Antminer S3+ is junk and no support from BITMAIN

[shoemakerbruce]

12DEC14, I contacted Bitmain to assist in troubleshooting as to why my 2 brand new S3+ miners slow down to ~50GH/S after running for only a few hours.    After too many emails I started raging here on this board.  People from Bitmain who cared stepped up and got my problems squared away in short order.  I have been "made whole" in every way and I have full confidence in Bitmain.  Growing pains are a tough thing.  We suffer our pains and we grow.  It's part of being new, and developing products in this new and ever changing environment.  info@bitmaintech.com is likely the wrong place to send your issues.  I got my problems straight from bitmainwarranty  so go there up front if you have any operational issues with your new miners.  My new miner is now happily mining it's hash off and all is 

[1714863243]

1714863243

[1714863243]

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[dogie]

May I ask why you asked for two controllers when only one was bricked? What PSU are you running?

[shoemakerbruce]

You may.

I have 2 brand new units. I have no indications that the blades are defective in any way.  

The unit hashes for a few hours and then slows down. My ASIC indicators all show 0. (this is good) These new S3+'s are right next to S3's that have never given me a bit of trouble and I am asking for the S3 revision controller so i can have some stability.

Should I have asked for four new blades?   why?  Based on what?  because they slow down after a few hours?  My S3's NEVER slow down.  EVER.

I am not a testing and repair facility.  Should I start disassembling my S3's to use as testing components?

I use EVGA 1300 Gold and EVGA 850 Gold.  My existing S3's work like a champ and I love them.  

I am open to ideas but this is really getting old.

okay, so I should take my s3 controller and install on my s3+ to test?  I think they should send me old revision controllers for me to test with.. Why is it all on me?

thanks!

Bruce


Turns out I just needed the correct version of firmware.  23dec14

[wh00per]

May I ask why you asked for two controllers when only one was bricked? What PSU are you running?

I was hoping that, at least, you read the posts before you ask your scripted support questions.
The guy just said that "one card is totally dead and the other is unstable". Be happy he did not ask for spares.

[shoemakerbruce]

Thanks W00per, that is EXACTLY what I was thinking.  Funny, it felt a lot like my emails to BITMAIN.   Only difference was that theirs always starts with: I'm a bit confused.....

:-)

I ALMOST said:  did you read the post?

Thank you for picking up on that.

PEace, out.

B

[Gladimor]

Good luck on finding support for your malfunctioning S3s!

Merry Christmas,
Adam

[dogie]

May I ask why you asked for two controllers when only one was bricked? What PSU are you running?

I was hoping that, at least, you read the posts before you ask your scripted support questions.
The guy just said that "one card is totally dead and the other is unstable". Be happy he did not ask for spares.

I read every word, and unlike your post I am contributing to sorting the problem....

ANYWAY, if you're in the US send them to BitmainWarranty and he will swap them out. The bricked controller does sound bricked, but your hashing issue is more than likely firmware based. What version are they running?

[B1]

Calm down guys. What dogie want to say is the second controller is unstable, maybe from firmware. You can try another firmware that available on bitmain site.

Note for updating firmware:
1. Do not use wifi connection, use direct connection pc to miner.
2. Do not close the web page until the process finish.
3. Do not poweroff the controller during process.
4. Do not unplug the utp cable during process

[B1]

Good luck on finding support for your malfunctioning S3s!

Merry Christmas,
Adam

There is one already pop out.

[pak13]

Thanks W00per, that is EXACTLY what I was thinking.  Funny, it felt a lot like my emails to BITMAIN.   Only difference was that theirs always starts with: I'm a bit confused.....

:-)

I ALMOST said:  did you read the post?

Thank you for picking up on that.

PEace, out.

B

It may have felt a lot like your emails to Bitmain since Dogie is a paid employee of bitmain to help english speaking customers. Supposedly. Most of his responses are simple scripted 1 liners. 

[kendog77]

Are you running the November S3 firmware version? I experienced a similar issue running the November firmware, but after switching to the 10-24 firmware my S3s have been rock solid.

