ANTMINER S2 Discussion and Support Thread

[whonesta]

OC'd @ 200 - ASIC Freq


OC'd @ 225 ASIC Freq



Replaced PSU w/ EVGA 1300.

Hardware errors are much higher! But it is doing short of 2000 WU more per minute @ 225.

[1714781311]

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[1714781311]

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[1714781311]

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[sbfree]

OC'd @ 200 - ASIC Freq


OC'd @ 225 ASIC Freq



Replaced PSU w/ EVGA 1300.

Hardware errors are much higher! But it is doing short of 2000 WU more per minute @ 225.

more importantly, what's it hashing at the Pool??

[whonesta]

more importantly, what's it hashing at the Pool??

15 minute averages:

538.6 GH/s on acct #1
541.9 GH/s on acct #2

[sbfree]

So i've had my three batch 1 S2's running for over a week now, and have some observations:

Stable. 
when they run, they run.  have not had the need to babysit them.

corrupt SD cards. 
twice now, i've gotten corruption on the SD card on one machine or another.  If there's a power cut, i cross my fingers and hope for the best.  chances are, at least one machine will need it's SD card removed and re-imaged.  Big thanks to the guy who posted a link in this thread to a copy of his SD card.  Although Bitmaintech has now posted updates to the firmware, they are in the format needed to update via the web gui - not directly image the SD card.

this problem is particularly concerning as there is no "shutdown" option in the GUI or button on the case.  just the power switch.  So each time you shut it off, you have a 50/50 change of buggering the software.... yikes.

can't power on.
This problem is unrelated to the software issue described above.  for some reason, there's some kind built-in protection in the power supply that prevents it from being turned off and on again quickly.  i guess this is a good thing, except it give the impression that the thing is dead until you leave it be for at least 15 minutes between powering off and on again.   Have not found any work-around.  Now that i've learned this, i know to expect it, but to the uninitiated it is a temporarily heartbreaker.

I will have to look for this when I start testing the 1 bad PSU that came with my S2

[Zelek Uther]

Buy new SD cards

What kind of SD card should I buy?  Regular SD or micro SD?  

[whonesta]

Buy new SD cards

What kind of SD card should I buy?  Regular SD or micro SD?  

CLASS 10 microSD

[Zelek Uther]

Buy new SD cards

What kind of SD card should I buy?  Regular SD or micro SD?  

CLASS 10 microSD

Thanks very much.

I forgot to ask: what size?  Is 2 GB enough?

[dalenorman2005]

Format the card and image it, try to boot, if it won't boot take a few asic cards out so you can read teh BBB and eject the sd card while the unit is on, then put it back in, you'll see the ethernet lights cycle, I've had that make mine turn on before.


In other news, I did have a bad BBB that wouldn't write to the SD card. I replaced it with a factory BBB, that's what my machine is using now

Ahhhh, now THAT was some f'ing good advice!  thanks mate - you're the best.  followed these steps and got each one working with 8 boards.  Sweated like a blackjack player holding 17 for a while, wondering if i should stick with what works or risk it and try adding the other two boards.

I chose to try something new - i ejected the SD card while it was running.  Left it like this for about 5 minutes.  it kept mining!  i then powered it off, added the two boards, popped the card back in and turned it on.  magically, it booted it up just fine!

So, until i figure out something better, this is my step-by-step to deal with the corrupt SD card problem:

shut off
remove 2 asic boards and sd card
reimage sd card via laptop
boot up with 2 cards missing, pop card in and out until it boots (you can tell when the blue lights on the BBB card near the ethernet card light up)
when it's running, pop out SD card, power off, then add 2 boards, pop card back in and hope for the best.

[dalenorman2005]

I replaced both stock SD cards with new ones.  The stock were no-name cards, 2gigs.  I replaced them with brand name high speed ones from my GoPro camera. 

I will watch to see if they suffer from the same corruption problem or not, but i really don't feel like trying to crash it on purpose at this point. 

[faustus66]

UPS just delivered three S2 units instead of the expected two, my mind was working overtime thinking that I had lucked out but noticed the address on the third unit was not me :-( just caught the guy as he was leaving, returned the third unit. Would have been nice.

[sbfree]

UPS just delivered three S2 units instead of the expected two, my mind was working overtime thinking that I had lucked out but noticed the address on the third unit was not me :-( just caught the guy as he was leaving, returned the third unit. Would have been nice.

i think bitmain owes you a shirt and the unlucky now lucky again miner who must live in your neck of the woods owes you AT LEAST a beer/coffee

[bitmanaus]

Antminer S2 turned up today, it was in horrible condition, cards loose everywhere, thermal paste everywhere, pci slots all bent to shit, after an hour and a half or so of fiddling (2 screws were stripped and needed to be drilled out) i managed to get it back together, then i had a problem with the screen, played around some more and got that working.

PROBLEM!

Its turning on and mining (all cards are flashing, hash rate on screen etc) but it will not allow me to access the settings and displays a "404 not found" error and on top of that it will not login via ssh with putty and tells me that the password i am using username: root password: root is not working, so i cannot even change pools.

Bitmain shipped me a unit that is basically mining for them!

Can someone please help?

