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Ordering has ended. PCBs and components have been bought and received.

I am currently offering refunds of $45 per miner, for those who want out.

Current projected throughput is 100 K16 miners completed per day once the test board issues have been figured out.

==========

Terms of Sale (formerly at stumptownminers.com)

                        

• You will supply your own chips.
• You will tell your group buy organizer to send your pledged chips to Stumptown Miners.
• The price of the miners you have bought may drop due to more people from your group buy joining. Any price difference in USD between what you paid and the new price will be sent back to you as BTC.
• There is a batch size minimum of 60 from each group buy for each design. If you order a design and there are not enough orders of that design from your group buy, you may either receive a refund or (if you are part of an early group buy) opt to have your chips lumped in with a batch from a later-arriving group. You must make the election to either have your chips lumped in with a later order or receive a refund at the time of purchase.
• All received BTC will be converted to USD to hedge against market crashes. (This step is necessary as the assembly and fabrication plants do not yet take BTC.)
• Refunds will be calculated according to the USD value of your BTC at the time of currency conversion. An equivalent amount of BTC, calculated at the exchange value on CampBX, will be returned to you in the event of a refund. (E.g., if BTC doubles in value against USD after you have paid, and you then receive a full refund, you will only get half the BTC you originally paid.)
• Refunds on any of the miners (K1, K16, and K64) in your order may be requested until orders for that particular model of miner from your group buy (or from a later group buy, if you've opted to have your order bumped rather than refunded) reach 128. I will begin ordering parts for your group buy's orders at that point and will no longer be able to fully reimburse you.
• You will be contacted via email for your shipping information once production begins. I will also arrange at least one group meeting per group buy for those of you who live nearby and want to pick up your miners in person.

Interested.  Watching.

I'd be interested in this as well.

Of course, there are a lot of things we still do NOT know, like when Steamboat's batches of chips are coming in (I have some on order with him), as well as what assembly prices and timetable will be.

More importantly, I'd like my chips to not be messed up in the assembly process, because they're a pain in the behind to get.

But, fundamentally, people working together to achieve common goals is a good thing, since we all want the stinkin' miners ASAP, heh.

Hello, I have chips in the same orders as you and would be interested.  Following

I'm in Portland and have some chips on order. I'm interested :)

edit: Also in your batch of chips, only 60 ordered though.

Agreed. I plan on posting "batch size and turnaround to price per board" tables once I get verification from BkkCoins that I didn't mess up the specs I was getting quotes with. To minimize the amount of time people's chips are waiting around for chips from other group buys to arrive, I'm thinking of basing batches on group buys. And if a person is in a group buy that's not sending many chips my way, they can opt to join up with a larger, later-arriving group buy in order to get a lower price-per-board.


I know that feeling. I'll make sure to ask about error rates while shopping plants. I don't think it'll be very high for most of them, but I don't expect it to be zero either. There *is* a plant I'm looking at that offers conductivity testing on their boards, and another one that offers more in-depth testing. Both are pretty expensive per board, though.


Agreed.

EDIT:

Excellent. In that case, we can arrange a face-to-face pickup if you'd like. That'll save you some shipping time and expense.

Alright, BkkCoins has verified that I was giving the correct numbers. Here is the cheapest price per K16 board I could find for assembly in Oregon:

Qty	1 day	2 days	5 days	10 days
8	$513.63	$368.91	$330.14	$303.86
16	$471.44	$332.98	$297.33	$274.18
32	$450.34	$315.01	$280.92	$259.33
64	$439.80	$306.02	$272.72	$251.91

And here are the cheapest prices per K16 board I could find for PCB fabrication in Oregon:

Qty	1 days	2­ days	3­ days	4­ days	Electrical test
8	$266.52	$150.82	$121.89	$104.53	$196.33
16	$142.89	$80.76	$65.23	$55.91	$196.33
32	$81.08	$45.73	$36.89	$31.59	$196.33
64	$62.52	$35.08	$28.22	$24.10	$196.33

As BkkCoins said to me, "No wonder iPads aren't made in the USA."
I've got a couple of requests for quotes currently out, too, so I'll let you guys know if any come back with better prices. Tomorrow I'll take a look at prices for assembly up in Washington and start looking at part prices.

EDIT: BkkCoins says they know a place in Canada that offers $75 per board assembly. Going to be checking them out and then seeing if I can use their quote to knock some of these quotes down a peg. Hoping I don't have to cross national borders to get this thing done, but I'll do it if I have to. I've driven most of the way to Canada in a single day before, and that was without an early start.
Anyone know the laws regarding taking electronics back over the Canadian border?

Ouch! Pricey! Consider me another Portlander that's interested, Alto I don't have any chips yet I'd like to spend about 1.5-2BTC on some K1 miners.
Gunna see if I can find a group buy soon or maybe someone who has extra chips.

Another Oregon-er, but not (recently) from the metro area.

My interest is potentially conflicting somewhat (explained below.)  I am interested almost exclusively in the K1 USB style units.

My interest is mostly political (in a Bitcoin sort of way) in that I feel it would influence Bitcoin to remain more 'peer2peer' if the barrier to entry for mining were as low as possible.  People who are participating as non-commercial miners are not going to wish the solution to grow past the state where they could realistically mine.

I believe that individual users already overpay for bandwidth which they do not use, and the power costs for a small efficient rig would not even factor into most people's economics.  Thus, widely distributed mining may be competitive with commercial operations which do need to factor in power use as a major cost of operation.

So, I would be interested in any leads you may turn up in terms of local manufacturing and would certainly make an attempt to compensate for any effort it might save me.  Or if at some point you wish to and are able to coordinate such an effort that might be interesting to me also.  Secondly, if anyone else reading this might be of a similar mindset as I, I would be interested to hear from them.

Even if you (OP) are interested in a project along the lines of what I am talking about, I would not waste to much time on research.  It is more likely than not that I will lose interest.  But if you are talking shop with any leads and the conversation comes up, I'd be interested to know what you/they think.

Sorry to cross link here, but im offering roughly the same service in uk/europe and have cross linked this thread in mine already.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=203682

We are a free trade zone, here in North America, built and assembled should be duty free.  Call up customs, they are very helpful with this.

I will check in my neck of the woods. Guess if we got 64+ boards together it might be ok, but....it's still pretty pricey.

I was hoping to keep the unit cost under $150 for assembly....

Did you just give them the parts list off GitHub and they gave you a quote based on that?

I can't open Klondike's CAD files off GitHub.

What will you save on turn around time waiting on Chinese PCBs?
What will you save on import duties?
What will you save on shipping inside the US?

I bet the costs of all that when you consider putting the product in hands faster negates the higher production costs. At this point the first products to ship are really the ones that are the "cheapest" because if they are hashing you are getting ROI.

GOOD LUCK! I hope it works out. I am trying to do that here in Indonesia ... still waiting on pricing for the boards here based on BOM. I will let you know how it compares here.

Oh and I think you have to EDIT the table.... both prices are for the K16? The top one is for K64 right?

I travel back and forth to Portland a LOT.  Would love to meet you guys and discuss.

Wow, that's extremely expensive. Did you get a quote for the K64 as well? That might be more affordable on a chip-per-board level.

So I'm looking at around $312 per board (4 day/5 day choice) if we have at least 32 PCBs manufactured and then assembled, correct?

16 chips at 282 MH/s = 4.512 GH/s.  My end cost for chips is currently $9.42 each (.08BTC) so a K16 would end up being $462.72. That doesn't seem too crazy if my math is remotely correct. AM blades are selling for 50 BTC each at 12.89 GH/s.  Of course by the time chips are here it could be a completely different story.

About to. I imagine it will be as well. I saw a couple plants that said 16 inch boards were preferable, so I'm guessing that's the size of the stock material they're working with. I'm going to run some different numbers through the online quote forms and compare the K64 to the K16, and then look at whether the K16 can be panelized and broken out later for greater savings. (I was running quotes for one PCB per array, as I wanted to make sure the price erred on the high side.)

I'm also expanding my search out to include plants in Washington today. That may turn up a cheaper option.


Well, a little more than $312. I haven't really priced parts yet. The parts, according to the BOM, would be about $26.32 per board. But a couple days ago I did some shopping around and there are some snags the BOM doesn't call out that bumps up the overall price. All the assemblers I've found so far require components to be on reels, which requires either buying enough components for a couple hundred miners or paying the supplier a $7 reeling fee per BOM line item. There are also a couple components that only come on reels of 5,000. (Those ones are only $15 for a reel of 5,000, so it's not too much of a price bump.)

