ANTMINER S3+ Discussion and Support Thread

[TheFalseHuman]

I got three Antminer S3 from someone who quit mining. I got two of them to work and are up and mining away, but the third not so much. 
On the third one, the fan spins and the LED lights up, but the two activity lights for the ethernet port doesn't light up when plugged in. However, when turning it on, one of the ethernet activity light would blink a few times before going dark. I've tried resetting, but ethernet still doesn't work. 
Any help please? 
Thanks

Did you try a different ethernet cable?

The Ethernet cable is fine; I've used the same one for all three miners and was able to get 2/3 of the miners up and running. Any other suggestions? Does this mean I would have to get a new controller board?
Thanks

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[in2tactics]

The Ethernet cable is fine; I've used the same one for all three miners and was able to get 2/3 of the miners up and running. Any other suggestions? Does this mean I would have to get a new controller board?
Thanks

It is possible that you will need a new controller board. You could always check the cables from the hashing boards to the controller board to make sure that they are secure.

[TheFalseHuman]

It is possible that you will need a new controller board. You could always check the cables from the hashing boards to the controller board to make sure that they are secure.
[/quote]

Yeah, I was thinking of that, but the rest of the controller board seems fine, all the LED's, even the wifi LED, turns on (the previous owner had installed a wifi antenna onto the S3)

[leowonderful]

It is possible that you will need a new controller board. You could always check the cables from the hashing boards to the controller board to make sure that they are secure.

Yeah, I was thinking of that, but the rest of the controller board seems fine, all the LED's, even the wifi LED, turns on (the previous owner had installed a wifi antenna onto the S3)
[/quote]
Controllers aren't too expensive, though- you can order them off Aliexpress for just around 15$ with free shipping. That's the great thing about antminers, they're easy to replace

[Shermand100]

As far as I know they should be compatible. The 3 and 3+ are for all intents and purposes identical, (there was a small revision to the hashing boards a few years ago). The s3+ versions were just a string of good batches of s3 that were capable of stable hashing above the advertised 440gh/s. They called them 3+ so they could justify charging a bit extra for them. The firmware is more likely to be newer on an s3+ board due to it's more recent release date and works with both models.

(I run an s3 and s3+ on the same firmware)

[Shermand100]

Hi again, an update on my previous post. I ordered a new hashing board from aliexpress for about £20 to the UK from here https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Antminer-S3-220Gh-s-miner-Fitting-16-chip-pcs-PCB-28-NM-Calculation-circuit-board-bitcoin/32657963607.html?spm=2114.13010608.0.0.ViZuUW and the new board works fine and allowed me to remove the old one for a proper bit of testing. I previously left it in to run the second fan on the unit for the benefit of the still hashing blade.

So looking at it there are no obvious burns, warps, cracks etc. so the multi-meter came out to try and test the mosfets (the row of 8 5335555DQP chips). I pulled up the datasheet http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps53355.pdf but these are a little more complex than I'm used to. Granted a bulk of the pins are the 12v in, and the 0.8v out for the BM1382 chips. But some of the other signal and reference voltage pins threw me just due to terminology as I stated this is only a hobby and not a profession.

I settled for trying to test pins 3 and 4 as my best interpretation of gate and drain. Can anyone weigh in on that? Was difficult to test with certainty due to tiny pin size but seems ok.

However if the mosfets are shorted drain to gate as they most probably would, to my understanding as they are set up in parallel the open gate having drain voltage across it would damage all other mosfets as well, killing the whole board. This is a possibility and fit the symptom of the whole board failing at once, with the 12v fan plug unaffected at the top of the board. The replacement chips look costly as they are more complex than simple mosfets. They have many other features and each chip looks to cost around £7 in a small batch order. Making repair un-economical as all 8 would need changing, assuming the mosfets blowing hasn't also damaged the driving circuitry too.

Again is anyone interested in electronics with some knowledge to share? I'm keen to have an attempt at repair, for my own experience, and as it's a currently dead board it's only good as repair practice or a coffee mat. May as well repair it.

[cameloid]

If anyone is still interested in this, I've just built cgminer 4.10.0 for the Bitmain Antminer S3.

