Topic: ANTMINER S4 Discussion and Support Thread - page 33. (Read 301481 times)

theres no killowatt I know of that has a 240V plug..
I have a metered PDU
http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?326761_g10e

each side has its own amp mesurement so i have each s4 on a sepratate side. Right now it shows 6 amps used for each s4 for a total of 1440 watts

By chance do you have a kill-a-watt you can put on it?   I'm happy you fixed it just curious of how many watts it's pulling.

I solved my low fan/hash rate issue by putting the miner on 240V

the S4s seem to like the higer voltage and even at 60c I get over 2100GH now for 1.45KW

I skipped right over that particular reply. I fear he doesn't own any S4s as he had to ask if what we are saying is true, so lack of product knowledge, hasn't read the thread, hasn't been around for a few months, and looking to buy 20 of them. I literally feel bad for the kid if he gets those 20.

I said it in my walls of text, but to reiterate I know there are plenty of people who do not recognize these problems. There are plenty of people who also sold there problems and / or they were bought back by BITSTAIN.  

I also know for a fact it doesn't take more than a few months to provide adequate customer service and lay out a specific plan to address issues. I started with a group of 8 people over 20 years ago. Now we are over 100 and leaders in our field in customer service among other areas. It isn't difficult. IT is a mindset and the people calling the shots set that example while providing the tools with which to do it.  

When you work in a field where repeat business is the only true model you see these things in the proper light. As you mature you realize no matter what business you are in the people who voice legitimate concerns are the voice of many. There are many others who simply walk away and decide not to say anything, they buy from someone else and give them a chance.

SPTech do not have some magic technology (albeit the April Fool's was great haha), they have a history and habit of answering customers with facts and helping them correct any issue quickly. They lay things out and answer e-mails. They do basic things which make customers happy. It is not some huge secret. It is simply the correct way to treat people in this environment. You may even lose some money, sometimes a huge amount of money, but the business model provides the tools to bring those customers back again, and again, and again.

Look beyond what you can make today, and think about the foundation you may put in place by being customer service and technical service driven. The Sales will come.
And it is not too late, there are always ways to improve, but to do so you must actually produce something which addresses the issues. A repeated message by SHITSTAIN saying the engineers are looking into it doesn't work so well after enough time has passed.

One very important rule of proper customer service is actually the easiest to follow even though it can be a challenge at times, and a couple of others which helped me be great at what I do.
Return every single call, e-mail, or message before the end of the day, every single day.
Be polite and respect the other person may have been through hell that day working with your product.
Outline a plan to correct their issue(s) and provide them with constant updates on the issues.

Even if you slip on dates, have problems, make mistakes, and every other thing that can happen happens, as long as you do those basic things people see you for what you have become through those actions.

Some may not like to hear it, but the customer's perception is reality in the business world. Scammers are caught and dealt with in various ways and they are everywhere, but that is another subject AND not exclusive to BITCOIN at all. It has been prolific, but happens everyday to all of us.

Mainly communicate and have the right intentions. It is simple.
Be polite

That is great man, I am glad he is helping people. I have no doubt there is some resemblance to customer service at times.
I hope he pushes things in the right direction. The community needs service driven companies who are For Profit. That is Capitalism to me. It can be a great thing when you have a mindset to help your customers long term.
I hope to hear the same from many future customers and existing ones.

Sorry friends , if bitmain bitstain shitstain .. (whatever you like) still dont fix that scam firmware, we have a right to sing that song loudly.

They are trying and the puts them ahead of most of the failed companies that have come, scammed and gone. From my own dealings with them they are always open to finding new people that can help them out. Send a CV and see what happens. You just don't get Spondoolies like service unless you have the team in place and the communication to follow up with customers.

I am sorry to hear about your experience.  But I wanted to jump in and say I have had Yoshi's help a few times.  He's always treated me great, and so has his support team.   I have met him at a conference and he was very down to earth and spent a lot of time he didn't have to talking specs about at the S3 at the time which was brand new.

I personally have a positive opinion.

That goes double for Dogie when he stirs the f-ing pot right?

Get a grip. 99% of the problem is Dogie instigated. If he'd stop crapping in threads and bumping Avalon and Bitmain threads as well as complaining about Spondoolies there would be no issue. Get the facts straight.

Also it is clear that Bitmain would love to see do less of the ANTAGONIZING of customers and more actual support. Too late given what he has done to maintain in the past few months. He really really screwed the pooch and it doesn't surprise anyone including Bitmain that this has happened.

