ANTMINER U3 Discussion and Support Thread

[Iskavan001]

Amazon paid for the shipping all is well, they gave me my money back. SO the question now is for 100$/under should i attempt my luck at another u3 or is there something better i can get?

[1714806568]

1714806568

[dogie]

I am trying to run this from the command line in the cgminer 4.8 directory

cgminer.exe --bmsc-options   115200:0.54  –o   stratum.antpool.com:3333
-u(myuser) -p(mypwd)   --bmsc-voltage   0800    --bmsc-freq   0982 --startdiff   6

And I keep getting unrecognized error on all of the options.

Can anyone fill me in what am I doing wrong?


And once it goes ZOMBIE, is there another way to reset it without reseating the usb cable?

As far as i understand it, the guides showing you those settings are quite outdated. After 4.8 you don't really need to give any switches to get u3 to work pretty well i believe. And if you run cgminer.exe --help you'll see the available options. For mye 4.9, its the --au3-freq and --au3-volt thats relevant. And for those, the parameters are straightforward decimal numbers. 785 to specifiy 785 mV and 240 to specify frequency for instance. Just a few posts back i give an example of what i have working with  UE3 and cgminer 4.9

That's exactly correct, for modern cgminer versions you shouldn't need any arguments.

[Phosphorous]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

[clarkjhaley13]

I have a U3 miner. I get a consistent 73gh/s out of it. I use a barrel connector wired to a molex 4 pin into a standard atx psu. Biggest difference is heavier wire to the plug. I am running cgminer 4.6.1 using the following line:  cgminer.exe --bmsc-options 115200:0.5 -o stratum+tcp://yourpool -u workername -p password --bmsc-freq 0B82 --bmsc-voltage 0800   I can actually get it to run higher than this and stable but the gh/watt ratio is bad so i don't.




if it matters. It is hooked to a Windows 7 64bit system via a usb 2.0 port. Oh, I did throw away the garbage usb cable I got with it and opted for a better quality one I had on hand too.

In response to be asked about a donation addy. I do not want donations. This was posted simply because i too had trouble and found something that works. If it works for you just enjoy your hash.

[dogie]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

Yes and no is the answer. How are you in contact with Bitmain?

[Phosphorous]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

Yes and no is the answer. How are you in contact with Bitmain?

The have PM'd me on here in response to my PM where I explictly asked if I needed an RMA #, instead they just replied with an address for where to send it. I then called and left a message several days ago asking for an TMA # and no return phone call. I have been holding off for over a week now to send this back. If I don't need an RMA # they need to just say so so I can get this damn paper weight in the mail.

[dogie]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

Yes and no is the answer. How are you in contact with Bitmain?

The have PM'd me on here in response to my PM where I explictly asked if I needed an RMA #, instead they just replied with an address for where to send it. I then called and left a message several days ago asking for an TMA # and no return phone call. I have been holding off for over a week now to send this back. If I don't need an RMA # they need to just say so so I can get this damn paper weight in the mail.

As long as you include your original Bitmain order ID then you should be good to go. I'm unsure if BitmainWarranty is handling returns from 3rd party sales at the moment. PM them again if you're third party, if not you can send with order ID.

[Visvas]

Soooooo....  The power adapter brick that comes with it almost melted and caught my house of fire.  I started to smell something weird and I picked up the brick, turned it over and found this:
http://imageshack.com/a/img673/4097/zwk6hu.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img910/791/PL0Pm4.jpg

So what did I do?  I cut off the barrel plug, soldered it onto a molex, and plugged it back in...

What crap is BITMAIN releasing these days where stock settings may cause a house fire?!  

thats a bit worrying... exact same adapters i got. Very interested if you get any response from them..

[dogie]

Soooooo....  The power adapter brick that comes with it almost melted and caught my house of fire.  I started to smell something weird and I picked up the brick, turned it over and found this:
http://imageshack.com/a/img673/4097/zwk6hu.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img910/791/PL0Pm4.jpg

So what did I do?  I cut off the barrel plug, soldered it onto a molex, and plugged it back in...

What crap is BITMAIN releasing these days where stock settings may cause a house fire?! 

thats a bit worrying... exact same adapters i got. Very interested if you get any response from them..

I have some of those in the UK and they're cool to the touch fully loaded. Maybe they don't like 120V as much.

You're never going to be able to sue anything, that PSU is ages away from self igniting or igniting something else [as the materials are designed to be], and you'll be chasing some unknown entity in China. You have no damages and you'll be paying 25x anything you could ever get back in fees.

[Phosphorous]

The past week I have been asking for an RMA # to return my U3 from Bitmain and others. I keep getting responses on where to send the U3 but never an RMA #. Do I need an RMA # or not?

Yes and no is the answer. How are you in contact with Bitmain?

