ANTMINER S4 Discussion and Support Thread

[pikachuy]

Assuming your S4's IP address was say 192.168.1.99:

Code:

ssh -l root 192.168.1.99 (or equivalent with putty)
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer
mv /usr/bin/cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer.bak
chmod +x cgminer
mv cgminer /usr/bin/cgminer
/etc/init.d/cgminer.sh restart

I think that might not keep across a power cycle though.

Would ckolivas latest cgminer for the S4 be better then "initramfs.bin.SD-20141016.tar.gz"? Since ckolivas's cgminer is dated 10-18-2014, and bitmains firmware is dated 10-16-2014?

[1715669556]

1715669556

[1715669556]

1715669556

[MrGreenHat]

I received a Batch 2 with a PSU that was DOA on Thursday, October 16th. BITMAIN support apparently didn't believe me for the first several days as they were "sure" that my S4 was sent out in the batch with the new PSU's. I finally got my replacement PSU today and it seemed to work OK for about 3 hours (although I did notice that one of the four hashing boards wasn't hashing), so I decided to re-arrange the PCI-E cables (there are like atleast 8, and you only need 5, one for control board and one for each of the hashing boards) and guess what happened?
 
The brand new PSU that arrived today now will only power the control board. If I try to connect even one PCI-E cable to anything other than the control board, the PSU shits the bed and the green "Run" LED shuts off and the red LED light turns on where it says "fault" and the orange LED goes solid where it says "Alert". Not only that, but I can no longer power the unit using my own PSU's (which are actually used to power my S3+'s, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with asking for a new PSU in the first place), which  I was able to do until this new PSU arrived. However, the PSUs still power my S3+'s, fortunately. I have yet to hear back from BITMAIN support staff concerning today's new issue, but they refused to compensate me for my 12 days of lost mining, and I don't anticipate that I will get the result that I want at this point, which is a complete refund, because I have spent HOURS of my own time (which is valuable to me) fixing a miner that was advertised as "plug-n-play". my fingers have been cut up by the fucking heat sinks and I'm going to have a hell of a time removing the blood stains from carpeting/clothing. Since when is it the customers responsibility to fix a broken miner? I have been an extremely loyal BITMAIN customer up to this point, but now, I am going to do all that I can to make sure that no one has to deal with what I have had to put up with.

So for anyone considering buying an S4, let me be the first to warn you, they are pieces of shit. They use cheap, unreliable, non-brand name PSU's, and at this point I have about as much faith that they will do the right thing and give me a refund as I do that BFL will give me a refund.

[MrGreenHat]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

Same here with my B2. My B1's PSU died, but it was replaced quickly. All in all I'm a fan of the S4s. CK's updated cgminer helped a lot too.

You are a fan of a miner that won't let you choose what pool you want to use? I use eligius exclusively and I didn't read ANYWHERE on BITMAINTECH.com that the S4 would be exclusive to pools that allowed you to set minimum difficulty. So to me, even IF I could get my S4 working, it would still be worthless, because I can't use the pool that I choose. Why am I the only one who finds this outrageous?

[Tim.Shao19]

I recieve my s4 b2 today, but its Dead On Arrival, I think the PSU is dead. My first disappointment after I purchase alot of bitmain miner.
Send RMA request lets how it goes...Btw can I use my normal PSU to run the machine?
Thanks

Sorry for that, just send an email to my email address: ting.shao@bitmaintech.com with your order id or tracking info i will check your order, the new B2 should have been upgraded with new PSU.

[Tim.Shao19]

Tim ……


Im a bit confused …. in one of your responces you posted "As for the compensation, we'll  exercise discretion in light of the circumstances."

In your Info Release you stated that you would give 10 days mining compensation to people who experienced a critical PSU failure . I have received my RMA from my critical failure, I have provided you the pictures of the PSU with burn marks all on the inside of it and the melted flux on the PCIe connectors. What other discretion do I need to submit proof of ? I have asked the question several times here and submitted it to the support email … My unit was down for far more then 10 days, but I'm only asking for what was stated in your press release on these PSU's… 

please let me know your email address, i will track it in my mailbox and confirm with my colleague about your request for compensation.
Please understand that it's a whole batch of bad PSUs, we have been in contact with the PSU supplier these weeks and try to expedite the process, and the good PSUs  actually had been shipped out in succession.
and sometimes it's really hard to determine the failures from the physical appearance or identify the loss.
i think you might have misunderstood our info release on PSU replacement, i mean when we issued the release, not all customers who had the old PSUs came across the issues.
Anyway,i will confirm your request again, you can contact me via email ting.shao@bitmaintech.com, pm, or contact info@bitmaintech.com to further push forward with this. 