+2

Oh and by the way, while I'm at it, same for those who attack dogie every time he opens his mouth.  Get a life, already.  If you don't have anything constructive to add to the discussion, your ad hominem insults are just hateful noise to everyone else who is here to learn and participate in bitcoin technology, not to watch people fling shit at one another.  If you don't like what he (or anyone else here) has to say, there is an "ignore" link to your left.  Please use it.

Sometimes I wish that the moderators would enforce the one simple rule of civilized behavior that we all should have learned as children: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.  But alas, they are moderators, not baby sitters :-)

-dave

I wonder if every single poster in this thread using the terms Bitstan or Shitstain realize how much it hurts their message.

It makes you sound like a petulant child rather than someone with a credible issue.

It is easy to make the cables to go from a DPS2000bb to the boards with ring terminals or the PCIe connectors.

If you aren't handy with crimping or soldering, or simply do not want to fight more of the headaches I would suggest contacting sidehack and let him know what you need.

If you need help identifying anything I am happy to do so and will tell sidehack what is going on and give him the details of the situation.

It is not hard to make the correct cables with 12 gauge wire. I would revisit my saved information before telling you to use any smaller wire, but SHITSTAIN use smaller. I do not remember the size off the top of my head, but do have it and am happy to look it up.  

Keep this in mind: the main reason I did not want to accept the offer from SHITSTAIN regarding them sending me a 2000bb power supply to use as a stock replacement is it is not right and makes it horribly difficult to sell. Most people do not want to buy a miner with a modified component which is supposed to have an internal power supply. The cabling would have looked different, and I paid a lot of money to have a miner which was down more than it was ever up. Not to mention whatever liability issues you could run into if you modified something and then someone hurt themselves. And again mentioning the fact they KNEW and KNOW today they sold us a crap power supply, every unit has a board pulling too much voltage, and isn't clocked correctly when you do try to underclock, it still pulls the same, along with the other firmware issue. The unit never ran more than 9 days without a PSU failure. It was delivered from the SHITSTAIN factory in China around 01-01-15 and I was on the phone with them approximately a week later. Wash, repeat again after it took them a week to get me another power supply. Wash repeat again, same. I even sent them the entire S4 while explaining the issue was the hash board pulling too much voltage and I believed there may have also been an intermittent connection issue with one of the cables from the PSU. Wash Repeat again, but this time I was done giving them a chance. If anyone would like to know the actual timeline I have it all saved, with e-mails and tracking numbers, but I think you get the gist of my experience. Unfortunately I can change the PSU with my eyes closed.

I do think it important to point out that while Yoshi hides behind the BITMAIN Warranty Account posting on this board and spouting his usual rhetoric he does not deny these issues. He knows these things are true. He may throw out some random comment in an attempt to at least say something or put the scent on another item, but these issues have been clearly identified by many, many people over the past few months. The board issue where the voltage is not controlled correctly is way back in this thread, but again, clearly pointed out and outlined with all the data points anyone needs to confirm the problem. The power supply issue was admitted in the open, but the "batch 2" were not better.

They thought using the ring terminals was the big "fix", but their lack of internal communication or complete unwillingness to spend money on a proper fix for the overall issue is the core problem. Ring terminals are a better connector in this case, but it is not a fix. As you speak with him watch your six, document everything, and keep one hand on your wallet and the other on yourself.

Do not be surprised if he doesn't respond at all, or initially he responds with an e-mail which sounds great, but nothing substantial ever happens. Be prepared to take care of your own issues, but I hope with Prelude's recent posts they seriously take a look at this situation. The technical support personnel are much more professional and capable people. Use them to discuss the details of your issue. I made the mistake of contacting him when I was told to do so from a SHITSTAIN employee. If I'd known what I do now I would have stayed with the support guys. Yoshi gave me this spill about even though this particular unit was purchased through Amazon (Actually Zoomhash) and not directly through SHITSTAIN he would make sure everything was handled and take care of the warranty issues. I made another mistake of believing him as I waited days for information from him while the S4 which shipped from the SHITSTAIN factory directly to me sat not running.

