This is probably way to early to answer but are there any thoughts on these miners?
Looking at the Knots Discord/miners the conversation is all over the board on these…and it appears right now the prices are extremely inflated (like shovel suppliers throwing themselves in front of the irrational gold miners).
What you think? Should I look for a few or just wait?
In the meantime my asic are gather dust already.
Now that there is actual code that can be tested, I think we will start to see people posting test results and working with Luke and Chris to ensure broad support (the PR mentions targeting 6 ASIC vendors currently) I ordered the cheapest Blake2b ASIC I could find on ebay a few days ago when the algorithm was decided. My idea was to find out if it is already compatible (and if so to get a jump start on my tutorial for mining the new chain), and if not compatible, to see if I can create a translation layer (this would just be a new ASIC profile in the way the code appears to be shaping up). That itself would be a pretty cool way to contribute to the new chain.
That said, I don’t know what is the window of opportunity for contributing new ASIC profiles though (or even if Luke and team would entertain this type of PR). It is ultimately a gamble until someone reports success with whatever specific model you plan to acquire.
I’ll follow your lead if at all possible. I just have no clue what to get. BTW- what did you get? Of course it has to be 120/20amp (which might be a problem)
I just grabbed a used Goldshell Sia + HS miner (it had no model number listed). These are one of the devices that support dual HS+Sia mining with a switch on the firmware for pure Sia mining (which I’ll use). It is supposed to arrive tomorrow, so I’ll see if there is a model number printed on it.
There is a run on these miners now. Most of the suitable Goldwell (SIA) home miners (under1000W) are out of stock. We did find 2 HS miners on ebay that will be shipped all over the world. It is just fun to see if we get it up running and being an early bird as it works out well. Would be of a great help if Paul can make a tutorial on how to set up these miners and point them to a pool by datum. It techn goes over my head but still jumped in to it.
I hope there are some mining machines suitable for home miners. That’s the idea right? keep mining decentralized and in the hands of the common citizen? A full size ASIC would be too loud for my house… But, then there are hosting options I guess.
I see some of the Goldshell SC Box II Siacoin Miner (1.9Th) that run with a noise level of around 35db.
Is that the kind of machine that you guys are looking at?
the goldshell sc box ii is right near the top efficiency so its probably the top choice for home mining. The sc lite is good too but a bit louder. I think its easy to change the fans on it though
this guy seems to think blake2b sia miners will work with the bitcoin pow change
Yes, at least the Goldshell HS+Sia rigs work in pure Sia mode – he tested on regtest with the latest Knots code, so not just speculation. I have one of these supposed to arrive today, so I’ll see if I can confirm his results.
No model number. It just says Goldshell HS BOX and has a serial number. It is powered by a single standard 6-PIN 12 V PCIe auxiliary power connector (the one that previous gen GPUs used for power), so should be easy to find a compatible power supply for this model. I have a few of them from my old SHA256 ASICs.
i’ll try it out on regtest and report the results.
It is just plain bonkers right now and the leeches are on the lose. $800+ per Th/s!!
I’ve spent some time doing a deep dive into the code. My original plan of reproducing Connor’s results has evolved into a plan to create a couple of apps that folks can use to test different Sia ASIC models and hopefully collect useful information for Luke and team. It also could provide non-technical folks with the ability to contribute if they have capital to risk on testing a variety of ASIC models. It could also (if there are enough mavericks in the first category) potentially become a useful resource for anyone considering buying an ASIC but who don’t have the capital to gamble.
I’ve opened a couple of issues for discussion on the upstream projects (bitcoinknots/bitcoin#359 comment for Knots, and justinfilip/datum_gateway#3 for Justin’s fork of Datum Gateway). Neither of these are blockers, but I put them in to hopefully help them out if these are issues they aren’t already aware of.
We got our hands on 3X Goldshell HS-Box from ebay.nl good as new total €400. Hopefully a good investment. Now the challenge is to set them up stand-by to go for mining with the new PoW. It is challenge for I am really non techn but w’ll work my way true it. Any suggestions would be helpfull. Where to find help info on how to set this up.
I’ll have a video out today which will show how to test them to make sure they are ready to go (I’ve already tested the HS-Box myself, so I know that model is compatible). For now you can only mine on regtest, but it will at least give you some practice. Setup on mainnet when Knots rolls out the update will be very similar (and I’ll probably do a follow-up video then as well)
You’r great help Paul. 
I found a reasonably priced Innosilicon S11 that I decided to order just so I can test another model besides the Goldshell HS Box. I would like to test some of the newer models, but I can’t really afford them. I hope a few people will see my video and take a chance on some other ASIC models.
Fired up an 815GH miner I picked up at a buck and a quarter with a PSU, cord, and multi outlet extension. Fired it up, ran the tests, copied the report output, and here it is:
ASIC compatibility report
Device: Antminer Antminer A3 / GNU/Linux
Firmware: CGminer Version 4.9.0
Stratum user agent: cgminer/4.9.0
Works. 158 of 161 shares accepted.
stale-prevblksubscribe : 1 param(s), widths [13]
extranonce1 : 4 bytes
extranonce2_size : 8
submit : 5 params: 34,16,16,16,16 (161x)
difficulty : [64, 1024, 512]
methods used : mining.authorize, mining.notify, mining.set_difficulty, mining.submit, mining.subscribe
non-standard : none
Submit uses 16-hex ntime and nonce, the Sia 8-byte convention.
ab3e922c80692deb5a6f02925781505b562f53c8)Still not sure I got the info above right. I’m still combing through it as I just purchased so I could participate in the investigation.
Awesome. I added it to the compatibility list.
In the latest version, I also added a check for if blocks themselves that are mined get accepted, so that I can fill that column in the compatibility table. If you are OCD and want that column to be filled in for the Antminer A3, just update the app and run another diagnostic test and post the results, and I’ll update the table to include that data point.
It is a very minor point though, and doesn’t change the conclusion that the A3 is definitely compatible with the new chain. In regtest, the accepted shares are usually within the target difficulty, so lots of accepted shares implies lots of accepted blocks.
I’ll gladly fire it up a little later today and post another report result. Thanks a ton for your efforts Paul!
2nd run for an Antminer A3:
ASIC compatibility report
Device: Antminer A3 / GNU/Linux
Firmware: CGminer Version 4.9.0
Stratum user agent: cgminer/4.9.0
Works, and it mined real blocks. The node accepted 97 of 107 blocks this miner found. 106 of 107 shares were accepted.
stale-prevblksubscribe : 2 param(s), widths [13, 9]
extranonce1 : 4 bytes
extranonce2_size : 8
submit : 5 params: 40,16,16,16,16 (107x)
difficulty : [64, 512, 1024, 2048]
methods used : mining.authorize, mining.notify, mining.set_difficulty, mining.submit, mining.subscribe
non-standard : none
Submit uses 16-hex ntime and nonce, the Sia 8-byte convention.
ab3e922c80692deb5a6f02925781505b562f53c8)