Topic: Innosilicon's A4 Dominator, 1.2W/Mhs 14nm ASIC and miner, open for Partners - page 9. (Read 48989 times)

There might be something wrong with my A4 it keeps dropping one board then the other one maybe  two mins later it is a B3 i was told and it is running 202 beta it was running ok till last nite then it started doping one board first now it's both, I  left the voltage @ 815 like the seller said do and hadn't really done any OC, i swiped out the PSU hoping that was it,  both boards are stating to act up ...I really hate to ship it back to china.


I hate this shit of being force to use a old out dated OS on a old out dated rusting PI they sell that is inside the controller that takes for ever to install something that may not install .. man i hope INNOSILICON see the light of this wisdom and let us use our own  controller's with Ubuntu 16 in my case the dropping boards may have something to do with the OS and how bad it is  and also either give us the cables to run it off any PI hell im even pay for them if that's a problem just make them reason able ...and not some stupid greedy price , I'll make my own once they let us if they let us use any RPI or PI type ......if the price is stupid !!!!

 wheezy is old, i don't think even https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ supports it any more sigh ....I remember reading some place a year ago that support was being drop for wheezy.... upgrade to Raspbian.. i would rather use my own RPI 3 if I have to be forced or limited to a RPI and Ubuntu 16 .... so I may not buy another A4 till they fix the limited controller issue to me that is a big issue  and may be another issue causing the boards to drop .....I was giving it some thought of buying another half till the boards started acting up if they are ..EastShore Mining Devices has them back in stack for 899 a 100 bucks more then i paid for this one ...

Don't get me wrong l love the miner the power it uses and small form factor but my Alchemist with 5 working boards and jstefanop firmware with BFG support runs better then this does on most pools, ...IF  jstefanop was to write one for this if he hasn't yet i would gladly pay him 60 bucks for a copy .... even 60 bucks a miner if he requested it that's fair to me ...

The sound is no longer a problem for me let it run at full spin i have in a room in my basement that is sound proofed, i may turn into a miner room soon with one window so venting won't be a problem, if i do ...

Last thought for those who don't know the SD card has to be a 8 GIB or less the slot size has to be Class 10 SDHC Card or the big one  in this case 8 gib or the OS wont fit it .. and using a big slot adapter with the little standard card won't do it  or using a 16 GIB card with SDHC support didn't work for me, i forget that pI only takes one size card slot wise i think and never allowed  use any thing over 8 GIB...with that OS ...

I know no one cares but that's how i feel and gonna say it any way ......  

The fans are approx 65dbA, so pretty loud. It's possible (if you have multiple rigs), ti use ducting to a larger/quieter fan used in AC units or squirrel cage fans.
If you want truely silent, then you need to drop the miner boards and the ATX PSU into a mineral oil bath.
Then, use tubing to circulate the mineral oil through a radiator, perhaps something like a car radiator from an old car. That way, the noise is outside, but the miners are inside.

No they still use the old Pis, they have to be the version 2 of the B . one of mine only has the BCM chip and ethernet controller, they left off everything else, no usb jack , power , etc, and yes all of mine are rusty. As as for making it work on a newer version, well it wont work out of the box, it will have to be recompiled due to the bcm2708 libraries needing to be different , not to say it cant be . I have been allowed to get the source code and were working on making them work a lot better myself and another person have made some good progress.

AS far as the fans , yes they are loud but I put some dc-dc converters on them dropped them to about 8volts and they are a lot more tolerable , it only changed the CFM about 30% and they run only about +5c higher.

I guess I can ask what would people like to see in this, things we have done so far is make them a lot more stable and done the xnsub addition.

While it would be neat to water cool them I'd say be more hassle than good, although I have though about it.

No, there is no opensource version of CGminer.

Drop it in a tub of mineral oil...

Man talk about cheap or cutting corners i had to open the controller mine came with the RPI b not b plus or 2b but mine was rusting and old the pins on the SD slot were bent to the point the only SD it worked with was the one  it came with and that was hard to get it to boot or the only one that would boot the miner with any image i found so far that works on the A4 ... .. good fpr me thu i had a b i don't use any more with no bent pins on the SD slot, and no rust ... I put it on the addon board it booted up no waiting sad thu i'm  gonna figure out or try to plug a RPI 3 or any PI into the board , the add on board on the RPI b is all you really need.


my other question is there any open Source Software for that version of CGMINer ?  and i wish BFG worked with it , i know it doesn't ...



so im guessing it can be watered cooled if you want to go that route and have some heat sinks made, the boards from what i saw are your normal type hash boards not like the miners bitmian put out after the S5 ... I didn't open the miner and have no plans to till the warranty is up . only went by pictures i saw ...

Not that I know of. The specs on the fan are 200CFM, so as long as you can vent 200CFM through the rig you should be able to replace with ducting or other forced air.

just got my first A4, thing is loud, something i wont be running at nite glad for me it's just hobby right  now..

my question now has anyone come up with a quieter fan ?. All ready like it but the nosie gonna have to either find quieter fans or build something around it...

jump  to baikal mmmmmmmm yummy

They guy that Innosillicon decided to go with improving the source code is called Nowayz on this forum btw

I have never received any word back from Innosillicon regarding my proposal to them, not even after a reminder email with a modified proposal

Please contact us if you have B1 or B2 A4 miners. We can help you to update directly to B3.
Email to: [email protected]

Well batch 3 is better however I have made some modifications, I replaced /sbin/shutdown with another a file that does a hardware MCU reset , had to wire that in along with a sudo pkill cgminer to kill cgminer off, all of the stuff in ran in a do loop do it instantly restarts, well nearly for some reason the cgminer binary takes 10 seconds to start now for some reason.

I have been unable to flash my own boards from batch 3 firmware that I pulled to my batch 2 cards just get a quick sharp LED flash, dont know the error of my ways, the jig is a month late or so , needless to say I am a bit sad

From my observation they have a script that reboots the Pi any time it see's 1 Get Failure.

I haven't had time to chase/find it yet though but I can confirm it does it consistently.

I've got a 3rd A4 cube coming that is supposed to be batch 3. Hopefully that gamble pays off when they fix the stability issues.

I hope so to, they did reply said whoever had the jig now was having to make repairs to it and it would be a while,  already a month later than expected, the batch 3 boards I do have work better but still not happy , made some hardware mods and some software mods as well to make it a little better but still no where like they claimed.

They said they still are not sure on letting the driver code out, so I guess we will chug along with what we got.

I don't understand the thought to make the machines reboot in a stratum disconnect.

Hopefully we see some updates soon. The Chinese holiday ended on February 4th so they have been back in office at least 4 full days now.

Cool that is nice, I just wish I could get mine updated to Batch 3.. these units are driving me nuts!

The datacenter ended up allowing a separate router with private VPN, so I can VPN into the router and reach the rigs.

I see two plans here depending on what you have access to.

If you can get an static IP at the data center you would need another PC or router and switch to bridge between you can the miners. You could set up and VPN on the router you could connect to and have access to the network behind them.

If your miners just get a private IP and you don't get the ability to set up anything else , if you had a static IP or at least something you could use a dynamic DNS on the outside you could set the miners to use say OpenVPN and have it start, each miner open a VPN to the outside world where you could connect to it as well.

And you could combined them if you could add a switch and router but don't get a outside IP then you can have the router build a VPN to an outside device and go from there.

Maybe this helps some, kind done a little of both.

Im worried about it because if they expose my A4 on the internet, anyone anywhere can change the config.
If they don't expose it, then I have no way to monitor the boards to see if anything died, or to change the pool.

Honestly you arent going to find a datacenter that will let you put your own router on their network. That is just a big no no. If it is secured in the datacenter why are you so worried about it? IF you are that paranoid just talk to whoever you signed your hosting contract with and get them to put in writing they will pay for lost revenue if somehow the account information gets changed.