ZEC Mining Guide with Innosilicon A9

ZCash is the first blockchain system that uses a zero-knowledge proof mechanism which provides full payment confidentiality while still maintaining a decentralized network through a public block chain. Like Bitcoin, the total amount of Zcash (ZEC) is also 21 million. The difference is that ZCash transactions can hide the senders, receivers and amounts of all transactions on the blockchain. Only those who have the view key can see the contents of the transaction. Users have power of control and they have the option to provide others with a view key.

Now we can use the following miners to mine ZEC, including Bitmain Antminer Z9 mini, Innosilicon A9, etc. For more details of miner hashrate, power consumption, Break-even and so on, please visit Poolin website.

*Screenshot taken on Jan. 22th, 2021

Here we will take Innosilicon A9 as an example to introduce how to set up the miner and start to mine ZEC.

What You Need to Know before Using Miners:

1. PSU output power is recommended to be 20% higher than the power consumption of miner;

2. The router or network switch you are using to get connected with miners shall be ones without POE;

3. Miners can only be connected to router or network switch with wired connection;

4. Recommended operation temperature: 10-35 °C;

5. Recommended operation humidity: <65%;

6. Measures shall be taken to protect miners from dust, cax or so, otherwise hashrate board may be in corrosion and heat may fail to be dissipated;

7. Google or FireFox browsers are recommended to signin miner backend.

PREPARATION

Before setting up Innosilicon A9, you need to make sure whether everything is ok and ready.

Tools needed: PSU, PSU power cable, miner, network cable, a personal computer for operation

A: Check the Miner

1. Package inspection. After receiving a new miner, please make a package inspection first to check whether the package or the miner inside is damaged. If yes, please take photos and contact customer service of miner producer;

2. Miner inspection. Please take miner out from package and then check whether there's deformation or damage in miner, fan, cable, fan cable etc. If yes, please take photos and contact customer service of miner producer;

3. Heat sink inspection. Inspect from both the front and back fans to check whether heat sink is disconnected. If yes, please take photos and contact customer service of miner producer;

Note: as computing boards are put in card slot chassis, you may hear some sounds by shaking the miner, which is a normal phenomenon. And don't worry about it.

MINER BUTTON INTRODUCTION

MINER CABLE CONNECTION

1. Cable connection of hash board: Innosilicon has three hash boards and each board has 2 PCIE 6PIN intefaces.

Note: there's no difference in using which cable to connect with which interface. Just keep in mind to plug it in with right direction, namely the direction of buckle. If errorly operated, hash board may encounter short circuit and damage. After plotted those cables, you need to double check if the cable is loose or not fully inserted.

2. Cable connection of control board: there's one PCIE interface in control board and you just need to insert one PCIE 6PIN.

Note: there's no difference in using which cable to connect with which interface. Just keep in mind to plug it in with right direction, namely the direction of buckle. If errorly operated, hash board may encounter short circuit and damage. After pluging those cables, you need to double check if the cable is loose or not fully inserted.

3. Network connection: plug in networking cable as follows.

4. Fan connection. Check whether the plug of fan cable has been fully or tightly connected. Each fan is connected to control board with one plug.

LOCATE MINER IP

After the miner is fully equipped and set up, the first thing you need to do is locate miner IP.

Method One: Get IP through IP Reporter software

1) Download IP Reporter or other similar softwares from miner producer's website;

2) Run the software and click "start";

3) Press IP Report button for about 1 second;

4) The software will show the IP address of the miner you are operating.

Method Two: get IP address from router

1) Sign in router management page (usually it's an IP address that you can find in router instruction or label) and then you can see equipments that are connected to this router.

2) Figure out the miner you are operating according to its name or the time it's connected to router and then you will know the IP address of the miner.

MINER CONFIGURATION

After getting miner IP, you can start to configure the miner. Use a computer that is connected to the same router as the miner, and type the IP address of the miner in the computer browser address bar and press "enter" to continue.

1) There will be a pop-up page that requires you to enter username and password of the miner.

Default username and password are both admin.

2) After signing in, click Settings and then Pool page and then enter the following three urls to URL respectively.

URL 1：stratum+tcp://zec.ss.poolin.me:443

URL 2：stratum+tcp://zec.ss.poolin.me:1883

URL 3：stratum+tcp://zec.ss.poolin.me:700

The miner will connect to pool 1 by default and then pool 2/pool 3 if it fails to connect to pool 1.

3) Click Update Pools to start the miner.

4) The miner will start to work after a few seconds. You can go to Miner Status page to check details and performance.

<1> Confirmation of the mining status of miner background: after miner is connected to mining pool, you could view hashrate and other data on Miner Status page.

<2>Confirmation of the mining status on Poolin dashborad: You can log in to your ZEC sub-account at Poolin.me. When your miner is connected to the mining pool, you can see real-time hashrate, active miners and other data.