Restore Bitmain Orginal Firmware Using Sd-card

[o_solo_miner]

Hi all,

I bought a used S9 from ebay and to my suprise I noticed that there was not the expected bitmain firmware on it, instead it was equiped with this "Hiveon Asic" firmware. This firmware might be good, but I don't trust that "Dev Fee" and maybe "welcome to my botnet" thing in my network. So I searched and read a view things, I also asked Phil for some advise to get rid of this firmware.

I thought that might be usefull for others if they run into the same problem, so I wrote this:

Restore S9 control board back to original bitmain firmware

To do this please read this completly BEFORE you take any actions. If something is unclear, please ask first, english is not my native language and I write it as I would do in german.

[german version is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5269128.0]

you need:

1. philips screw driver
2. sd-card with max. 4GB
3. Files from Bitmain (see links)
4. Access to your router to see the ip given to the miner when using dhcp

First of all we download the needed Files:

Bitmain Firmware for the control board (t9+ is used on our S9 as well)
* It is used to recover the control board firmware of T9+
https://file12.bitmain.com/shop-product/firmware/t9%2B%20-SD%20Tools.zip

You can find it on the bitmain web page under Service/Others/Flashing Sd Card with image and then select the model of your miner if you need this for a different miner.

Firmware for your S9 type. In my case (13.5 THs) it was the S9 without any extra letter and I wanted that with SSH open and low power mode / enhanced mode.

Bitmain Link: https://file12.bitmain.com/shop-product/firmware/Antminer%20S9/Firmware/00720181206230950692dA4HgFnC067E/Antminer-S9-all-201812051512-autofreq-user-Update2UBI-NF.tar.gz

You can also choose the newest Firmware if you be aware of that then SSH is closed after Installing and you can't go back to an old firmware if you don't like it!

SD-Card Preperation:

Use a 4 GB sd card, that is enough room for the firmware and you don't run into incompatility problems. You should format that sd-card with fat32.
Uncompress the "t9+ -SD Tools.zip" file and you get a folder "t9+"
Now go into that "t9+" folder and copy the whole content of it to your sd-card.

We need to gain access to the control board to change the jumper setting of J4 because only then we are able to boot from the sd-card for this downgrade.

Unconnect any plug on the control board (power, fans, interconnections)
Unscrew the four philips screws for the rear metallplate wich holds the fan on the housing (don't unscrew the fan)
Now slide the three Asic PCBs a bit out (nearly half the size of it)
Retract the metal clips on both sides of the housing wich secure that the control board keeping it's position and slide the control board completly out.
Locate the four jumper on the left of the front side (where the ethernet connector is).
Now move the jumper marked [J4] this is the leftmost jumper, to toward the front.

Insert the sd-card with the contacts upwards into the controler.

Now connect the power plug to the controler and wait (1-2 Minutes)
You should see that the green SMT LEDs on the controler are lid, on the front side you see one red and one green tht 3 mm LED and they are off during the loading of the firmware.
When the loading and flashing process is finished both of that LEDs are blinking in 1 sec intervals.
Now you can disconnect the power plug and relocate the jumper j4 back into the old position.
Reassemble the miner and put back all plugs into their position (power / fans / interconnection).

Power up the miner, be aware that the old network settings are lost after flashing the new firmware and therefor the miner is in DHCP mode!

After you know what IP address your miner got (look into your router), log into the miner with your web browser and the ip. Passwords are as usual with bitmain User:root / Password:root.

On the mainpage select Upgrade, under [Flash new firmware image] uncheck the "Keep settings" and click on "Search files".

Now navigate to the folder where you stored your downloaded files and select the firmware file with ".tar.gz" at the end (Do NOT uncompress them), in my case I used "Antminer-S9-all-201812051512-autofreq-user-Update2UBI-NF.tar.gz".

After you rechecked twice that this is the file you need, press "Flash Image".
The flashing is very quick and when finished you see the message that the miner reboots now.
The miner restarts and again it is in DHCP mode so you have to look after the ip in your router again.
But now you are done, just enter the network settings you prefer and the pool you wan't to mine on.

Happy mining


Source List

Bitmain original Instruction Link: https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007577214-T9-Control-Board-Program-Recovery

Bitmain Video on recovery of a control board: https://youtu.be/6_4oxhVT6hg

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[mikeywith]

Great stuff, this is actually how to Sdcard flash pretty much all miners, so you might want to change the subject for better SEO optimization.

