[Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive Bitmain Antminer S4 Setup [HD]

[FreeFelix]

My S4 has stopped working.  The LCD reads 0GHS, I can get into the IP and the boards look good, and the pools say they're alive but no speed. And when I turn it on, the bootup screen comes on where it says Antminer -- and shows the IP, but then the screen goes blank, the fans speed up, and it reboots several times, before it gets to the the screen where it shows its not hashing.

Any ideas?

What does the PSU seem to be doing?  Does it show any issues from it's indicator leds?

Also you might check connections - https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203361315-Board-Diagnostics  Never hurts to make sure connections are snug.

Hi Thanks for the advice

Am sending the PSU back for repair/replacement.  Seems to be the issue

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[notlist3d]

My S4 has stopped working.  The LCD reads 0GHS, I can get into the IP and the boards look good, and the pools say they're alive but no speed. And when I turn it on, the bootup screen comes on where it says Antminer -- and shows the IP, but then the screen goes blank, the fans speed up, and it reboots several times, before it gets to the the screen where it shows its not hashing.

Any ideas?

What does the PSU seem to be doing?  Does it show any issues from it's indicator leds?

Also you might check connections - https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203361315-Board-Diagnostics  Never hurts to make sure connections are snug.

Hi Thanks for the advice

Am sending the PSU back for repair/replacement.  Seems to be the issue

Not a problem!  Let us know how it all works out after.

Best of luck

[wajiminer]

My S4 has stopped working.  The LCD reads 0GHS, I can get into the IP and the boards look good, and the pools say they're alive but no speed. And when I turn it on, the bootup screen comes on where it says Antminer -- and shows the IP, but then the screen goes blank, the fans speed up, and it reboots several times, before it gets to the the screen where it shows its not hashing.

Any ideas?

What does the PSU seem to be doing?  Does it show any issues from it's indicator leds?

Also you might check connections - https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203361315-Board-Diagnostics  Never hurts to make sure connections are snug.

Well finally got some time to open it up, unseating the sd card and reinserting it, fixed the problem

And it's clocking in at 2.3 TH for some reason.. I'll take it
Thanks

[notlist3d]

My S4 has stopped working.  The LCD reads 0GHS, I can get into the IP and the boards look good, and the pools say they're alive but no speed. And when I turn it on, the bootup screen comes on where it says Antminer -- and shows the IP, but then the screen goes blank, the fans speed up, and it reboots several times, before it gets to the the screen where it shows its not hashing.

Any ideas?

What does the PSU seem to be doing?  Does it show any issues from it's indicator leds?

Also you might check connections - https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203361315-Board-Diagnostics  Never hurts to make sure connections are snug.

Well finally got some time to open it up, unseating the sd card and reinserting it, fixed the problem

And it's clocking in at 2.3 TH for some reason.. I'll take it
Thanks

Glad to hear it's working again!   And it must be turned up on it's freq to OC, but yes in proper conditions they can reach that on speed.  Just with it being summer don't let it get to hot .

Happy Mining!

[6foot4geek]

***There is currently a firmware issue that prevents the S4 achieving its full hash rate on pools with variable difficulty.
Until a new firmware is issued, its recommended that you use BTCGuild or GHash IO with 2048 difficulty manually set***

Is this still the case? Or is there a newer firmware available now without this issue?

I am going to take a look at one of my S4's later today that runs for 5-10min and drops to about 200GH/s - 20GH/s and (presumably) its not an overheating issue (from info reported on the config page) it's not a power issue (I have another S4 that runs just fine and I shut it off and tried this one in its place) and no XXX's reported for the boards themselves. Also potentially relevant I'm currently mining on Eligius.

Thanks!

[TheRealSteve]

Well, at the very least the 'BTC Guild' recommendation is outdated - they're shutting down tomorrow.  Plenty of other pools where you can set the minimum difficulty, though.

[6foot4geek]

This I was aware of, I've been mining on BTCguild for quite some time up until this month.

[dogie]

***There is currently a firmware issue that prevents the S4 achieving its full hash rate on pools with variable difficulty.
Until a new firmware is issued, its recommended that you use BTCGuild or GHash IO with 2048 difficulty manually set

Is this still the case? Or is there a newer firmware available now without this issue?

