You’re better off just buying crypto instead of mining, right???
This is always a passionate discussion in crypto boards. Many say you're crazy to mine nowadays, or ever, but some say the return on investment is worth it. What's the right answer? Well, like anything, there is …
Crypto mining hackers or is there something more they could be up to?
Not your usual bloguverse post coming up. I've been in the woods for sometime and finally getting time to put some data back out here. While I've always been focused on crypto mining, specifically with ASICs, I …
Crypto Miner Fan Replacement
What to do when you're not hashing anymore, a very frustrating but often simple problem to fix. I've put together a quick cheat sheet of common problems that stop the hashing but for today we'll focus on …
Quick hack to monitor that your L7 (or any miner) is working
I've seen a lot of posts lately, and even got an message or two, asking how I remotely monitor my L7. Since (as of 8/12/22) there isn't any after-market firmware available, nor would I suggest using any …
How a cheap knockoff duct fan almost took out my crypto farm
How is that for a headline? Certainly nothing you ever want to read or even think about. As you can imagine, I feel very blessed and lucky that the circuit tripped before anything worse could happen, but …
So you want to buy a crypto miner but don’t know where to start?
I've been asked several times how I select miners that I use and what my process was for selecting them. I had to actually give this some thought. Some I select for pure profit, others I select …
Basic Multimeter Use for Debugging Crypto Miners
If you've owned a crypto miner for at least a year (or bought a used one) odds are you've had a problem with it. It's constantly rebooting, one of the hash boards isn't working, or a random …
How to troubleshoot your L3+ using the kernel log.
We've all had miners fail (if you're here that's most likely why), it's frustrating, maddening, but gosh darn-it, people like you. After you're done staring in the mirror, it's time to start figuring out what to do. …
Installing 120V or 240V 20A branch circuits for your crypto miners
In my series of, "I know what I want to see, but what do you want to see?" videos I had someone ask about the installation of basics 120V or 240V circuits. Well, you got it. I've …
A (not so) Quick Tutorial on HiveOS Tuning of an L3+
Got a question the other day about how to autotune an L3+ with aftermarket firmware. There are several firmwares out there that you can do this with, however I'll stick to HiveOS as it has the most …
L3+ Keeps Resetting
A buddy called me up and let me know he was having trouble with his L3+. It was resetting every 5-15 minutes, "for no reason." Well, there's always a reason so I took this as an opportunity …
Cooling and Quieting down an L7/S19
Ever have the feeling that you're about to have an aircraft take off from your house? If so, you're in good company (and making money) but the FAA hasn't found you yet and last thing you need …
What’s my fans CFM and how do I measure it?
Part of managing your crypto miner is finding the perfect balance between performance, power usage, cooling, and noise. It's not often easy, or even fair, how the balance works out. Often times I find myself sacrificing hashing …
What to do when you can’t fix an ASIC chip on an L3+ Hash Board?
Bypass it, jump over it, leave it in the dust, at least that's a path that I decided to go down. I was having problems with ASIC 28 on a hash board, and due to (most likely) …
How to know if it’s a bad 14V boost circuit or bad LDO’s
I've always heard the first thing that fails on an L3 hash board is the 14V boost circuit, I can say that I 100% agree with this. Of all the hash boards I've repaired, at least 75% …
Inside the Antminer L3+ Hashboard
One of the challenging things with working on an L3+ hash board is the lack of a full set of schematics or gerber files available for the printed circuit board (PCB) to figure out the full function …
S17/S17 Pro Firmware Options
The supposed "dog" of the crypto miners still has a lot of fight left in them. When I first looked at getting the S17 I read a lot of negative reviews, and there were/are issues with them, …
Don’t skimp on the solder when reflowing an ASIC…
What is that I see above? That's ASIC 28 on an L3+ hash board. You probably can't tell what's going on here, but I'll attempt to explain why the image above is bad and I promise I …
A Walkthrough of the L3+ Hash Board (2nd Edition)
Like many of you I've had some frustrations with my L3+ units, mostly surrounding the hash boards and various failures. Bitmain previously released an L3+ Maintenance Guide in 2018 that did a great job summarizing some basic failures, how …
What to do with 0 asics found and CRC5 errors?
Has anyone else ever been frustrated with an error that simply says, "bitmain_scanreg,crc5 error, should be 00, but check as 01….." I have, and lacking available source code to trace this down, I'm only guessing to the …