Chalk me up as interested, pending some firmer dates/plans/etc.

I'd be in at 250 chips

I'm in for 32 chips (2 boards).

TerraHash is assembling 64 chip boards for 1.99 BTC (around $230.00), and the 16 chip boards for 0.75 BTC (around $85.00). Definitely worth checking out.

Yeah, I've seen that. My value add is getting the boards sooner than you'd be getting them with Terrahash. It'll be more expensive, but you will be mining sooner. Particularly if you're in the Pacific Northwest and can do a face-to-face pickup. (I know the thought of my complete set of 8 K64s, or 30 K16s, going through the mail makes me nervous.)

Edit: Now i see the prices are for K16 only. It sounds like you want to create the pcb yourself. And the other list is for creating the miner with it. So you dont buy the set from klondike, you only built the miner after his plans?

I would like to add your offer in my dev-list (see my sig) and have some questions before.

The prices already contain your 9% or should i calculate it on top?

Do you buy the full set from klondike with all parts or the pcb only? If the pcb only... wouldnt the full set maybe be cheaper than buying the parts in us?

You wrote quantity... does this mean assembly of 8 x k64 boards or what is the quantity? And the days are the turnaround time after the boards are done, i assume.

I guess the 2 day creation has the best performance between price and turnaround and would suggest i put this price in the list as a first number (nothing fixed).

You will receive the asics and you bought the klondikes before, then you bring everything to the company and they create the miner. Then you ship the miner back to the owner or do you keep it and share the revenue?

Thats all... :)

Exactly. The only scenario in which I buy the set from BkkCoins is the one where they get dev chips far enough in advance of the rest of us to allow receipt of that set before I start receiving Avalon chips. I will be paying BkkCoins a licensing fee.


They don't. The prices and times quoted are for assembly and fabrication only. I still need to price out parts. I have a call with a promising Corvallis-based plant in about two hours, and I may be able to get some firmer prices from them. (They specialize in end-to-end PCB construction for startups.)


8 K16 boards, not panelized. I wanted to err high in my initial estimates as I'd hate to over-promise and under-deliver. And the turnaround time for assembly is after the boards are done being fabricated. I intend to begin fabricating the boards as soon as BkkCoins confirms the design with a prototype, so we may gain some time there. (Depends on how quick BkkCoins' turnaround is.)

Seems that way right now. Again though, nothing is fixed yet. I still have a whole state full of plants to get quotes from. And I'll be on the phone with one of them at 3pm PST, so I'm pretty optimistic about that.


I ship the miner back to the owner. No plans for hosting as of yet. I might hash something out if there's demand and I end up having enough time.

Ok, ill watch this thread for new infos then... :) I added you for now without a price and with a 16 chip and a 64 chip miner.

Catching up on responses to comments I missed earlier:


Ah, right. That makes sense. So... maybe Canada will be the way to go. I tried emailing him, but the address on his website didn't work. I'll see if BkkCoins can give me a working address.


No. I basically just gave them the number of SMD, through-hole, and QFN components, along with the number of BOM line items. Some of the other plants (like the one in Corvallis) have required Gerbers and a BOM, but not the one quoted here.


Maybe. Terrahash, the other US-based distributor currently making waves, will have the last two advantages as well. I imagine turnaround will be faster with me, but how much faster is the vital question here. As difficulty goes up, the advantage to be had from moving quickly begins to weaken, until eventually cheaper with longer turnaround is a better deal. I intend to keep price charts going here so we can figure out the best deal for all involved.


Thanks! Sounds good.


Nope. I split the two phases of PCB construction into two tables. The top one is for fabricating the bare board, and the bottom one is for placing and soldering the components.

Do the assemblers offer a warrantee for their work?
Say a few assemblies don't work due to a manufacturing defect will they repair them?

Just got off the phone with the Corvallis-based plant. They'll be coming up with some pricing charts and getting them to me later today or tomorrow. They're sending someone out to meet me face-to-face, too, tomorrow. They stressed how important it is to have large batch sizes, which is quite true. If you're in a group buy, and particularly if you know some of the other people in your batch are in the Pacific Northwest, then see if anyone else might be interested in a high-price/low-turnaround solution. The more people involved here, the cheaper it'll be for everyone.

I got some more quotes from the currently-cheapest plant for low numbers of PCBs. This time I figured in panelization and got some slightly lower prices for fabrication. Assembly prices are still really high, though.

Updated local per-board fabrication prices for the K16:

Qty	1-day	2-day	3-day	4-day	5-day	E Test
16	$129.09	$82.71	$69.46	$59.53	$49.59	$200.00
32	$66.39	$43.20	$36.58	$31.61	$26.64	$280.00
64	$35.35	$23.76	$20.45	$17.96	$15.48	$440.00
128	$20.83	$15.04	$13.38	$12.14	$10.90	$760.00

And updated per-board assembly prices for the K16, using leaded solder:

Qty	1 day	2 days	5 days	10 days
16	$471.44	$332.98	$297.33	$274.18
32	$450.34	$315.01	$280.92	$259.33
64	$439.80	$306.02	$272.72	$251.91
128	$434.52	$301.53	$268.61	$248.20

And now introducing K64 fabrication prices!

Qty	1-day	2-day	3-day	4-day	5-day	E Test
4	$516.35	$330.85	$277.85	$238.10	$198.35	$140.00
8	$265.57	$172.82	$146.32	$126.44	$106.57	$160.00
16	$141.41	$95.04	$81.79	$71.85	$61.91	$200.00
32	$83.34	$60.15	$53.52	$48.55	$43.59	$280.00

And K64 per-board assembly prices... :-p

Qty	1 day	2 days	5 days	10 days
16	$1,759.19	$1,224.09	$1,090.86	$1,007.64
32	$1,738.09	$1,206.12	$1,074.46	$992.79
64	$1,727.55	$1,197.13	$1,066.25	$985.37
128	$1,722.27	$1,192.64	$1,062.15	$981.66

I extended this out to 1024 boards, just for fun, and there's not much of a price break there beyond what 128 costs. With K64 batches of 32 and four days total turnaround, that would put the cost-per-board for fabrication and assembly at $1,286.27, before parts and my service fee. $358.21 for the same figures with the K16. So I guess the question now is, how much of a premium are you guys willing to pay for fast turnaround?

Anyway, I'm still hoping the folks in Corvallis can help me bring down the price. Right now I have pretty high hopes for them since they've been the most responsive and personable of the companies I've contacted so far.

I've also sent out requests for quotes to a few Washington companies, one California company, and one Arizona company. (The appeal of the last two being that they have plants in Mexico, which may provide a much lower price while still being close enough for me to do in-person pickup.)

Again, this is all tentative. Once I have quotes from everyone I've contacted so far and some finalized price charts and turnaround times put together, I'll see about getting escrow set up (hoping for JohnK or someone of similar standing) so people can start putting their bitcoin where their proverbial mouths are.

Escrow details

• The price per board will start pretty high and then drop as people ante up. Any overpayment caused by drop in price or rise in the value of bitcoin after you buy in will be returned to you upon production of your miner. Beware, though: if the value of bitcoin falls before the escrow can be released and converted to USD to pay for fabrication and assembly, you might end up owing more.
  
• If you have a special request regarding the size of the batch you want to be put in and how long you're willing to wait for such a batch, or if you want to pool your group buy chips with the chips from someone else's group buy, let me know and I'll try to work with that. The default batch grouping will be by group order batch, since I should receive those all at the same time, and processing in that way minimizes turnaround time.
  
• The escrow will be released to me when it comes time to manufacture the miners. (I don't have the funds to personally cover the cost of getting all these miners made.) Whoever holds escrow will also hold my personal information, to be released if I make off with your bitcoin.
  
• Escrow will not be available until all domestic pricing charts and turnaround times have been finalized. If demand results in enough miners being ordered and paid for via escrow to exceed the numbers in the pricing charts, I'll get additional quotes to cover the new requested quantities plus some buffer room.
  

I'll also see about getting offshore production quotes together so we can talk about possibly switching to those pricing models and plants in the event that difficulty skyrockets enough to negate any earning advantage resulting from the quick turn-around offered by domestic production. Of course, if the whole thing falls apart at that point, then I understand: my value proposition is quick turn around by using domestic companies and face-to-face hand-offs whenever possible.

