Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I'm going to be getting 480 chips as part of ragingazn/JohnK's group buy, assuming it gets funded in time. Since I'm already planning on having the PCBs for mounting the chips printed and assembled in my home state, Oregon, I was wondering if anyone else would be interested in a US-based assembly option.

I have no background in EE myself and am planning on simply passing the PCB design bkkcoins is working on to a plant nearby. Bkkcoins' design will accommodate 16 chips per board. (More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=161715.msg1928839#msg1928839)

To take advantage of this offer, you must be part of raginazn's group buy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177994.0). I don't want to have to deal with chips trickling in from other sources and potentially holding everyone up. Have raginazn ship your chips directly to me and I'll ship them on to you after assembly. Or you can come by and pick up the assembled unit directly, if you're willing to make the trek out to Portland.

I don't know how much this will cost, all told, but I will only be marking up the parts, printing, and assembly cost by 5% at the most.

Also, if there are enough parties interested in the single-chip USB miner the DIY group is designing, then I'd be happy to have that printed, assembled, and shipped as well.

I am interested, and I am buying 100 chips in ragingazn's group.

My understanding is that ragingazn is also looking for someone who can do this for the group. If that guy is you, then all is good. However, if ragingazn is in talks with someone else, then I guess the majority will go with that, and so will I.

May be talk to ragingazn about this - assuming you really are in talks with companies ?

Thanks for he effort.

Sounds interesting to me.
480 chips are for you ?
30 modules a 16 chips ?

That guy is not me and I did not know that was in the works. I'll talk to ragingazn.


bkkcoins' design is supposed to allow for daisy-chaining multiple boards together with only one board actually needing to be hooked up via USB to a computer that acts as a controller.

I like the 16 chip idea... and the little bitty ones with single chips.

I'm definitely interested and have 180 chips on the ragingazn group buy.  If there is some sort of confirmation and escrow arrangement (since you'll have possession of our chips), I'll increase my order to 192 chips assuming 16 chip boards.

yea that sounds awesome.

Thanks for making this post Rye.


UPDATE!

Alright guys. I think I can move towards the next step in my little business plan as far as working with the local engineers in my state. I decided to purchase domains for my small start up group!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:

https://i.imgur.com/BJrY3Vf.png

(30 second paint job)

http://neo-asics.com/ will currently point to the updated spreadsheet

I will keep you guys updated on what we plan on doing as far as assembling these machines. After talking to my team we are confident that we can put together a machine using Avalon ASICs chips. But only time can tell until we can put together concrete evidence. We are just doing a lot of research right now but the enthusiasm is really high!

If you are interested in having machines made using your chips send me a PM! This will be a first come first serve basis.

As for pricing we will be asking for parts + labor. Pricing at this point is unknown but you can base it some what on:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/45698vk7bpvbdkp/BOM.xls - from the DIY thread.

Obviously you can opt out anytime you want  this is just so I can see who is interested in something like this!

P.S I need a photoshop guru to design my logo hehe

I am very interested!  I'm getting 591 chips in the group buy.

What state are you in, by the way?

Read the first post.

Ah, sorry. Connecticut. Got it.

Check it out guys... still in the works but it's pretty slick I think ;)

http://neo-asics.com/

Site might not update yet for some ISP try ALT + F5

tell me what you think!

PS I NEED a hardcore photoshop (or any photoshop for logo design lol)

Do you have any specs available yet for your ASICs? I'm curious to at least know how many chips your boards will take.

Nope just getting our feet wet and researching right now.

Demo site is up!

http://neo-asics.com/

This is not good enough. Unless you have sufficient background or know proper people, you cannot just research and pull this.

ryepdx - I guess it is time for you to look into this as well.

Note that I am NOT offering any services yet. I'm simply getting it out there. Just tossing an idea around. I'm not taking any pre-orders or anything right now. Just gettin' my feet wet ;)

its all conjecture at this point anyway, avalon has not released chip info

I understand. However, we need people with sufficient experience in PCB layout and assembly. This is a time critical operation, so whoever delivers first gets the biggest piece of pie. There is no time for research / learning. You will need to know stuff beforehand - once the specs and plans are released, it needs to be realized and manufactured ASAP.

Well it is NOT included with the group buy but you definitely have other options available ;) - If my operation is a success then it will save you a lot of time and money because I can build machines with your chips and  just ship them right to you. I'm just hoping for the best.

Absolutely! I wish you success, and I am very interested in your operation as well - which I have already mentioned. There is no harm having alternatives. I hope you would agree that in case you plan did not work out on time, then you would also like to get your chips assembled by someone who figured it out, right ?

I am open to any service. It would certainly be best if you (ragingazn) can sort things out, as there would not be any need to transfer chips elsewhere.

Understood. I'm working with bkkcoins, who knows this stuff, and sharing the 5% markup with them. The PCB design will be hosted on Github at http://github.com/bkkcoins, thus making it available for anyone to critique. I also have some EE friends from college that I could potentially tap, and once I get some sort of PCB design from bkkcoins I plan on getting quotes from some of the PCB printers and assemblers in the area.