The only difference is that the new models like the 17 series and even the K and SE versions of S9 is that there is no jumper to be changed, the control boards are made in away so that when they sense an Sdcard in the slot - they use it to flash the files on the card instead of booting the installed firmware.

But wait, why did you have to go this route? did HiveOn lock your miner? as far as I know all custom firmware are not locked and you can easily go back to stock firmware, but if Hiveon does that then they probably deserve a negative feedback on their profile until they solve this issue.

2. sd-card with max. 4GB

This isn't exactly correct, you can pretty much do with any size, Bitmain recommend 16GB or less, I know it will work with large SDcards too, the smaller the better but if you have no options, work with whatever you have available.

Thanks for sharing this great content.

[o_solo_miner]

But wait, why did you have to go this route? did HiveOn lock your miner? as far as I know all custom firmware are not locked and you can easily go back to stock firmware, but if Hiveon does that then they probably deserve a negative feedback on their profile until they solve this issue.

I searched for "Hiveon Asic" and I found a milion instructions on how to get it on the miner. Instructions on how to uninstall that was nearly zero.

On github I found out a one liner, telling me to type "uninstall" but I did not know if the "backup" is stored on the miner itself (flash) or on a pc connected with that "Hive OS" and I still don't know.

Well, I bought that miner via ebay from a unknown source, I would not trust anything wich is on the miner itself because it is not locked. So I decided to only use the original files from bitmain just to be secure.

This isn't exactly correct, you can pretty much do with any size, Bitmain recommend 16GB or less, I know it will work with large SDcards too, the smaller the better but if you have no options, work with whatever you have available.

I did use a 16GB sd-card at first, but it won't work (ultra sd sandisk), so I took an old 4GB former used on my raspberry pi and geparted it to fat32 and all went well.

Thanks for sharing this great content.

Thank you for reading and coment, what titel would you suggest?

[mikeywith]

... Instructions on how to uninstall that was nearly zero.

This is probably because HiveON is relatively new and not enough people know about it anyway, also the search keywords could be focused on how to restore stock firmware rather than how to remove HiveOn, any way you made this guide so it's no longer zero.

Well, I bought that miner via ebay from a unknown source, I would not trust anything wich is on the miner itself because it is not locked.

Most certainly, I always tell people to Sdcard the heck of any used mining gear they buy as many of them come infected, you have another option which is flashing Bitmain stock firmware via the web GUI but the miner needs to be on a quarantined LAN/VLAN, in most cases going with an Sdcard flash is easier.

I did use a 16GB sd-card at first, but it won't work (ultra sd sandisk), so I took an old 4GB former used on my raspberry pi and geparted it to fat32 and all went well.

Been there done that, every time I try to flash a miner using an Sdcard I have to try a few of them to get one to work, and then I lose it, a few months later I go through the same shit again, but based on my experience the size isn't the issue, it's just some Sdcards don't work for this thing, so when you find a Sdcard that works please hold on to it.

... what titel would you suggest?

Maybe something like "Restore Bitmain Orginal Firmware Using Sd-card"?

[o_solo_miner]

Most certainly, I always tell people to Sdcard the heck of any used mining gear they buy as many of them come infected, you have another option which is flashing Bitmain stock firmware via the web GUI but the miner needs to be on a quarantined LAN/VLAN, in most cases going with an Sdcard flash is easier.

I did isolate the miner in a vlan as a precaution, and I had to use wireshark to find the fixed IP the miner was set to (the seller didn't included that information).

Maybe something like "Restore Bitmain Orginal Firmware Using Sd-card"?

Thank you, I changed it to it.

[mikeywith]

I did isolate the miner in a vlan as a precaution, and I had to use wireshark to find the fixed IP the miner was set to...

The seller must be new to this, usually, when you want to sell a mining gear the first thing to do is to reset the network settings to DHCP, anyway after finding the IP address to the miner, did you attempt to change the firmware from the GUI by going to "upgrade" tab? this should work unless:

1- The is a signature-lock like most recent Bitmain firmware.
2- The miner is infected.

I hope I get an answer to this question because I will very likely tag HiveOs if it turns out that they lock the firmware upgrade from the GUI on purpose.