For those of you holding out for the K1: I will be gathering quotes and taking orders for the K1 miner as well once the BOM and Gerber files are released.

The one I'm currently quoting only offers a 30 day money back guarantee by default. I'll send them an email regarding rework and let you know what they say.

I'm in the Pacific NW as well, and am interested in a large order on behalf of Cognitive.

I live a few hours from BC, so feel free to get in touch to coordinate a pickup/dropoff etc.

--Garrett

Very interested. Would you offer selling the chips, and assembly service? I live in Canada in the Greater Toronto Area, let me know if there's anything I can do to help in terms of getting quotes and what not.

I'll get in touch with some people to hopefully find a company suitable, and get quotes.

Unfortunately I don't plan on selling any chips as I have no surplus to sell.


Sounds great! PMing you now.


Much appreciated. :-)

If you have any specific Canadian manufacturers in mind, PM me!

Hey guys. I'm looking at prices for renting pick-and-place machines and reflow ovens. It's looking like a super-cheap option compared to contracting with a plant. I'm going to look into this option a little more...

They say that fabricated boards with errors will be replaced with new boards and improperly assembled boards with be reworked for no additional cost.

Doesn't $1.3k seem a little pricey for just assembly?

Yes, it seems extremely pricey! I could rent a small pick and place machine, solder stencil applicator, and reflow oven for a month for less than that. I'm looking at the possibility of doing just that right now...

Is terrahash on the west coast?  Their assembly cost of two btc per k64 seems cheaper than these quotes.   Not sure they do pickup, but might be worth asking.

They are on the west coast. Silicon Valley, according to their website, so... San Francisco, I guess. They are able to offer such low prices because they have their own manufacturing equipment.

Vancouver BC hère, 32 chips am interested.

Border should be easy but don't DIY commercially.

http://blog.openbeamusa.com/tag/stuck-in-customs/

I'm also in the Northwest (Seattle-Tacoma area) and would like to support your effort.  There is a PCB manufacturer in Vancouver, WA that you more than likely already know of, but I believe you can rent out their space to do this very thing. 

If you haven't yet reached out to the Dorkbot folks in Portland they could probably point you towards the most cost effective direction.  I'm sure they know of more local old school 'make and bake' places that might not even have a web presence.   

I'm about 2.5 hours away from PDX, so just like the other locals count me in for the assist as well. 

Thanks for the cautionary tale! Definitely was considering doing a DIY import, but might just leave it to FedEx overnight shipping after reading that.

Also, I've finally gotten in touch with the Canadian BkkCoins was telling me about. He claims he can deliver finished boards within 24 hours or so of receiving all the parts. He also says he can produce the K16s at a rate of 100 per day. His preliminary quote, based on the current board design, is $75 per board for assembly.

He also has a supplier in Taipei who can fabricate the boards for $9 each with 10-12 day turnaround. Given that I can do the same thing domestically for just a little more and with less turnaround, I may do that, or else go with a Canadian fabrication company as well. I'll be looking into prices on that side of the border now that I seem to have found a viable assembly option.


Could you PM me a name? I haven't heard anything about being able to rent equipment/space from any of the companies I've contacted so far. Thanks!


Good call. I'll get in touch with them.


Much appreciated! :-)

looks like doors are opening and we can pursue getting this done locally ourselves as opposed to terra doing it.  If you get the name of the place in vancouver let me know im in vancouver.

http://www.pcbuniverse.com/
may be worth a shot, east vancouver.

Also maybe check this out

http://oshpark.com/

On the other hand, I WOULD like my chips messed up during assembly.

There is a manufacturing company in Calgary that my school dealt with for robotics, I've emailed them for a quote.

I looked at these guys a week or so back (by following some sparkfun links) and it looked like they charge $10/square inch.  Seemed like it might be a decent price for low volume, but expensive if looking at a large run (but I don't know anything... so take it with a grain of salt).

Is this Colin Fitzgerald you're talking about?   I emailed with him a few weeks back about a small personal run of these boards.  He'll be at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire in early June, seems to know his stuff.

Yup, that's him! How'd you find him?

"How'd you find him?"

Not sure if you're asking me, how I know him or how did I find his work!

Colin is on the local hackerspace mailing list and has answered various SMT questions from people like me over the last few years.  I got into a thread with BkkCoins about him being from BC and mentioned I had asked Colin about just doing my Avalon asics for me (I was thinking of hand soldering the rest but given they're 0402, seems unlikely).  I guess Bkk forwarded the stuff to you that Colin sent me - I pointed him at Bkk's threads and github.

So in summary, I think Colin is genuine person who is very helpful and seems to know a lot about SMT.  I've not used his operation for anything.  You can see some of his posts at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/VancouverHackSpace/colin$20fitzgerald

Unfortunately he is located about 11 hours drive east of here in Kimberley (north of Montana, not north of Washington) so visiting him is not really an option.  I am hoping to meet him in a few weeks at the local Maker Faire.  I suspect his location makes him somewhat competitive (rural areas have lower costs).  I also suspect that since the business is fairly new he might be more available.

One other thought, have a chat to Paul from pjrc.com, he is OR based and seems to have a lot of experience with SMT production houses.  I worked with him years ago on his mp3 player, a smart guy.

Still waiting on news on the K1/Nano miner prices, I can wait till you can figure out who will have the cheaper prices for the K16's but don't wait too long! I'll be getting about 4-10 chips depending on prices. I hope I don't have to wait too long for Batch 3 chips..(should have gotten in on batch 2 but I wasn't sure about ROI/Production yet)

Maybe in a week or so we locals can meet up and chat over drinks? I'd be up for that.

Thanks. I'll take a look at both of your links.


Excellent. Much appreciated!


Both, basically. He wasn't on my radar until BkkCoins brought him up, and then for you to guess his name right off the bat...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/2ae2315c24268644a4e655abdf49abf0/tumblr_mirpi1ojCE1qgap0so1_400.gif

Thanks for giving your endorsement, too. It's good to know I'm working with someone who knows his stuff. :-)


Oh man, I didn't realize he was that far away. Will still go with him if I can't find anything nearly as competitive, but dealing with someone so far away is bound to mess with turnaround. :-/


I'll definitely do that. It would be awesome if I could manage working with someone more local than Colin. I'm sure he's a great guy, but I'd really like to do face-to-face pickup to expedite orders getting out, and trying to cross the Canadian border with a trunk full of miners sounds like it could end up being a lot of trouble. :-3

Met with the representative from the Corvallis plant today. Nothing new was said. They repeated that they'll get a quote to me at some point. I guess they just wanted to place a face with the name. :-/

best price ive got so far for europe version is equiv to 96$/board ~ + vat so call it 100$

looks like our pricings are coming out similar
Though mine include the assembler printing the pcb and getting the parts (but not the asic chips)

I just talked to a local to me assembly guy, and his best price would have been $200 a board, just for assembly.

So, these prices are looking pretty good.

As for other factors, I'm still waiting on my 32 chips from Steamboat, but so is everybody else.

I'd be interested to see what he's doing for his assembly as well.

As for Terrahash...the jury is still out on that one...

> I guess the question now is, how much of a premium are you guys willing to pay for fast turnaround?

I guess that question is best asked right before the orders are placed, when we have a better idea what the difficulty rate is and what the time is worth.

I have 20 chips coming from ragingazn, so would like 1xk16 and 4xk1's.  Any word on the k1's?

Ah, that's pretty good then. With me, it's probably going to be about $20-$26 for parts, plus $9 for the bare board (if we use Colin's Taipei supplier), which comes out to $104-$110. A bit more expensive than yours. With the volume increase since he made his quote, I expect the price to drop, though I'm not sure how much. He doesn't want to give any more quotes until we've got the finalized PCB design and parts list.


No word on the K1s yet. I've finally got the specs I need to get a quote, though, so I'll contact Colin and see if he's willing to give us just *one* more quote.


True facts. To that end, I won't be opening escrow until we're closer to Avalon's projected shipping date.

I can be in for two k16's

any thought on doing his nano 1 usbs?

I have some extra chips for those if you are

Yeah, it looks like I'll be offering the Nano as well. There's been enough interest. I've started looking for quotes on it.