[Tim.Shao19]

I recieve my s4 b2 today, but its Dead On Arrival, I think the PSU is dead. My first disappointment after I purchase alot of bitmain miner.
Send RMA request lets how it goes...Btw can I use my normal PSU to run the machine?
Thanks

My first and almost certainly the last S4,
worked with EVGA G2 1300W  and  waited for new  PSU  over a week .  
Max 1200W ,  Frequency 181,25M  GH/S(avg) 1800 , at pool 1630

sorry to hear that, we had been in contact with the PSU supplier and the good PSU actually had been shipped out in succession these days.
please contact info@bitmaintech.com or ting.shao@bitmaintech.com about this. We will track it in the system and keep you updated.

[Tim.Shao19]

sorry for all the troubles.
please contact me via email, my email address: ting.shao@bitmaintech.com
you might have contacted info@bitmaintech.com before, can you please let me know your email address and order id, i will track your order in the mailbox and email system and confirm with my colleague again.
and i think it better if you could please send us a video to let us get to know the situation.

I received a Batch 2 with a PSU that was DOA on Thursday, October 16th. BITMAIN support apparently didn't believe me for the first several days as they were "sure" that my S4 was sent out in the batch with the new PSU's. I finally got my replacement PSU today and it seemed to work OK for about 3 hours (although I did notice that one of the four hashing boards wasn't hashing), so I decided to re-arrange the PCI-E cables (there are like atleast 8, and you only need 5, one for control board and one for each of the hashing boards) and guess what happened?


The brand new PSU that arrived today now will only power the control board. If I try to connect even one PCI-E cable to anything other than the control board, the PSU shits the bed and the green "Run" LED shuts off and the red LED light turns on where it says "fault" and the orange LED goes solid where it says "Alert". Not only that, but I can no longer power the unit using my own PSU's (which are actually used to power my S3+'s, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with asking for a new PSU in the first place), which  I was able to do until this new PSU arrived. However, the PSUs still power my S3+'s, fortunately. I have yet to hear back from BITMAIN support staff concerning today's new issue, but they refused to compensate me for my 12 days of lost mining, and I don't anticipate that I will get the result that I want at this point, which is a complete refund, because I have spent HOURS of my own time (which is valuable to me) fixing a miner that was advertised as "plug-n-play". my fingers have been cut up by the fucking heat sinks and I'm going to have a hell of a time removing the blood stains from carpeting/clothing. Since when is it the customers responsibility to fix a broken miner? I have been an extremely loyal BITMAIN customer up to this point, but now, I am going to do all that I can to make sure that no one has to deal with what I have had to put up with.

So for anyone considering buying an S4, let me be the first to warn you, they are pieces of shit. They use cheap, unreliable, non-brand name PSU's, and at this point I have about as much faith that they will do the right thing and give me a refund as I do that BFL will give me a refund.

This is nothing short of criminal. Just because up until the past few weeks BITMAIN has had a relatively spotless reputation doesn't mean that you should blindly believe that they will continue to take care of their customers when its obvious that something is VERY VERY WRONG.

Look at all the poor people who are stuck with S2's waiting for firmware. OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE, haven't you noticed that BITMAIN has been making a hell of a lot of promises that they can't keep?  
Has anyone actually received compensation for their downtime? Where is BITMAIN, the user? not BITMAIN SUPPORT or DOGIE, but BITMAIN. If you are reading this, this is a WONDERFUL opportunity to explain yourself and get your shit together.

[Prelude]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

Same here with my B2. My B1's PSU died, but it was replaced quickly. All in all I'm a fan of the S4s. CK's updated cgminer helped a lot too.

You are a fan of a miner that won't let you choose what pool you want to use? I use eligius exclusively and I didn't read ANYWHERE on BITMAINTECH.com that the S4 would be exclusive to pools that allowed you to set minimum difficulty. So to me, even IF I could get my S4 working, it would still be worthless, because I can't use the pool that I choose. Why am I the only one who finds this outrageous?

I can mine pretty much anywhere with them since I updated to the latest firmware + installed Ck's custom S4 cgminer build. I haven't tested eligius for a while, and while it didn't work earlier I'm confident it would now. I could test it if you're curious?

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

[Xian01]

Has anyone reported issues with running these on North American 120V residential circuits ? Contemplating picking up a Batch 3 if it comes out. Seems steady improvements are being made to the S4.

[dogie]

Has anyone reported issues with running these on North American 120V residential circuits ? Contemplating picking up a Batch 3 if it comes out. Seems steady improvements are being made to the S4.

Nothing I've seen, power consumption up as expected.

[pikachuy]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

Same here with my B2. My B1's PSU died, but it was replaced quickly. All in all I'm a fan of the S4s. CK's updated cgminer helped a lot too.

You are a fan of a miner that won't let you choose what pool you want to use? I use eligius exclusively and I didn't read ANYWHERE on BITMAINTECH.com that the S4 would be exclusive to pools that allowed you to set minimum difficulty. So to me, even IF I could get my S4 working, it would still be worthless, because I can't use the pool that I choose. Why am I the only one who finds this outrageous?