The November firmware release contains a bug that causes S3s to slow down significantly after hashing for a few hours. It looks like Bitmain has removed the November S3 firmware from their website due to this issue.

[dogie]

It may have felt a lot like your emails to Bitmain since Dogie is a paid employee of bitmain to help english speaking customers. Supposedly. Most of his responses are simple scripted 1 liners. 

If I am a scripted account, then my writer deserves a Turing Award.

[dogie]

Are you running the November S3 firmware version? I experienced a similar issue running the November firmware, but after switching to the 10-24 firmware my S3s have been rock solid.

The November firmware release contains a bug that causes S3s to slow down significantly after hashing for a few hours. It looks like Bitmain has removed the November S3 firmware from their website due to this issue.

Agreed, anything but the beta firmware I posted past 1024 should be avoided. 1024 also breaks the reset button, my beta one fixes it.

[wh00per]

It may have felt a lot like your emails to Bitmain since Dogie is a paid employee of bitmain to help english speaking customers. Supposedly. Most of his responses are simple scripted 1 liners.  

If I am a scripted account, then my writer deserves a Turing Award.

Unfortunately you do not understand what a "scripted response" is. Let me explain.

1st level support is usually tasked to solve common issues, like "is it plugged in?", "let's upgrade firmware to the last stable version" .. etc .. The questions to be asked a customer seeking support are to be followed in a certain manner (i.e. scripted), so that based on the customer answers, if (s)he can't fix it, level one support escalates the issue to the right people. Therefore, Level 1 support follows a predetermined "script" to figure out the issue .. You don't need a lot of training for Level one support .. it just needs to be organized.

Now, it worries me a little, if the hired support behaves like in the post above, instructing a customer who paid a decent sum for a miner, to ship the miner or the boards / miners for replacement to another (official or not) forum user without proper customer identification, RMA #, incident analysis and documentation. BITAMAIN does not learn anything about the issue this way and considering everyone "legit" .. incurs costs without any possibility of fixing the same problems for other customers. That's basic support personnel training .. I hope for your sake that BITMAIN does not ask for customer reviews on the offered support when they close the tickets .. (if there are any support tickets) ..

You say I'm not helping.  I hope I do. If not the customer here, maybe other customers following .. If no one told you yet ..make sure you understand you're BITMAIN's employee. "your" beta is BITMAIN's beta. In the event you actually fixed some bugs, by saying literally that "1024 breaks the reset button" you are not doing BITMAIN any favors. I personally won't be considering thinking to buy any BITMAIN units with such support. It might be better than it was before .. but not good enough for the average North American in the 21st century.    

Agreed, anything but the beta firmware I posted past 1024 should be avoided. 1024 also breaks the reset button, my beta one fixes it.

[Bicknellski]

It may have felt a lot like your emails to Bitmain since Dogie is a paid employee of bitmain to help english speaking customers. Supposedly. Most of his responses are simple scripted 1 liners.  

If I am a scripted account, then my writer deserves a Turing Award.

Unfortunately you do not understand what a "scripted response" is. Let me explain.

1st level support is usually tasked to solve common issues, like "is it plugged in?", "let's upgrade firmware to the last stable version" .. etc .. The questions to be asked a customer seeking support are to be followed in a certain manner (i.e. scripted), so that based on the customer answers, if (s)he can't fix it, level one support escalates the issue to the right people. Therefore, Level 1 support follows a predetermined "script" to figure out the issue .. You don't need a lot of training for Level one support .. it just needs to be organized.

Now, it worries me a little, if the hired support behaves like in the post above, instructing a customer who paid a decent sum for a miner, to ship the miner or the boards / miners for replacement to another (official or not) forum user without proper customer identification, RMA #, incident analysis and documentation. BITAMAIN does not learn anything about the issue this way and considering everyone "legit" .. incurs costs without any possibility of fixing the same problems for other customers. That's basic support personnel training .. I hope for your sake that BITMAIN does not ask for customer reviews on the offered support when they close the tickets .. (if there are any support tickets) ..

