Owners of A4 General Discussion and Help

[Longsnowsm]

Thanks for the information that the hashrate drops on both pools. That info helps a lot because having a slight hashrate drop on Litecoinpool indicates that we aren't forgetting to do something that Litecoinpool does. It confirms that the problem is the different characteristics of difficulty and restarts on our pool compared to Litecoinpool.

You said that one of your hashing boards does not get any work. KnC Titans are very similar in that they take a long time to propogate work to all their chips. This behavior is the reason we originally introduced the work restart time. This leads me to believe that our work restart time calculations are underestimating the work restart times of A4s. I want to look at the shares the miner submitted. Was that miner the only miner on your account? If not, did you assign that worker a name?

We are testing with tradewiz a change on the development server to see if the problem is indeed a difficulty switching issue. We'll let you know as soon as we have results.

Hi Chris,

At the moment I only have 1 miner mining. The second one will be coming online in a another day or two. Waiting for cables from Corsair. How do I add a worker name? Thanks for the help. The board without work eventually recovered last night, but it is very slow to pick up work after it falls out.

[Chris Sokolowski]

I have heard rumors of a firmware update for A4s coming out, and perhaps that could help with the issue of dropping boards. I would look on Innosilicon's website about it, but their website seems to be offline at the moment (I'm getting a DNS error).

To add a worker name, just use n=worker_name in your password, replacing worker_name with whatever you want to call your worker.

[Longsnowsm]

I have heard rumors of a firmware update for A4s coming out, and perhaps that could help with the issue of dropping boards. I would look on Innosilicon's website about it, but their website seems to be offline at the moment (I'm getting a DNS error).

To add a worker name, just use n=worker_name in your password, replacing worker_name with whatever you want to call your worker.

Some of the guys have been sent a firmware update. I haven't gotten a copy yet. I have not heard if it is helping those with the update yet. Inno is saying the miners are stable so don't expect a lot of updates... I beg to differ with them on that. It has been a rough day mining with several events with boards dropping, and the miner crashed on me at least once requiring power cycles.

I will add a worker to my miner so we can keep track of it separately. The second A4 will be online either tomorrow or Tuesday depending on when cables arrive.

[Longsnowsm]

Well after multiple crashes, dropped cards, and hung miner today multiple occasions I think I need to move the A4 back over to Litecoinpool and hang tight until we see some firmware updates and we can figure out what it takes to keep the A4 happy and hashing at a reasonable rate. If you guys need me to run the A4 here so we can debug the A4 to get the best performance on Prohashing I am willing to do that. Just let me know.

[vinylwasp]

I have heard rumors of a firmware update for A4s coming out, and perhaps that could help with the issue of dropping boards. I would look on Innosilicon's website about it, but their website seems to be offline at the moment (I'm getting a DNS error).

To add a worker name, just use n=worker_name in your password, replacing worker_name with whatever you want to call your worker.

Chris, you're right, there's currently 3 versions of firmware. Very early machines have one, the next batch has another, and then there's a 3rd which was published 11/02. I don't have the later yet myself as Inno have published it on Baidu and you need a CN mainland phone number to register. It's all in Chinese too so a bit hard to make sense of anyway.

I've got a mix of the very first and 2nd batch and unfortunately I opened them together and mixed up the units and the SD cards. I'm currently working through the process of unpicking that mess.

If you have a very early machine (my first batch were shipped 10/13) then I've been told by Chloe not to apply the firmware update but to increase the voltage to 820Mv. I've tried that and have even gone to 825Mv to improve stability.

I'm also very conscious of Inno's statement about automated heat and power management so I'm keeping them quite cool.

HTH.

[CritterDog]

I have heard rumors of a firmware update for A4s coming out, and perhaps that could help with the issue of dropping boards. I would look on Innosilicon's website about it, but their website seems to be offline at the moment (I'm getting a DNS error).

To add a worker name, just use n=worker_name in your password, replacing worker_name with whatever you want to call your worker.