I can mine pretty much anywhere with them since I updated to the latest firmware + installed Ck's custom S4 cgminer build. I haven't tested eligius for a while, and while it didn't work earlier I'm confident it would now. I could test it if you're curious?

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

Does Ck's custom S4 cgminer build located here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer still need the difficulty manually set on the pools?

[Prelude]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

Same here with my B2. My B1's PSU died, but it was replaced quickly. All in all I'm a fan of the S4s. CK's updated cgminer helped a lot too.

You are a fan of a miner that won't let you choose what pool you want to use? I use eligius exclusively and I didn't read ANYWHERE on BITMAINTECH.com that the S4 would be exclusive to pools that allowed you to set minimum difficulty. So to me, even IF I could get my S4 working, it would still be worthless, because I can't use the pool that I choose. Why am I the only one who finds this outrageous?

I can mine pretty much anywhere with them since I updated to the latest firmware + installed Ck's custom S4 cgminer build. I haven't tested eligius for a while, and while it didn't work earlier I'm confident it would now. I could test it if you're curious?

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

Does Ck's custom S4 cgminer build located here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer still need the difficulty manually set on the pools?

It didn't need difficulty to be specified with p2pool. Haven't tested it anywhere else yet.

[dogie]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

Same here with my B2. My B1's PSU died, but it was replaced quickly. All in all I'm a fan of the S4s. CK's updated cgminer helped a lot too.

You are a fan of a miner that won't let you choose what pool you want to use? I use eligius exclusively and I didn't read ANYWHERE on BITMAINTECH.com that the S4 would be exclusive to pools that allowed you to set minimum difficulty. So to me, even IF I could get my S4 working, it would still be worthless, because I can't use the pool that I choose. Why am I the only one who finds this outrageous?

I can mine pretty much anywhere with them since I updated to the latest firmware + installed Ck's custom S4 cgminer build. I haven't tested eligius for a while, and while it didn't work earlier I'm confident it would now. I could test it if you're curious?

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

Does Ck's custom S4 cgminer build located here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer still need the difficulty manually set on the pools?

Not sure but in any case it can't hurt. 2048 is right for a 2TH miner.

[-ck]

Does Ck's custom S4 cgminer build located here: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/antminer/s4/4.6.1-141018/cgminer still need the difficulty manually set on the pools?

No it doesn't, that was one of the major fixes that went into it.

[IYFTech]

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

Would you mind sharing the miner settings you're using with p2pool? Also, what is your reject/doa rate with the S4 & p2pool?

Thanks.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

It's a shame there were so many S4's out with problems.

Mine came in, I manually set difficulty, increased the frequency and consistently hash at 2.3TH no problem and no complaints.

ditto. 1st tried Eclipse - as 'stock' one s4 would not go over 25-30ghs and the other one - that arrived only 1 day later - does better holding @ 1.68THs on EMC. Applied CK's tweak and both now rock-solid at 1.98-2.28THs.

Anyone know if the changes CK made will be put into an official Bitmain update so it is not lost on hard-boot?

OR - since it seems the S4 is running off of a RAMdisk created on boot and loaded with the miners running files, anyone know where the master copy of the CGminer file is located and if it can be replaced with CK's tweaked one?

As for US residential powerlines... this should be a major design concern for Bitmain or any other miner mfgr because PSU's do NOT like low lines... In Detroit area home power is 110v - not 120 - and during summer will often drop to 100-105v. The '220v' incoming reflects the same drops. This year it got so bad (hit 95v for 2 weeks) I had to wire in a boost transformer to make up the difference...

[bgibso01]

Would ckolivas latest cgminer for the S4 be better then "initramfs.bin.SD-20141016.tar.gz"? Since ckolivas's cgminer is dated 10-18-2014, and bitmains firmware is dated 10-16-2014?

I'd like to know this too.  Does the new firmware incorporate what CK has submitted to them and work as well as his current release?  I've got one using original firmware with CK update and have 2 more suppose to show up today or tomorrow.

[Prelude]

I've been mining with p2pool lately and it's working perfectly.

Would you mind sharing the miner settings you're using with p2pool? Also, what is your reject/doa rate with the S4 & p2pool?

Thanks.

That's with 2 S4s running. Latest firmware installed (10-16) with ck's custom cgminer, each running at 225MHz. I edited cgminer.sh, changing queue from 8192 to 0, and added expiry 1 and scan-time 1. Share difficulty manually set to 2048.

[IYFTech]

Thanks for that, I did wonder if you'd used the zero setting for queue.....expiry & scan time are pretty obsolete now though.

[Prelude]

Thanks for that, I did wonder if you'd used the zero setting for queue.....expiry & scan time are pretty obsolete now though.

No problem! I'm pretty new to p2pool, and I stumbled across those settings somewhere. So I shouldn't bother setting expiry and scan-time?

I'm testing eligius with 1 S4 right now, it assigned 2048 diff shares pretty quickly, looking good so far. I;ll post back with stats soon. Any other pools anyone wants tested while I'm at it?