ANTMINER S2 Discussion and Support Thread

[thecr4ne]

After having no setup issues and running great for the last couple of weeks, I woke up this morning to find my batch 1 AntMiner S2 not hashing, fans going full speed, panel dim and the red light solid. Recalling that others here have had the same issue, I went back and skimmed over the previous posts and found that the likely issue was probably a corrupt SD card. That was indeed the case, as I am now back up and running, and I figure the problem started when a brief power outage occurred here this morning. Thought I would briefly summarize what I did to recover, which may be of special interest to those folks using a Mac to write to their SD cards:

- ran to the store and bought a 4gb Sandisk microSD card. They didn't have any class 10 cards, only class 4, but it seems to work (ordered a couple class 10s from Amazon for backup).
- Downloaded onto my MacBook the latest firmware from the bitmaintech website, as well as the SD card image from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16075357/bitmain.img.zip (thanks 1l1l11ll1l)
- put the new microSD card in the adapter, shoved it into my MacBook, read through the guide at http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup, and then ran these commands in Terminal:
   cd Desktop (my bitmain.img was on the desktop)
   diskutil list (to find the disk name of SD card, mine was disk2, so replace disk2 below with what yours is)
   diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
   sudo dd bs=1m if=bitmain.img of=/dev/disk2 (this took 30 minutes to complete)
- once SD card was ready, I opened up the AntMiner, pulled out the BeagleBone card, swapped SD cards and reassembled
- powered up, and it started hashing again. Connected to the miner from the browser, uploaded the latest firmware, changed to point to my pool, and everything was golden.

Much thanks to all of previous posters that talked about this issue, as your help got me back up in hours as opposed to days.

I tried this with no luck. I ended up swapping the S2's stripped down beaglebone Black with a Beaglebone Black Rev. C(off the shelf)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=671625

[PhilippeD]

Other solution :
Remove the bad board
Overclock the S2
Run the Overclocked S2 with only 9 boards
I will have the same hashing speed as 10 boards

What frequency are you running?  I facepalmed myself just now for not thinking of this!

option 'freq_value'    '0801'  #212.5M
option 'chip_freq'     '212.5'
option 'timeout'       '40'

[dance191]

So, my S2 I got recently hasn't been running smoothly. After some testing and experimenting it now runs stable with 9 blades. With 10 blades I could get it to run about 12hrs at 1th before it started dropping hashrate. If I then restarted the miner process some blades would show up as bad or with x's and I would only be getting 700gh+. With 9 blades, it's running smoothly at 900gh/s for 24hrs+. The one card I removed has only a faulty temp sensor. Does anyone know where it's located on the blade? Or is it inside the chips?

I think the PSU is the problem but don't know 100% yet.

Sometimes the PSU might be under spec, but sometimes the PSU might not be getting enough cooling.  I put a 165 CFM 120mm fan blowing into the air intake for the PSU and this helped me a ton.  I could only run with 8 blades before, now I'm back to 10.

This might apply to the "miner turned off and you need to wait for it to restart" situation more (that is 100% overheating), but give it a shot.  It is better to not toss out a blade if you can avoid it.

[futurovida]

AntMiner S3 for sales shipping starts from July 10th

Speed:    478 GH/s

Price:      0.75 BTC

Link : https://www.bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140630025130637RV8OhOwt06BC

http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/538409003201406301025098334V0o3dRR0656.jpg

another 10 days to deliver......   

[nottm28]

Bitmain needs to deliver a decent upgrade package for his loyal S2 customers - who will not see anything like an ROI - which the S1 and S3 will...

[edit]
which the S1 (did) and S3 (most likely) will...

[Swimmer63]

Had a nice surprise with my S2 delivery today.  They added a plate across the top of the blades to keep them all in place during shipping.  It was plug n' play.  No adjustments needed.
So they fixed it just in time for obsolescence.

[samsonn25]

Bitmain needs to deliver a decent upgrade package for his loyal S2 customers - who will not see anything like an ROI - which the S1 and S3 will...

[edit]
which the S1 (did) and S3 (most likely) will...

The s3 will ROI .55 btc

[Biodom]

Received a new S2 today that was shipped on June 26.
There is a metallic plate-nice, all connectors were undisturbed despite the box taking a huge beating during shipping.
Software: from the get go, miner did not want to accept the IP change. I checked the software-still 4/10/14 (I don't know why they did not load the latest version).
Downloaded 6/19 version tar file, on update the "wheel" keeps turning without end. Waited 5 min (just in case-because it says wait a minute...).
After restart, this miner now accepts the IP change. So far after ~4-5 hours mining S2 seems stable at ~1000Gh. We shall see longer term...
Edit: The boards look different: no more hanging POTS/resistors.

[Biodom]

Also rcvd an S2 today after customs held it for 24 hrs.

fired up ok, shame about the shoddy lid with no 'tongues' to keep the side flaps down.

HOWEVER, the fans are acting up in as much as they power up, & up, & up then cut out

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

shes hashing around 1000 but the noise is giving me toothache right now its been at it the whole time its been running.

i tried removing the metal plate to see if it made any diff and it didnt.

shes also running 4-5C hotter than my other 3...

any ideas??

Direct a moderate extra fan airflow toward the intake fans; it seems to help to reduce the internal fan's speed, hence noise.
Lower ambient temperature in the room helps as well...

[Und3rd0g]

shes hashing around 1000 but the noise is giving me toothache right now its been at it the whole time its been running.

A "toothache"  That is the strangest BTC mining side affect that I have ever hear of.  Good Luck!

[Biffa]

Had a nice surprise with my S2 delivery today.  They added a plate across the top of the blades to keep them all in place during shipping.  It was plug n' play.  No adjustments needed.
So they fixed it just in time for obsolescence.

Yup they did that in the last batch

[edgar]

Had a nice surprise with my S2 delivery today.  They added a plate across the top of the blades to keep them all in place during shipping.  It was plug n' play.  No adjustments needed.
So they fixed it just in time for obsolescence.

Yup they did that in the last batch

not in my last batch...

also missing are the useful tongues that kept the lid sides tucked in nice & snug... need to use the mounting 'ears' and 2 side screws now... kinda lame - especially as this is the rig thats running hot (66C) and wierding me out with the up n down fans for the past few hrs.

67C now, im getting close to snipping the blue wire/s and leaving them at 100%, but there are 4 of them so which ones would make more sense - the inlets, the outlets or all 4?

[hurricandave]

Also rcvd an S2 today after customs held it for 24 hrs.

fired up ok, shame about the shoddy lid with no 'tongues' to keep the side flaps down.

HOWEVER, the fans are acting up in as much as they power up, & up, & up then cut out

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

then 5 seconds later they power up, & up & up then cut out again

shes hashing around 1000 but the noise is giving me toothache right now its been at it the whole time its been running.

i tried removing the metal plate to see if it made any diff and it didnt.

shes also running 4-5C hotter than my other 3...

any ideas??

Direct a moderate extra fan airflow toward the intake fans; it seems to help to reduce the internal fan's speed, hence noise.
Lower ambient temperature in the room helps as well...

It sounds like a load cycle loop from the PSU. It is the same thing you may have noticed in the past if you had hot plugged a case fan in a desktop PC with a low power ie.200~300watt AT PSU. You might consider powering down, having a look to make sure all fan connectors are on the pins correctly, then restarting.

[letuslook]

65C is really hot, My S2 runs stable at 40 degrees with intake temperature of 32 degrees. I really think something is wrong with the temperature measurement or your fan settings. First thing to try is to reflash your mining software / firmware with the latest from bitmaintech.

Advanced (not recommended) tip: Set fan speed to 100% all the time to make sure the unit never gets to hot. You can do this by opening the unit and strip the blue or white cable from the fan cables leading to the mainboard. Only do this if you are familiar with electronics and computer equipment.

~ Luc 

[hurricandave]

Is the miner status reporting the same 65c temps across all the blades? Does it report the RPM on all four fans correctly? If the miner thinks a blade is 65c I think it is going to request full RPM on at least one fan if not all of them.

[edgar]

i cant actually access miner config / miner status without pulling th ether cable and connecting straight to the laptop.

i CAN access network & system without issue but they reveal little info.

Repeated requests for tech support have gleaned nothing.

the 67C is showing on the LED display & in PuTTy, but i cant tell much more.

when i power cycle it sits around 60-61 for a while but the fans continue to drop, rev up, drop, rev up until it gets up to 66-67C


on opening i found 1 blade not hashing so i pulled it, swapped with another to check if it was the board or the connector and when fired up all 10 were hashing.

which leads me to thinking its the (temp sensor? on the) powerboard, not the fans themselves.


E2A - Fk me, shes at 72C now!!

[TracerX]

Other solution :
Remove the bad board
Overclock the S2
Run the Overclocked S2 with only 9 boards
I will have the same hashing speed as 10 boards

What frequency are you running?  I facepalmed myself just now for not thinking of this!

option 'freq_value'    '0801'  #212.5M
option 'chip_freq'     '212.5'
option 'timeout'       '40'

Cheers for that--I'll give that a go when I get a chance this week.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

[gyntas]

AntMiner S3 for sales shipping starts from July 10th

Speed:    478 GH/s

Price:      0.75 BTC

Link : https://www.bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140630025130637RV8OhOwt06BC

http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/538409003201406301025098334V0o3dRR0656.jpg

Hi  ,any experians , how much we can get per day BTC with this toy, difficulty rise again ?

[-droid-]

my latest S2 died lastnight, was only running for 12 hours since it was delivered at my house yesterday.

i was checking my pool stats in the middle of the night while feeding the baby and noticed the new s2 not hashing so i went out to the garage and the power supply fan is spinning, but the s2 is dead, no lights at all

so i turn it off and on to no avail, then unplug it and move it to a different outlet and plug it back in and there was a loud POP and a spark flew out of the power supply.  upon closer inspection one of the capacitors blew and is leaking white stuff

had a spare 1000w rosewill psu i swapped it with and started up the S2 and wouldn't turn on agn, so i started removing hash boards and moving them around and came to the conclusion one of the hash boards is totally dead.  when this particular board is plugged in the unit wont turn on, doesnt matter if theres 6, 7, 10 boards plugged in.  without the dead board the S2 starts like a champ

the unit is now running fine with 9 boards and my spare PSU


contacted bitmain for RMA help and so far theyve asked me some troubleshooting questions, but at this point its pretty obvious what the issue is lol.

[Biodom]

AntMiner S3 for sales shipping starts from July 10th

Speed:    478 GH/s

Price:      0.75 BTC

Link : https://www.bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140630025130637RV8OhOwt06BC

Hi  ,any experians , how much we can get per day BTC with this toy, difficulty rise again ?

At these BTC prices ~$9/day (~0.014-0.015BTC) vs ~$1.1-1.2/day in electricity if at $0.12/kwh.