Topic: Avalon Miner - Clone Issues (Read 2011 times)

Hello,

Feel free to skip to the questions.

The Story so far...

I bought what I thought was a kosher Batch 2 Avalon Miner. The seller has gone quiet since I mentioned some of these problems I've been having since it arrived Thursday - I've had no replies since the tracking number. So bang goes my 'support' promise.

What I got was a silver case (not black as shown in sales picture), with a lot of rattling. I payed over the odds, and I kept getting please wait messages when I asked about delivery - which ending up taking 4 weeks. I did get a tracking number 1 week ago from Hong-Kong - yet this was supposed to have been purchased from England.... yep.. not kosher. I was orginally given a line about people refunding CC after purchase so seller asked me to wait 2 weeks before he'd deliver. I've been scammed before with something similar so this made sense.

I had to find screws for heatsinks (One wasn't screwed in at all the other had 3 screws in.. I found 4 screws loose inside the case!). The TP Link 703n was also loose inside the case.

I then discovered on powering it on that the red light meant a power issue. And joy.. many of the power cables were loose/badly seated. One connector PCI-E was split which I've replaced. The PSU in the picture I bought from was a 1000W Antec.. I have some chinese written un-brand in there, but it is '1000W' rated according to the numbers on the sticker.  

I then had to disconnect and manually flash the TP703n as even when resetting using the button on the TP Link & using IPScan to find any address  - (including the 2 different address ranges hand written on the back of the box) Finally in on 198.168.0.100!

I can't use Avalon2 images as it will not connect though.(Socket connect failed: Connection refused)
I have got it running using Avalon WRT image 20140227 (Off the Avalon Wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon)
A ck.kolivas.org -20140329 image was mining  - but it didn't produced any Summary Statistic - everything else worked. That took me to 3am Friday morning. Yawn.

The Goods

Last night I had a play around - It is mining 16 miners /10 chips /1400 freq producing an unstable 195-215GH. Any lower or higher it produces less hashing. It's been running fine since then. Uptime of 10hrs since my last adjustment.

It has two blades with A3255 chips on (2x8/10)
It has Avalon Project V1.5 PDU and ControlUnit

Now running:
OpenWrt Barrier Breaker r39380 / LuCI Trunk (svn-r9957)
[Firmware Version] => 20140227
cgminer: 4.0.0
cgminer-openwrt-packages: bb677a2+
luci: d2fe67a

I have some resulting  questions though:

Big Questions

1) I'm assuming at this point this is just a batch 1 type clone with 55nm chips given all the information I find inside. Could I even downgrade to a 750/850and still run this?  I have a soft spot for Corsair RM850s which run very efficient.

2) According to an IRC from xiangfu post I read the HW errors isn't HW errors but something to do with VarDiff mining?  It's running about 10x 'HW' Vs Accepted

3)How do I reduce the number of discards?? No other coin-mining kit I've used has anything like this problem so I know I've missed something. Avalon --config options?

Little Niggling Questions

4) It has NO fan speeds showing? - yet all 3 fans are connected? And yes I can hear them! All the cables look intact inside. I don't have any 3-pin connectors on my main PC to cross test. The fans are also not on the sides of the case but have been glued/screwed onto the heatsinks with only 1 attached to the casing.

5) It is showing 1 temp sensor, but there's only 1 inside and space for 1 more, yet 3 spaces on the screen? I don't believe it's 21C in there as its hot. Is there somewhere better I can glue gun the sensor than the outside of the top heatsink.

6) The TP-LINK WR703N doesn't have a wireless antenna soldered on like my Antminer or the Avalon Pics. I could solder a spare on from parts inside some old laptops - but there's a little chip over the two connectors were I can see the cable soldered online across two points on the unit. Any ideas? It won't connect stable over Wifi - but it it happy running off a old wireless repeater.

Thanks for your time!

Any suggestions would be great. I seriously feel better for looking at what I've managed, even if I don't make any other progress!

I fear I've been stuck with someones used and abused clone. It's a good job I have some skill in solving problems. I was looking to minimize power costs long term - doesn't look like I can get voltage thing to work on this.

Internet should have a #drunk --lock option. I'm hoping they reply by Monday. Otherwise I'll be posting the website details up. So much for a "Avalon Bitcoin Miner - Bitcoin Mining Rig 240 GH/S ASIC 55NM" And the company has dropped all its prices over the last month since I ordered - so I'll be looking for repayment of the difference for all the problems.

Time for a beer! BTC