Solo Mining Testnet BTC with Antminer S9

Anyone tried using the Antminer S9 (14 TH)? I'm looking to mine testnet BTC and need a reliable old miner.

Just a heads up, the Antminer S9 has its own OS. You'll need to set up your mining pool software like those on GitHub and connect the S9 to the IP running that software.

I got my S9 up and running on Antpool, hitting about 13.1 TH/s. But I’m confused why I can't follow the tutorial from this thread for mining test BTC. Update: I tried using the public pool software from GitHub, but it failed to build in Docker. Opened an issue, hoping for some guidance.

Not impossible, but you might need to tweak some steps. I don’t have an S9, but here’s what I think: 1. Follow step 1 from the tutorial. If you don’t know your S9's IP, use rpcallowip=192.168.0.0/16. 2. Skip step 2. Configure the S9 to connect directly to Bitcoin Core using the RPC URL, user, and password.

I managed to run the public pool after matching the Node and npm versions in Docker. But now I get this "Error getmininginfo 404 undefined" error. Could be something off with my configs.

Back again, had some issues at home. Found out my.env config was messed up. I had to remove the port number from BITCOIN_RPC_URL. It should be like this: BITCOIN_RPC_URL=http://192.168.1.181 Now the pool log shows it's connected to bitcoind.

I set the Antminer S9 pool config as: pool: stratum+tcp://192.168.1.15:3333 Worker: mrYpN6imcBNkmsceuw5C7JjtFa9AyasEBL password: x Miner status shows pool alive, but the public pool log says it connects then disconnects.

You might want to check your S9 log. Either from the web interface or SSH if you have custom firmware. It might give you clues on why it's disconnecting.

Left the miner running overnight and despite the disconnects, I ended up mining 5 BTC. But I’m confused why the balance shows as unmatured and on-chain separately. Those small transactions I got from BTC faucets.

New Bitcoins need 100 confirmations before you can spend them.

Thanks for the tips! It was indeed related to miner settings. Found messages in the watchdog logs indicating the miner was stopping due to a drop in hashrate. I disabled the restart function and now it’s been running for 10 mins without issues at around 9 TH/s.

I was thinking about low power mode being enabled, but you mentioned hitting 13 TH/s on Antpool. Maybe consider starting a new thread in the Mining support section.

Yeah, I did get 13 TH/s on Antpool for about 20 mins. Checked the miner chips and many are yellow and red. So now I'm running at 8 TH/s and 600 watts. Got enough test BTC for my project, gonna share extras with other devs.

20 minutes isn’t enough for accurate hashrate readings. You need at least 24-48 hours at a place like Antpool.

Cool, I created a separate thread for my Antminer S9 solo BTC mining. Everything’s working fine now. My miner has seen days of mining but is unstable for real BTC. It’s good enough for test BTC at reduced power. Just a note: Follow the original thread for solo mining testnet bitcoins, but you don't need cgminer setup since Antminer has its own.