Chris, you're right, there's currently 3 versions of firmware. Very early machines have one, the next batch has another, and then there's a 3rd which was published 11/02. I don't have the later yet myself as Inno have published it on Baidu and you need a CN mainland phone number to register. It's all in Chinese too so a bit hard to make sense of anyway.

I've got a mix of the very first and 2nd batch and unfortunately I opened them together and mixed up the units and the SD cards. I'm currently working through the process of unpicking that mess.

If you have a very early machine (my first batch were shipped 10/13) then I've been told by Chloe not to apply the firmware update but to increase the voltage to 820Mv. I've tried that and have even gone to 825Mv to improve stability.

I'm also very conscious of Inno's statement about automated heat and power management so I'm keeping them quite cool.

HTH.

This is very interesting. I did not get mine until end of September it was a 2 cube set then I got a single unit later with control. They do not mix well together.. I have the one unit that when powered on it flashes its red light and goes solid when mining starts..The other 2 when powered up just come on a solid red light even though its not hashing. I wonder if those are from the first batch possibly

[vinylwasp]

In the Web UI, batch 1 machines just have a banner which reads LTC LIMITED--T SERIES. Batch 2 machines have V1.0.1 underneath the banner in light grey or if you have the latest firmware release (built 02/11) it will say V1.0.2.

If you ever get them mixed up (which I did), there's a small tamper proof seal on a screw at the rear which has the build date written on it. Batch 1 miners were built before 15th Oct.

I spent most of today (Sunday in NZ), sorting out the two batches and applying the new firmware release (V1.02) to my batch 2 machines. It's still not very stable with lots of restarts.
My batch one miners on the other hand are rock solid. I think I may try setting static difficulty on the B2 machines and see how that affects their performance.

[CritterDog]

In the Web UI, batch 1 machines just have a banner which reads LTC LIMITED--T SERIES. Batch 2 machines have V1.0.1 underneath the banner in light grey or if you have the latest firmware release (built 02/11) it will say V1.0.2.

If you ever get them mixed up (which I did), there's a small tamper proof seal on a screw at the rear which has the build date written on it. Batch 1 miners were built before 15th Oct.

I spent most of today (Sunday in NZ), sorting out the two batches and applying the new firmware release (V1.02) to my batch 2 machines. It's still not very stable with lots of restarts.
My batch one miners on the other hand are rock solid. I think I may try setting static difficulty on the B2 machines and see how that affects their performance.

Thanks for the info.. It seems then my dual cube set is batch 1 because there is no version number but on the single unit it does have V1.0.1. I got mine mixed up last night I wanted to see if I could run all 3 on one controller. Nope it seems the 2 separate batches will not work together. I am so glade I spent the extra 40.00 and ordered the single with its own control board.

[vinylwasp]

In the Web UI, batch 1 machines just have a banner which reads LTC LIMITED--T SERIES. Batch 2 machines have V1.0.1 underneath the banner in light grey or if you have the latest firmware release (built 02/11) it will say V1.0.2.
.

Here's another tip: The 1.0.2 firmware has 2 extra speed settings; 1224Mhz and 1248Mhz. You'll hit 280 Mhs with 1248Mhz but it's no more stable, seems to restart around 22minutes. Try 820 or even 825Mv.
HTH. Cheers

[CritterDog]

In the Web UI, batch 1 machines just have a banner which reads LTC LIMITED--T SERIES. Batch 2 machines have V1.0.1 underneath the banner in light grey or if you have the latest firmware release (built 02/11) it will say V1.0.2.
.

Here's another tip: The 1.0.2 firmware has 2 extra speed settings; 1224Mhz and 1248Mhz. You'll hit 280 Mhs with 1248Mhz but it's no more stable, seems to restart around 22minutes. Try 820 or even 825Mv.
HTH. Cheers

I noticed those higher Mhz settings just yesterday. I tried to raise it to 1248 but it would not stick. AS soon as I hit start it dropped itself back down to default setting.. I believe I had the volt setting on 820 when I tried it..