I understand there may be agreements with distributors they receive a larger discount or other incentives to handle their own warranty claims and even support in many cases, but in hindsight find it extremely unusual for someone to act like they are doing me a favor to support this product for 90 days when it isn't even like Zoomhash could have done anything to the unit, they never saw it. AND if he had told me to contact Zoomhash instead of playing the "we will take care of it for you" game, I would have probably received an appropriate response from Zoomhash, but we do not know, because I was never told to do so, he said he would handle it.

 I was always polite and professional in every conversation and e-mail, but the simple fact is Yoshi talks a lot of shit, lies to you, and then expects you to treat him like he is something special. You are nothing without customer service. He tries to lay the blame on purchasing from a 3rd party. Why did he tell me he would take care of it then? He knew who I'd purchased it from THEN. I directly e-mailed him the exact same information I had sent customer support showing my detailed invoice and shipping information.

 It was after the fact that he realized, as he realizes today that I know enough to catch him in his lies, point out the defects in design, and the cheaply built components SHITSTAIN used in the S4. Then he decides to use his magic purchased from a 3rd party line, but it doesn't hold water to anyone with half a brain who understands the items being pointed out. It doesn't matter who you buy it from if it ships straight to you and has defects in design. It isn't as though Zoomhash ordered a different model and sold me something different, it is the same problems many, many, MANY others are realizing they have experienced or are experiencing now. He doesn't respond directly regarding any of the serious points with anything except to say they will look into it while he continued to ship more crappy product from China AND keep shipping replacement power supplies. But there is no real engineer looking into anything. Their "Engineers" are looking at next gen crap. If they wanted to correct this, it could have been done months ago.

He does buy people off. I have seen many people with the exact same complaints I have raised who go for days or weeks complaining saying the EXACT same things as I, but then one day it is they spoke with Yoshi and everything has been worked out.
Do you think he corrected the issues we all faced or face today with the S4? Of course not, he bought them off with more product, cloud hash, coupons and other items. One at a time, Garza style.

Back to the problems others are experiencing today:
I made my own cables and used sidehacks breakout board. Other than the aforementioned issues the unit runs correctly using that power supply and breakout board.
For the Euro users I am pretty sure sidehack ships there, but there is also Jabber's board to fit this same power supply. Him being in France might save you some shipping. I have not used his 2000bb board, but his IBM 2880 power supply breakout board runs great.

I will not sell the S4 this way though. Even though I know sidehack's boards and my cables work perfectly, you do have a liability concern in my opinion.
If it is a 'buddy' who I know understands what they are looking at / getting into I would probably ship it setup using a server power supply.

But again, I am happy to help anyone with issues.
The SD card vibrates loose quite a bit. Sometimes all it takes is to eject it and reinsert and it will boot.
I bought an extra one and copied the existing one.

For fans it depends on the clock speeds you are running. An overclocker would want to (at a minimum) match the S4 original fan specifications and I have them in a folder somewhere which I can digup. There have been many posts regarding Fan alternatives, but keep in mind the cable lengths. Fans never have cables as long as the ones SHITSTAIN designed in the fans on the opposite end from the controller card aka Beagleboneblack. So, you will need to purchase extensions, or splice some on.
You can get away with a more quiet fan if you underclock.

...but trying to underclock using the current firmware does not save you much in power usage since they removed the voltage functionality. Lowering the frequency does lower your power use, albeit slightly, but the issue is if you cannot set the right voltage you may as well not underclock. You aren't saving much money regarding power usage AND you risk causing other issues.  

You could run the older firmware which does have voltage adjustment, or you could talk to one of the few people who have created firmware themselves. It sounds like Prelude has come up with some firmware and he may be willing to share if we help him recover some of his investment. It seems he asked for anyone else to help when he started to find a coder and have the changes made he needed. I follow many of his posts when I can be here and missed where he asked for other people to chip in, but I told him I would definitely do so. I imagine if he has enough people to help him recover some of his cost he would share with the community at large. Prelude has always seemed to be fair and helpful.

There is also a post from a couple months ago where a guy made S4 firmware for lowering the fan speeds. There were many people using it and I remember reading nothing but good things from his changes. He even sent the code to SHITSTAIN and there were comments about them incorporating some of the same functionality but to my knowledge it never happened because the next firmware release was the one we have now. This one does help provide a more stable hashrate, but of course as I've mentioned and others, it screws the pooch on voltage adjustment. They did the same stinking thing to the S3s. (The S3 firmware has been crappy, buggy and has gotten worse since the 10-24-14 release with the broken reset button, but that is another thread) This shows their consistent screwing customers and limiting choices.    

