Identifying your ASIC miners issues and how to fix them?

ASIC is a short word for Application-specific integrated circuit. ASIC is a device designed for one purpose of digital mining currency only, and it runs complicated calculations searching for a unique number. In proof of work systems like bitcoin rewards, the first person to find the number.

All of this work does not happen alone. Indeed, there is some maintenance to be done on the machines. Besides, malicious actors are increasingly targeting mining operations intending to infect their network and take part or all of the hashrate. In this article, we identify the common causes of problems and how to solve these problems.

Update Passwords

Do you want to improve a safe password for miners? You can use tools like Awesome Miner to change passwords in bulk. Suppose you forgot the password; you can restore factory settings before logging back into the miners behind the scenes. If you use an SD card to reset, you can change the default password with your own updated password. There is a considerable threat to ASIC miners; a virus that listens to the password entered by the user in the web interface during authorization puts all the ASICs on the network at risk because more than 90% of users use the same password for all their devices. The password alone will not be sufficient protection.

Bulk Configuration

With the popular APMinerTool, you’ll be able to bulk the configuration process. Using this tool, you can manage miners in bulk by doing the following.

• Detect miners in a specific IP range
• Select “miner manager” to move to the management interface
• Select to activate the “IP editor.”
• Click add (+) to obtain the IP range.
• Double click on each IP sector to modify
• Click “Save” to save changes.

Start scanning the configured miners and select the IP range examined, and a window will pop on your screen, displaying the number of miners in each state. Keep in mind that you can only choose the successfully scanned miners.

You can configure the miners by

1. Switching the coin to the corresponding stratum and fill each pool “pool.” And make changes manually
2. Select all miners or specific miners for the correspondent coin mining and set workers name password and other details
3. Click config to configure the selected miners. when the configuration is complete, a notification will pop on your screen indicating the number of miners in the state “config success” or “config fail.”

Bulk Upgrade Miner Firmware

Are you having issues with your hardware? That is an indication that your firmware could need an upgrade, and this is how you do it using the APMinerTool.

• Click “upgrade” to switch interface.
• Select the corresponding IP range and tick on the miners that need an upgrade
• Suppose you have already downloaded the firmware. Extract it and upload it directly.
• Click on “Add firmware,” and a pop-up window displaying “Upload Success” will show when the upload is complete.

Using this tool, you can “save setting” by default when upgrading firmware in bulk. If you don’t want to keep this setting, uncheck the box next to “save setting” before upgrading.

Choose the miner type and firmware name and proceed on upgrade. On your screen, you will see the number of miners to upgrade. After two minutes, results will show if the firmware upgrade was successful or not.

Bulk Change Miner Overclock Setting (useful for older miners)

Before overclocking miners, the first step is to upgrade the tool to the latest multi-option firmware on your miners. after upgrading, double-check if you can overclock the miner in APMinerTool. You can do this by either.

• You can scan the data displayed in the mode column. If there is data, you can go ahead and overclock the miner.
• You can also login to the miner backstage (miner configuration) page and confirm if you can see the working mode option. If there is, you can go ahead and overclock your miner accordingly.
• If there is no data displayed in both mode column and miner backstage, this means that you have not upgraded your miner to the latest multi-option firmware. Luckily you can confirm this by clicking on the overclock button. A message will pop up, notifying you, “your miner does not support the overclocking function.”

If you double-check and confirm you are ready to overclock. Select the miners you want to overclock, click the overclock button, and select the corresponding mode and click OK in the tool. The miner will eventually restart, and the overclock mode configuration mode will be complete. Here are some of the things you should note and be cautious about when overclocking

Caution

• Currently, only T9+ and the S9 series support the overclock function.
• Power supply requirement and working mode adjustments

Note if a message pop on your screen indicating password error after overclocking, don’t be worried, change the password under “Basic Settings in settings” and enter the same password as from backstage.

Scan for Viruses

Viruses are hazardous to any machine and business. Therefore, the antivirus function in the tool allows you to scan for viruses by merely selecting the IP range and click “Start Scan” and scan for viruses. After scanning, you will see four types of results.

• Normal, this means there is no virus detected.
• Infected, this means a virus detected. The files infected will be displayed under the “error detail.”
• Secure firmware means secure firmware installed on the miner port 22 is closed, or SSH function is disabled.
• Not supported, this means there could be either.

1. A wrong password, the miner password is not similar to this tool password, and you will need to change it in basic settings or backstage.
2. SSH failed; this is either port 22 is closed. Use an SD card to reset the miner.
3. Remove the infected miners, download antivirus firmware for the corresponding miners, and select kill viruses. After successful virus removal, a pop-up message will display “kill success.”

If the miner’s firmware is old, the configuration settings will be lost after upgrading firmware.