You say I'm not helping.  I hope I do. If not the customer here, maybe other customers following .. If no one told you yet ..make sure you understand you're BITMAIN's employee. "your" beta is BITMAIN's beta. In the event you actually fixed some bugs, by saying literally that "1024 breaks the reset button" you are not doing BITMAIN any favors. I personally won't be considering thinking to buy any BITMAIN units with such support. It might be better than it was before .. but not good enough for the average North American in the 21st century.    

Agreed, anything but the beta firmware I posted past 1024 should be avoided. 1024 also breaks the reset button, my beta one fixes it.

Whopper and shoemakerbruce

What would be required to resolve this problem to the satisfaction of the average North American in the 21 Century?

I ask this in all seriousness.

I ask myself how would spondoolies tech respond since they seem to always resolve issues even when they have missed multiple emails etc.

What does Bitmain have to do?

I am not asking Dogie to answer as it is clear he is antagonizing people rather than resolving the issues otherwise there would not be a number of these Bitmain slagging threads that devolves into what Dogie did wrong as the focused of the thread. Rather than how to fix the problem immediately and make the customer whole.

===

@Wh00per.

Thanks man. Hope people take what you posted to heart.

[MyRig]

@shoemakerbruce,

Something must went really wrong here and apology...

Would you please check your PM.  Sent you a contact info.  Lets resolve this.

[dogie]

Now, it worries me a little, if the hired support behaves like in the post above, instructing a customer who paid a decent sum for a miner, to ship the miner or the boards / miners for replacement to another (official or not) forum user without proper customer identification, RMA #, incident analysis and documentation. BITAMAIN does not learn anything about the issue this way and considering everyone "legit" .. incurs costs without any possibility of fixing the same problems for other customers.

You seem to be attacking me without many of the facts here and its rather weird. The BitmainWarranty IS Bitmain, and is in charge of the US returns centre. The only way to use that centre and not the CN centre is to contact them directly as advised. The customer has already stated he has an email string with Bitmain and so there is something that can very easily be transferred over.

You have also ignored that I diagnosed the problems with the miners prior to making the referral, as they are previously known issues. Both boards were physically fine but had a bugged firmware on, before one of them was bricked due to a failed flash. The bricked board needs RMA'ing to BitmainWarranty as advised and the other just needs 1024 firmware putting on as advised.

Anything else? Or can we get back to actually helping this person now....

[wh00per]

Bicknellski,

What I'm looking at when dealing with a support team (be that from Dell, SP-tech, IBM, SAP, HP, BITMAIN) is for a generic procedure which can be recorded and it's results evaluated. The saying "we're learning from our mistakes" is more to the point than ever. Unfortunately you can't have production in numbers and no failures. Especially when the units you build rely on the performance of numerous vendors you can't actually control.

That being said, a good support team is respectful with the customer buying their products, follows rigid rules in solving issues (scripted questionnaires, recording results, opinions and product failures case by case, escalation when necessary) so that they improve their response time, do not argue and or embarrass the customer and builds a body of knowledge in the process to support their products. It might seem funny, but the rules are implemented mostly due to the fact that someone is interested to measure and improve their performance and professionalism as well as to cut the overall support costs, as much as possible.

I won't go through my history in dealing with the support teams from F500 companies, however recently, I finalized an RMA process with SP-Tech. Let me tell you that those people are really interested in learning what went wrong with the units they sold and why that happened, they try to establish failure patterns and everything gets recorded in their systems. They're courteous and serviceable even outside the business hours, even late at night (due to the time difference Israel / North America). If you have their support contacts (Mike & Sonya) in your skype client .. you can see they're taking turns and are available most of the day time. When you talk with them you can feel that they're proud of being there and their success is SPT's success.