I am going to take a look at one of my S4's later today that runs for 5-10min and drops to about 200GH/s - 20GH/s and (presumably) its not an overheating issue (from info reported on the config page) it's not a power issue (I have another S4 that runs just fine and I shut it off and tried this one in its place) and no XXX's reported for the boards themselves. Also potentially relevant I'm currently mining on Eligius.

Thanks!

Yes its still the case, its a limitation of the controller that means its likely to crash (or get stuck at low hashrate) on a vardiff pool. Eligius is a vardiff pool so that would explain it.

[FreeFelix]

My S4 has stopped working.  The LCD reads 0GHS, I can get into the IP and the boards look good, and the pools say they're alive but no speed. And when I turn it on, the bootup screen comes on where it says Antminer -- and shows the IP, but then the screen goes blank, the fans speed up, and it reboots several times, before it gets to the the screen where it shows its not hashing.

Any ideas?

What does the PSU seem to be doing?  Does it show any issues from it's indicator leds?

Also you might check connections - https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203361315-Board-Diagnostics  Never hurts to make sure connections are snug.

Hi Thanks for the advice

Am sending the PSU back for repair/replacement.  Seems to be the issue

Not a problem!  Let us know how it all works out after.

Best of luck

OK So got my PSU back after sending it to Serbia (the only place in Europe for repair) - cost a lot in postage

Installed and got it working ok and worked fine for about a week then the same thing.

Got back in touch with the service guys who says it is  overheating protection - has been unusually hot in UK recently.

But they cannot tell me how to reset the PSU as against company policy.

Anyone know about this and how to reset the PSU?

Or is it possible to use the ones for sale on the antminer site by adapting the cable to take the older style connectors (not PCI)

thanks for any suggestions

[dogie]

Got back in touch with the service guys who says it is  overheating protection - has been unusually hot in UK recently. But they cannot tell me how to reset the PSU as against company policy. Anyone know about this and how to reset the PSU?

The reset is probably just letting it sit for x amount of time, although how long that is we don't really know. There is likely something wrong with your setup which is causing this as I tested S4+s up to 45C ambient I think it was and the PSU was fine.

[Mysteryos]

I have an Antminer S4 which is not working. It does not appear on my list of network devices and so it is inaccessible by HTTP or SSH.

When the Beagleboard and controller board are swapped with known good components from another S4, the miner works as expected. I've contacted Bitmain support and they've advised trying to re-image the Beaglebone board. The problem is I don't know how to do that, and I can't get a clear answer from Bitmain support on how to do it either.

Since I didn't have any spare microSD cards lying around, I bought this one. Bitmain pointed me to these instructions, which only helps with copying the image to the microSD card. I did so with the image provided here using HDDRawCopy.

I put the SD card into the Beaglebone board and booted up the S4. I waited for some time, but nothing ever happened. The fan speed remained low and the unit never appeared on the list of active network devices. I informed Bitmain, and they directed me to this set of instructions, which are not particularly helpful since the stripped-down version of the Beaglebone used for the S4 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.

I find it hard to believe that no one else has had this issue, though I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find any useful information. Does anyone know the correct method for re-imaging this board?

[notlist3d]

I have an Antminer S4 which is not working. It does not appear on my list of network devices and so it is inaccessible by HTTP or SSH.

When the Beagleboard and controller board are swapped with known good components from another S4, the miner works as expected. I've contacted Bitmain support and they've advised trying to re-image the Beaglebone board. The problem is I don't know how to do that, and I can't get a clear answer from Bitmain support on how to do it either.

Since I didn't have any spare microSD cards lying around, I bought this one. Bitmain pointed me to these instructions, which only helps with copying the image to the microSD card. I did so with the image provided here using HDDRawCopy.

I put the SD card into the Beaglebone board and booted up the S4. I waited for some time, but nothing ever happened. The fan speed remained low and the unit never appeared on the list of active network devices. I informed Bitmain, and they directed me to this set of instructions, which are not particularly helpful since the stripped-down version of the Beaglebone used for the S4 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.

I find it hard to believe that no one else has had this issue, though I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find any useful information. Does anyone know the correct method for re-imaging this board?

Did they provide an image to put on the SD card?  If so to re-image it is easy just using program to put it on sd.  It is a bootable image so your using a program to copy it and not just drag it to card.

If they did not give image let us know and we can probley find it in thread.  But I'm guessing they provided one.

[Mysteryos]

I have an Antminer S4 which is not working. It does not appear on my list of network devices and so it is inaccessible by HTTP or SSH.