The have PM'd me on here in response to my PM where I explictly asked if I needed an RMA #, instead they just replied with an address for where to send it. I then called and left a message several days ago asking for an TMA # and no return phone call. I have been holding off for over a week now to send this back. If I don't need an RMA # they need to just say so so I can get this damn paper weight in the mail.

As long as you include your original Bitmain order ID then you should be good to go. I'm unsure if BitmainWarranty is handling returns from 3rd party sales at the moment. PM them again if you're third party, if not you can send with order ID.

I didn't buy though Bitmain. IIRC, ordering through Bitmain required you to get 50 of them or some huge quantity. Mine came from Minersource.net, and they ignored my initial requests for support and they censored (refused to post) my review of the product.

[irobb]

Still getting ZOMBIE after a few hours on both version of CG Miner...

What is your stable bat file look like (either version of cgminer) ?

[Phosphorous]

Talking to me?

cgminer.exe -o {pool} -u {user} -p 123 --rock-freq 290 --anu-freq 290
I am also running a Rockminer R-Box and 2 Ant U2's.

[irobb]

Oh sorry, I will clarify; Anyone with stable settings with AMu3 please chime in your settings and state if 4.6.1 or 4.9

[Visvas]

Do not believe you'll ever get these devices truly "stable", but it's been more stable with this setup than any more clocking.
4.9 : cgminer.exe -O username:pass -o stratum+tcp://pool:port --au3-freq 240 --au3-volt 785

But, you shouldnt really need the --au3 options to get good enough performance from the U3s. testing without any options right now, seems to average just slightly lower. But one of my units are constantly giving me 15-20 less GHs than the other

Not done a really good study of it, but it seems i get less zombie fallouts after i added some more mechanics for passive cooling of the units. My shift work effort logged seems to have stabilized on a higher level recently too, which would support that.
 

[Phosphorous]

Is anybody able to run their U3 without it going Zombie once or more times a day?

[irobb]

Do not believe you'll ever get these devices truly "stable", but it's been more stable with this setup than any more clocking.
4.9 : cgminer.exe -O username:pass -o stratum+tcp://pool:port --au3-freq 240 --au3-volt 785

But, you shouldnt really need the --au3 options to get good enough performance from the U3s. testing without any options right now, seems to average just slightly lower. But one of my units are constantly giving me 15-20 less GHs than the other

Not done a really good study of it, but it seems i get less zombie fallouts after i added some more mechanics for passive cooling of the units. My shift work effort logged seems to have stabilized on a higher level recently too, which would support that.
 

I will try it... Maybe I should disassemble then check thermal paste and connectivity too...

[ppumkin]

I have 2 of these. I actually had to return one to Amazon seller because I couldnt get more than 45ghs from it. Also dumped the original USB because not 1 of them worked on Linux for some reason. Chopped the PSU barrel pin and connected to dedicated 450W PSU both on separate channels. Running on Ubuntu

I use cgminer 4.9.0 compiled just for iccarus and I cant get these to run longer thatn 24 hours, ever. They go stable, stable, stable, ok I go to bed now. In the morning ZOMBIE.
I got to go unplug the USB, power down, kill cgminmer, plug in power, USB cables and start cgminer. Starts mining again. Then next morning the same problem.

Very rarely one or the other goes zombie. I keep mine cold room ambient 5 degrees with other NAS'es and stuff. So when they running for a few hours the heat sinks are hardly 40 degrees.

Do I need MORE cooling?

I think this is a USB controller / or firmware issue. Because if I power down without removing USB the red light still shines inside and power up and restart cgminer it does NOT find the device. So if the firmware still runs on USB power maybe its firmware crashing, I am not sure. But I was wondering why the bitmain official guide specifically says to plug POWER IN FIRST then USB. It shouldn't matter. (I actually got mine mining 7ghs just off USB power, lol - That was wierd? Plugged in power and jumped to 63ghs)

There must be a firmware issue on these devices I cant believe Bitmain did not pick up on this, they never tested a single unit longer than 24 hours?? Not sure about Windows but maybe its a Linux specific problem?

[irobb]

No, same happens to me on Win7x64 - Go to sleep thinking finally... then zombie. 

[Phosphorous]

Dogie, clearly there are several U3 users here who cannot get their U3s to operate reliably.

Please talk to Bitmain and find out what they will do to make us whole on these. It was around 3 weeks if not longer before CK released the first half-way usable version of CGminer. In total I have had mine almost 2 months and have not been able to get much use out of mine.

None of us probably purchased our units from Bitmain directly as you had to order a pallet of them and no one uses that many USB miners so we all have resellers to deal with.

This is a serious issue for a seriously defective product, and we want answers and resolution (and ideally, a refund).

[irobb]

I took it all apart, cleaned the CRAPJOB of thermal paste they did, reapplied NICELY, fixed a LOOSE capacitor via re-solder, and assembled again.

Hashing at 65 AVG right now.  Let's see if THAT fixes this POS.