ANTMINER S2 Discussion and Support Thread

[rodeoclownicp]

so i just got my 1th/s miner, i sure could use some help here setting it up after reading this i think i am in way over my head,,, mine came from hong kong via gawminers...just pm if you have some willingness thanx all...

[smooth]

To follow up a bit on the corrupt SD issue, I did not think there was anything writing to the flash during normal operation.

To test this you can turn on debugging of block I/O operations as follows:

Code:

echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump

Once that is done, any operations that access block devices will be logged to the kernel output, which you can see with

Code:

dmesg

I see no block I/O during normal operation.

If you do these commands with debugging turned on:

Code:

cd /config
touch a
rm a

you can see I/O occurring as you create the file and delete it. But normally there is none. You will likewise see activity when you change the config files through the web.

Turn off block debugging with

Code:

echo 0 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump

I still don't know why the SD card is getting corrupted, but I can say that it isn't because of writes the SD card during normal operation.

[bitcoin_miner]

Is BTC6.5 bad investment for batch 3?

IMHO yes...not a good investment...

Let's do some math... S1 is 0.831 BTC ...or $410-415 ( @112Bit as well)...

S2 is generally replicated 5 x S1 ...in a rack box ...10 blades vs 2 blades design...900Gh vs 1000Gh

So $410 x 5 = around $2,000 ...add 1 more blade ...around $2,100 ...all other parts, including PSU, case, LED etc are maybe another $100 at cost...$2,200...but they are saving of 4 controllers less...and they are not so cheap...

My guess is that In May we will see price in the $2,000 and a change range...

What do you think...? Am I missing something...?  

S2 is way over priced BUT saves on electricity.
Still overpriced though...

S1 and S2 are priced about the same per chip.  Ten times as many chips ten times the price.

bad investment...

AntMiner S2 1TH/s Miner Batch 3 = Price:      3199 USD ( 7.064 BTC )

S2 over price..

[rodeoclownicp]

so 3 1/2 hours and i got it running a few guys pm'd .... thanx but wound up using some phone support.... pi wasn't connected and a fan male prong was bent...got it back straight with  a wine key, i pour a lot of wine at my job...  so its running now,, what should i expect? is all the sudden its gonna stop if i don't flash something or replace an sd card??? i cant believe i made it this far.. the interface looks so crappy like calico vision, do i up date it??
pool recommendations??

[rodeoclownicp]

what should my dificulty be set at its 128 now

[freebit13]

use this program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16075357/bitmain.img.zip
Taken from an actual S2

I downloaded that program and the Bitmain.img file in the quotes but My win32 disk Imager program doesn't offer any option to format. I can format in windows explorer under fat32 I used "Default Unit Size" as Allocation unit size optionquick format checked. I tried to do this to one miner and it worked! Only after i bought a new micro sd card, I think re-writing the micro sd a bunch of times corrupted it. I'll try the same on the other two now.

OK Update.. Good news all 3 1TH/s miners are hashing, the problem was with the Micro SD cards. 3 new Verbatim 8gb cards & it works.

I suggest making an img file of each of your current cards and writing them to the bitmain supplied SD cards as backups... it'll make the next switchover a lot quicker

My S2 also went down last night, it suddenly started beeping like crazy after dropping to 800GH/s when my S1 had no problems. I ejected the card, switched it off, reinserted the card and it started up and carried on as normal, although I find it hashes more often below 1TH/s than above 

[hurricandave]

what should my dificulty be set at its 128 now

128 is fine for now. Most of the big pools are set up to adjust your difficulty "higher" automatically if its needed but they don't pull it back "lower" in case you set it high for a specific equipment related reason. It may take 12 or more hours for a pool to adjust you higher. Just keep in mind that the main reason for pool difficulty to increase for your worker "instance" is that it reduces the size and frequency of Ethernet traffic between you and the pool servers.  
  If you use BTCGuild you can set your difficulty minimum under the "worker" tab to "match your config" and it won't kick out a message saying that the diff doesn't "match" and start you out at "2". I won't comment on the other pool behaviors, I can't remember if they are the same.

[jelin1984]

128 is low I think I have mine at 1024

[tzortz]

1024 use.

Change also to pool, if can be done.

Ghash changeable and btcg also .

[klondike_bar]

so 3 1/2 hours and i got it running a few guys pm'd .... thanx but wound up using some phone support.... pi wasn't connected and a fan male prong was bent...got it back straight with  a wine key, i pour a lot of wine at my job...  so its running now,, what should i expect? is all the sudden its gonna stop if i don't flash something or replace an sd card??? i cant believe i made it this far.. the interface looks so crappy like calico vision, do i up date it??
pool recommendations??

if its running leave it be     as for pools, i suggest eligius. you get newly minted coin, no fees, and nmc merged mining. also something like 9% of the network so its an ideally sized pool IMO

[klondike_bar]

I hope we can get some better info for overclocking. A hex for clock speed around 215MHz would be great for a 5-7% hashrate boost if you swap in a 1200W PSU. anything higher (such as 225MHz) does not work well without knowing which resistors to modify in order to overvolt the system.

who calculated all the clocks for the S1 (393,387,381, etc)?  We really need the same done for the S2 in the 210-220MHz range.   (225MHz gave me 7% errors - 200MHZ gives 0.4%)

[klondike_bar]

It comes from the Antminer U1 overclock manual. But I think this should be compatible to Antminer S1, too.