I'd be interested in 3 of the K16 boards... and possibly some of the K1s  ( depending on how many chips get damaged  ::) )

A new quote just came in from a plant in Washington. They're offering assembly for $45.33 on batch sizes of 128 with 3 to 5 day turnaround.  They gave the quote based on a previous revision, which was a bit simpler, so I expect the final price to bump up a little, but that's still a bit better than what Colin was offering for that same revision. (Though the batch size of 128 means I'd need to wait until I have enough chips in hand to create 128 miners at minimum, whereas Colin was willing to work with batch sizes as small as 10. Still, the proximity means in-person pickup would be pretty easy and fast compared to how it would be with Colin.)

I'm still considering looking at prices for renting my own equipment, but that's honestly a route I'd like to avoid if possible since I feel I'm much more likely to mess up people's miners than a plant that specializes in assembly is.

With the new quote, that brings the back-of-the-envelope estimated cost per K16 miner to $89. Since the K64 is just four K16s on a single PCB, I think $356 is probably a safe bet on the K64 miner cost, though (as with everything in this thread so far) that's still pretty tentative and assumes we run the K64s in batches of 128. (Probably not a very safe assumption, honestly. I'll get more accurate quotes once Gerbers and a BOM for the K64 has been released.)

I didn't request a quote from them on the K1 (I sent the RFQ before we'd decided to move forward on the K1s) but I'll request one now.

Still waiting on a quote from the plant in Corvallis and a plant in Tigard that was recommended to me yesterday.

Let me know when i should put these prices into the list...

Can do. At this point, I suppose I'm fine with you putting the currently projected prices in with a "(tentative)" after them. The price can still change since the design isn't finalized, but I think we're now in a reasonable ballpark of what it'll end up being.

I think i will put a notice that all prices of the offers are tentative because no one really exactly knows whats the endprice.

~270-300$ per K16 Sounds pretty boss considering how fast we will get the units compared to BFL's speedy production.
Considering how simple K1's seem to be, It's going to be pretty easy to push those little suckers out for around 20-40$ depending on who you go with.

~270-300$ per K16 ? How many chips in that board?

:)

Guess how many are on the K64!

First.
Would like to thank everyone for the effort to get this going. Thank you.

Second.
Would like to get in on this...I have chips coming from zefir. When the time is appropriate let me know who to send the chips to.


subb'ed

zif                                                                                                                 

Could I get some clarification on who I should be sending my chips too from zefir?  He has a request to post what developer you are supporting..is this supporting BBKCoins or ryepdx? I want to eliminate any potential confusion before it happens.  8)


Where should I tell zefir to ship?

You'd be sending them to me.

Btw, does anyone know how these chips are going to be packaged? I'd assume reels of 10,000, but I haven't seen that confirmed anywhere.

Put me down for 2 K16's.
I paid for 32 ASIC from steamboat on 6 May.
Thanks

Meh. The plant messed up their quote and forgot to include the price of stencils. At 100 K16 miners, that brings the price up by about $4 to $49 for assembly. It'll take 256 K16s to get to $45 per miner for assembly. At the moment, that brings the price up to $93 per miner.

Also, it occurs to me that we haven't discussed heatsinks. I imagine you might want those included with the miners, right? I'll start looking at prices in order to get a ballpark figure, but from what I've seen on the Klondike thread, I expect that to kick the price up by $3 to $5.

I'd prefer my chips not to melt off the board, but that's just me. :)

I'm interested in 10-15 K16s (depending on number of chips I end up with) and a handful of K1's for leftover chips.

I'm east coast US and this looks to be a reasonable option for boards... pricing looks great so far!

I'd be interested in 1 k16 board an 4 k1s, depending on final price.  I'm on ragingazn628's buy.

I would be interested with 3 K64 if the price and turnaround time are feasible. However that would leave me with 8 chips left. I have an order with zefir for batch 5 and 7. I'll be checking this thread regularly.

Okay, let's do this. I'm in for 128 chips, either 2x 64 or 8x 16 depending on what ends up cheaper.

How much time do you think in-person pickup would save? Kind of a drive from San Jose.

Drop me a line if you want a second pair of eyes before you put in an order for parts.

Interested in 6  K64s.

Also interested, but on the eastcoast. Anyone tried an eastcoast assembler? I would be interested in K16 and K1 if possible.

+1

Steamboat is in FL and working on something.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.msg2225167#msg2225167

I'm fairly sure you don't have to be in his group buy.

I have been following steamboat and have been very tempted to just pull the trigger on batch 3. I guess I did not see if HE was the assembler or if he HAD an assembler. He is across the alley for me, so I'll bug him some more.

+2 I am on the east coast as well.

For the people interested in the K64 boards...aren't you concerned that if the board goes bad it takes out all 64 chips from your mining?

If you read the Klondike thread (or at least just BkkCoins' posts in that thread), it appears that the chips are organized in clusters of 8 and that the worst-case scenario has one chip taking out a cluster of 8. The K64s are little more than four K16s printed on a single PCB and pre-wired together. I understand that there are a couple of components that can be omitted in that particular configuration, but that's basically all they are. Thus the worst-case scenario for chip failure on a K64 also only has a bank of 8 being taken out. (And more realistically, BkkCoins contends that in most scenarios a bad chip would just generate bad hashes, which would get ignored, and the other 7 chips would stay in commission.)

In the interests of transparency, here's a list of companies I've contacted for quotes so far:
- Sunstone Circuits
- RelianceCM
- Westak
- Colin Fitzgerald
- Cascade Systems Technology (Still out. I dropped the ball and just today picked it up again.)
- Hi-Tek Electronics
- SMT NW (Still out. No reply since 8 days ago, so I'm counting them out for now.)
- PCB Unlimited
- Screaming Circuits
- Bright Manufacturing
- PJRC.com
- ESP Seattle (Still out. No reply since 7 days ago, so I'm counting them out for now.)
- Two or three California plants that only had contact forms on their websites. (They never emailed me, so I wasn't able to find any records in my inbox.)

I also had someone from Dorkbot offer to beat whatever price I could find online if I paid half the price of a pick and place machine. I'll be following up with them later, but for now I'm going with Tate Technology's quote.

I plan on opening escrow and figuring out batches soon, as I think I've got a good enough feel for how much this is going to cost now.

Awesome. Thanks for doing all this legwork.

Are you seriously entertaining quotes from California companies? There's some plants in the valley I could take a look at, if you'd like - seems like the least I could do. Been too busy the past couple weeks to send any RFQs.

I've got some concerns about how the Avalon chips are going to be loaded into a pick-and-place. I assume they come on reels of 10,000 (can anyone confirm?) but they're going to be all cut up into strips by the time they get to you. Any ideas?


I'd defintely want them on my boards, or at least included. It'd be tough buying heatsinks at a good price as an individual. $3 to $5 wouldn't be bad at all. I'd be more concerned that we actually won't be able to get enough of them - heatsinks tend to be made-to-order rather than off-the-shelf.

Vycid

No problem! :-)


Yeah, I'd be alright with Californian companies. They're within driving distance for me. Idaho would work too, honestly, if there are any Idahoans reading this. But they'd have to be able to offer *very* competitive rates. ~$45 for assembly seems pretty good...


I'm hoping to get in contact with the people running the group buys for the people involved in this effort and having them send all the chips from each given group-buy as single, long strips. If that fails, I can just get the cut tape spliced together.


That's fair. I admit that I haven't spent much time sourcing heatsinks. It looks like there's at least one viable, BkkCoins-approved design on the Klondike thread now, though, so I'll start looking for sources.

Have you made any arrangements with BkkCoins about getting programed PIC chips?

No, I haven't. I was planning on sourcing and programming the PICs myself.

Sounds good if BkkCoins releases a image file to load into the PIC.

It sounds like they're open to the idea of releasing it to specific vendors who are willing to pay them a fee per PIC.

Now, regarding escrow, is it alright with everyone if I gave JohnK my personal identity and then held the funds myself? I'm going to have to pay the assembly and fabrication plants and I don't have enough money on hand to fund a full batch of 100 on my own. If I fail to deliver, JohnK will release my personal information and you all can choose to pursue legal action.

Are there any objections to this arrangement?

That's totally fine with me. I know you from raginazn628's group buy and have every reason to believe you're on the level.

I assume you want BTC?




It is pretty good, and most of the companies I know of mostly deal in high-end networking or military hardware. On the bright side, their volumes are usually low, but $45 is hard to beat.


