Topic: A4 Dominator - Pre-Order Group Buy - 280mh, roughly 1000w, $1800 + shipping - page 12. (Read 122577 times)

http://eastshoretrade.blogspot.com/2014/09/tutorial-setting-up110mh-scrypt-asic.html

This software is so unstable for me. Almost nothing works. I can't get it to mine without rebooting constantly, the auto-start doesn't work, changing the voltage or the core speed renders the whole unit inoperable until I reflash the SD card. I'm lucky if I actually get the miner to start hashing successfully.... I really think it has everything to do with the software and not the miner as on the original firmware I was getting much closer to the reported hash rate (although still about 40 mh/s shy of 270). I am most likely going to flash that image back (V1).

Its rather unfortunate, really, because I have an A2 as well that works phenomenally (with a custom image though). In fact, the A2 has almost the exact same speed as my A4 right now (minus about 30 mh/s). Simply not what I purchased at all. Hopefully Inno does something to address these issues (as it seems that I am not the only one encountering them). I enjoy the mining experience because of the ebbs and flows, but this has been one ebb I can't figure out and its driving me bonkers .

EDIT:

I re-flashed the original firmware that came with it (unknown version number, as it doesn't show any on the webpage. Its the one where the voltage shows a "/" and you have to manually input to get it to start). I also switched pools to pro hash and am now getting the appropriate hash rate (270). I'm certain now that the firmware was the cause of the issue, as even on pro hash I would still get significantly lower hash rate on v2+.

All you have to do is quote the string of parameters in the A4 to set more options.  And then try to remember every time you stop and start the miner to copy and paste that string in there again or it will blow away the settings on restart.  It is a giant pain in the backside.

Do you have an idea how to set 2 parameters into the password field of the A4? For example "n=A4Miner h=3"? The A4 software always cuts off the last parameter (I guess because of the blank between them).

On prohashing try using h=3 in the options and see if that helps your hash rate.  I second your assessment of the L3 on Nicehash.  It works very well there.  The L3 is a good miner so far.

So even after flashing the 2.0.2 firmware, I am still getting over 100mh/s lower poolside than I am locally... 162 mh/s on litecoinpool.org. I have noticed auto start doesn't work for me on the new firmware, and every time I manually reboot I have to ssh and delete temp folder for it to hash again.

Any ideas how to mine stable @nicehash? If I point to nicehash the miner restarts every few hours and even stops for some hours if I do not pay attention. This does not happen on prohash.com, I got it running there for ~80h now (still counting) without restarts.
Unfortunately prohash only does pay around 0.00667 BTC per Day (270 MH/s) while Nicehash would pay 0,009+ BTC per day (~25-30% more). Where are you guy mining to get the best profit out of the miner?

I also got an L3 running stable since days on Nicehash - pretty good miner.

Thank you! I have just flashed that 2.0.2 and am going to test and report results back later today.

2.0.2 is current firmware -- I don't know if this will resolve your issue but just an FYI.

I am starting to find that setting static difficulty poolside causes issues with these miners. I want to stress that this is very preliminary information but I've been having trouble with mine and recently switched it to dynamic and for 3 days now its like a different machine running with PH. Previously I had been setting static difficulty poolside and been having nothing but problems with B3.

Here is a download link for 2.0.2 from another thread that I used to download it. This is not my dropbox share or link -- https://www.dropbox.com/s/9umhsbtky6t1c6j/2.0.2beta.rar?dl=0

I have, I am running 2.0.1.


I have also tried setting manual difficulty and unfortunately it didn't help at all. In fact, moving the voltage up and core speed up actually lowered my poolside hash rate (although it increased my local hash rate quite a bit). Im honestly quite stumped on this one...

Here is a picture of my stats after almost 40 minutes of uptime:


As you can see, one of the boards is getting rejected poolside %0.43... I have no idea what could be accounting for these rejected shares, but on a long enough timeline (few hours) it seems to settle down to around %0.1. on all boards.

You might try setting the difficulty manualy on litecoinpool.. It seemed to help me get a higher hashrate then letting the pool set it. This is what I use the xxx is just my password but it must be typed in quotes and coma with no space like this
"xxx,d=8192" And I set my mv at 830 and 1248Mhs

Have you upgraded the firmware?

I have done - it doesn't seem to have any effect

You tried hard restart. Just in case.

My A4 will only hash at 200 mh/s on litecoinpool.org (or any other pool) for some reason. All of my boards are healthy, and the miner UI says its working at 275 mh/s. Hardware errors are %0.02 Device rejected is %0.05 and Pool Rejected is %0.05. I don't understand what is going on that would account for the discrepancy between local and pool hash rates... Anyone have any ideas/advice?

We have a new LTC pool to signal segwit support: www.sparkpool.org, a PPLNS pool. Looking for some miners This is not a multipool but a standard LTC pool.

