Block Erupter Prisma (>=1.4 T/device, 0.75-0.78 W/G, <1 BTC/T, October Shipping)

[Zich]

So fighting with these machines for several weeks now I have found out a couple things:

1. These things are so temp sensitive that I don't see them running autonomously without being installed in a climate controlled environment. Not the heat - but the cold. If I fire them up from cold, or I turn on the vent to full, they will cool down to the point of not even hashing. They don't start to hash halfway stably until the room hits at least 70F+. I shut off the vent for too long and it overheats everything else. This makes me feel like I'm dancing on a wire rope.

2. IR Gun every hashing boards and look for boards that are running 2X+ times as hot as normal hashing boards. These need to be pulled as fire hazard, they may be affected by #3

3. The laminate on the bottom of the pcb/hashing board is VERY thin. One scratch here will reveal the copper substrate inside the pcb and will invariably lead to a short to the heatsink and fire is likely.

I run cointerras, S1, S2, S3, S4, BFL, BTCGarden, ZeusMiners in every flavor, Gridseed G-Blacks, SP20's... This was my very first RMA, flame out and hardware exploding miner, power supplies excluded.

Ok, point 1 is very ridiculous.  I already read other said the same thing, i thought he is only joking.
Now i need to believe even if i can't find the reason for such behavior.

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[LordPaco]

I know it doesn't make any sense. Maybe someone has an idea at what is really going on here but it sure isn't me.  This explains why some people find it hard to restart these prismas; they are in a cold room and have cooled off and need to warm up again. After rebooting and fighting it randomly starts to work, only because it has warmed up enough. Ignoring errors, power downs, non-hashing, until the heatsink is warm to the touch, only then will the power downs go away and so do the errors and boards start to hash.

I could throw open the vent to one of my mining rooms that has 2 prisma arrays and the cold air will put them offline within an hour. That room is too hot now for my cointerras(most heat sensitive miner I have) but the Antminers don't care either way.

[Phasebird]

Update on 2014-12-02:

Compensation scheme for previous buyers&customers:

Due to a lot of problems (factory`s faults + bugs of controllers + delivery damages) ,we have received so far a lot of user feedback, focusing on saying that our miners are in unstable working conditions/cannot start hashing at all,or even got burned.

We apologize here again for all inconvenience we possibly brought to you.

We are solving the problems by changing factories,strengthening the tests,debugging our firmware ..etc ,at the moment,things are going well,our new batch of Prisma are under test and working well so far.

The compensation scheme for all previous benefit-lost-buyers caused by quality problems of our Prisma miners is the following:

1. All problem products such as hashing boards,controllers, fans, data wires are changable. Please mail them to this address:

ADD：UNIT 10-11,20/F.,RICKY CENTRE,36 CHONG YIP STREET,KWUN TONG,KOWLOON,HONG KONG.
TEL：00852-35688889
Contacts：MISS  LI


  (We will surely cover the shipping fees but please help disassembling the heat sinks, which is the most heavy and expensive part for shipping,and keep them with you.)


2. A sum of compensation fee will be given to all broken miners buyers. Calculation method follows: (Theoretical daily income with your broken boards of Prisma`s hashrate - actual daily income with real hashrate) * Number of days between the date you received your old Prismas to the date you will have received replaced boards again. Each prisma board is calculated as 287W and 350GH/s. The electricity fee is calculated as 0.1$/KWH.

BTW：We will account your compensation fee with a calculater such as this one: http://www.iasicminer.com/index.php/action-channel-name-counteren

         We will check the real hashrate of your broken Prisma boards shipped back.
         
         We can only do it after you receiving your new boards because we can not know your receiving day in advance.

You can get your compensation fee by email us to sale@bitquan.com with the following information and format:


* Personal info,shipping address,tel number
* Date of buying our Prisma
* Your previous individual/exclusive btc payment address
* Number of broken Prsima boards (have to be fit well with the number you shipped back)
* Date you received your miners,date of shipping back
* The picture of the shipping label with the shipping price on it
* Your btc receivable address (it will be best to be the one you paid to us before)



If you bought from resellers, please do this with them directly.
If you were our big buyers (100+ sets order) or resellers,and your broken boards are more than 20 boards per 400 boards,please contact us through email directly.‍

[xhomerx10]

That is f^cking awesome!
Go Asicminer!!

[Mabsark]

Phasebird, as an AM shareholder, I think this is simply not good enough. You have only addressed a part of the problem. The other part of the problem is your lack of communication. You should be checking this forum multiple times per day and should probably be making at least one post here a day.

It you can't do this, then you need to find someone who can. Your lack of communication has pretty much destroyed AM's reputation in my opinion.

[Dexter770221]

I know it doesn't make any sense.....

Actually it does. Parameters of electronic components can vary alot in the function of temperature. Maybe some components are poorly selected and with heatup (or cooldown) they parameters are off limits and something starts to oscillate. 

[praeluceo]

Phasebird, as an AM shareholder, I think this is not simply not good enough. You have only addressed a part of the problem. The other part of the problem is your lack of communication. You should be checking this forum multiple times per day and should probably be making at least one post here a day.

It you can't do this, then you need to find someone who can. Your lack of communication has pretty much destroyed AM's reputation in my opinion.

As a customer with a batch of these miners, I agree. Several of the miners arrived damaged and we had to solder ourselves to even get hashing in the first place, after a month delay in even receiving the hardware. I do appreciate the offer to RMA, and I'm glad for the additional details since our original email didn't say anything about sending boards back without heatsinks, or that ASICMiner would pay shipping. I also appreciate the payment for the downtime.

However, at this point, I don't want refurbished boards returned. We have taken on a lot of undesired risk by running these Prismas in our mine, and the risk greatly exceeds the reward, because if there is a fire, we have the potential to lose all of our capital invested in mining. We have taken reasonable precautions by isolating our Prismas, and putting them on a flame retardant, but this is not what we signed up for when we bought the Prismas.

We do understand the modular nature of the Prisma, and that is one of its great strengths. The cost per board was 0.3725 BTC. Using your numbers below, in the month of October each hashing board should have mined 0.10 BTC, during the month of November each board should have mined 0.08 BTC, and if they are run through the month of December, they may mine 0.06 BTC.

I want to ship back the boards that we have, which have never worked since being delivered to us, and receive back 0.6125 BTC for loaning ASICMiner a considerable sum of money on a terribly failed product. You can keep the board and mine on it yourself. If additional boards fail, then we will request compensation of the original cost 0.3725 plus 0.1 BTC for the headache of dealing with down miners, the threat of fire, and the inability to resell something for fear of burning down someone's residence.

In the future, I'd recommend this sort of damage control to occur within days, not months, of launch. This is a perfect example of too little, far too late. In fact, it's an absurd attempt by Phasebird to try to salvage the situation after so many weeks of not replying to anything on this forum, all the way down to his hardware causing small housefires. It is entirely unacceptable and shameful for ASICMiner to put their name behind this.

[Chris_Sabian]

Phasebird, as an AM shareholder, I think this is not simply not good enough. You have only addressed a part of the problem. The other part of the problem is your lack of communication. You should be checking this forum multiple times per day and should probably be making at least one post here a day.

It you can't do this, then you need to find someone who can. Your lack of communication has pretty much destroyed AM's reputation in my opinion.

As a customer with a batch of these miners, I agree. Several of the miners arrived damaged and we had to solder ourselves to even get hashing in the first place, after a month delay in even receiving the hardware. I do appreciate the offer to RMA, and I'm glad for the additional details since our original email didn't say anything about sending boards back without heatsinks, or that ASICMiner would pay shipping. I also appreciate the payment for the downtime.

However, at this point, I don't want refurbished boards returned. We have taken on a lot of undesired risk by running these Prismas in our mine, and the risk greatly exceeds the reward, because if there is a fire, we have the potential to lose all of our capital invested in mining. We have taken reasonable precautions by isolating our Prismas, and putting them on a flame retardant, but this is not what we signed up for when we bought the Prismas.

We do understand the modular nature of the Prisma, and that is one of its great strengths. The cost per board was 0.3725 BTC. Using your numbers below, in the month of October each hashing board should have mined 0.10 BTC, during the month of November each board should have mined 0.08 BTC, and if they are run through the month of December, they may mine 0.06 BTC.

I want to ship back the boards that we have, which have never worked since being delivered to us, and receive back 0.6125 BTC for loaning ASICMiner a considerable sum of money on a terribly failed product. You can keep the board and mine on it yourself. If additional boards fail, then we will request compensation of the original cost 0.3725 plus 0.1 BTC for the headache of dealing with down miners, the threat of fire, and the inability to resell something for fear of burning down someone's residence.

In the future, I'd recommend this sort of damage control to occur within days, not months, of launch. This is a perfect example of too little, far too late. In fact, it's an absurd attempt by Phasebird to try to salvage the situation after so many weeks of not replying to anything on this forum, all the way down to his hardware causing small housefires. It is entirely unacceptable and shameful for ASICMiner to put their name behind this.

I agree with both Mabsark and praeluceo 100%.

I really do appreciate the offer of RMA.  I will take the offer up with Canary since that is who I bought from.  But I really don't want any replacement boards.

I have serious concerns about fire with the prisma.  If I had a steel shed, with outside ventilation in the middle of winter with a box fan on the prisma, then maybe I'll take the risk.

[Blazed]

Agreed too little too late...

I just do not get this company...how they can not do simple tasks such as support and a forum presence. From what I can tell they only advertise these via a website (broken English to say the least) and here. I for one will not be buying anything from this company again after this experience (also had a bad controller on tube).

[FUR11]

It you can't do this, then you need to find someone who can. Your lack of communication has pretty much destroyed AM's reputation in my opinion.

Well, I think you are right in so far as it did actually hurt AM's track record or reputation. But not nearly as much as other manufacturers or vendors suffered! The mere fact that they roll out this reimbursement plan show that they care about their customers and are in for the long run. They really do care about their honesty, it seems. I think it's a great sign.

[wpgdeez]

Agreed too little too late...

I just do not get this company...how they can not do simple tasks such as support and a forum presence. From what I can tell they only advertise these via a website (broken English to say the least) and here. I for one will not be buying anything from this company again after this experience (also had a bad controller on tube).

There's nothing to get. They are and always have been greedy bastards. Good luck getting your compensation, I feel more pain coming to these poor customers.

[Blazed]

Agreed too little too late...

I just do not get this company...how they can not do simple tasks such as support and a forum presence. From what I can tell they only advertise these via a website (broken English to say the least) and here. I for one will not be buying anything from this company again after this experience (also had a bad controller on tube).

There's nothing to get. They are and always have been greedy bastards. Good luck getting your compensation, I feel more pain coming to these poor customers.

Well in both instances I sold off the miners ASAP to minimize my losses. I have nothing left to send for the RMA 

[dogie]

My unit keeps throwing up low hash warnings on ghash every few hours, and the controller resets after a while. Hash rate when its running is fine, all chips accounted for and chips temps never >90C or so externally. I've tried a known working controller and I've also tried @220 on the chips but no difference. Any ideas, I've not seen this type of behaviour before.

[OgNasty]

Agreed too little too late...

I just do not get this company...how they can not do simple tasks such as support and a forum presence. From what I can tell they only advertise these via a website (broken English to say the least) and here. I for one will not be buying anything from this company again after this experience (also had a bad controller on tube).

There's nothing to get. They are and always have been greedy bastards. Good luck getting your compensation, I feel more pain coming to these poor customers.

Well in both instances I sold off the miners ASAP to minimize my losses. I have nothing left to send for the RMA 

I am glad that they're making an attempt.  If I indeed do receive compensation for downtime and shipping, I won't be that disappointed.  It remains to be seen whether or not selling it off and eating the loss right away would have been the right thing to do.  I'm just relieved it isn't a total loss for me at this point.

[DigitalPackrat]

Curious to see how this turns out. I covered return shipping directly to Hong Kong for the damaged board for which I was promised an entire prisma as compensation. That in itself was a gamble with paying for shipping, downtime for the fire, reduced hash rate while waiting for a replacement and having less time to mine at current diff. If it was just boards shipped to crazyguy I am going to have more down time trying to clean up the damaged heatsink so it can be reused and even if I get an entire prisma's worth of boards it's kinda hard to run them without a heatsink.

[TracerX]

My unit keeps throwing up low hash warnings on ghash every few hours, and the controller resets after a while. Hash rate when its running is fine, all chips accounted for and chips temps never >90C or so externally. I've tried a known working controller and I've also tried @220 on the chips but no difference. Any ideas, I've not seen this type of behaviour before.

I presume the low hash numbers happen when the controller resets--do you have a USB UART to try the device with a rPi controller?

[bigredbutton]

I am trying to unload my headache right now actually....

Canary told us to individually approach about initiating RMA. I'm still debating if chasing some tiny compensation is worth it. Frankly I don't even want to get this POS failed miner back.

Can I send it back and get a refund at the Group Buy purchase price of 1.47BTC? I'll pay shipping and will even send it back with a BE Controller, on me.

[Swimmer63]

My unit keeps throwing up low hash warnings on ghash every few hours, and the controller resets after a while. Hash rate when its running is fine, all chips accounted for and chips temps never >90C or so externally. I've tried a known working controller and I've also tried @220 on the chips but no difference. Any ideas, I've not seen this type of behaviour before.

Similar issue with some of mine.  Needs resetting every day.  Often multiple times a day.
I have had the issue on Ghash and on BAN.  Seems a little better on Ghash.  Using a PC as a controller seems to work the best.  BE controllers....not so good. 

[whonesta]

That is f^cking awesome!
Go Asicminer!!

U R A POS, hang yourself you shill!

[whonesta]

It you can't do this, then you need to find someone who can. Your lack of communication has pretty much destroyed AM's reputation in my opinion.

Well, I think you are right in so far as it did actually hurt AM's track record or reputation. But not nearly as much as other manufacturers or vendors suffered! The mere fact that they roll out this reimbursement plan show that they care about their customers and are in for the long run. They really do care about their honesty, it seems. I think it's a great sign.

SHILL!! ASICMiner is dead in my books, NEVER again. Phuck friedcat for designing this POS and then selling it to morons to man/dis. can you say ignore, just like Marto and Inaba deaf ears hear none of your future lies.