Ok, all the people involved in this will need to verify the transfer with their respective group buys, then. That should probably get worked out sooner rather than later. It does have the potential to save the group buy operators some trouble, so hopefully they'll be on board.

We should probably give raginazn628 a heads up and see what he thinks.




Ok. Have you seen this?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=208381.0

Thanks!


Yep. I'll be converting it to USD upon receipt, though. I have to pay the plants in USD and I don't particularly want to get screwed by exchange rates.


True facts. As for myself, though, I've decided to assume Tate's is the cheapest (barring that guy on Dorkbot proving to be legit) and start looking at heatsinks and components. I also need to source PCB fabrication, but I'm not too worried about that since there wasn't much variation among the preliminary fabrication quotes I was getting earlier. (They were all about $10 each for quantities over 100.)

My thoughts exactly. I'm going to put together a simple website to start taking bitcoin and registering how many chips to expect from each group buy soon. Right now my freelance work is pretty much taking up all my time, but I should get a chance to put it together soon.


Yeah, definitely. I'll probably send him a message once I have some hard numbers to lend more weight to my request.

Here's a thought: each group buy had a public address that was associated with it. Based on the prices and fees for each group buy, it'd be straightforward to make a formula to calculate how many chips each sending address purchased.

In order to use the website, perhaps the payment for board assembly has to come from the same address that was used to purchase chips, so it can be verified that X number of chips (less than or equal to the number of chips on the boards being made) actually belong to that person. That'd constitute proof, in the blockchain, for the group buy operators to release those chips... assuming the chip ownership wasn't transferred after the fact (that'd have to be handled through the forums).

Or perhaps there's a better way to do this. It does seem a little convoluted, but I'm imagining scammers trying to get boards made with other peoples' chips.



Edit: After 5 minutes of thinking about it, this is a terrible idea. Maybe it's good for settling disputes, but it shouldn't be the primary verification method.

The pool operators just need the individuals that want to redirect their chips to you to inform them the same way they initially provided shipping info. Since the pool operators are trusted entities, they can simply provide you a list of everyone who redirected their chips. (All of this assumes the pool operators will be amenable to the idea of redirecting chips in the first place).

What YOU need, then, is some way to connect payment for the boards to the identity of the individuals who provided chips. You COULD use the blockchain method I described, but that has the complication of post-order ownership transfer. Since the pool operators will probably be providing you forum usernames, maybe the website could spit out a confirmation code that we'd PM to you.

Sorry about the brain dump, hope something useful came out of it.

Edit 2: Oh, duh, just put the forum username into the website. I'm a little slow today.

Let me consolidate the rambling into a coherent suggestion:

1) It's recommended we use the same address to send bitcoins for making the boards that we originally used buy the chips. This will help settle any disputes that arise.

2) We pay up front for boards on the website, and leave our forum username and probably an email address.

3) We inform group buy operators about the change in delivery address. Hopefully they'll be OK with this (since it saves them shipping $ and trouble), and they'll provide you a list of forum usernames that are now sending chips to you (and the associated number of chips).

4) You can validate the people rerouting chips against the people who paid on your website using forum usernames, as well ensuring they're not having more boards made than they're having chips sent.

5) Hopefully this means nobody gets scammed.

So far I like how this thread has been going, I was wondering just in case BTC crashes to 80-90$ levels.
Is it OK if I paid you in USD when it comes time to order?
Heck we can even meet up for a few drinks with the other local miners too  ;D

Sounds good to me.


And a refund address. If your group buy has enough people sending chips to me, you'll be bumped into a lower-priced assembly and fabrication tier, which will result in a refund of the difference between what you paid and what the miner now costs. Plus I'll need to issue refunds for anyone who joins from a late-shipping group buy without enough orders to justify the cost. (Making a batch of, for example, four miners would not be worth it, and I don't want to hold up assembly on a shipment from a larger group buy to wait for a couple more chips to trickle in from a later group buy.)


Sounds good to me. When someone joins from a particular group buy, I'll send my shipping information to the person who organized it and then the person getting miners from me can just tell their group buy organizer to send their chips to ryepdx, or Stumptown Miners. The person organizing the group buy can then just tell me who's forwarding their chips to me and how many they wanted forwarded.


That's what I plan on doing.


Hopefully! :-)


I'll be selling the BTC I receive immediately in order to hedge against such crashes. I'll also be organizing a local meetup for people interested in this endeavor so they can talk with me face-to-face. You can hand off whatever USD you want to hand off at that point. If it ends up that the price of your miner drops due to the amount of involvement from your group buy, I'll send you back the extra cash along with your miner.

Sounds great, What's the status on the K1 quotes if any?

The last quote I got on the K1 from Colin. It was a hand-wavy $10 for assembly and $2 to $20 for fabrication. Still waiting on a quote from SMT NW on both the K1 and the K16. ESP Seattle finally got back to me, but they weren't able to beat Tate's price on the K16, so I won't be pursuing things with them any further. I'll send out for a quote on the K1 from Tate today.

$2 to $20 for fabrication? That was a real quote? Hahahaha. I hope $20 is for 10 units and $2 is for 10,000 or something, because that's completely useless otherwise.

Interested. 34 chips from ragn's first group order.

True facts. I'm not going to be going with Colin's supplier in all likelihood. I got some preliminary online quotes for fabrication before I started focusing on assembly costs, and it looks like $10 per board is pretty much what it costs at most places for our batch sizes.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Sie4JW1E

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The escrow address for Ryepdx's Avalon Chip group buy is:

1E4YTtj589bWJPyN5y1NMTdkQ3DDfc6c8f

Please state and agree to the conditions (if item is received damaged, item lost with tracking, customs fee etc) beforehand.

If possible, GPG sign your agreement to prevent any discrepancies later on and please ship with tracking to prevent problems during delivery.
GPG signing is not a requirement, and any verbal exchange in the form of private messages or posts on bitcointalk.org, or email is effective as a statement of condition.

In addition to that, I confirm the receipt of:

1) Photo of Ryepdx's passport
2) Photo of Ryepdx's Driver's license
3) Self-potrait of Ryepdx and his house
4) Self-potrait of Ryepdx and his house number
5) Self-potrait of Ryepdx and his license
6) Photo of shipping label to his address

The fine print:
This Contract is solely generated for the purpose of facilitating the transaction between the seller and the buyer, which refers to the pseudonyms used on bitcointalk.org.
The escrow holder, John, assumes and gives no liability or guarantees on the satisfaction of all parties involved, although he agrees to mediate and facilitate the deal to the fullest extent he is capable of.  On the event that any problems arises, he will release the escrow to whichever party that presents him with the most convincing proof and/or after an open discussion with others or theymos. 
The verbal acceptance by both parties (or the failure to reject) and the sending of Bitcoins to the escrow address above constitutes the acceptance of the terms and conditions stated, and the activation of this Contract.
[
Please understand that I am assuming the risk of holding the escrowed Bitcoins, and I am using my own time to facilitate this transaction.   
I am imposing a fixed and nonrefundable fee of 2% for this transaction, to be deducted when the funds are moved.

Thank you.

John (the escrow holder)
27 May 2013
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)

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Interested in 2 k16's and 4 k1's (assuming all chips are good).  I'm also in ragingazn's first batch and steamboat's 3rd batch, so that works out perfect. :)

Very Interested in throwing my hat in the ring for some combination of k16s and k64s totaling 256 chips from Ragin's 1st chip group buy.

So what are we doing with this?  Is this a preliminary setup?  Are you accepting payment already?  Are the prices on the OP set?

I think rye is just setting up escrow so he can accept taking funds now, I'm pretty sure he's getting ready as bkkcoins is finishing up his prototype boards within 4-5 days. I'm pretty sure once the firm price points come in he will get lots of orders from all of the West Coast.

East coast too; I'm in both of ryepdx's group buys so I figure it'll be less mess if I just follow ryepdx through assembly.

Not a joke...

Have you looked on ebay for "4-layer PCB" printers? The prices and quality is a LOT better than most US listed prices. (Not for a prototype board though.)

I believe they all follow ISO standards that are up to date, and they do most of the "extra" stuff free... Like, actually testing the boards, solder-masking, silk-screening... Which other places try to charge you additional fees for, to hide the fact that they are taking you for a ride. :P

Just offering my 2-cents...