 If you decided to use older SHITSTAIN firmware for your S4 please keep in mind there was an issue where the difficulty had to be manually set on your pool side at 2048 (going from memory on that number, I can look it up if needed for anyone.) If you don't do this you have all sorts of other fun, which was crap hashrate, and I am not talking about a little difference, I am talking several hundred GH in many scenarios. Going from memory I remember seeing 1.6 - 1.7 TH.
This particular issue limited people to being able to mine on specific pools. Vardiff didn't work correctly. IT was messy.  

PM me if anyone wants any help with any part of what I have said. I saved everything and can backup each assertion or piece of information with confirmed items.
 
Good luck to the folks dealing with failures today. Try to keep the stress from getting to you, it isn't worth it and let me know if I can help any of you be it power supply, fan, firmware, etc.

Why would you use a custom PSU?

And why would Bitmain support on the website say "get one from your local market"?

I simply don't understand.  Epic fail.

M

S4 PSU, please DO NOT try to open it and fix it on your own.  As others mentioned here many times, it could harm you or even KILL you if the wrong part of the internal parts being touched.

Also, PSU out of the factory meets the standard of self-extinguishing fire within so many seconds, but once you break the case open, and make modification on your own, that part may not be sustainable and could be a fire hazard. 

S4 PSU alternate solution be please find a PSU that is stronger than 1500W 80+ Gold or better or Server PSU.  Older S4 that had more trouble some PSU uses PCI-E plugs times 5.  So any PSU with enough PCI-E connectors with strong enough power can power up the S4 in that version

The recent S4 PSU use ring style connectors which is a custom made PSU and you will not find it in the market.  May be someone may be selling the PSU out of their S4 units.

This is their "for profit" model.
They sell crap and then tell you to F OFF.

I will help you. PM me with details. I have sources for parts.

Sorry Yoshi, nice try.
*IF* someone purchases your product through Amazon and they ask you about it and are up front with you with every single piece of documentation AND YOU decide then that it is a "third party" but that YOU will help them then you keep your word.
I worked with MANY people at your place who TRIED to help but COULDNT because of your design FLAWS. You lack of intelligent replies no longer leaves me in awe, it is well known.

*IF* you wanted me to go back to ZoomHash through Amazon you should have said so at the start you idiot. You said you would help AND miserably failed, as both a liar and a "for profit" business. BITSTAIN has now turned to SHITSTAIN.
You are only saying so now because it is all you can think of to defend yourself.

FIX the problem. My miner shipped to ME from the factory in CHINA.

YOU have just proven the point. You are a POS, and one day I will see you at a conference and light you up.
You and Josh Garza have many things in common, the only major difference is he has already been caught, and you haven't.

*IF* you want me to start posting every single piece of documentation I have keep running your mouth. It is not nice to piss off, pissed off customers more with your sideways insults.

I bought new in the box S4 miners shipped from the SHITSTAIN Factory to my door through YOUR distributor.
You are right about one thing, *IF* I ever bought another piece of shit product it would be through your crappy factory.
How much child labor are you using there?
How good are your people's wages who work in that factory?
Maybe some real US media should check out the place where these GREAT products are made.

Keep messing with me and diverting from the true issues, which are you put out products with HUGE issues and run to the next one without providing proper customer service.

So those of us who have a PSU that doesn't show any error lights are just out of luck?

I'm sorry, but spending as much as I did on my S4s and having them die this quickly with no real recourse to fix them is quite sad...

I'll be buying only Spondoolies hardware from now on, only warranting something for 90 days is horrible!

An what dead S4 fans after warranty? I have 4 fans dead (in Europe).

FOR S4 PSU ISSUES:

If you own Antminer S4 with expired warranty/non-qualifying unit and experiencing the dead S4 PSU with the following LED ERROR STATUS, we may be able to provide the service for  you

Please include the $25 USD Money Order per returning S4 PSU with a PRINTED RETURN ADDRESS.  This DOES NOT GUARANTEE the RESTORED PSU, however, highly likely we can send you the replacement PSU.

If the PSU is damaged to the point that it will not power on any ERROR LED, this service will not work for you.

MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO: "BITMAIN"

Bitmain Warranty
3700 Quebec Street
Unit 100-239
Denver, Colorado 80207

Tel; 844-248-6246


Applies to the non-working PSU showing these LED conditions