When the Beagleboard and controller board are swapped with known good components from another S4, the miner works as expected. I've contacted Bitmain support and they've advised trying to re-image the Beaglebone board. The problem is I don't know how to do that, and I can't get a clear answer from Bitmain support on how to do it either.

Since I didn't have any spare microSD cards lying around, I bought this one. Bitmain pointed me to these instructions, which only helps with copying the image to the microSD card. I did so with the image provided here using HDDRawCopy.

I put the SD card into the Beaglebone board and booted up the S4. I waited for some time, but nothing ever happened. The fan speed remained low and the unit never appeared on the list of active network devices. I informed Bitmain, and they directed me to this set of instructions, which are not particularly helpful since the stripped-down version of the Beaglebone used for the S4 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.

I find it hard to believe that no one else has had this issue, though I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find any useful information. Does anyone know the correct method for re-imaging this board?

Did they provide an image to put on the SD card?  If so to re-image it is easy just using program to put it on sd.  It is a bootable image so your using a program to copy it and not just drag it to card.

If they did not give image let us know and we can probley find it in thread.  But I'm guessing they provided one.

Yes , they gave me an image and instructions. But these images are not for Beaglebone board
 Here is a letter from support.bitmain.com
Hi,
use this program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
image file from good miners locates here: https://mega.co.nz/#!0NRAVDAL!OYVxUNl9tLgrDrCa2B_xDJT00AedczuZ81R7r2N98Gg

1) put card in computer (requires an SD reader)
2) use the above program to backup an image of what’s on the card to your desktop (just in case)
3) use the program to format the card (fat32 should be the default)
4) use the program to write the new image to the card - should take under a minute if the image is only 14MB
5) eject the SD, put it in your unit, and boot up


also I used these instructions: http://derekmolloy.ie/write-a-new-image-to-the-beaglebone-black/
                                       https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204339655-How-to-create-a-bootable-MicroSD-card-with-factory-setting-

[notlist3d]

I have an Antminer S4 which is not working. It does not appear on my list of network devices and so it is inaccessible by HTTP or SSH.

When the Beagleboard and controller board are swapped with known good components from another S4, the miner works as expected. I've contacted Bitmain support and they've advised trying to re-image the Beaglebone board. The problem is I don't know how to do that, and I can't get a clear answer from Bitmain support on how to do it either.

Since I didn't have any spare microSD cards lying around, I bought this one. Bitmain pointed me to these instructions, which only helps with copying the image to the microSD card. I did so with the image provided here using HDDRawCopy.

I put the SD card into the Beaglebone board and booted up the S4. I waited for some time, but nothing ever happened. The fan speed remained low and the unit never appeared on the list of active network devices. I informed Bitmain, and they directed me to this set of instructions, which are not particularly helpful since the stripped-down version of the Beaglebone used for the S4 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.

I find it hard to believe that no one else has had this issue, though I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find any useful information. Does anyone know the correct method for re-imaging this board?

Did they provide an image to put on the SD card?  If so to re-image it is easy just using program to put it on sd.  It is a bootable image so your using a program to copy it and not just drag it to card.

If they did not give image let us know and we can probley find it in thread.  But I'm guessing they provided one.

Yes , they gave me an image and instructions. But these images are not for Beaglebone board
 Here is a letter from support.bitmain.com
Hi,
use this program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
image file from good miners locates here: https://mega.co.nz/#!0NRAVDAL!OYVxUNl9tLgrDrCa2B_xDJT00AedczuZ81R7r2N98Gg

1) put card in computer (requires an SD reader)
2) use the above program to backup an image of what’s on the card to your desktop (just in case)
3) use the program to format the card (fat32 should be the default)
4) use the program to write the new image to the card - should take under a minute if the image is only 14MB
5) eject the SD, put it in your unit, and boot up


also I used these instructions: http://derekmolloy.ie/write-a-new-image-to-the-beaglebone-black/
                                       https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204339655-How-to-create-a-bootable-MicroSD-card-with-factory-setting-

Win32diskimager does sd card images.  Does not matter what it is for.  Yes it will work for S4 image.

Make sure it's a image your using and not firmware.   Regular S4 firmware is not a SD image for controller.

[Mysteryos]

I have an Antminer S4 which is not working. It does not appear on my list of network devices and so it is inaccessible by HTTP or SSH.

