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Topic: Antminer R4 - dead hash board? Shitty design, read before you send it back - page 6. (Read 12358 times)

jr. member
Activity: 49
Merit: 3
I've lost an R4 hashboard to this issue as well.. reboot didn't resolve it fully:( only 40/63 asic found. 

No way this is a hardware issue, the board was hashing for only 2 days...  Bitmain please update your firmware for all these PIC/ICC bricked hashboards.
legendary
Activity: 4256
Merit: 8551
'The right to privacy matters'
I get access to my older miner that dropped a board a few days ago.

Maybe dead maybe a reboot saves it.
sr. member
Activity: 441
Merit: 250
No zuo no die why you try, u zuo u die dont be shy
Hey tbone I feel your pain.  My R4B4 that's dropped a board is in a DC up there in the great white north ...  Waiting for CNY to finish and then off it goes.  We'll see how much $$ that takes once it happens.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I have opened a ticket with Bitmain and see how it goes. Please keep me updated on your case too. I may be able to lower your shipping a little bit.
hero member
Activity: 1610
Merit: 538
I'm in BTC XTC
Hey tbone I feel your pain.  My R4B4 that's dropped a board is in a DC up there in the great white north ...  Waiting for CNY to finish and then off it goes.  We'll see how much $$ that takes once it happens.
sr. member
Activity: 441
Merit: 250
No zuo no die why you try, u zuo u die dont be shy
And in addition to ^^ I'll add that it is best to keep the bad board powered.

On my R4b6 with the bad board in (reports only 8 chips, no red power on light) the good board runs at 605MHz/4.4THs. Disconnect the bad board and the good one auto tunes itself to only 550MHz/3.9-4THs.

Personally, I will be sending it to Bitmain Warranty in CO for paid repair after I get back from a work trip late next week.

 :(I am in Canada.

I don't know how the costs compare
US shipping + paid repair
VS
Asia shipping

Either way, i am screwed .
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
Guys, I ordered 2 r4b6 and one just failed after 20 hours running. The 2nd board [J8] can only show 45 chips instead of 63 but it produces 0 hash.
And in addition to ^^ I'll add that it is best to keep the bad board powered.

On my R4b6 with the bad board in (reports only 8 chips, no red power on light) the good board runs at 605MHz/4.4THs. Disconnect the bad board and the good one auto tunes itself to only 550MHz/3.9-4THs.

Personally, I will be sending it to Bitmain Warranty in CO for paid repair after I get back from a work trip late next week.
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 560
The boards are in a single long string, with that many chip failures you will not ever get it to hash. You will have to warranty it (after chinese new year)
sr. member
Activity: 441
Merit: 250
No zuo no die why you try, u zuo u die dont be shy
Guys, I ordered 2 r4b6 and one just failed after 20 hours running. The 2nd board [J8] can only show 45 chips instead of 63 but it produces 0 hash.
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
The first one I tried it on was having BC_write_timeout errors. I looked at the data cable while unplugging it and one of the wires seemed loose. I will swap cables later today and try more testing. This is looking promising though.

I'll kick over a tip for every board I'm able to resurrect RadekG, thanks for giving me hope.

Anyone know a source for the data cables? They seem awfully flimsy.
hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 500
Won't help with the 1st batch-6 I got last week that had 1 board fail 22hrs after starting it. Just noticed after poking around with it the past couple days that the red Vcore-OK LED is not lit meaning the DC-DC circuit is dead/offline.

Wonder what is feeding the 8-good (but producing 0 hash rate) ASIC's that the miner finds on chain-8? Possibly from the controller via the data cable? The system *does* find the PIC and talks to it....

Yes, my dead board was talking via IIC, but read random voltage or produced random (error) messages regarding speed, ASIC count or ASIC frequency. I think this is the same problem with PIC firmware continuing from S7, but they are trying to fix this problem by reflashing bad fw on the fly. Sometimes, both boards was affected by reflashing fw or random number of ASIC found. I did my unbeliveable simple solution which worked. It found correct fw with correct number of ASIC and it also found correct PIC frequency settings for each ASIC. Everything worked fine even before with two boards connected it was not.
hero member
Activity: 924
Merit: 500
Sorry if my explanation is too complicated.

