I'm pretty sure that I'm the idiot here, at least the noob.
When I start the miner both fans (inlet #1 and outlet #2) turn on and spin. The miner actually hashes as expected for a few minutes, before it decides that it cannot find fan #1. When #1 goes to 0 rpm, the miner throws the fatal error (fan lost!) and then looses connections.
It sounds like the controller or the connections are bad. I'm leaning towards the controller since the connection always works when I power up the miner.
Can the controller be replaced?