Antminer R4 firmware

[yoyome]

just a quick question. I have 2 of these R4s and they have different firmware.
One has control over fan and frequency, the other does not.
Can I export the old one and flash it to the other? Any issues with that?
I'd like to have manual control on both of them.

[VRobb]

Knowing BiteMe you can't install an older fw over a newer one. Why would you, though? The newer fw (Nov 2018 in my case) has ASICBoost enabled for the pools that support it.  Better W/THs, why worry about fans in the already quiet R4?

[yoyome]

The only reason would be the manual one at 600.00M freq hashes @ 8.5-8.7 Th @845W
The auto freq one is dead set at 7.5 Th... much quieter and draws only ~800W but would like to have the flexibility of tinkering with it.
I figured Bitmain might have some sort of a check on FW date and wanted to ask before I actually gave it a try.
So I take it there's no known workaround?

[Artemis3]

The only reason would be the manual one at 600.00M freq hashes @ 8.5-8.7 Th @845W
The auto freq one is dead set at 7.5 Th... much quieter and draws only ~800W but would like to have the flexibility of tinkering with it.
I figured Bitmain might have some sort of a check on FW date and wanted to ask before I actually gave it a try.
So I take it there's no known workaround?

I have the autofreq one (Nov 2018) and the boards are set at 600m (or close, one is like 602 and the other 598 or so). In my case, the older firmware would actually do 8 THs vs now 8.5THs.

If you "upgrade" to the old one it should work, but you should not do this. Asicboost makes them work much better. I do remember some R4 batches labeled as 7.5T instead of 8T, perhaps you have one of those?

Flexibility will come, next year after Braiins OS finishes the cgminer replacement bOSminer and they start adding more hardware support. In the meantime, i don't think any other firmware is worth it, you could use the older if the asicboost one is giving you trouble, but i don't recommend it.

This fan is too silent to bother forcing it, and you can always force it to 100% by disconnecting the fourth (blue) wire...

[yoyome]

So, I just checked the freq is set to 522.xx for both boards.
That explains the low hashrate, but I have no way to bump it up.
It is labeled R4_8.0T... the thing is that on pool side it sometimes drops down to 6.5Th (24hr average 7.6Th)
The manual one is 8.5Th - 8.7Th consistent.
I might try the Nov 2018 fw and see if that works better.

Thanks for all your input guys!

Hmmm, so I ended up flashing the Nov 2018 FW and not a single change
Still dead set @ 7.5 Th, chip freq 522.xx for both boards.
Fan changed from Fan3 to Fan5 but still set at 1800
No HW errs and temps are really cool:

Chain#          Freq(avg)          Temp(PCB)          Temp(Chip)
7                   522.17              49-44                 64-59
8                   522.26              43-55                 58-70

I noticed that if you try to access the advanced settings by requesting the /cgi-bin/minerAdvanced.cgi page it loads and I can see all the available frequencies.
I tried selecting a higher setting like 587.50 but I get a message saying:
"It will take about 3 hours on search frequency before mining! Are you sure?"

I wasn't sure
 
Anyone ever played with that? and more importantly... Did it work?

[hersh9]

I have tried. I can't get the frequency to change regardless of what I set it to on the Advanced. Using the same firmware as you, I'm stuck at 557.89 freq. and 8.0 Th. It appears nothing I do will make this thing do more.