Antminer S9/S9i firmware - Full voltage/frequency control - HAS HIDDEN DEV FEE

[grinbuck]

Update: So the firmware I posted earlier apparently has a hidden dev fee as pointed out by another user here. Have updated the title accordingly. Works fine though.

Original post:

I recently purchased firmware offering full voltage/frequency control and claiming to have no dev fee from ebay. Sharing it here for those who may be interested.

NOTE: I've used this for about a week now and see no issues on five of my S9's. I can't guarantee that there's no "hidden" dev fee but prima facie - there doesn't appear to be any.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR MINERS. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

What I achieved:
1) Consistent reduction in voltage consumption by 15% or so. About 150w per miner give or take.
2) A marginal reduction in hash rate too. I was averaging about 14 TH/s per miner per day using standard bitmain firmware. With this firmware, though there is a reduction in power consumption, my hashrate is about 13.85 average over 7 days.
3) Note that my intention was NOT to overclock. I just wanted to reduce power consumption. OVERCLOCKING IS DANGEROUS. USES MORE THAN 1600W SO YOU'LL NEED MORE POWERFUL POWER SUPPLIES.

First download link from mega.nz - free account so download rate limited:
https://mega.nz/#!mbxSBCxR!gAcTMktLj94PoubgELS8nuqga84Lb1VnoYLVF9FuWjg

Second download link from Google drive:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gbEnUfsKisDEYsWosvVpH_sJt575zLcO

Some screenshots:
https://imgur.com/Mh3DEV0
https://imgur.com/evbDXSQ
https://imgur.com/wYP9t3z

Cheers!

[butok]

IT HAS HIDEN DEV FEE
This firmware is from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4575654.0
Files are identical!!
Dev. fee is 1.8%

[grinbuck]

Argh! Ok. Thanks for the heads up. Should've known better than to trust someone from Ebay. Have reverted to standard bitmain firmware on all miners except one which I absolutely need to undervolt in order to stay within the 80% stipulated maximum draw from one of my circuits.

Will try out the "Volt RocketShip" firmware at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4513567.0 instead. At least the code for that is open source!

Lesson learnt.

[butok]

You may ask eBay to return your money back, as the item you have received does not correspond its description

[grinbuck]

You may ask eBay to return your money back, as the item you have received does not correspond its description

Yeah but how do I prove the existence of a dev fee? I only have your word for it.... it's not apparent anywhere else in the software. Wish I knew how to examine outgoing network traffic from the miner using fiddler or wireshark .... but I dont.

[butok]

So, I decided to do experiment and go your way to buy it on Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/401574456180
Finally, it had dev. fee. So I have returned money back.
So, do not afraid, you are able to cancel order too as it does not correspond to description (eBay policy).
After that, the eBay seller has removed no dev. fee from caption and its description.

[grinbuck]

Thanks. I took your advice and just requested a refund on ebay. Let's see how it goes! Cheers!

[butok]

What is your Ebay seller name? My was jti1.

[grinbuck]

Somebody called northeast212. The link to the product page is

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Antminer-S9-S9i-Bitmain-Custom-Firmware-No-Dev-Fee/223113782162?hash=item33f29e2392:g:PEMAAOSwA~Jbcke3

Again... thanks for being so helpful about this. Really appreciate it!

[grinbuck]

So, I decided to do experiment and go your way to buy it on Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/401574456180
Finally, it had dev. fee. So I have returned money back.
So, do not afraid, you are able to cancel order too as it does not correspond to description (eBay policy).
After that, the eBay seller has removed no dev. fee from caption and its description.

Hey @butok - I got the refund. Care to share your BTC address? I'd like to share the spoils with you since it wouldn't have crossed my mind to request a refund had it not been for you mentioning it!

[butok]

You are so kind
BTC address: 35tuMojs9S9X6meQxta86m115ehtvsidDn

[grinbuck]

You are so kind
BTC address: 35tuMojs9S9X6meQxta86m115ehtvsidDn

There you go. A small token of my appreciation sent. Cheers! 