Yep, that's the case. JohnK has my identity information and I'm currently working on a small website that will allow people to place their orders. There was a miscommunication between JohnK and me, though. The escrow we're looking at setting up will have the payments going directly to me so he doesn't have to deal with converting a bunch of XBT (I just discovered the ISO standards thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179881.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179881.0)) to USD all the time. If I reneg on our deal, then JohnK releases my identity information.

Is this an acceptable setup for everyone? The funds will have to pass through my hands and into the plants' hands at some point prior to delivery anyway, as I don't have enough funds on hand to pay for batches of 100 miners all by myself.


I have no trouble believing this. In looking for a local supplier, I'm hoping to minimize turnaround time, not price. I'm going to be a little more expensive than most of the other deals, but I'm aiming to be faster in return. Time is XBT when you're mining.

I'm perfectly happy with this setup and don't mind paying a bit more for a faster turn around.
Also while XBT is neat all all, I'd rather call it it BTC in the non-formal syntax. It rolls of the tongue better.

Hi,
         Is it possible to run a k16 board with only 12 chips and mine a little slower?

subscribed.  I am probably willing to devote about 1000 chips from my order and help with costs so keep me informed please.

yes it is, mount 3 per bank

I'm not sure that the plant will be able to accommodate different numbers of chips per board, though...

Hey Rye, PM sent.

BTW, im working on a website where people like you who are providing services can take orders for your product, track orders, send out emails or updates to status of users who have ordered, etc.. etc..

Let me know if interested, I have something working behind the scenes yet but haven't shown anyone.

I'm interested in at least 4 K16s, and a handful of K1s.

Ryepdx - PM sent.

预计K16价格：〜$ 93
预计K64价格：〜$372

The quote's in from Tate on the K1/Nano. It'll be $11.28 for assembly at batch sizes of 128 and $10.56 at batch sizes of 256. Parts for a batch size of 128 will be $5.48, plus shipping, which brings the parts price up to $6.44. (I'm allocating $5 in shipping for each line item.)

I don't have circuit board fabrication quotes for the K1 yet, so I'm going to use the 5 day turn around, 128 batch size quote I got on the K16 from PCB Unlimited: $10.07. I imagine we'll be able to get it cheaper once I get hard numbers, since the board's about 1/8 the size of the K16, but that's what I'm going with for now.

Not sure about the price on heatsinks yet, but the price sans-heatsink looks to be $30.57. I'm going to be looking at heatsinks for all the miners today and will hopefully have those numbers to add to the miner prices soon.

I'll also be looking at sources for cases and stacking solutions for those of us who need them. I don't plan on producing any myself at this point, but I figure it'll help to have a summary of the efforts out there here. And if there's any sort of bulk discount, we can pool our orders to take advantage of that. I won't be taking any sort of group buy fee on those orders, since I'm already taking a fee on the miners themselves.

How big will the licencing fee for bkkcoins be per board?

Licensing fees were still up in the air last time I checked, but BkkCoins threw out $5 per board a couple weeks ago when we were PMing. I was planning on giving him a cut from my fee.

Alright, for now I'm planning on going with steamboat's heatsink buy. I'll allocate $6 per K16 for that. I haven't seen anything decisive regarding heatsinks for the Nanos yet.

Whats the update on the PCB development? Is this more of a BkkCoins related question? I on the fence as to go with ryepdx or burnin's PCB assembly. I would be interested in 3 K64s but would have about 8 chips leftover. I am on the east coast so shipping would be quick once assembly is complete, but not sure if the difference would be enough to change my mind as to build quality/warranty/turnaround time considering difficulty is up just 25% this round alone. I have two orders with zefir for batches 5 and 7, but have still not supported any devs until I see more tangible proof of completed PCB assembly. (I understand this is all speculation until Avalon actually sends sample chips to the devs for testing, but am just testing out the waters and these two projects have the best prospects for right now.

If you want to keep track of the state of PCB development, go read through BkkCoins' posts in the Klondike thread. Basically it sounds like things are going well so far. Heatsinks are the most unknown quantity right now. There have been a couple proposed heatsink designs, and BkkCoins has received a few samples, but he's not really going to be able to test them until he has chips. Right now we're in "wait and see and design cases and heatsinks" mode.

From reading the Klondike thread, it's my understanding that sample chips will precede the rest of the group buy chips by four weeks. We should have at least a couple weeks to react to anything unforeseen revealed by BkkCoins' prototype tests. I'm not too worried about BkkCoins' design working out, though. There have been a lot of eyes on it, and most (if not all, IIRC) of BkkCoins' assumptions about the design prior to Avalon's release of their specs turned out to be right.

Cross-post in all threads of projects that are registered for Avalon sample chips from my order.

Delivery of sample chips seems to have started.

If you have chips ordered with me that you want to support this project with, do it now.

If you are the owner of this project, please provide me your shipping address.


Find the details here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg2419155#msg2419155).

Orders are now open. Go to www.stumptownminers.com (http://www.stumptownminers.com) to place your order.

Let me know if you have any questions. I'll soon be arranging a meetup in Portland for those who want to meet with me face to face.

Placed the order. Will send the BTC in few hours. 

Good job on the order form. Unfortunately I have chips coming to you from 2 different group-buys.
Hope they arrive at the same time. Also, where are you located, as I would prefer a local pickup.

Thanks, and good luck.

Love the site, well done....

Think I need to sort a site too soon :D

Thanks! For users with chips coming from two different group buys, I'll choose to either split the order up between the group buys or get it done with the later-arriving one. My criteria will be whichever results in more people getting their orders.


I'm in Portland, Oregon.


Thanks. If you want, I can let you use my code.

Okay, I'm organizing two meetups this week for those who would like to either place an order in person or just place a face with the name.

I'll be at the Green Dragon from 7pm to 8pm this Thursday and Friday. I'll be the guy with the "Stumptown Miners" sign on the back of his laptop.

Please let me know if you can't make either of these and want to place an order in person.

So this design will be based off BkkCoins Klondike Design identically? Who will be assembling the boards and what experience do they have with ASIC/FPGA technology? What is the expected turnaround time? Will there be any sort of warranty for this?

I'm almost at a decision, although burnin's seems the most informed thread out there for DIY designs. If you can answer these I would consider adding my chips to your order. I would be interested in 3 K64 units, however would have 8 chips left, would there be an option to buy out others leftover chips and assemble another K16 unit? Or I guess 8 K1 units? Feel free to PM me these answers as well, although I think it would get many more of us stateside interested simply due to faster shipping.

Yes. I am simply organizing the assembly of BkkCoins' design stateside.


Tate Tech will be assembling the boards. They were founded in 1992. Their CEO managed Key Tronic Europe's operations in Ireland in the 80s. I've been in contact with their VP of Customer Solutions and he's told me they can provide assembly with 3 to 5 day turnaround. I expect to add a day to that for PIC programming on each batch. PCB fabrication will take 10 days, but I expect to kick that off before the chips arrive. I also expect to have all the parts necessary before the chips arrive. I am shooting for 1 week turnaround.


burnin is probably more informed than I am, since it sounds like he knows how to assemble the miners himself. I don't have that kind of EE knowledge, honestly. You should be aware of that.


You can certainly arrange for buying out other people's chips. They'll have to speak up here, though, since I don't personally have any insight into that. The order form requires the number of chips pledged from a group buy and the number of chips required for the miners ordered to divide evenly.

Ugh, looks like subscribe to thread doesn't actually notify me of anything :(

Anyways, great progress!

Has it been settled on Steamboat's heatsink design?  I only ask as I'd be one of those looking for a chassis solution (either will make my own, or piggyback off someone elses project) that I can rackmount, and knowing the dimensions beforehand lets me start building mockups.

I'm also looking for 6 extra chips (assuming none of mine are DOA) from anyone who happens to have a few extra.  I'll pay above the price paid + shipping, and I'm sure we can simply let rye know to swap 6 on his end when they arrive.

Do you plan on keeping this open?  Or will this be a one-time group buy?  Sorry if this was already answered.  I plan on picking up chips if available after they ship from auctions and the like, so I need to line up options to get them turned into miners if that scenario plays out.

It notifies you if you visit every email

Payment made for 2xK16 and 2xK1s. Any way to see the numbers of boards that have been paid for?

I plan on first setting up a table showing the number of orders made from each group buy, and then later I'll probably update it to show how many orders have been paid for from each group buy.