So after ~6 Days since my last post the A4 ran without issue on Prohash, until about ~2 hours ago now.

A couple of clarifications:

• I'm sharing this information with everyone here to be transparent with the community about my experience and hopefully as a community we can all find a solution to the issue(s) being experienced with the A4 at this time. I can be frustrated at times but I know this will get fixed, in time. My goal here is to communicate and collaborate with everyone involved
• I want to say thanks to Dominique, Chloe, and everyone at Innosilicon for their efforts in supporting us with the A4 issues we have been experiencing thus far.

In regards to changing the code randomly, at this time I have not changed any code. What I have done is deleted log files from the Pi and let the miner create fresh ones on a reboot and I've been attempting to review them. I've extracted the SD card images on my computer and have been trying to find whats causing the reboots over what I suspected(now confirmed) was 1 Get Failure.

In regards to SSH, My Raspberry Pi was configured the default username and password so I was able to easily login to it and start looking around.

I have a new SD card with a Fresh 2.0.2 image that I've been waiting to install in the A4, that will now happen this weekend since it's now rebooted again. I'm going to do what I'm now calling the "Reboot Dance" today to see if I can get it stable and mining again since it will be 2 days before I can get out to my remote site. I have no idea why its doing this or why it suddenly starts/stops working other than this information below.

I can now confirm that 1 Get Failure causes the Pi to reboot. User MjGraham has reported a similar issue in another thread so I'm going to include his response below.


Screen Capture I got on a 10 second refresh of 1 Get Failure this morning just before the Pi rebooted itself. Hope this information helps.



EDIT:

Stopped the A4 and set startup to Manual, left it there for about 15 mins, started it back up and its been running fine for about an hour now. Previously it was stuck in the reboot loop described above. Did not power-cycle the A4 or reboot the Pi manually this time around.

I don't perceive there to be any value lost with split payouts but one of the other great features of ProHashing is that you can try to work out the answer to your question by reviewing thier really detailed help and the totally transparent daily profit report. https://prohashing.com/profit.html

The difficult part is trying to work out how you'd make a meaningful comparison between pools because there are a number variables to consider such as time of day when the coin was mined, the luck factor (both +ve and -ve), the exchange rate from the coin mined to the payout coin at the time it was processed and the aglo that decides where, when and what to mine and sell.

If you want, they'll also payout in $USD if you have a Coinbase account.

To echo USAO's response below here's what Prohashing say about Hashrate:

Why Hashrate Isn't Everything

It's tempting to look at base hashrate, and arrive at the conclusion that a lower hashrate equals lower payouts. However, the relationship between hashrate and payouts is much more complicated.

Periodically, a coin has a period of low difficulty that increases its profitability to a very high level. The pool will switch some miners to that coin during these intervals. During these periods, base hashrate will appear to be lower than during periods when only litecoins are being mined because work restarts decrease hashrate. However, profitability during these periods is higher, because the blocks being mined are more valuable. Consider the following situation, which arises commonly during mining:

    Mine litecoins: Achieve 1 MH/s at 3 cents per MH/s/day = 3 cents per day
    Mine casinocoins: Achieve 0.5MH/s at 10 cents per MH/s/day = 5 cents per day

In this instance, it appears at first glance that mining casinocoins is suboptimal because the frequent work restarts lower hashrate. However, the math above demonstrates that the expected value of mining casinocoins is superior to that of mining litecoins, even though the hashrate of mining casinocoins is only half that of mining litecoins.

On cloud mining providers like Nicehash, "negative deltas" and other errors may appear that indicate that some hashrate is being wasted due to work restarts. Prohashing only sends work restarts when doing so would gain more profit even after the restart losses than would continuing to mine the same coin. When using these services, compare actual profitability at several pools to see where you can make the most money, rather than deciding by hashrate alone.

HTH

Don't look at the lower hashrate on nicehash. Look at the daily returns and compare that.
All sites (including nicehash) subtract a fee. Then there are transfer fees from your wallet to an LTC/BTC exchange (unless you are mining directly to the exchange).
Then there are the exchange fees,
Then there are the transfer fees from BTC back to your wallet (or additional fees for conversion to local currency).
When you add up all the fees along the way, I get more BTC in the end from nicehash with lower hashrate than I do at LTCpool with higher hashrates.
That said, it can vary. I keep all the historical pool and exchange data in a postgres database so I use querys to determine in real time where is the best place to mine, and switch my miners based on that query.

With that being said is it more profitable to run these at Prohashing or Nicehash?  I haven't been able to flash mine yet with the jig so have just left them on Nicehash getting around 230 MH/s on average each.

I want to hold some Litecoin so I am thinking about switching to Prohashing and taking maybe 80% BTC & 20% of my payout in LTC.  Has anyone split coin payouts there, do you see any value lost by automating the coin % balance?