Owners of A4 General Discussion and Help

CritterDog wrote:

vinylwasp wrote:

CritterDog wrote: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..

Yes, it drops down to the default in the UI, but it's actually mining with the new setting. You might have also noticed that max Mv is now 850, as opposed to 860Mv in the 1.0.0 firmware. Also when you look at stats the V 1.0.1 and V1.0.2 firmware report all the cores per chip like this 100-100-100 (20 times) with a total of 2000, whereas the V 1.0.0 firmware (batch 1 miners) don't have this field at all.

It looks like they've created a watcher process which is polling the cgminer api and when it sees some event it restarts the miner. I'm going to look at the code today and see if I can find what it's looking for.

HTH.

vinylwasp wrote: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.

From the looks of it mine appear to be 10/21 (EDIT) Batch 2 because mine says LTC LIMITED--T SERIES 1.0.0T

I've gotten near 48 hours hashing here without a drop and it seems to be "mostly" stable on this version, I tried 1.0.2 out and 1 card would go down within 25 minutes almost like clock work.

Configuration Webpage of mine
[Archived image unavailable: http://w61t.imgup.net/A4100Te1fa.jpg]

vinylwasp wrote:

CritterDog wrote:

vinylwasp wrote:
It looks like they've created a watcher process which is polling the cgminer api and when it sees some event it restarts the miner. I'm going to look at the code today and see if I can find what it's looking for.

HTH.

This is the hacker's way of fixing things when your product is so bad that you can't figure out what is actually wrong. Instead of fixing the problem, simply restart it and hope that it doesn't recur. One would have hoped that a company selling millions of dollars' worth of these things could come up with some idea of what is happening.

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

vinylwasp wrote:

CritterDog wrote:

This is the hacker's way of fixing things when your product is so bad that you can't figure out what is actually wrong. Instead of fixing the problem, simply restart it and hope that it doesn't recur. One would have hoped that a company selling millions of dollars' worth of these things could come up with some idea of what is happening.

Possibly good news is Innosilicon's website has gone down today so no new sales should be occurring while they sort out this quality problem.
http://www.innosilicon.com/

Innosilicon posted over on Bitcointalk that they are making the software open source soon. > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1523298.msg16780895#msg16780895

Here's to hoping that it's sooner than later.

I agree regarding their sales -- the longer they take to fix this problem, the less buyers there will be.

No way a large mining operation could use these right now.

That being said, mine is going over 9 hours strong right now since I went back to 1.0.0T

EDIT: guess I spoke too soon lol -- 1 card went down, not minutes after this post and the miner restarted itself. -- Now trying 820mv

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

vinylwasp wrote:

CritterDog wrote:

This is the hacker's way of fixing things when your product is so bad that you can't figure out what is actually wrong. Instead of fixing the problem, simply restart it and hope that it doesn't recur. One would have hoped that a company selling millions of dollars' worth of these things could come up with some idea of what is happening.

hehe, this is how their firmware works too?!?! This is exactly what I worked on beefing up in the Titan firmware. I turned their 8KB watchdog script(mostly useless) into a working and fully featured 66KB script.

GenTarkin wrote:

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

vinylwasp wrote:

This is the hacker's way of fixing things when your product is so bad that you can't figure out what is actually wrong. Instead of fixing the problem, simply restart it and hope that it doesn't recur. One would have hoped that a company selling millions of dollars' worth of these things could come up with some idea of what is happening.

hehe, this is how their firmware works too?!?! This is exactly what I worked on beefing up in the Titan firmware. I turned their 8KB watchdog script(mostly useless) into a working and fully featured 66KB script.

Do you plan to produce better firmware for these miners?

We desperately need firmware for them that resolves the heating issues with work restarts. Perhaps there is a way to fund this effort so the firmware is completed quickly so that everyone involved can install it and get increased hashrate.

""hehe, this is how their firmware works too?!?! This is exactly what I worked on beefing up in the Titan firmware. I turned their 8KB watchdog script(mostly useless) into a working and fully featured 66KB script.""

We could sure use some help with the A4. It runs hot on litecoinpool also. Best I can get there is around 250Mhs and the temps are to high as Steve pointed out. The spec sheet says I believe 40c max and these are running at 50c even on litecoinpool depending on settings

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

GenTarkin wrote:

Steve Sokolowski wrote:
This is the hacker's way of fixing things when your product is so bad that you can't figure out what is actually wrong. Instead of fixing the problem, simply restart it and hope that it doesn't recur. One would have hoped that a company selling millions of dollars' worth of these things could come up with some idea of what is happening.

hehe, this is how their firmware works too?!?! This is exactly what I worked on beefing up in the Titan firmware. I turned their 8KB watchdog script(mostly useless) into a working and fully featured 66KB script.

Do you plan to produce better firmware for these miners?

We desperately need firmware for them that resolves the heating issues with work restarts. Perhaps there is a way to fund this effort so the firmware is completed quickly so that everyone involved can install it and get increased hashrate.

Steve, while Inno have implemented some thermal protection with this hardware, I don't think this is the core problem. My Batch 2's are well cooled and as you can see I'm trialing many variations of voltage, diff, Mhz, and G=off, etc. Not one of them seems to run longer than 20-25 minutes before it resets all the cards. One the other hand my Batch 1 miners are very stable. I think it's the version of cgminer they've compiled which is different for every batch.

vinylwasp wrote:

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

GenTarkin wrote:

hehe, this is how their firmware works too?!?! This is exactly what I worked on beefing up in the Titan firmware. I turned their 8KB watchdog script(mostly useless) into a working and fully featured 66KB script.

Do you plan to produce better firmware for these miners?

We desperately need firmware for them that resolves the heating issues with work restarts. Perhaps there is a way to fund this effort so the firmware is completed quickly so that everyone involved can install it and get increased hashrate.

Steve, while Inno have implemented some thermal protection with this hardware, I don't think this is the core problem. My Batch 2's are well cooled and as you can see I'm trialing many variations of voltage, diff, Mhz, and G=off, etc. Not one of them seems to run longer than 20-25 minutes before it resets all the cards. One the other hand my Batch 1 miners are very stable. I think it's the version of cgminer they've compiled which is different for every batch.

I have a batch one set but could not make it work on this pool.. Can I ask what settings you are using then I can see if I get the same results as you do.. Thanks