the moment I stretched her legs into LTC solo pool ...... the first hour.... struck 25 x LTC with 1.68GHs.... I am speechless..... but still disappointed with this whole mess. IMHO even with this v2.01, reflashing is required....

[DebitMe]

I received a reply back for pricing from Innosilicon for pricing from single units up to group buy pricing, but I am wondering if it is worth it at this point.  I believe, if the machine works as intended at the advertised speed and whatnot that they will make money, the question is, will it be stable?

Are people finding that these are remaining stable with the most recent version of miner and firmware?  I don't want something I will have to check on every couple of hours.

[TracerX]

I received a reply back for pricing from Innosilicon for pricing from single units up to group buy pricing, but I am wondering if it is worth it at this point.  I believe, if the machine works as intended at the advertised speed and whatnot that they will make money, the question is, will it be stable?

Are people finding that these are remaining stable with the most recent version of miner and firmware?  I don't want something I will have to check on every couple of hours.

The jury is still out on that, I'm afraid.  I'm ready to pull the trigger if/when we see some stability, but it hasn't happened yet.

[excelerator]

My Batch 3 arrived last week and I done several test on pools that I want to mine on. I am convinced.... that even with v2.01, the miner cannot handle multi-coin and profit switching pools well - like Prohashing, Zpool, Nicehash.... Unlike the A2s - no issues with those pools..... BUT.... the moment I stretched her legs into LTC solo pool ...... the first hour.... struck 25 x LTC with 1.68GHs.... I am speechless..... but still disappointed with this whole mess. IMHO even with this v2.01, reflashing is required....

If these A4s can't do automatic coin switching, then they are way overpriced as this infers these are effectively LTC mining rigs as currently architected, even with Batch 3 machines.

In the end, Innosilicon is now only claiming to mine LTC with the A4, no other coin, not even the mention of scrypt in the final publication.
http://www.innosilicon.com/html/mining-asic/14.html

[DebitMe]

I received a reply back for pricing from Innosilicon for pricing from single units up to group buy pricing, but I am wondering if it is worth it at this point.  I believe, if the machine works as intended at the advertised speed and whatnot that they will make money, the question is, will it be stable?

Are people finding that these are remaining stable with the most recent version of miner and firmware?  I don't want something I will have to check on every couple of hours.

The jury is still out on that, I'm afraid.  I'm ready to pull the trigger if/when we see some stability, but it hasn't happened yet.

Yea, my thoughts exactly.  I would probably buy 2 or 3, mine with them and stick a few on amazon, but if they aren't stable, then there is no reason to at this point.

[firehawk71]

Neat. Any chance someone can post pictures of the gen 1, 2 and 3 boards, along with the controllers. Curious if there are any board specific changes.

Lightfoot, I don't know what the root cause is, but I can tell everyone here that there's a fix coming from Inno.
Here's a slightly edited excerpt of an email I received from Chloe.

Hello Vinylwasp,

We have solved the restart and reboot problem in batch 3. No update in hardware but the firmware in STM32 MCU and SD card both have updates.
SD card firmware has been upgraded to v2.0.1. For ST MCU firmware, we will send you a testing jig (which is expensive) and user manual to update.
For smaller batch one and batch two buyers who bought less than 50 units, we will send them new STM32 MCU for local replacement, but will need them to find local expertise to execute that.
.

I replied suggesting that Chloe reach out to Longsnowsm, yourself and/or GenTarkin to discuss how to co-ordinate reflashing the group buy miners after sending you a jig.
I additionally suggested that yourself or GenTarkin could be utilized in your respective geographies to flash units belonging to small purchasers rather than sending them an updated STM32 MCU for local replacement, while offering my jig (once I receive it) and my services down under. I'm based in NZ.

I've been involved in the IT industry for the past 20 years and have seen numerous failures, so this is very familiar ground. Sales promise shipping date, orders are taken and paid for, development takes longer than anticipated (best case targets rarely come true), buyers start complaining about missed shipping dates, testing is shortened -> product has bugs.

So before everyone starts screaming about how terrible this situation is, remember the pressure applied to ship this product, the large investors who laid down $0.5-1M, and the fact that Inno have been working tirelessly to improve both the hardware and the software over the past 4-6 weeks with 3 versions of hardware and 6+ versions of software shipped in this period. Yes they can improve comms but they've got large enterprise customers who are screaming much closer to home in their native tongue and Chloe seems to be the only person in a comms role (btw: I checked with Chloe that it was ok to share the information above). This is the industry we've chosen to jump into for better or worse. I'm hurting too but I knew the risk before I laid down my money.

My personal experience is that the restarts are not the real problem, the problem is that some cards do not restart. To solve this, I've been monitoring each cards work and applying +2Mv to the miner and watching for 24 hours. It seems to be working. I now have miners which still restart all 4 cards most of the time. Not only that my B1's are hashing on Prohashing at around 250-260+ Mhs 2hr avg. and my B2's hash at 270+Mhs.

B1 = 822-824Mv at 1200Hz
B2 = 826-828Mv at 1224Hz

They're running between 45-52 C most of the time, but will drop into the 30's overnight. I do through a lot of cool air at them though so mileage may vary.

HTH

Good news but do you know if they will send a jig to anyone in the USA? I have a Batch 1 set and a Batch 2 single.. Also I can not seem to raise my Mhs on the BAtch 2 single above 1200. When I do it just pops back down to 1200 when I hit start. Thanks