Will the manufacturer you are going with be receiving test chips to replicate and test the Klondike design as well? Will there be any sort of warranty offered?

No, the assembler I'm going with will not be receiving sample chips to test the Klondike design. I'll be going off of BkkCoins' test results. As for a warranty, I'm not sure what Tate Tech offers. Most assembly plants will do rework for free if things go wrong during assembly, but I will ask them specifically about that.

So where do we tell our group buy organizers to ship chips?

I would imagine that they would probably deal directly with each other. I think John K acted as escrow for both ryepdx as well as Ragnazn (organizer of my group buy) so it should be relatively easy for them to coordinate. I just filled out the shipping info form for my group buy and indicated that I was having them sent to Stumptown. I don't know how everyone else feels but my preference would be to just bundle all the Stumptown-bound chips together in one shipment, overnight to Oregon, and share the cost between those involved (proportional to each person's share of the chips). Alternatively, ryepdx would cover shipping for that one shipment and each of us users would pay him our share (this way one person isn't delaying the shipment to Stumptown).

Ragnazn has created an order form. He confirmed that for the address field we can simply state "Stumptown Miners" as the recipient and they will handle the details on their end.

Ok.  Will do.

Also, ryepdx I filled out your order form, but can't get the BTC until a week from Monday.  I'm confident you won't receive my chips by then, so I should be ok, but how do I update my order form?  That is, how do I recall the previous form I've already filled out?

Any chance that paypal (yeah, I know) can be accepted for the assembly? Would you care to have that as an option? As much as I can't stand Paypal sometimes, it might be beneficial since most of the people who would be using it are stateside anyways.

If you're just talking about getting a payment address, the address shown upon order form completion will work indefinitely. You can even bookmark the URL if you want. The page won't go away or anything.

If you need quantities or something changed for an order you've already made and paid for, just email or message me and I'll be happy to make the changes.


No, I'm sorry. Aside from the inevitable chargebacks I'd have to deal with, I'd also have to worry about them freezing my funds indefinitely if I get any sizable amount of money coming in.

I believe I saved the payment address, but I can't be positive.  When I get home tonight I'll check, and if not I'll PM you.

Thanks!

I just got back a quote on turnkey assembly of miners at larger batch sizes. I thought it would be interesting to share with you. Lead time on the K16s would be 10 to 12 weeks, though, so I'm not going this route unless they can reduce lead time.

Full turnkey assembly of a batch greater that 128 of K16s would run us $80.16, plus the cost of heatsinks, screws, PICs, and the 4UCONN 10987 and 11182s, per miner. Batch sizes of 256 would get us down to $72+, and batch sizes of 512 would get us to $64.62+. There are also one-time costs associated:

Solder Paste Stencil: $220.00
Programming (their machines, not the PICs): $330.00
Methodization: $182.00
PCB: $600.00

Full turnkey of a batch greater than 128 of K64s would run us $307.85, plus the cost of heatsinks, screws, PICs, and the 4UCONN 10987 and 11182s, per miner. Batches of 256 would run $277.95+, and batches of 512 would run $250.11. One time-costs:

Solder Paste Stencil: $220.00
Programming: $1,842.00
Methodization: $182.00
PCB: $600.00

And a batch of 128 K1s would run us $16.88 (plus cost of heatsinks) each, with 6 to 8 weeks turnaround. Batches of 256 would be $13.44+, batches of 512 would be $11.50+, and batches of 1,024 would be $10.25+.

I sent back an email and am seeing about getting the price of fabrication and assembly split off from the price they sent back, and I'm also seeing if they can reduce turnaround time. I suspect most of the lead time in their quote is due to parts acquisition. If that's the case, I'm going to see if I can get ahold of the parts any faster than them.

K16-sized heatsinks run about $6 each from steamboat's group buy. (So that's $24 added to the price of each K64.) I've got 256 arriving in the first batch. I'm also going to see if I can get a local plant to fabricate the heatsinks. If we get enough overall orders, that might push the price down further.

I've decided to drop my fee back down to the 5% I was talking about when I first started feeling this out. And once again, any difference in the price you paid in USD via BTC and the cost of the miners plus my 5% fee and shipping (if applicable) will be converted back to BTC and returned to you once everything's been bought and paid for.

Also, I've begun ordering PICs. I have 90 in hand already and will be sourcing more as soon as possible. I'll also be talking wtih BkkCoins about alternatives to the PIC on the parts list, since it's obviously in short supply. BkkCoins was talking about using another, more available chip requiring a different mounting procedure, so I'm going to see if I can get more information about that.

Wouldn't a different mounting procedure require a different board?

edit:
Why not just order them?

http://www.microchipdirect.com/ProductSearch.aspx?Keywords=PIC16F1459

Yeah, it would require a slightly different board. BkkCoins plans on making that design available shortly after he's finished testing the current design. I'm hoping to have at least 128 of the original PICs available for a batch on the off-chance that the other design takes longer than expected to be released. I already have 90.

I haven't ordered a bunch of those yet mostly because I haven't even sold enough K16s at present to make a full batch of 128. I've added tables with number of chips pledged from each group buy and overall number of K1s, K16s, and K64s sold so you guys can keep track of that stuff too. I'll also be adding tables that show the number of K1s, K16s, and K64s from each group buy (with and without K16 substitution where its been requested) later on.

The biggest group buy using my service right now is ragingazn's, and that one has a potential 76 K16s after substituting the K64s with K16s. I have 1 order from zefir's group buy, and 1 order from SebastianJu's. 2 from steamboat's, if you count my own. We need more people on board as soon as possible.

I plan on ordering 3 k16 boards.  What's the refund policy (chips + BTC) if this falls through and manufacturing/assembly never happen?

Thanks,
Dave

The refund policy is to send you back the USD value of the BTC you sent as BTC. (I am converting the BTC I receive to USD for holding.) If we don't have enough orders for a batch by the time group buy chips start to go out, then this enterprise will be considered failed.

We need to move quickly now, though, because parts are already starting to go out of stock at various vendors, and I don't want to start ordering any parts en masse until we've got enough orders to fill a batch.

I plan on ordering 2 k16 and 8 k1 (40 chips from ragingazn's group buy), but I'm going to wait until Monday or Tuesday when the btc price hopefully recovers. Weekends is not a good time to buy something with btc.

How much will shipping be to Canada?

Shipping depends on how fast you want it, of course, and the shipper you prefer. But USPS can ship that up to Canada for $20, assuming the weight is lower than four pounds. (That's assuming about 1/4" of padding on all sides is sufficient, of course.)

QQ: Relatively speaking, how skilled would one need to be with standard soldering equipment to fit Avalon chips to a K1 board?  ...if it is even practical...

Not sure it'd be practical! Most of the components are small enough that reflow is basically the only way to go, as I understand it. There have been people who've been talking about doing skillet reflows, but I personally wouldn't want to risk my Avalon chips like that.

I've got BitPay set up now, so the currency conversion will take place instantly. Because the currency conversion is taking place instantly, I've changed the listed prices to USD. However, you still must pay in bitcoin.

Let me know if any of you have any questions. Thanks!

If anyone was having trouble ordering earlier, the server errors have been resolved and everything is functioning normally now.

He's right, skillet reflow is not advisable....but if you have a reflow ovan and air gun its doable...
You could do it with a v. fine soldering iron, but you need seriously steady hands....

Ill be reflowing the k1's myself, but I do have the oven etc

I'd like to buy one K16, what is the group buy username / batch number / number of chips?
          Thanks--

The username of the group buy organizer you bought chips from, which number group buy it was (if this was their first/only group buy, then it'd be batch 1), and the number of chips you will be forwarding to me from them.

Update!

After looking at the availability of alternative parts on the BOM, I'm much less worried about shortages now. The PICs are the scarcest component at present. I have 90 of those in hand and I've sent off for 166 more. They will get shipped to me on July 11th. We should be covered for at least 256 K16s now, PIC-wise. If orders start taking off and we need more, we can switch to the alternative design BkkCoins will be releasing and use the QFN version.

At present we are halfway to having a full batch of K16s, if we substitute them for the K64s. I've sent off an email to Colin to see if he can offer pricing that's competitive with Tate's at that batch size. If so, I will lower the minimum batch size on the K16s.

Sounds  good. Looking forward to placing an order  for K64's this coming week.

