The obligatory background story: I'm a long-time bitcoin user since 2011. I first came across bitcoin and CPU-mined a block around 2010, but sadly I did not back the drive up. I've been a part time miner since then, starting up with GPU's and slowly upgrading to FPGA's and an Avalon. I have stopped mining for over a year due to my relocation and being generally super busy with everything else.
The review:
Shipping:
The miner was shipped extremely fast via Fedex from Israel to US. In total, it took 3 days including a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was at the door early morning on Monday.
The package was extremely well thought out and designed, and I could not feel any give in even after trying to sit on it.
Shown is the paper box housing it came in:
Setting up:
I bought two CX750 PSU's in anticipation of the miner. Setting up was straightforward - a paper clip was inserted in the green wire and a black wire respectively. (shoutout to Dogie for his extremely concise website here: http://www.dogiecoin.com/spondooliestech-sp20.html) Two cables of each PSU were connected to the miner, and powering up was effortless.
PSU's that I used:
The actual setting up took much more time on my part as I was trying to get it to connect to a large workspace network. For regular users with a limited number of devices on their network, opening myminer.io on any browser would work instantaneously. With the help of Spondolies-Tech (Guy), wh00per and the others, I managed to get it online.
Procedures for situation like this:
1 ) Get wireshark installed in your computer.
2 ) Connect the miner directly via ethernet cable to the computer.
3 ) Set up monitoring on the ethernet port using wireshark.
4 ) You'll get the DHCP requests from the miner unit as it tries to go online.
5 ) Write down the MAC address.
6 ) Whitelist the MAC address on your network.
7 ) Connect the miner directly to the network.
8 ) Using AngryIP scanner, try to determine the actual IP of the device. (I skipped this as I have access to the admin page showing the IP of the miner)
9 ) Fire up a browser while on the same network and go to http://(the ip address).
10 ) If it works, you'll be presented with a login screen. (user/pass:admin)
The mining:
It is really straightforward after you manage to connect to it. Just input your pool settings and you're good to go.
The miner stats after some time:
ASIC Stats:
The noise level is quite high - the decibel tool on my phone gives me around 80dB.
After running continuously for almost 24 hours, I'm happy to say that everything went well, although initially I had a few crashes (complete crash needing a power cycle) that I suspect was due to high temperatures in the box killing the control unit. I've since placed it somewhere cold, and it has been mining happily since.
Update: It's been running continuously for almost two days straight. No reboots/power cycle was required. It's been a dream.
Cheers,
John
PS: I'll add stuff to this as I keep on playing with it.