[o_solo_miner]

... anyway after finding the IP address to the miner, did you attempt to change the firmware from the GUI by going to "upgrade" tab?

No, I was unsure if this was just for upgrading to a new Hieveon Firmware, or for all types of Firmware. The Gear was not locked as SSH was possible.

The seller was a company for trading and not the former owner of the miner, this must be a mine in russia or ukraine according to the postagelables on the original packing. The miner was in perfect condition and got a
mark on it wich identify it as no# xx, the psu was labeled the same, but with a different no. I think a mine sold his old gears to an trading service and do not care about reseting anything. The pool settings where also in it and because I wiresharked the trafic I could see that one goes to btc-pool, a second connection was going to another port of btc.com and a third one was going to an IP located in Frankfurt germany, that boost my will to reflash the whole thing to not leave anything suspicious on the controler.

[DaveF]

Some troubleshooting notes:

In a dusty environment the SD card clot can get a bit clogged and not work, a blast of compressed air is usually all you need to get it working.

As you noticed not all SD cards work. It's not always the size but a lot of times the brand or just the card itself. I have found that for some reason some miners just don't like some SD cards. Even within the same batch, you occasionally need a different card even though that card worked fine on the miner next to it.

I'm sure Phil can probably add more to the list.

-Dave

[philipma1957]

I like Samsung cards the  16gb are hard to find

here is a 32gb kit

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MicroSD-Memory-Everything-Stromboli/dp/B07YNXPNNN/

trust me you want more then 1 card

you want an air blower

the best air compressor I have ever used it this one.

https://www.amazon.com/California-Air-Tools-CAT-1P1060S-Compressor/dp/B01LYHYHEA/

just get a good hose for it.

also look at this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tLR6sEVQs

time 1:40 to 2:00

it has a Samsung sd card

I misspoke in the video.

[Artemis3]

The thing is you should avoid SDXC and SDHC. SDHC might or might not work, they don't say it this clearly, but that is the sole reason. Not all controllers are SDHC capable, and of course there are no SD beyond 4gb (2gb is the usual max).

This is probably a Xilinx or Bitmain thing, not really caring about what port/chip gets in there. Whatever cheaper choice you could put there was probably the answer, and what better way to get rid of your remaining surplus stock?

If you want to play it safe. stick to non sdxc and non sxhc cards; ie. Nothing above 2gb.

And, they didn't expect people using the sd card that often... But then again, they didn't expect their firmware to be entirely replaced.

PS: To avoid trademark issues with SanDisk, China calls microSD "TF".

[philipma1957]

The thing is you should avoid SDXC and SDHC. SDHC might or might not work, they don't say it this clearly, but that is the sole reason. Not all controllers are SDHC capable, and of course there are no SD beyond 4gb (2gb is the usual max).

This is probably a Xilinx or Bitmain thing, not really caring about what port/chip gets in there. Whatever cheaper choice you could put there was probably the answer, and what better way to get rid of your remaining surplus stock?

If you want to play it safe. stick to non sdxc and non sxhc cards; ie. Nothing above 2gb.

And, they didn't expect people using the sd card that often... But then again, they didn't expect their firmware to be entirely replaced.

PS: To avoid trademark issues with SanDisk, China calls microSD "TF".

To keep and have multiple cards is best since some controllers are like f you

[mikeywith]

No, I was unsure if this was just for upgrading to a new Hieveon Firmware, or for all types of Firmware.
The Gear was not locked as SSH was possible.

It is most likely the average upgrade we have on all firmware including the stock firmware which allows you to flash any other firmware, and since SSH was not locked it simply means they don't lock your miners, so as for now - no negative feedback is required.

The thing is you should avoid SDXC and SDHC. SDHC might or might not work, they don't say it this clearly, but that is the sole reason. Not all controllers are SDHC capable, and of course there are no SD beyond 4gb (2gb is the usual max).

That is a good point, I ,however, had some SD cards that failed to flash some miners while a flash went through with SDHC, I don't recall trying or even owning any SDXC but I would guess it might not work, so all in all it all boils down to this.

As you noticed not all SD cards work. It's not always the size but a lot of times the brand or just the card itself. I have found that for some reason some miners just don't like some SD cards. Even within the same batch, you occasionally need a different card even though that card worked fine on the miner next to it.