Reading back through this thread, this has been a problem with bitmain throughout their entire miner range. Many people have asked them repeatedly to fix their driver/cgminer fork problems, but have been completely ignored (the same can be said for their pool support). What makes it particularly annoying is the fact that they lied, and continue to lie about their support of p2pool in their threads - & even go as far as to say that they help decentralize the network!!

We are in a precarious position. The only mining hardware currently available on the planet does not work properly/efficiently with p2pool - the only truly decentralized pool. I have a few S7's & am thinking about buying a couple more, but it pi**es me off that in order to use them effectively I am forced to point them at a centralized pool instead of my preferred choice - p2pool.

As many miners switch off their older (but p2pool compatible) miners due to inefficiency & electrical costs, I can't help but wonder what the future holds for p2pool unless a manufacturer steps up with something to rival bitmain or a dev steps in who can fix the broken bitmain firmware for use with p2pool. I can't hold my breath long enough for that to happen, & the more I think about it, the more I dislike bitmain - both their broken firmware & their empty block producing crappy SPV pool with zero support......

Spondoolies - rescue us please?