Let's see the example of why 0780 and 4F81 are 400MHz.

HEX                   BINARY                          15/BS         M                               N                            OD
0780                 0000  0111  1000  0000       00          00 0111 1   = 15          000 00  = 0              00 = 0 which NO=1
4F81                 0100  1111  1000  0001       01          00 1111 1   = 31          000 00  = 0              01 = 1 which NO=2
5F82                 0101  1111  1000  0010       01          01 1111 1   = 63          000 00  = 0              10 = 2 which NO=4

Fout = 25 * (M+1) / ((N+1)*NO)

Fout(0780) = 25 * (15+1) / (1*1) = (25*16)/1 = 400 MHz
Fout(4F81) = 25 * (31+1) / (1*2) = (25*32)/2 = 400 MHz
Fout(5F82) = 25 * (63+1) / (1*4) = (25*64)/4 = 400 MHz

Actually, 5F82 is also 400 MHz, but due to the instruction below 500 <= Fout * NO <=1000
Fout(5F82) = 400MHz, therefore,  Fout*4 = 1600 and over 1000.

So I think I should not config 5F82 for 400MHz, according to this manual.
I don't say that it does not work (I tried it before understanding the HEX, it worked)
but you have also another 2 freq_values which give you the same MHz and get along with the instruction in the manual.

A little bit too long, anyway, I hope you enjoy my lecture, lol.

Any questions are welcome.

If this is useful, any donations/tips are welcome => 12QAQhbmTzV7sJ9sg8xT96JAneE4S89sS6  

I finally got around to doing the calculations myself for the antminer S2 - and so far it looks good (testbench was a U1, which on success menat the code could be applied to the S2 safely)

5002 = 206.25MHz
5082 = 212.50MHz
5102 = 218.75MHz

all three meet the requirements stipulated by the above rules and pattern.

5082 is currently giving a hashrate of 1095GH and error rate of about 0.95% after 15minutes.    (212.5 is 8.5% higher than the stock speed)

tips accepted at  1LQZnkJuUbdeVdxGjR27zkNJWSW4FSLBhh

[finlof]

I hope we can get some better info for overclocking. A hex for clock speed around 215MHz would be great for a 5-7% hashrate boost if you swap in a 1200W PSU. anything higher (such as 225MHz) does not work well without knowing which resistors to modify in order to overvolt the system.

who calculated all the clocks for the S1 (393,387,381, etc)?  We really need the same done for the S2 in the 210-220MHz range.   (225MHz gave me 7% errors - 200MHZ gives 0.4%)

see here for 212.5Mhz clock speed - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=518205.msg6362685#msg6362685.  make sure you upgrade your PSU to prob at least 1200 (i was using a 1500)

[rodeoclownicp]

ok, so are difficulty and mining results related?? i see 1 person said 128, two other people said 1024, and 1 guy said 512... i had it running for a few hours at 128 it did not seem to have as much success as i thought it should....on the pool end of things like on btc guild i can select 512 or 1024, but on my machine the interface only allows 256 or 1024... what do i do?

[navigator]

ok, so are difficulty and mining results related?? i see 1 person said 128, two other people said 1024, and 1 guy said 512... i had it running for a few hours at 128 it did not seem to have as much success as i thought it should....on the pool end of things like on btc guild i can select 512 or 1024, but on my machine the interface only allows 256 or 1024... what do i do?

If I had an S2, I would use 512. I always use the difficulty lower than my hash rate. An S1 is 180-200gh/s, so I use 128 instead of 256.

If you set your difficulty too high you will get more stales because your miner is working on a larger packet of data and will take longer to send it back.
If you set it too low then your miner is constantly sending/receiving too much data so you are wasting bandwidth.
*If your S2 is constantly over 1000gh/s, I might would use 1024.

[xstr8guy]

so 3 1/2 hours and i got it running a few guys pm'd .... thanx but wound up using some phone support.... pi wasn't connected and a fan male prong was bent...got it back straight with  a wine key, i pour a lot of wine at my job...  so its running now,, what should i expect? is all the sudden its gonna stop if i don't flash something or replace an sd card??? i cant believe i made it this far.. the interface looks so crappy like calico vision, do i up date it??
pool recommendations??

if its running leave it be     as for pools, i suggest eligius. you get newly minted coin, no fees, and nmc merged mining. also something like 9% of the network so its an ideally sized pool IMO

Great choice if you want constant late payments and not be paid for namecoin for months.

[raskul]

so 3 1/2 hours and i got it running a few guys pm'd .... thanx but wound up using some phone support.... pi wasn't connected and a fan male prong was bent...got it back straight with  a wine key, i pour a lot of wine at my job...  so its running now,, what should i expect? is all the sudden its gonna stop if i don't flash something or replace an sd card??? i cant believe i made it this far.. the interface looks so crappy like calico vision, do i up date it??
pool recommendations??

if its running leave it be     as for pools, i suggest eligius. you get newly minted coin, no fees, and nmc merged mining. also something like 9% of the network so its an ideally sized pool IMO

Great choice if you want constant late payments and not be paid for namecoin for months.

DGM is the way to go. find a good DGM pool.

[mdude77]

so 3 1/2 hours and i got it running a few guys pm'd .... thanx but wound up using some phone support.... pi wasn't connected and a fan male prong was bent...got it back straight with  a wine key, i pour a lot of wine at my job...  so its running now,, what should i expect? is all the sudden its gonna stop if i don't flash something or replace an sd card??? i cant believe i made it this far.. the interface looks so crappy like calico vision, do i up date it??
pool recommendations??

if its running leave it be     as for pools, i suggest eligius. you get newly minted coin, no fees, and nmc merged mining. also something like 9% of the network so its an ideally sized pool IMO

Great choice if you want constant late payments and not be paid for namecoin for months.

DGM is the way to go. find a good DGM pool.

they work great with p2pool.  not subject to pool ddos attacks, pool problems, mitm attacks, or pool operator problem.

M

[hurricandave]

ok, so are difficulty and mining results related?? i see 1 person said 128, two other people said 1024, and 1 guy said 512... i had it running for a few hours at 128 it did not seem to have as much success as i thought it should....on the pool end of things like on btc guild i can select 512 or 1024, but on my machine the interface only allows 256 or 1024... what do i do?

Typically BTC Guild will use the difficulty set under "worker" tab when you launch. It will detect the speed of your worker and slowly push you up. The next time you restart this process will happen again unless you make note where your diff is on your miner software header before ending a "LONG" session. ie. BFG Miner actually displays "diff xx with stratum..." on the third line. This is the same setting you want to select on the BTC Guild page and set too in your config file.
If you set yours at 128 and run for a short time it may not have changed yet. But if you looked at the miner software and it shows you at"diff 512 with stratum..." then you know to change your account diff and config line.
If your account "worker" setting is not the same as your config file at launch, BTC Guild will reject the diff setting you send a request for and begin the processes of calculating when too push you up and too what #, automatically.

[rodeoclownicp]

ok, so are difficulty and mining results related?? i see 1 person said 128, two other people said 1024, and 1 guy said 512... i had it running for a few hours at 128 it did not seem to have as much success as i thought it should....on the pool end of things like on btc guild i can select 512 or 1024, but on my machine the interface only allows 256 or 1024... what do i do?

Typically BTC Guild will use the difficulty set under "worker" tab when you launch. It will detect the speed of your worker and slowly push you up. The next time you restart this process will happen again unless you make note where your diff is on your miner software header before ending a "LONG" session. ie. BFG Miner actually displays "diff xx with stratum..." on the third line. This is the same setting you want to select on the BTC Guild page and set too in your config file.
If you set yours at 128 and run for a short time it may not have changed yet. But if you looked at the miner software and it shows you at"diff 512 with stratum..." then you know to change your account diff and config line.
If your account "worker" setting is not the same as your config file at launch, BTC Guild will reject the diff setting you send a request for and begin the processes of calculating when too push you up and too what #, automatically.

ok, so i am not where i need to be as far as even being able to understand what u and a few others have said, i do want to say thanx to all who are helping me,,, how do i print screen so i can show u what i am seeing and then ask the appropriate question sorry but i tried it like i always do and it didnt work?? so my miner has cgminer not bfg.... i think what you are saying is that i could have my miner dificulty set higher on btc guild than i do on my miner and it will use the btc guild difficulty,,,but that being said my miner does not have the option of being set at 512....its 256 or 1024,,,,lets say i didnt use btc guild and the pool i was using didnt have an option to set the dificulty does that mean they still control the difficulty for my miner and they will ramp it up regardless of my settins or will i have to choose 256 or 1024 on my end.... do i update this thing?? for the last 8 hours i had btc guild dificulty at 1024 and my rig at 256,,, i dont know if this means anything but over those 8 hours i had 18,432.00 total dificulty rejected,, an average total of 195% "device rejected %".... a btc guild avg hash of 996 and 99.8% accepted ... so is all this related... when i use a calculator i am definitly under par? but why? is this stuff related,,,