Scan for Miner Issues (low hash power, fan issues, etc.)

Your machine begins to no longer act in a normal way. Start with these basic diagnostics.

Basic Setting

1. Make interval changes of status refreshing while monitoring the crypto miners.
2. You can set default and new password for miners.
3. Look at your pool configuration. Make sure the pool is online.
4. Make sure you have no spelling mistakes in your username and password.

Investigate physically

Watch your machines at work. Place your hands in front of and behind the machine and compare it with working machines if you notice any abnormality, for example, very cold or scorching air, a fan that does not work, a light that does not turn on.

Do a reset

If after the first pass on all your parameters and an investigation of the machine does not reveal anything abnormal, reset it. For this step, we advise you to take an SD card to re-install the original Bitmain firmware, then update to the firmware of your choice.

What to do if you determine some miners are not currently operational? You will need to make a decision.

The hashboards are the brains of your mining operations. Each panel has multiple microchips that may need fixing. If you have determined that the miners are corrupt, you will need to make a decision.

You can hire a D-Central professional to come to your facility. We will check if there are loose power cables on the miners and contain the usual operation issues. One other option is to pay for a replacement part and change the damaged part yourself. The final option is replacing the individual damaged chips on your boards. This demands experience and specialized equipment. D-Central Labs is a repair center near you, we have new offices in Montreal, where we receive all your orders to repair machines and get back to work as soon as possible, saving your time and money.

Primary issues affecting bitcoin mining repairs

These are the most common issues you will encounter with your Bitcoin mining operations.

1. Hashboards
2. Power supply
3. Fans
4. Control boards

Fix issue number 1: Hashboards (boards and microchips)

Expense: Average to high

Difficulty: High

To get as much power, ASICs come with certain inconveniences. For example, chips are chained on hashboards. It’s comparable to old Christmas lights, if one bulb burns out, the whole garland goes out. So if a chip gets damaged on your board, the rest of the chain becomes unreachable and goes out. The only way to bring these boards back alive is to replace the failing chip. There are also other possible problems that can result in a “0 asic board”. D-Central Labs has all the tools to bring these boards back to life.

Fix issue number 2: Power supply

Expense: Average

Difficulty: Low

Power supplies are usually damaged when there is a surge or when the cooling system malfunctions. If it comes to testing the faulty part and replacing it, such as a capacitor for example, our electronics technicians will replace those parts and row your PSUs alive, for a fraction of the price!

Fix issue number 3: Fans

Expense: Low

Difficulty: Low

Repairing or replacing a broken fan is an easy fix, but it is also the most requiring issue. More often than not a machine stops mining entirely because one or more fans are broken. Nothing could be easier to change, go to our online store to order replacement fans now.

Fix issue number 4: Control boards

Expense: High

Difficulty: Low

Often repairing a control board means buying a new replacement board. Sometimes repairing a control board is twice expensive as buying one from a second-hand miner. Our e-commerce has all the control boards you could possibly need.

Repairing steps for a bitcoin miner

• Investigate your hardware following the steps in this guide
• Hire a professional to check if they can troubleshoot the issue on-site
• Use APMinerTool or Awesome Miner to update firmware software and check if the issues are corrected.
• Repair your miners only if they make sense to repair them; S9s are probably not worth repairing. In this case, order a replacement hashboard.

Bitcoin mining is the best way to support decentralization; however, it can be costly. It is wise to keep track and record of operating cost, repair cost, electricity cost, and labour cost.

Recently, global Bitcoin mining diversification has increased, bringing a strain on the repair services needed to maintain the United States and Canada mining fleet. It is good to note this will reduce downtime and the considerable cost of repairing and maintaining hardware. Today the estimated saving cost of shipping is around $100 per unit. Therefore, having a repair center within North America will significantly reduce the repair time by two weeks. Once repairing your mining machine is complete, we ensure you get it back as soon as possible.

If your bitcoin mining hardware stops working, you need to repair all your ASIC miners as soon as possible. Suppose you fail to do that; you will be losing money every single second. D-Central Labs has a great base of understanding of how crypto miners work, their weak side, and the common causes of their failure. We also took our time to learn how to diagnose malfunctioning mining machines and how to repair them. Today we are offering the same valuable and reliable services to all our clients. We understand how it hurts when miners do not work. Just give us a call and let us do everything for you. Don’t worry; we will take on all activities related to bitcoin mining machines repair and maintenances.

All you need to do is to prepare a detailed calculation of whether it is worth to fix your machines or not. Note that we also help our customers purchase spare parts for the broken devices and new devices if your devices are irreparable. Before you repair, first, analyze the failure rate and figure out what’s happening to your miner for you to achieve a better return on investment.