Welcome to the DCENT_OS Documentation Portal — the single home for everything you need to install, configure, tune, recover and build against DCENT_OS, D-Central’s open-source (GPL-3.0) firmware for Antminer hardware. Everything here is written for the closed beta and updated as the firmware moves toward public beta.

Status, honestly: DCENT_OS is experimental, not a production product. It is in active closed beta on the Antminer S9 family only (S9 / S9i / S9j). There are no public image downloads yet, public beta is planned for summer 2026 (an estimate, not a guarantee), and flashing custom firmware can brick a miner and void the manufacturer warranty. Joining is a waitlist, never a pre-order. The always-current state of play lives on the beta-status page — that page is the source of truth; this portal organizes the documentation around it.

DCENT_OS stands on the shoulders of the people who made open Bitcoin mining firmware possible: the CGMiner / BMMiner lineage that every ASIC miner descends from, Braiins for proving that open firmware and runtime autotuning could ship on real Antminers (and for authoring Stratum V2), Luxor, and the wider open-source mining community. We are one more layer trying to make mining a little more decentralized, and we are doing it in public.

Start here

• New to the beta? Read the beta-welcome & expectations page, then the hardware-readiness & recovery checklist before you flash anything.
• Recovery first. Before the install guide, read the rollback & UART recovery guide. Knowing how to get back to stock before you flash is the difference between an experiment and a brick.
• Join the waitlist. Closed-beta access opens one slot at a time. Join the beta waitlist (we email you once, when your slot opens — no broadcasts).

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About DCENT_OS

DCENT_OS is an open-source firmware project for Bitmain Antminer hardware, built by D-Central — a Quebec repair bench that has been fixing ASIC miners since 2016. The design goals: a 0% mandatory dev-fee target (user-configurable donation), recovery built in from day one, honest behavior (no hidden processes — trust should be verifiable), and a Heat Mode that treats an old miner as the space heater it physically is. It is GPL-3.0 so anyone can read, audit, fork and improve it.

• License: GPL-3.0 (open-source target after public beta).
• Source: github.com/DCentralTech/DCENT_OS
• Where it fits on the firmware map: see the vendor-neutral firmware comparison matrix. DCENT_OS is not on the production feature chart yet — it is closed beta — and we say so there too.

Quick start (S9, closed beta)

The only control-board family with a beta image slot today is the Antminer S9 family, whose control board is the Xilinx Zynx-7010 (dual-core Cortex-A9 at 667 MHz with an Artix-7 FPGA). The S9 boots from an SD card when the J3 boot jumper is shorted, which is exactly why it is the safest family to start a beta on: install and recovery both run from removable media, not a one-way NAND flash.

1. Get your hardware ready. Follow the readiness & recovery checklist: an S9 you can take offline, a tested recovery SD card, and a 3.3 V UART/serial adapter (115200 8-N-1) so you always have a console.
2. Read recovery first. Roll back to stock & recover a failed flash (SD + UART).
3. Install. Install DCENT_OS on the Antminer S9 (SD card).
4. Configure & tune. Point it at your pool, then choose a profile (see Configure and Tune below).

Install (per control board)

DCENT_OS images are organized by control-board / platform family, not by individual SKU, because the firmware that boots a board is what differs. Install paths open one validated family at a time.

Control-board family	Representative models	Status	Install path
S9 family (Zynq-7010)	S9, S9i, S9j	Active closed beta — first SD-card image slot	S9 SD-card install guide
S17 / T17 family	S17, S17 Pro, T17, S17+, T17e…	In active development; no public image yet	Planned
S19 family	S19, S19j Pro, S19 XP…	In active development; planned to follow the S9, one validated control board at a time	Planned
S21 family	S21, S21 Pro, T21…	In active development; ships last in the staged rollout	Planned

The S9 family ships first deliberately: its Zynq control board boots and recovers from an SD card, so a bad flash is reversible by swapping a card rather than re-soldering NAND. Later families move at the pace of validated, recoverable bring-up — we will not flip a family to “install now” until there is a published image and a tested recovery path for it. (Verb discipline: until a family has a live image, the honest word is “in active development,” never “runs on.”)

Configure

Once DCENT_OS boots and you reach the web interface, configuration is the familiar set of mining basics — with recovery and honesty layered in:

• Pool / Stratum. Add your pool URL, worker and password. DCENT_OS speaks the Stratum V1 the whole ecosystem runs on today. Stratum V2 was authored by Braiins and ships natively only in their firmware as of 2026; if and when DCENT_OS adds it, that will be documented here, not implied before it is real.
• Network & access. Set a static IP or DHCP reservation so you can always find the miner, and so your recovery SD card and UART console map to a known device.
• Identity & honesty. DCENT_OS does not run hidden processes; what the firmware is doing should be inspectable. The dev-fee target is 0% with a user-configurable donation — you choose, and you can see it.

For background on the configuration vocabulary (per-domain voltage vs per-chip frequency, V/F curves, thermal derating), the mining glossary defines every term as a citable entry.

Tune

Tuning DCENT_OS is autotuning, not preset-picking. The firmware derives frequency and voltage at runtime from your target and the board’s measured behavior — it does not load a fixed table of “presets.” This is the same idea Braiins proved on Antminers; DCENT_OS implements it openly.

• Voltage is per DOMAIN, not per chip. On a hashboard, groups of chips share a DC-DC converter (a voltage domain); you cannot set a single chip’s voltage independently. The firmware tunes per domain and clocks per chip.
• Efficiency over heroics. On eight-year-old S9 silicon, tuning down for J/TH is safer and more useful than chasing peak hashrate. The S9’s BM1387 runs ~75 GH/s per chip at ~98 J/TH stock; there is far more value in quiet, efficient heat than in a fragile overclock.
• Heat Mode. The S9’s signature beta feature — hit a target temperature, stay quiet, hash with the headroom. See DCENT_OS Heat Mode first boot.
• Reference tuning data. The ASIC power-profiles database shows the realistic efficiency envelope across models so you tune toward a number that exists, not a fantasy.

OpenAPI & data reference

DCENT_OS is built by the same team that publishes D-Central’s open mining data layer, and it is designed to be machine-legible. While the firmware’s own local API is documented per build in the changelog, the public, keyless data services you can build against today are:

• D-Central Mining API (/dc/v1/) — free, keyless JSON: miners, power profiles, hashprice, reliability, price index, error codes and Bitaxe benchmarks.
• Open Mining Data hub (/data/) — every dataset as CSV + JSON under CC-BY-4.0, with a documented methodology & provenance page.

When DCENT_OS exposes its own local control API, the OpenAPI specification will be published here and versioned alongside the changelog — documented before it is recommended, never the other way round.

Changelog (versioned, honest)

DCENT_OS is pre-1.0 beta software. We version honestly, including known regressions — a changelog that only lists wins is marketing, not documentation.

Build	Phase	Notes
2026.06-dev	Closed beta (S9 family)	S9 SD-card install path documented and testable. Heat Mode (target-temperature, quiet) and rollback/UART recovery in active testing. Known limitation: S9 family only — no S17/S19/S21 images yet. No public image download; access is waitlist-gated.
summer 2026 (planned)	Public beta (estimate)	First public image slot. Target, not a guarantee. The beta-status page carries the live date.

Per-build release notes — including the inevitable “this build broke X, here is the workaround” entries — are tracked on the beta-status page and in the GitHub repository as the project matures.

Recovery & unbrick

Recovery is a first-class part of DCENT_OS, not an afterthought. The S9 family was chosen first because it recovers cleanly: it can boot from an SD card via the J3 jumper, and it exposes a UART console you can reach with a 3.3 V serial adapter at 115200 8-N-1. On the Zynq, the BootROM is hardcoded in silicon and reads boot-mode pins, and the FPGA bitstream in mtd0 is RSA-verified and not user-replaceable — but mtd1 (the ramdisk) is SHA-256-verified and replaceable, which is the seam custom firmware lives in.

• Roll back to stock & recover a failed flash (SD + UART) — the document to read before you install.
• Generic SD-card recovery background: SD-card firmware recovery guide and firmware update failed: how to fix.
• Hardware-level recovery (UART/serial, damaged NAND, board-level) is also a paid service at the D-Central repair bench — separate from the firmware, and not a warranty.

FAQ

Is DCENT_OS available to download now?

No. DCENT_OS is in closed beta with no public image downloads. Access opens one waitlist slot at a time, on the Antminer S9 family first. Public beta is planned for summer 2026 (an estimate, not a guarantee).

Which miners can run DCENT_OS today?

Only the Antminer S9 family (S9 / S9i / S9j) has a beta image slot today. The S17/T17, S19 and S21 families are in active development with no public image yet. We do not say a firmware “runs on” a board until there is a published, recoverable image for it.

Will joining the waitlist charge me anything?

No. The waitlist is not a pre-order. There is no charge and no obligation. We email you once, when your slot opens.

Can flashing DCENT_OS brick my miner or void my warranty?

Yes — it is experimental beta firmware. Flashing custom firmware can brick a miner and voids the manufacturer warranty. That is why recovery comes first: read the rollback & UART recovery guide and the beta safety & warranty note before you flash. Do not flash hardware you cannot afford to take offline.

What does DCENT_OS cost, and what is the dev fee?

The firmware is GPL-3.0 open source with a 0% mandatory dev-fee target and a user-configurable donation. You choose, and you can see it.

Where do I get help or report a bug?

Reporting bugs is the whole point of a closed beta. Join the DCENT community on Discord (the only real-time channel — email is capture-only, no broadcasts), watch the GitHub repository, and check the beta-status page for the current build.

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Last reviewed June 2026. DCENT_OS is experimental, closed-beta, GPL-3.0 firmware on the Antminer S9 family only; public beta is planned for summer 2026 (an estimate). Waitlist only — never a pre-order. D-Central, Laval, Quebec — a repair bench making Bitcoin mining one more layer decentralized, on the shoulders of the open-firmware community before us.