[bitmanaus]

Fuck, the case screws won't come off... anyone else run into this?

yep had to drill mine out

[smooth]

it will not login via ssh with putty and tells me that the password i am using username: root password: root is not working, so i cannot even change pools.

Password is "root" via web and "admin" via ssh. Why it is different on these I have no idea.

[googlemaster1]

Fuck, the case screws won't come off... anyone else run into this?

yep had to drill mine out

I literally had to RIP the fucking case off.... was not cool, but I was able to push from below once it was open and now I rebent the case and rescrewed in (some) of the screws...

[ElGabo]

I've tried to  ask something about overclocking but I was ignored....

Don't care, try it again....

I've asked 111 that he tried to oc with the stock 225M clock setting in the asic-freq.conf? I think the clock numbers and timeouts are not for this machine.

If you have a look at the timeout at 196M I think you realized that the timeout is '40'. So if you use the same parameters as they left in the config, the timeout will be '70'.

196M   '40' timeout

225M   '70' timeout

 

Think it's no good, as you make higher clock you need more less timeout.

I've tried the stock '0781' with timeout 40-35-30-25. No succes. At 25 the cards stopped working so don't try....

I made a calculation it looks like '5f06' is 200M not 196 but this is not for sure, it was late night so I'll calculate again today just to be sure.

So in my opinion the values in asic-config are useless except the stock settings.

I'll try to calculate some clocks later today.

Sidenote: These are just my ideas, maybe a rocket engineer knows it better. 

[ZiG]

Sigh. My unit still not arrived as UPS keeps messing up. Now they're still processing customs (5 days) even though they've assured me everything is fine.

They are hashing on your S2, Dogie...sure, everything is fine...for them...

[faustus66]

I've got four Batch 1 units running, uptime is steady and problems have been minimal so far,

I'm just unpacking two Batch 2 units, the first one started up, network cable internally needed reseating and one card was slightly out of its guides.

It started hashing to my pool when I changed the settings and I thought all was good.

After about 10 mins the whole unit powered off and has been unresponsive ever since.

I've unplugged all outputs from the PSU and it's still not coming back up, so it looks to be the PSU.

Any ideas on what to try to resurrect? I have multiple CX750M PSU's but nothing big enough to replace the 1000W Enermax.

Cheers

[sbfree]

Fuck, the case screws won't come off... anyone else run into this?

yep had to drill mine out

I literally had to RIP the fucking case off.... was not cool, but I was able to push from below once it was open and now I rebent the case and rescrewed in (some) of the screws...

tek eet ezay tek eet ezay.....no need for ripping nor drilling. Patience and breathe. Remove all screws that cooperate. Then gently pry with blade screw driver, butter knife or similar tool under cover near unfriendly screw with slight pressure while turning screw out, and proceed to next one. Most if not all uncooperative screws should come out this way.  

[Zelek Uther]

Fuck, the case screws won't come off... anyone else run into this?

yep had to drill mine out

I literally had to RIP the fucking case off.... was not cool, but I was able to push from below once it was open and now I rebent the case and rescrewed in (some) of the screws...

tek eet ezay tek eet ezay.....no need for ripping nor drilling. Patience and breathe. Remove all screws that cooperate. Then gently pry with blade screw driver, butter knife or similar tool under cover near unfriendly screw with slight pressure while turning screw out, and proceed to next one. Most if not all uncooperative screws should come out this way.  

Got my batch 2 S2 a few hours ago - this is exactly what I did.  Remove screws by hand, don't use a drill, to avoid stripping screw heads.  For the stubborn screws, do as per above and pry the case gently to provide pressure while unscrewing.  All my stubborn screws came out this way, and my case is undamaged.

Visual inspection of the inside showed everything was ok.  Each blade has a connector to the motherboard at the base, and is supported on each end by plastic sleeves (I think the sleeves are new for batch 2).  Much better design - prevents the blades from becoming unseated during transport.

When I turned it on it wouldn't hash (0 GH/s shown on LCD screen).  I took out every card, and closely inspected everything.  What I found was that the ethernet cable which connects the BBB to the external network port was loose at the network port end.  I re-seated the n/w cable, put all the blades back in, and fired it up.  Voila!  It started hashing!  I know other people have had 1 TH/s (and above) miners for a while, but this is my first unit, and I'm quietly amazed to look at this box and consider that it has 1 TH/s of hashing power inside.  When I first heard about bitcoin (April 2013), the entire network hashrate was only 80 TH/s.

My S2 has been mining for an hour and a half.  The hash rate shown on the LCD fluctuates between roughly 950 to 1100 GH/s.  At the pool so far I'm seeing 968 GH/s (and slowly rising), I expect this to settle in closer to 1 TH/s when it has been running longer.  At the wall it is draws 1039 Watts max (usually 1 or 2 W less than that).  Temperature is 53 C (not sure what the room temp is, but I feel a bit hot).  In the Miner Stats, for some reason chain 4 shows a temperature of 0 (no sensor / faulty sensor?).

I had it mining with the case off originally, putting the case on caused the fans to reduce speed.  I guess the wind-tunnel affect of having the case on improves cooling, so the fans don't need to work as hard.  

After I took the case off I could smell a light machine oil / grease odour.  I don't find it unpleasant, just noting it.  I think it happened because I pulled all the cards out.  With the case back on now I don't smell anything.