Thanks ryepdx. I'd like to get a K16 but only have 12 chips. Any suggestions? Should I try and find more chips?

Earlier I saw one of my customers had 4 extra chips they were looking to offload. I'll see if I can find them again and edit this post with their info if I do.

Good news! I just heard back from Colin. With the number of K16s we currently have ordered and paid for, he's willing to beat Tate's price by $3 and do batches in sizes as small as 10 miners per batch.

So if we go with Colin, the minimum batch size for group buys would be 10 (assuming I can get overnight shipping from Canada on 10 miners for $30 or less). We're way above that number already, so the deal is on! I will be calculating the cost of overnight shipping between Colin and myself to figure out the *real* cost and then I'll get back to you all about the possibility of partial refunds based on the price drop.

Thanks, everyone, for your support. I'm excited to get these chips on boards and hashing. :-)

Thanks for the update, man. I'm stoked about this.

I also sent you a PM a while back. I realize you're probably pretty inundated with messages but if you have a chance and could take a look, I'd appreciate it.

Just for clarification on this, this will essentially yield a working hashing board complete with components and heatsink, correct? The only thing it won't have is a case but pci-e power connector, usb, and all requisite components will be on the boards, right? Just plug in the power supply, connect to computer, install any requisite drivers, start cgminer, and the hashing commences. Correct? I just want to make sure that if there's anything I need to get taken care of prior to receipt that I do it now rather than waiting until I get the boards.

Sorry about that! I was pretty inundated, and it looks like a few messages fell through the cracks. I'm looking at your email right now and composing a reply.


Yup! You will need to supply your own case (if you want one) and PSU, but everything else is included.

Any chance there would be volume discounts on board assembly? I have 240 chips through zefirs GB and am wondering what is the most best option taking into account reliability, turnaround-time, and cost per board. This equals 15 K16s or 3 K64s and 3 K16s. Would it take longer to get the K64 boards tested and produced?

That would be me, send me or ryepdx a PM and I'm sure we could figure something out.

BTW ryepdx anyone else order from steamboat other you and me?

I ordered from steamboat too and after looking at his assembly pricing I'm interested in other options  :)

I'll be looking for assembly of 16 miners and I'll have a handful of spare chips as well.

Looks like it's just you and me for now, plus eabedry if they follow through.

You should have my order to: 16 k16 from 256 from Ragin.

Yes, I have your order in the database and marked as paid.

Regarding overclocking: it does not appear that the first revision of the Klondike boards will be overclockable. BkkCoins is planning on making an overclockable revision once the current revision has been proven to work.

Do you want to wait for an overclockable version of the Klondike boards? This will likely mean we get our miners later than if we didn't wait, but it also means we will have the option of overclocking to achieve performance gains of 20% to 30%.

Please let me know your preference so we can decide on a direction.

Thanks,

Ryan

Maybe I'm alone here but isn't the base clock speed the base clock speed because anything over that would / could result in failure or HW errors? I'm not sure I'd want to chance overclocking if it was going to mean potential quick burnout of the chips.

It depends on how cool you can keep your chips and whether the rest of the hardware on the board can handle the increased voltage demand from the chips. Right now the Klondike's hardware cannot handle the increased voltage demand that would come with overclocking. However, I've seen a number of Avalon miners on the boards say they've bumped their chips up to around 350Mh/s and 375Mh/s without much trouble. Yifu has insinuated that the chips can easily do better than their base clock rate, too, and I've heard people talking about a theoretical limit of 450Mh/s.

But you're right, overclocking would be dangerous and you would likely shorten the lifespan of your chips. If we decide to wait for the overclockable revision, the miners I ship would still be at their base clock speed. It would be up to you to overclock them.

we are still on schedule to get one of the first finished boards right? Should be interesting.. I am guessing August rollout at the latest?

Assuming the majority votes to go with revision 1 of the board and not wait for an overclockable version, yes.

sounds good, revision 1 for sure (difficulty curve vs waiting for overclocking is a wash at best)

any savings you get on costs you can keep as a tip from my order if all goes as planned

Can you confirm which heatsink design you're proposing?

Since people are in different chip batches I guess you're hoping to use someone like Colin who might only charge full setup once (PnP programming etc) even if the assembly batches are spread over time?

If you use Colin we might be able to split off Canadian orders and ship them direct.  Provided the volume is moderate I could act as the distributor for free.  We can meet in Portland in mid july so you can verify my identity etc.

I have some uncommitted chips with Steamboat in the same batch as you guys (I think I bought 34 in batch 3), give the potential shipping savings this could be the right deal for me.

Just chiming in.  I'm also partial to version 1

I'll also vote for Version I...  I think the hot-rodding can wait a little bit.  :)

Till you see the competition...

We all might be thankful that BKKCoins can with little time and testing get an overclocked version 2 out in time for even the earliest orders. I for one will be waiting for Ver 2.

order submitted for my K16's.  Thanks rye

Hey ryepdx, I'm curious.  Once the initial orders from group buys are finished, will you continue to operate your assembly business for any length of time?  I may end up with some extra chips after the fur has finished flying, and I'm trying to get more info on some one-off K1s.  What's your long term plan for this, if any?

I just want to make sure we're clear on this: you won't be able to "hot-rod" your miner if we go with version 1, unless you're willing to remove some of the chips from your board. Based on the discussion in the Klondike thread, it sounds like version 2 will, aside from using different components, have a slightly different PCB design as well.


I admit I'm also hoping for a timely version 2. I personally would like overclockable miners, so if the consensus here is to go with version 1, then I may just order more boards and have mine populated with 14 chips instead of 16. (Depends, of course, on how difficulty looks at that point in time.)

All right-- you talked me into it.  Assuming the delay (if any) is going to be modest, I'm certainly glad to have the added versatility of overclocking potential, so let's go ahead and see how Version 2 shakes out.  

(I mean, honestly-- if you're willing to wait, that speaks volumes, since you've got a **lot** more skin in this game than I do!)

Haha. Thanks. All of this is a gamble, of course. But I feel like having the ability to overclock will make us more competitive in the longer run, and give us a better shot at turning a profit.

+1 for v.2. I think BBK will have the revised version ready prior to ryepdx receiving the chips and placing the order. If not, then I am OK with just going with v.1

It is a hard choice...

There are too many variables really be certain. My feeling given the progress and confidence of BKKCoins he will give us something. Even with the V1 K16 300 GH/s and a bit more might be possible. But really if it is between a 1 to 2 week wait for V2 then I think that might be worth it in the longer term over a 14 chip solution.

I wish you guys the best of luck hope it works out for us all.

btw, I need to replace my order, I got few more chips for Zefir to round up my  order.

Okay. If you want to change any of the things on your previous order, go ahead and email or PM me. But if you got, say, 16 chips and want one more K16, then you should be able to just place another order. I'll be packaging up things according to address, so if you have multiple orders from the same group buy, they will ship together.

the best defense is to hedge and be quick..  buy from each offerring but never slow the train

So, has anyone heard any rumblings about the Avalon chips? We're nearing the promised ship date... 1-2 weeks, probably.

As for pressing boards, do we have any kind of ETA on that? I know BKK is still working on his design.

By the way, ryepdx: can you confirm receipt of my payment? There was only a pass-through webpage when I ordered to serve as a reciept. I kinda wish it'd emailed me.

No ETA on pressing boards yet. As you said BkkCoins is still working on his design. I don't want to pull a Terrahash and get a bunch of boards pressed prematurely. I'll start pressing boards once BkkCoins has confirmation that the current K16 design can be chained.

Yes, I have received your payment. For anyone else who has the same question, here is the list of all the people I have received payment from so far:

redphlegm
OtaconEmmerich
timewaster
spinner
ThatBitcoinGuy
DPoS
Vycid
spanishfry

If you believe your name should be on this list, please message me.

If you still want to buy from me, please do so soon. I will be closing orders on July 7th to allow some time for selling the excess PICs I've ordered to other assemblers.

That is wise. I assume that the volume from raginazn628's group is not high enough to consider K64, right?

I'm honestly a little confused where everyone is taking their chips. Are they waiting on ragin? He's released basically no information...

This effort sounds like the most solid plan..  no hype and just going to get it done. 
I dont think anyone feels they are going to get rich with these but they should pay for themselves and help spread out the hashing.

no rush, stay steady and let's get it done right the first time

Thanks. