I have an Antminer S5 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 S5, 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 S5. 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 S5 does not have a USB or 5V power port or a boot button.
The last contact I had from Bitmain was them advising to try with a 4GB microSD card instead. I don't have such a card, and from
what I was able to find via search the Beaglebone should support microSD cards up to 32GB so I don't think using a 16GB card is problematic.
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?