ANTMINER S4 Discussion and Support Thread

[dkaufman]

B10 is up now: https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140917060843699l3bEXYxL06C0

But now they're charging $135 (USD) for UPS shipping.  Such Wow not.

[suchmoon]

S4 Suckers Early Adopter

I feel your pain, turns out it was a good thing they overpriced it as much as they did - prevented me from buying it...

[ChuckBuck]

B10 is up now: https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140917060843699l3bEXYxL06C0

But now they're charging $135 (USD) for UPS shipping.  Such Wow not.

GEEZ louise, what happened to Bitmain's free shipping model?

Guess when BTC price is this low, everyone gets f@cked, even the manufacturers.  Gots to skim off some profit somewhere.

[dogie]

B10 is up now: https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140917060843699l3bEXYxL06C0

But now they're charging $135 (USD) for UPS shipping.  Such Wow not.

GEEZ louise, what happened to Bitmain's free shipping model?

Guess when BTC price is this low, everyone gets f@cked, even the manufacturers.  Gots to skim off some profit somewhere.

That's ~cost price shipping. No one makes money on shipping. You can check that by trying to send a 13kg package the other way round the world.

[bobwoods]

I have the same problem with the Antminer S4 with Elgius Pool.  This is the reply I received from BitMain.

Hi,
please set the difficulties setting with pool to a lower value to try.
Btcguild and ghash both work perfectly fine share difficulty manually set to 2048. you may use the 2 pools to try first.
engineers are investing the issue, please wait for the update patiently:)


Best Regards

BITMAIN

This e-mail and its attachments contain confidential information from BITMAIN TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED, which is intended only for the person or entity whose address is listed above. Any use of the information contained herein in any way (including, but not limited to, total or partial disclosure, reproduction, or dissemination) by persons other than the intended recipient(s) is prohibited. If you receive this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by phone or email immediately and delete it! Thank you.

2014-10-08 5:26 GMT+08:00

Dear Bitmain
 
I have a problem with my new Antminer S4 which has just arrived.
 
The display and the software show a hashing speed of around 2TH/s but my pool (Elgius) is only showing 20 – 50GH/s.    I also have a S2 on the same account which is working correctly at 1TH/s and the settings are the same  (Workers are AntS2 and AntS4)

[Bogon]

My S4 is operating at the stock setting of 0725 which corresponds to .725 Vdc.

What are the valid increments if I want to up the core voltage on the chips?
What would be the highest voltage - the technical upper limit?
Are there valid steps, or do you just up it in .1v increments?

Thanks.

[Xian01]

BTC Guild has been crap for almost a year now.

Isn't that the truth As much as I want to mine there (and I did for quite some time), I can't rationalize it given the cheaper and more profitable alternatives :|

[dkaufman]

First, allow me to introduce myself.  I'm the biggest Bitmain Sucker ever, apparently.  I bought the S4 the day it went on sale and, although I took delivery quickly, getting in early screwed me over in more ways than I can count.  So let's count them:

1. Bitmain offered coupons to buyers of their earlier products to knock $200 off the sticker price of the S4, but not to buyers of the only earlier product that I'd bought (a pair of S3's) so such fail, much weep, No coupon for me when I ordered mine (and although they became widely available from other customers over the weeks after the S4's went on sale, that was weeks too late for me cuz I was so quick to pull the trigger).  No soup for you!  Wonderful, punish the customer.

2. Bitmain lowered the price of the S4 for everyone days later, knocking off $200, to drum up more "late adopters" I assume.  Punish the early enthusiastic cheerleader customers, reward the skeptics.

3. Oh yeah the thing didn't work right and we're still waiting for a fix.  Top it off by ignoring the customer as you celebrate the longest holiday the west has ever effin heard of.  Which, by the way, again I say, whaaat? the whole country takes a whole week off? what's the excuse?  Tree day, squirrel day?  Y'know far, far, FAR be it from me to  begrudge anyone their slackage, but a whole week of traveling or something while my just-launched $1400 miner waits for a firmware update *and* the next looming Difficulty of Damocles hangs ponderously over our heads too this week?  I dont think that's much wow service -- thanks for your very slack amaze.  At my job we're not allowed to launch big new changes on a Freakin' Friday and then go home to sleep late for the weekend.  You ship a new miner all over the world.  And then your whole country -- wait for it -- travels.