Missing emails at support@ is not an big issue, mostly because of the sheer number of messages going in and out. Eventually you get your turn. No one said it's next day support. But they try. When I have something important to deal with, I learnt to be persistent and/or contact them through every public channel available (skype, email, forum, enlarged team). In the end, someone answers and puts me on the right track. Even then, they seem happy they could help and do not let me drop until I'm satisfied with their answers. There's no difference between their support quality and Dell support, provided by Unisys .. in either case, I'm not feeling sorry for myself when I try to speak with them because of a miner/server issue.

[shoemakerbruce]

It may have felt a lot like your emails to Bitmain since Dogie is a paid employee of bitmain to help english speaking customers. Supposedly. Most of his responses are simple scripted 1 liners.  

If I am a scripted account, then my writer deserves a Turing Award.

Unfortunately you do not understand what a "scripted response" is. Let me explain.

1st level support is usually tasked to solve common issues, like "is it plugged in?", "let's upgrade firmware to the last stable version" .. etc .. The questions to be asked a customer seeking support are to be followed in a certain manner (i.e. scripted), so that based on the customer answers, if (s)he can't fix it, level one support escalates the issue to the right people. Therefore, Level 1 support follows a predetermined "script" to figure out the issue .. You don't need a lot of training for Level one support .. it just needs to be organized.

Now, it worries me a little, if the hired support behaves like in the post above, instructing a customer who paid a decent sum for a miner, to ship the miner or the boards / miners for replacement to another (official or not) forum user without proper customer identification, RMA #, incident analysis and documentation. BITAMAIN does not learn anything about the issue this way and considering everyone "legit" .. incurs costs without any possibility of fixing the same problems for other customers. That's basic support personnel training .. I hope for your sake that BITMAIN does not ask for customer reviews on the offered support when they close the tickets .. (if there are any support tickets) ..

You say I'm not helping.  I hope I do. If not the customer here, maybe other customers following .. If no one told you yet ..make sure you understand you're BITMAIN's employee. "your" beta is BITMAIN's beta. In the event you actually fixed some bugs, by saying literally that "1024 breaks the reset button" you are not doing BITMAIN any favors. I personally won't be considering thinking to buy any BITMAIN units with such support. It might be better than it was before .. but not good enough for the average North American in the 21st century.    

Agreed, anything but the beta firmware I posted past 1024 should be avoided. 1024 also breaks the reset button, my beta one fixes it.

So Dogie knows all about the units slowing down after a few hours...   Wonder why Ken had to be the one to provide the resolution?   If Bitmain is aware they have faulty firmware why can't they tell me this up front and how to resolve instead of the endless circle of emails stating: "Hi,
I'm a bit confused. you only have 1 control board broken, why you asked for 2?  (sound familiar?)
for the miner, please connect the blade one by one and confirm which hash board is broken, we can provide the RMA for the hash board. "
I couldn't have been more clear, Here was how i replied (6 times):  This is the screenshot for the unit.  It runs for a while and then slows down.   You can see it ran for 5 hrs 33 minutes and has an ave 413 GH/S.  As you can see the current speed is 45 GH/S.   The unit is supposed to run at 455 GH/S.   This is my problem with both units.  (They crash after running for a short time). 
I get the same reply until my head is about to explode: "I'm a bit confused. you only have 1 control board broken, why you asked for 2?"

Now do we all understand why I am soooo annoyed?  I was patient the first 5 email cycles.  All this time my money has been spent and mining difficulty increases.  I hope these miners are not totally obsolete before I even get them running.  Hey these are BRAND NEW, why do i have to go through this!!!

BITMAIN-TECH - you want this resolved? ship me a controller board.  Do it right now, this minute.  (Right after you ensure it has the correct firmware version).

Thank you!  (Especially you Ken!!!)

[cloverme]

I do really like bitmain, they are one of the better asic manufacturers out there. That being said, their return/rma process and procedure is awful and it's nearly impossible to get support. I had a unit that showed up with a capacitor that was broken off, when I went back to them for a replacement, they told me to press hard on the chips. I even had pictures showing the damaged component on the board with big red arrows pointing at it.  I finally gave up after a month of emailing back and forth. So, I would forget about trying to get anything fixed or returned to them. Junk it and buy another and chalk it up to the cost of mining.