When the Beagleboard and controller board are swapped with known good components from another S4, the miner works as expected. I've contacted Bitmain support and they've advised trying to re-image the Beaglebone board. The problem is I don't know how to do that, and I can't get a clear answer from Bitmain support on how to do it either.

Since I didn't have any spare microSD cards lying around, I bought this one. Bitmain pointed me to these instructions, which only helps with copying the image to the microSD card. I did so with the image provided here using HDDRawCopy.

I put the SD card into the Beaglebone board and booted up the S4. I waited for some time, but nothing ever happened. The fan speed remained low and the unit never appeared on the list of active network devices. I informed Bitmain, and they directed me to this set of instructions, which are not particularly helpful since the stripped-down version of the Beaglebone used for the S4 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.

I find it hard to believe that no one else has had this issue, though I spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find any useful information. Does anyone know the correct method for re-imaging this board?

Did they provide an image to put on the SD card?  If so to re-image it is easy just using program to put it on sd.  It is a bootable image so your using a program to copy it and not just drag it to card.

If they did not give image let us know and we can probley find it in thread.  But I'm guessing they provided one.

Yes , they gave me an image and instructions. But these images are not for Beaglebone board
 Here is a letter from support.bitmain.com
Hi,
use this program: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
image file from good miners locates here: https://mega.co.nz/#!0NRAVDAL!OYVxUNl9tLgrDrCa2B_xDJT00AedczuZ81R7r2N98Gg

1) put card in computer (requires an SD reader)
2) use the above program to backup an image of what’s on the card to your desktop (just in case)
3) use the program to format the card (fat32 should be the default)
4) use the program to write the new image to the card - should take under a minute if the image is only 14MB
5) eject the SD, put it in your unit, and boot up


also I used these instructions: http://derekmolloy.ie/write-a-new-image-to-the-beaglebone-black/
                                       https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204339655-How-to-create-a-bootable-MicroSD-card-with-factory-setting-

Win32diskimager does sd card images.  Does not matter what it is for.  Yes it will work for S4 image.

Make sure it's a image your using and not firmware.   Regular S4 firmware is not a SD image for controller.

Is not this firmware for beaglebone? https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/201659685/S4_Jan_29_Image.imgc

[VirosaGITS]

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

[6foot4geek]

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

I would be willing to bet that those fans (140mm with 120mm mounts) are too big and will not fit in the S4. with max RPMs being 2000 I also dont think they will move enough air to cool them appropriately.

[notlist3d]

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

I would be willing to bet that those fans (140mm with 120mm mounts) are too big and will not fit in the S4. with max RPMs being 2000 I also dont think they will move enough air to cool them appropriately.

The RPM is slower then you should use.  It would not be recommended.  It is just too slow.

Look here for better choices: https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204199879-Antminer-S4-fan-specification-and-possible-replacement-fans

[VirosaGITS]

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

I would be willing to bet that those fans (140mm with 120mm mounts) are too big and will not fit in the S4. with max RPMs being 2000 I also dont think they will move enough air to cool them appropriately.

I don't think they are really larger. Is the 120mm such a tight fit it barely fit itself?

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

I would be willing to bet that those fans (140mm with 120mm mounts) are too big and will not fit in the S4. with max RPMs being 2000 I also dont think they will move enough air to cool them appropriately.

The RPM is slower then you should use.  It would not be recommended.  It is just too slow.

Look here for better choices: https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204199879-Antminer-S4-fan-specification-and-possible-replacement-fans

Are you certain? It has the same CFM as the stock fans. The only portion i'm not sure is the impact of its static pressure value.

[notlist3d]

I don't think they are really larger. Is the 120mm such a tight fit it barely fit itself?

Hello, is replacing the fans in this units with 4x Silverstone FHP-141 possible and a benefit to cooling/dB ratio?

I would be willing to bet that those fans (140mm with 120mm mounts) are too big and will not fit in the S4. with max RPMs being 2000 I also dont think they will move enough air to cool them appropriately.

The RPM is slower then you should use.  It would not be recommended.  It is just too slow.

Look here for better choices: https://bitmain.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204199879-Antminer-S4-fan-specification-and-possible-replacement-fans

Are you certain? It has the same CFM as the stock fans. The only portion i'm not sure is the impact of its static pressure value.

Stick with the list and you will be fine.  Look at default spec fan on page.

It shows it as "Power consumption: 1600RPM 1.68W / 4000RPM 25.8W".    So it may be running lower but you really want a higher RPM then 2000.