So Bitmain tainers, I hope you had a nice holiday.  My wife is gonna divorce me <-- not your fault, of course.  I know I'm addicted to gambling with bitcoin mining hardware and chasing Don Quixote-style the ROI pot of gold at the end of a rainbow of evaporating mining returns that is boiling off just as I reach out to touch it, from the heat generated by rising network difficulty and spin applied by the simultaneously falling price of bitcoin this week (month, and year).  ASIC hardware manufacturers are just the most obvious symptoms of that malaise, not the problem :-)  At least in China the FTC can't seize their business lol shh, don't jinx it!

Great. So. While I may acknowledge, grudgingly, that my madness has caused me to break up with reality, it does not make me irrational! (does it?) After all, there are still laws of this universe (wait, what?) and rules with their own sort of internal consistency -- even if only we, the afflicted, can comprehend them.  And in my delusional world, dammit, I find -- to my own horror, yes -- that I'm now interested in yet another pair of S3's ...and the Batch 10's are finally on sale --- woot!

So of course I rush in (as fools are wont to do).  But their hubris thankfully stopped me this time (or at least slowed me down): now I see that Bitmain, in their infinite generosity, have bestowed upon my account... A Gift: a Coupon no less. For me.  Aww, you shouldn't have!  Oooh, don't I feel like Charlie, finding a Golden Ticket to the Wonka Factory at the bottom of my cereal box now! 

But alas, they Still Just Don't Get It:

  Coupon ID: xxx
  Info: AntMiner S4 Coupon 50 USD
  Total Count: 1
  Use Count: 0
  Validity Time: 2014-09-28 17:27:00~2014-10-27 17:27:00
  Option: [Donate] button

Whaaaat? And they "gave me" this, apparently, one week AFTER they charged me full freight for it?? The Chinese Chocolate Factory has clearly failed to grok the rules of the universe into which they themselves have lured and entrapped me, because A.) Willie sold me this dream, by finally putting pairs of highly overclockable Batch 10 S3+'s back on sale this morning, but then 2.) he's gone and completely blown it for me by cruelly issuing me a Golden Ticket that's for too small a discount, good for too short a time and, only useful to pray at the alter of the Dreaded Evil Sith Lord Villain -- the S4 -- that, while they've been reveling in their holiday and ignoring our agony, we the inhabitants of their ASICverse have come to Truly Hate.  And the irony is, that by going on holiday and continually ignoring the ensuing customer support catastrofrack, they themselves taught us to loathe it so.  Such uncool.

Anybody want a $50 USD coupon for a S4, the big loud-breathing Darth Vader of Antminers?  This golden ticket expires in three weeks and I'm taking bets as to whether or not they will have released the firmware by then, necessary to make it -- you know -- actually work and mine at a pool at its "guaranteed" 2TH speed.  Such betting not so much.

Maybe Bitmain will issue we, their biggest suckers, who bought an S4 at the its highest cost using no coupons -- I dunno, call it a new "Sucker Coupon", a "Bronze Ticket" if you will, for a new Batch 10 S3 (or two).  Free shipping, for instance, would be nice.  Or maybe they'll just continue to Milk us Suckers.  Sluggo would be such proud.

thanks,

-dave

[seriouscoin]

BTC Guild has been crap for almost a year now.

Isn't that the truth As much as I want to mine there (and I did for quite some time), I can't rationalize it given the cheaper and more profitable alternatives :|

which pool are you talking about? pls dont tell me Ghash

[Xian01]

which pool are you talking about? pls dont tell me Ghash

(I can't do Eligius on principle because of Luke Jr. and P2Pool isn't optimal with my hardware)

[Tupsu]

First, allow me to introduce myself.  I'm the biggest Bitmain Sucker ever, apparently.  I bought the S4 the day it went on sale and, although I took delivery quickly, getting in early screwed me over in more ways than I can count.  So let's count them:

1. Bitmain offered coupons to buyers of their earlier products to knock $200 off the sticker price of the S4, but not to buyers of the only earlier product that I'd bought (a pair of S3's) so such fail, much weep, No coupon for me when I ordered mine (and although they became widely available from other customers over the weeks after the S4's went on sale, that was weeks too late for me cuz I was so quick to pull the trigger).  No soup for you!  Wonderful, punish the customer...........

Coupons given for  antminer S2 buyers . I got 14 coupons $200. I bought a 37 Antminer S3 and did not get any coupons.

2. Bitmain lowered the price of the S4 for everyone days later, knocking off $200, to drum up more "late adopters" I assume.  Punish the early enthusiastic cheerleader customers, reward the skeptics.

Patch 2 was cheaper than  patch1, It is not Weird.