- Based on the latest cgminer 4.10.0 from git (changelog: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ckolivas/cgminer/master/NEWS )
- Statically linked with the latest libcurl 7.54
- Built with gcc 5.3.0

Hashes just fine on my unit so far.

Download link: https://yadi.sk/d/CVhgXxmN3K2SBw

[tartoga1]

So, I got a cheap S3+ (one hash board was dead) I haven't found replacement hash boards. Is there a why to remove the dead board and get it to run?

[gilwen]

have a chance to buy this device in China, my friend will buy and forward it to me
is it still a profitable device? what is the payback rate? as i heard the difficulty of the net has been increased and payback may take up to 1 year

[leowonderful]

have a chance to buy this device in China, my friend will buy and forward it to me
is it still a profitable device? what is the payback rate? as i heard the difficulty of the net has been increased and payback may take up to 1 year

If you don’t specify your electrical cost we have no way of knowing. Regardless of that the S3 is a reeealy old miner and unless you’re using this as a quiet heater or something of the sort it’s really just a collectible. With no difficulty jumps you make less than $100 a year at 10 cents per kilowatt and difficulty jumps will make the unit even less profitable.

[gilwen]

have a chance to buy this device in China, my friend will buy and forward it to me
is it still a profitable device? what is the payback rate? as i heard the difficulty of the net has been increased and payback may take up to 1 year

If you don’t specify your electrical cost we have no way of knowing. Regardless of that the S3 is a reeealy old miner and unless you’re using this as a quiet heater or something of the sort it’s really just a collectible. With no difficulty jumps you make less than $100 a year at 10 cents per kilowatt and difficulty jumps will make the unit even less profitable.

thanks  for your reply
i suppose it's better to simply buy some coins and get some profit in several months

[GoldBuffalo]

So, I got a cheap S3+ (one hash board was dead) I haven't found replacement hash boards. Is there a why to remove the dead board and get it to run?

Go to Aliexpress. You can get used parts for cheap. Probably get an entire S3 for little and have another for parts. I love the hobby, electricity for me is cheap, so I play the lotto game with miners. Ignore the noise, roll the dice and mine away!

[spoonwzd]

If anyone is still interested in this, I've just built cgminer 4.10.0 for the Bitmain Antminer S3.

- Based on the latest cgminer 4.10.0 from git (changelog: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ckolivas/cgminer/master/NEWS )
- Statically linked with the latest libcurl 7.54
- Built with gcc 5.3.0

Hashes just fine on my unit so far.

Download link: https://yadi.sk/d/CVhgXxmN3K2SBw

Thanks for this. I still spin up my S3 from time to time when I have extra solar spare.

When I run your executable on firmware 2015-01-09 I get: "BitmainAntS3: no bitmain-options specified"

Any ideas?

Edit: Sussed it. It's doesn't like the --version-file part of the script and the definitions for --antminer-options and --antminer-freq are different in your version to what public documentation and the antminer expects.

To fix, you need to alter the following lines in /etc/init.d/cgminer to:

Code:

AOPTIONS="--bitmain-freq $_freq"

PARAMS="--bitmain-options 115200:32:8 $AOPTIONS $POOL1 $POOL2 $POOL3 $_pb $_ow $_bec --api-listen --api-network --bitmain-checkn2diff --bitmain-hwerror --bitmain-voltage $_vl --queue 4096"

$APP --lowmem --bitmain-freq $_freq --bitmain-voltage $_vl -q >/dev/null 2>&1

...which seems to do the trick.

[slurfius]

So I got an S3+ to play around with as a heater and when i was setting it up i noticed wifi was an option so I set it up that way. It was happily mining but I didn't have the hot air blowing where I wanted it so i unplugged and rotated the miner.  I figured out the hard way that I don't have a wifi antenna and now I can't get the s3 to connect because there is no wifi antenna and no matter where I move it it no longer connects so it's ip doesn't come up so I can't reconfigure for lan. I have tried holding the reset button but it didn't do anything after that just solid red light. I've restarted and tried resetting it but nothing can connect with it.