[butok]

Thank you so much bro.
This is historical moment for me, to receive BTC not from mining

[grinbuck]

Thank you so much bro.
This is historical moment for me, to receive BTC not from mining

You're welcome. Keep up the good work!

[2FastMining]

I downloaded and installed the firmware from the first link in the first post.  I wanted to test and try it out so I didn't care about the dev fee.  I didn't plan to run it long term.  I tried to reinstall the firmware backup I had and although it said "successed" it would not revert back to the original firmware.  This is something a virus would do and I now consider it to be a virus because of that.  Something else people should be aware of when using this firmware.

If anyone can help me wipe this stubborn firmware off it would be greatly appreciated.  The way I see it is I have 3 choices, either live with it, or swap out the control board with a known good one from ebay, or send this one back to bitmain and hope they will flash it back.

[grinbuck]

I downloaded and installed the firmware from the first link in the first post.  I wanted to test and try it out so I didn't care about the dev fee.  I didn't plan to run it long term.  I tried to reinstall the firmware backup I had and although it said "successed" it would not revert back to the original firmware.  This is something a virus would do and I now consider it to be a virus because of that.  Something else people should be aware of when using this firmware.

If anyone can help me wipe this stubborn firmware off it would be greatly appreciated.  The way I see it is I have 3 choices, either live with it, or swap out the control board with a known good one from ebay, or send this one back to bitmain and hope they will flash it back.

Are you sure? I installed it on 5 S9's and reverted back with no problem whatsoever. Maybe try installing the official firmware from the bitmain website instead of using the firmware backup you have? That's what I did and I faced no issues.

The one thing I did do before reinstalling the firmware from bitmain was to reset frequency and voltage to defaults. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Also you can't directly install the Asicboost Bitmain firmware over this firmware. You have to first install the autofrequency or the 650m firmware and then update it to the Asicboost one.

Hope that helps.

[ironson]

This firmware is by far the best and foolproof firmware I've used on S9i ( I cannot speak for other models).

Both of my S9i with 1600W bitmain stock PSU can go up to 16TH stable with temp around 90C, ambient temp around 20C.

Pump from 14T to 16T and taking 1.8% with the watchdog functionality I'd say it's a pretty good deal, it's like hiring a bot to watch over your mining rigs, not at all a bad investment. Personally I have yet to figure out how it does this though as pool doesn't report anything unusual.

Of course the HIDDEN FEE and closed source is not a way to do this, but I guess this is just one of the lesser evils.

As for the Rocketship mod, I'd appreciate the guy's effort to do it but at 16T it isn't very stable and temp is up to <110 degree, which is a bit scary...

Anyway, thanks OP for sharing, I'd like to share my 2 cents hope it helps others.

[grinbuck]

Anyway, thanks OP for sharing, I'd like to share my 2 cents hope it helps others.

You're welcome. Glad it's working out well for you.
TBH I had similar results as you did but I got annoyed about the hidden fee - I don't have a problem paying 1.8% or whatever for quality work but don't lie that there's no fee just because average Joe's like me can't figure out better.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

[...] Personally I have yet to figure out how it does this though as pool doesn't report anything unusual...

The dev fee is generated by the miner actually mining to 2 different pools at the same time, 1 pool is the one(s) you setup and the other is the one the Dev hard-coded. Stratum has a function that allows this and the user never sees the hidden mining going on - no way to verify just what % is being diverted from their chosen pools.

[ironson]

switched over the Braiins-OS and is now getting better hashrate than this one without devfee.

also found that this firmware has mis-reported temperature value and it doesn't support ASICBOOST.

TEMP2 shows only 85 C whereas Braiins shows 102C, and when you lay you hands on the exhaust fan side, you can notice the temp difference is higher on the 85C miner, which means it is a lie.

S9i overclocked to 750M at 9.1V and is running stable for a couple hours now. Has rate is now around 16T, temp is 105 Max.