3. Oh yeah the thing didn't work right and we're still waiting for a fix.  Top it off by ignoring the customer as you celebrate the longest holiday the west has ever effin heard of.  Which, by the way, again I say, whaaat? the whole country takes a whole week off? what's the excuse?  Tree day, squirrel day?  Y'know far, far, FAR be it from me to  begrudge anyone their slackage, but a whole week of traveling or something while my just-launched $1400 miner waits for a firmware update

*and* the next looming Difficulty of Damocles hangs ponderously over our heads too this week?

  not this time https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

I dont think that's much wow service -- thanks for your very slack amaze.  At my job we're not allowed to launch big new changes on a Freakin' Friday and then go home to sleep late for the weekend.  You ship a new miner all over the world.  And then your whole country -- wait for it -- travels.

So Bitmain tainers, I hope you had a nice holiday.  My wife is gonna divorce me <-- not your fault, of course.  I know I'm addicted to gambling with bitcoin mining hardware and chasing Don Quixote-style the ROI pot of gold at the end of a rainbow of evaporating mining returns that is boiling off just as I reach out to touch it, from the heat generated by rising network difficulty and spin applied by the simultaneously falling price of bitcoin this week (month, and year).  ASIC hardware manufacturers are just the most obvious symptoms of that malaise, not the problem :-)  At least in China the FTC can't seize their business lol shh, don't jinx it!

Great. So. While I may acknowledge, grudgingly, that my madness has caused me to break up with reality, it does not make me irrational! (does it?) After all, there are still laws of this universe (wait, what?) and rules with their own sort of internal consistency -- even if only we, the afflicted, can comprehend them.  And in my delusional world, dammit, I find -- to my own horror, yes -- that I'm now interested in yet another pair of S3's ...and the Batch 10's are finally on sale --- woot!

Golden Week (China) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_%28China%29
Three days of paid holiday are given, and the surrounding weekends are re-arranged so that workers in Chinese companies always have seven continuous days of holiday. These national holidays were first started by the government for the PRC's National Day in 1999 and are primarily intended to help expand the domestic tourism market and improve the national standard of living, as well as allowing people to make long-distance family visits. The Golden Weeks are consequently periods of greatly heightened travel activity.

An estimated 28 million Chinese traveled during the first National Day Golden Week in 1999.[2] In 2007, this number had increased to over 120 million

So of course I rush in (as fools are wont to do).  But their hubris thankfully stopped me this time (or at least slowed me down): now I see that Bitmain, in their infinite generosity, have bestowed upon my account... A Gift: a Coupon no less. For me.  Aww, you shouldn't have!  Oooh, don't I feel like Charlie, finding a Golden Ticket to the Wonka Factory at the bottom of my cereal box now!  

But alas, they Still Just Don't Get It:

  Coupon ID: xxx
  Info: AntMiner S4 Coupon 50 USD
  Total Count: 1
  Use Count: 0
  Validity Time: 2014-09-28 17:27:00~2014-10-27 17:27:00
  Option: [Donate] button

Whaaaat? And they "gave me" this, apparently, one week AFTER they charged me full freight for it?? The Chinese Chocolate Factory has clearly failed to grok the rules of the universe into which they themselves have lured and entrapped me, because A.) Willie sold me this dream, by finally putting pairs of highly overclockable Batch 10 S3+'s back on sale this morning, but then 2.) he's gone and completely blown it for me by cruelly issuing me a Golden Ticket that's for too small a discount, good for too short a time and, only useful to pray at the alter of the Dreaded Evil Sith Lord Villain -- the S4 -- that, while they've been reveling in their holiday and ignoring our agony, we the inhabitants of their ASICverse have come to Truly Hate.  And the irony is, that by going on holiday and continually ignoring the ensuing customer support catastrofrack, they themselves taught us to loathe it so.  Such uncool.

Anybody want a $50 USD coupon for a S4, the big loud-breathing Darth Vader of Antminers?  This golden ticket expires in three weeks and I'm taking bets as to whether or not they will have released the firmware by then, necessary to make it -- you know -- actually work and mine at a pool at its "guaranteed" 2TH speed.  Such betting not so much.

Antminer S4 Patch 1 buyers got all the $50 coupons.  I hope to get one  of the Patch 2 purchase.

Maybe Bitmain will issue we, their biggest suckers, who bought an S4 at the its highest cost using no coupons -- I dunno, call it a new "Sucker Coupon", a "Bronze Ticket" if you will, for a new Batch 10 S3 (or two).  Free shipping, for instance, would be nice.  Or maybe they'll just continue to Milk us Suckers.  Sluggo would be such proud.

thanks,

-dave

[-ck]

P2Pool isn't optimal with my hardware

You could probably run S4s on p2pool if you just add +1500 to your username when connecting to it.

