Topic: Block Erupter Prisma (>=1.4 T/device, 0.75-0.78 W/G, <1 BTC/T, October Shipping) - page 7. (Read 108023 times)

Unboxing of the BLOCK ERUPTER Prisma. I-am romanian so the video is in romanian language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHIA7jKwhs

This is not advertising today i will make a video How to set up the prisma.

Thanks it comes in handy from time to time but mostly is just a toy. I'll take some more shots for you when i get home tonight and if i can fimd something t hook up to the video out on it ill post something on youtube with start up to failure.

The prisma has been terrible.

Here is my experience:

 I ordered via Canary based on 'in stock' shipping.  My prisma was 2 weeks late shipping.  Once the prisma arrived, I've tried for almost 1 week to get this thing to hash.  I've had 0 luck.  I've tried different builds of cgminer, minera, BE conroller, BE controllr with proxy, windows, linux, single boards.  After many emails, PM, QQ messages, I finally was able to contact AM after a frustrating week and a half.  Apparently I have 1 or 2 bad boards, even though the asic chips show all 0000 on BE screen.  AM response was to ship the boards back to Hong Kong.  No word on how long it will take, or what will happen when the boards arrive.  I'm tried of spending additional money on this thing.   


I purchased the Prisma because it was the best deal on the market at the time and had a good chance a ROI.  Now I have 0 chance of ROI and probably lost all ~1.6 BTC I've spent on this crap.  Live and learn I suppose.


ASICMiner failed horribly with these.  Their customer support is terrible.  Their product is terrible.


ASICMiner / Friedcat, Phasebird: how about decent product and decent customer service??



Special thanks to Blazedout419, CanaryInTheMine, CrazyGuy, philipma1957 for their help.




This thing is for sale if anyone wants to experiment with it.  Sold as is.  All offers considered.

Well at least people are catching on to how horrible this gear is. A couple of guys recently tried to start an .eu group buy and no one bought any. Anyone thinking of buying this gear should avoid it at all costs. Horrible gear and the company selling it will not test it before shipping or reply to you if you have issues.

Yes, because it's totally fair to ship faulty equipment to your customers and then tell them they need to pay to ship it back due to not taking the time to test before shipping.  I don't know how much it would cost to ship these back to Hong Kong or how long it would take to get them back, but I do know that any hope of ROI for me is long gone.  At this point, I think it may be best to just take the loss and not continue wasting time troubleshooting as well as throwing good money after bad.  I know from the lack of responses, that is what asicminer wants to see.

Yeah, except all miner manufacturers take Bitcoin for their orders (Bitmain just added USD, but I'm not sure how that works yet), so you're stuck ordering from a third party if you want to be able to do a card. And I know for my sake (as a local reseller) I don't take cards, only cash or Bitcoin, for exactly that reason. I have been contacted by several people wanting to do CC purchases, some who even want to pay 150% up-front for it. Yeah, no thanks, I don't feel like being scammed, charge-backed, or taking stolen money. So take "real money" and if my clients have an issue then they e-mail me and I can troubleshoot it, or swap their miner out for one of my own.

So what I'm trying to say is that if I'm not going to expose myself to the risk of chargebacks, neither is a manufacturer. The issue isn't adding penalties to a trustless exchange, the solution is working with the amount of trustlessness you feel comfortable with. If you want to eliminate risk, buy from an established local reseller that you know you can talk to face-to-face, or call/email if you have problems. Crazyguy and Canaryinthemine have been really great through all this, providing a better face to this debacle than ASICMiner has, even to buyers who aren't their customers. That's the best you can hope for in this market right now.

Thank you for sharing those pictures! They're much better than the IR thermometer I've got! And they do confirm some of my power distribution concerns. If we could isolate some of the issue, there may be some thermal management we could do, or rework that can reduce the issue. There has to either be unbalanced load somewhere, or way too much resistance somewhere. If we could improve that, maybe we could save these before they fry entirely.

On a brighter note, we finally got a response from Phasebird regarding RMAing our defective units! Now I have to figure out how much shipping to Hong Kong from the USA is and whether it's worth the expense!

I agree and am very disappointed with my Prisma.  I've been troubleshooting it for weeks and trying different methods to get it to run (windows, linux, usb, controller, etc...).  As of right now, 2 of the 4 boards give off nothing but errors, 1 of the boards is completely dead due to arriving with missing parts, and 1 works.  I can't get any response from asicminer and my group buy seller told me to deal with them and won't accept a return.  My advice, if you insist on buying one of these, make sure you do it with a method that can be charged back in the event you receive a non-functional miner and whoever sold it to you is unwilling to make it right.

Just pick up a Seek Thermal - dirt cheap and decent quality.

Back on topic.. I wonder if the chips themselves are perhaps subject to differences that would really warrant them getting binned so that each board at least gets chips with similar characteristics.  Seems odd to get the hot spots depicted otherwise (assuming that the heat sinks are indeed mounted correctly).

I am pretty sure that these are string miners? The chips are powered differently than the tubes. Why is it that AM will not even bother to support these? Who would buy anything from them in the future after they just ignore all these issues? AM needs to watch how Bitmain and SP-Tech handle issues and learn from them.  This company flat out sucks for end users...they can't not even be bothered to reply to emails.

Interesting that Tubes works ok, at least there's no many complains about Tubes. I would check quality of power delivered to chips with oscilloscope. Maybe DC/DC converter is oscillating and couses trouble..

+1 +envy.

That's a nice camera you got there    Thanks for sharing, it confirms the results I've been seeing. I am curious what they look like when they are being powered on from an off state, when the controller fires up, running, and when it fails to hash. Also if any change is seen from position in daisy chain, and record/log which hashing boards look proper to confirm new failure. Powerful being able to visualize all that information in real time. I suspect those hot spot boards were having problems when you captured those images.

I've been having problems with mine since i got them. I can't get them to hash more then a few minutes before throwing errors. I decided to look at them with the thermal scope here are a few pictures sorry about the quality. you can see one board that looks fairly uniform then the two others with some very hot spots. They get plenty of cool air constantly and all screws were tightened before first hooking them up.

https://i.imgur.com/OZbi618.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/79qZKbt.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/Ix7GJQx.jpg?1

What about MOQ? Did anybody buy 1 device per order?

This is a very similar issue we're having on one of our units. Also, we noticed some warping on the fan connector on one of the hashing units (this one is interfering with the daisy chain). It looks like it's at a similar spot as the burned out hashing units I've seen on the forum posts from those who have had their Prismas flame out. I'd speculate that there's an issue with a short between the first capacitor and the fan connector, and when that gets damaged, the issue builds up and cascades down the chain.

We really need some official word from an official representative of ASICMiner on here.

I can confirm no response from the correct email address.

Last night a 3 prisma array wouldn't boot up with all hashing boards, so I took a physical examination.. One tested known good board has deteriorated to a 'hot' board where transistors see 80C+ and my IR gun measured over 95C on one BE200 chip, the same one that is the most burnt in my previous burnt prisma pic. I disconnected this newly bad board and resumed like normal, albeit another 300ghs short. I'm certain if these bad boards arn't serviced and removed they will lead to fire. I have found when this happens they do not recover from this state, I.E. once they run hot, they will always run hot (and not hash well because of it), and break/interfere with the daisy chain.

Me to i had some custom problems in my country but i had to deal my self whit them, no answer.

Likewise, we have sent several RMA request emails for one of the miners in our batch, no response since we got the tracking information. Has anyone tried reaching Phasebird or friedcat on QQ? I think I'll try that tonight, this is becoming really problematic. At least ASICMiner posted a public statement acknowledging their lack of communication, unfortunately it was 100% geared toward shareholders, and not their customers that pay the shareholders dividends (or would, if AM paid dividents lately):
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9619178

This is the good address but no answer from them.