1) turn off the miner
2) unplug working board
3) start miner until it hashes.
4) if you are lucky, it will recover bad board
5) turn off miner
6) plug good board back
7) start miner until it hashes.
Cool if you are lucky, you have both working boards
9) if you have bad luck, try it again. You can also try start "single-board-test" program via Putty several times.

NEVER stop or apply changes before miner start hashing. It killed my board, but I recovered it by previous steps.

Sorry I missed important thing: I am disconnecting white data cable from controller board.

UPDATE: Just tested this on latest batch, another DOA R4 arrived. Afer starting with "bad" board only it ressurected.
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
Out of my 2 x B6 R4's which I received last Thursday.

1 x Hash board was DOA - never hashed
1 x Hash board failed after 2 days (Saturday)

Worth noting that I keep my miners in a temp/humidity controlled data center.
Verrrry interesting.... I also got my bad R4 last Thurs the 19th...  Huh Wonder how many other flaky ones were in that lot...

re: s9's, I have 16 of them from batch-1 on up and only have had 2 boards fail. One was from the b1 (failed last Oct.) and another was from a batch-12 and in-Warranty. Had both repaired/replaced by Bitmain Warranty in CO -- yes even the in-factory warranty one (was faster, fully insured, etc.).

Oh, and again: I highly recommend Awesome Miner. Free up to 4 miners and well worth the scaled price if you have more. It will check the miners and restart CGminer (BMminer) which sometimes hangs and if you set thresholds can also fully soft-boot the miner when hashrate drops or other things arise.
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
I'm at about a 25% failure rate on my R4's and 5-10% on S9's so far. The S9's have been far more heat tolerant, but they also require a bit of babysitting as boards will go down while still reporting full speed in the interface.
full member
Activity: 120
Merit: 100
Out of my 2 x B6 R4's which I received last Thursday.

1 x Hash board was DOA - never hashed
1 x Hash board failed after 2 days (Saturday)

I continued to run both on the remaining good boards (disconnected both power and IO from the bad) until this morning when I noticed I've lost yet another board.

So I'm experiencing a 75% failure rate on these boards, less than ideal. Worth noting that I keep my miners in a temp/humidity controlled data center.
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
Good question. Pouring over the logs from the R4b6 with a bad board I can say they are certainly doing a ton of device-level checks right down to how many good cores are in each chip...
newbie
Activity: 49
Merit: 0
This is an interesting log so far. I wonder wtf is going on here...

Code:
Chain[J7] has 82 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 0 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 167 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 99 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 149 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 0 asic
retry Chain[J7] has 63 asic
...
OK: Chain[J7] is for this machine! [minerMAC: 08:85:07:d1:xx:xx]

are they doing board level mac addr checks?
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
Won't help with the 1st batch-6 I got last week that had 1 board fail 22hrs after starting it. Just noticed after poking around with it the past couple days that the red Vcore-OK LED is not lit meaning the DC-DC circuit is dead/offline.

Wonder what is feeding the 8-good (but producing 0 hash rate) ASIC's that the miner finds on chain-8? Possibly from the controller via the data cable? The system *does* find the PIC and talks to it....
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 560
Bitmain has said that you can do that! Breaking the seals over the screws to swap boards w/o authorization is a great way to void the warranty....

Bitmain usually has an order number or serial number sticker on each individual board. They would for sure be able to tell if you did this.
full member
Activity: 120
Merit: 100
Um ONLY if Bitmain has said that you can do that! Breaking the seals over the screws to swap boards w/o authorization is a great way to void the warranty....

I did consider this as an option but Bitmain has requested both units to be returned. For now I'm holding onto them until after CNY, I might send them off next Friday. I did ask if they could swap them for T9's but they didn't go for that.
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
Hope you got smart and put both bad boards in one for the return

Um ONLY if Bitmain has said that you can do that! Breaking the seals over the screws to swap boards w/o authorization is a great way to void the warranty....
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