At any rate, phaeonix is right: it's all conjecture at this point. My bottom line is getting the group buy full and ordered as soon as possible, and then getting those chips onto circuit boards and mining. I don't particularly care if ragingazn does it or if I do it.

And ragingazn handling manufacturing does make more sense, honestly, since they'll be taking initial receipt of the chips, and I'll only be receiving them once they've had a chance to ship them to the other side of the country. And, if we give all the chips to a single plant, it may mean bumping us up into another bulk-order discount bracket. On the other hand, that would give us a bottleneck, with ragingazn's plant handling all the orders, which might end up causing delays for some.

I'm not about to close down my effort, though I might yield to ragingazn if they come up with an open-source PCB design that works for the quantity of chips I'll be taking and the community at large deems it viable.

Agreed 100%. Thank you.

Maybe you should consider the zefir group buy too. There should be a lot of US buyers in their group as well.
I myself is getting 360 chips from zefir and would be great if there is a US based pcb.

Not a bad idea. Thanks. We'll see how things play out. If bkkcoins can come up with a solid design before ragingazn does, I'll consider handling US assembly for zefir's group.

Here in Indonesia we will be using a PCB fabricator after we get the DIY design / BOM. I am keen on hearing more once the specifications come from Avalon. There will be multiple designs that are open source by the sounds of it. I am keen on working with a number of different people who are doing the same thing in the USA or CANADA or EUROPE as well as Asia. My goal is to have ASIC's assembled here in Indonesia only for the Indonesian market and given the direction of the DIY thread I do not think it will be as problematic if you have a good PCB fabricator and one of the DIY designs.

Drop me a PM if you are also interested in some sort of board royalty if you have a design ready once the specs are out. I have 540 chips on order and 16 chip board that bkk is designing is something that is interesting to me but also the 20 chip higher density board that Burin mentioned as well. I am very hopeful that the DIY end of this spawns many local asic developers / distributors and kills off the over priced weaker efforts of BFL to get something viable to the market. This will be the future of the BTC for the next few years as Avalon I suspect will be working on newer and better chips.

We should work together where possible so that the community supports developing the DIY avalon worldwide in local situations.

Maybe we could form an organization that can support this once we are all up and producing boards and marrying avalon chips to them. I see this as the best way to weed out the likes of BFL from the marketplace if it is done well. Asics could be cheaper and readily available to a much much wider audience even in places like Indonesia where Bitcoin is not even a novelty yet.

+1

I am interested in this.  I know people that are E.E. masters and phd candidates.   If you want chip to pcba then I know people as well as I work in the semi conductor industry.

I have a few hundred chips in zefir batches and a much smaller number (26) in the ragingazn628 buy.  I'd like to have some of those chips assembled in the US as a hedge because while I'm predicting that Burnin is going to do great work, the shear volume that is coming his way (could be 50000 or more chips) plus the fact that his design accommodates a max of 20 chips, means he's going to be extraordinarily busy.  Since speed is of the utmost concern, I'm definitely interested in spreading around the chips, so if you are open to chips from Zefir, then I'm definitely interested. 

why dont we consider outsourcing this to china? there are hundreds of listings of companies that do custom work relatively cheap that I found on alibaba.com

What we could do is organize a group buy for the boards from a well known manufacturer and you can resell them with 5% markup in the group buy

I'd get to contacting allot of different companies, there are a few hundred companies in the states that will do this, but they may not be able to beat china's pricing, lets do some shopping

I'm an EE with experience in PCB Design and i'd be very interested in helping work on this

However will you be taking orders from ragingazn628 Batch #2 as well? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189220.0


I agree, the fastest thing may be getting the chips, and going to a PCB Assembly house to produce them in large quantities.  Involving specific people or bitcoin-exlusive manufacturing/etc introduces slowdown that is unnecessary.  It should be a cut and dry standard assembly, at which point it simply becomes choosing one of the many places that can pick & replace + reflow your PCB assembly with a given turn time at a given cost.  All you have to provide them is the Avalon chips.  They can order the PCB and everything else on the BOM.

It might be slightly more expensive up front (we'd want to get as many people in on the PCB Assembly as possible, and of course do a test run of a few to make sure everything is good) but would definitely be the fastest and most reliable method.  Cut out the middle man

If the board is only 10-16 chips per, and people are ordering generally 50-500 chips, it may not be hard to get the price down, we're already talking several PCB assemblies per person.

Tracking,

Who is assembling these?

I'm in ragin's 1st buy, and definitely would like someone experienced to build them into rigs for me.

I'm on exactly the same page as conv3rsion - I have some chips with burnin, but am concerned about the volume he has to process.

ragin, ryepdx, ecliptic - very keen to get my boards built by whoever can get an experienced person / firm lined up to build them (happy to go with community consensus as to which person or firm that might be, so please keep me posted once the designs are out and you are able to make concrete plans).

Cheers!

scotjam

I have an order for 51 ragin chips.
Originally, I liked the BKK 16 chip board.
3 of those would have left me with 3 for single chip "Eruptalons".