I have a public p2pool node (0.5% fee ) you can try it on at
p2pool.ckpool.org:9332
(just added the dns entry, 167.160.36.109 if dns hasn't caught up)

This is not meant for long term mining. It's just for experimentation.

[-ck]

If you need anything, anything at all, like ssh access to an S4 such as my own, to use as a guinea pig rig, I am of course very eager to hook you up.  Coffee?  Adderall?  A foot rub?  Anything you need, mate!  I have several fine quality first born children who are negotiable, as well!

Cute

I don't have an S4, and I'm not even sure what architecture they are to create a binary for them, so it'd be doing it blind. I'll see if I can figure something out if I find the time.

No I'm not against paid work at all. I lost that inhibition when hardware companies were trying to make millions of dollars in profit while depending on my free software and rarely they'd toss me a peanut.

[dkaufman]

If you need anything, anything at all, like ssh access to an S4 such as my own, to use as a guinea pig rig, I am of course very eager to hook you up.  Coffee?  Adderall?  A foot rub?  Anything you need, mate!  I have several fine quality first born children who are negotiable, as well!

Cute

I don't have an S4, and I'm not even sure what architecture they are to create a binary for them, so it'd be doing it blind. I'll see if I can figure something out if I find the time.

No I'm not against paid work at all. I lost that inhibition when hardware companies were trying to make millions of dollars in profit while depending on my free software and rarely they'd toss me a peanut.

Thanks, that's all anyone can ask!

fyi:

Code:

  root@ant:~# uname -a
  Linux ant.bambam 3.8.13 #12 SMP Mon Sep 29 11:13:50 CST 2014 armv7l GNU/Linux

  root@ant:~# cat /etc/angstrom-version
  Angstrom v2013.06 (Core edition)
  Built from branch: angstrom-staging-yocto1.4
  Revision: 4ea94d58591603da605b9a8806b4c9dce8f59f04
  Target system: arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi

  root@ant:~# cat /etc/angstrom-build-info
  Configured Openembedded layers:
  meta-angstrom     = angstrom-v2013.06-yocto1.4:d0f7da44d73f1af26dff0a7579394a36d3098330
  meta-oe
  meta-efl
  meta-gpe
  meta-gnome
  meta-xfce
  meta-initramfs
  toolchain-layer
  meta-multimedia
  meta-networking
  meta-webserver
  meta-ruby         = angstrom-staging-yocto1.4:2f6f4b70ba03d80f9ddc1e005b9cb5176e328beb
  meta-kde          = angstrom-staging-yocto1.4:25c0a44462efc8b71ac3f3abfdfda89bbc2a6af2
  meta-opie         = master:c242efc6ca55772a88602f1f8f94dff697b38430
  meta-java         = master:7fb9465e5c2db618eedb59de5e5e013fd86cc06d
  meta-browser      = dylan:2140f2a114f7009f86479afb12a524bb157cbb0e
  meta-mono         = master:ac286b1682e6bcc486ceb30ef90a936949bbfeab
  meta-ros          = master:f69c619237e325e40b710b0c61e17b4e46eaf872
  common-bsp        = unknown:unknown
  meta-ti           = angstrom-staging-yocto1.4:04418dcadb0e3429029f34c6885538fb10624187
  meta-efikamx      = master:07f2a5c777b4f866985735303bc6d696592760a9
  meta-nslu2        = master:8948458fe3ec2b3c713b2a13a87123b64e22b0d9
  meta-htc
  meta-nokia
  meta-openmoko
  meeta-palm         = master:41c5c86813aefc21ace53edc4d3b469e9e7f87f3
  meta-handheld     = master:1dd57dcf14056901e25d8a661a7507b7d85b5a64
  meta-intel
  meta-sugarbay
  meta-crownbay
  meta-emenlow
  meta-fri2
  meta-jasperforest
  meta-n450         = dylan:adf8e9229f772d0882587e0fec43f56e617ca39f
  meta-minnow       = dylan:d5849d5ea14bc9b34ddd05b92c3a7ea46bd1863a
  meta-raspberrypi  = dylan:770b88b2ce696fddd2fdb99bbcd894a43b519f48
  meta-linaro
  meta-linaro-toolchain = dylan:7ab5e76aac4344e1a228b620f469e868e7914f2f
  meta-s3           = unknown:unknown
  meta              = angstrom-staging-yocto1.4:4ea94d58591603da605b9a8806b4c9dce8f59f04

And of course, as I said, I'm happy to provide you with ssh access to my S4 so you don't have to work blind!

Hope this helps!

thanks,

-dave

[xstr8guy]

Just one question in case I skipped it: Has the problem with the "underperformance" of the S4 been solved?
[...]

This issue is that the S4 can't communicate it's need for higher share difficulty to the pool. Btcguild and ghash both work perfectly fine share difficulty manually set to 2048.

Perfectly?  Are you getting paid perfectly?  Cuz I switched my S4 to BTC Guild over 3 days ago and, while the pool's dashboard does report my speed as just over 2TH and their pretty color charts do show my hashrate fluctuating consistently just above the 2TH line for three days solid now, I don't see to be actually getting *paid* for 2TH...

My earnings so far from this S4 on BTC Guild have been right at half of what I would have expected.  I'm actually earning the same ~$12/day from my S4 on BTC Guild as my two overclocked S3's (1TH) are paying over the same three days, which are still hashing away on Slush's pool.  Both have been running 24/7 since about 1am Oct 5th, with no power or internet disruptions at all.

This has me perplexed.  I know that slush's pool could just be lucky right now, and/or BTC Guild could be unlucky, but slush's posted luck of late has only been kinda good (and I don't see where BTC Guild posts its luck stats, as such) but anyway luck varies from day to day, this 50% of expected payout has been remarkably consistent.  And it seems unlikely that BTC Guild's payout scheme just sucks this much worse than Slush's?  I don't know -- I've never used any pool other than Slush cuz I'm old school like that, and i love their retro 1998-style geeky web design, lol.

I was very relieved to finally switch my S4 to BTC Guild, after researching extensively how to increase UserDiff at Slush's pool (only to find that he'd removed the feature after VarDiff was "perfected") but, at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding isn't it?  And I ain't likin' this pudding!

Now I'm reluctantly forced to consider pointing the S4 back at Slush's pool since, after 8 to 12 hours, it does finally reach about 1.6 to 1.8 TH there (sometimes, for a while), and that's about .6 to .8 TH's more than I seem to getting paid for from BTC Guild :-(

Anyone else conducting a side-by-side, apples-to-apples earnings comparison between an S4 on BTC Guild and some other proven mining equipment elsewhere?

Thanks!

-dave

As of this time yesterday Slush was running at 150% luck. BTCGuild doesn't provide shares per block in order to calculate luck, but it wouldn't take much of a run of bad luck to make it seem like your 1TH/s @ 150% is similar to 2TH/s if BTCGuild had some bad luck.

BTC Guild has been crap for almost a year now.

BTCGuild's luck for the past year has been 98.154%... Not sure how that translates to "crap".

Unfortunately, public pools don't dominate the network anymore and it's become feast or famine with luck. And that manifests itself as extended periods of low payouts followed by short periods of great payouts. It's the same with every public pool.

But this isn't really the place to discuss pools. BTCGuild has a very active thread here... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49417.0

Eleuthria promptly answers all questions and addresses every concern.

[StormTheFront]

It's been a tough three days!

Day 1:
...
Day 2:
...
Day 3:
...

Someone elsewhere said Bitmain should be paying you, and they should.

This code is provided entirely free of charge by the programmer in his spare
time so donations would be greatly appreciated. Please consider donating to the
address below.

Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org>
15qSxP1SQcUX3o4nhkfdbgyoWEFMomJ4rZ

Thank you for summarizing
I think I might be sick.

I cut most of the quote for length, but left the donation address for ckolivas. Bitmain should be ashamed that you are not on their payroll.

[philipma1957]

I have a simple question how are these doing powerwise?  on 120 volt and on 220 volt.

are they 1400 watts for 2th on btcguild? at setting 725

I ask because I do not see a lot of info on power draw.

[Collider]

Given power estimates should be accurate at 208V+, maybe slightly worse on 120V.

[-ck]

Thanks, that's all anyone can ask!

Fudged my way through a cross compile, wedged shit in here and there, patched stuff, moved stuff around, can't remember what I did, but here's a binary:

http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141009/cgminer

I have no idea if it really is for the right architecture, where you stick it on their filesystem or what to make it work or if it will just explode in a ball of flames, but there it is.

[fmarcosh]

hello everybody,
I've paid for 2 s4 batch 1 that received last friday. Both of them were working ok with default parameters (not overclocked yet) until yesterday night that one of them was powered down and now I'm not able to power on it again. I've tried unplug the wire, changing the wires between them, but the result continue to be that this machine doesn't work.
Any suggestion please?
Thanks in advance.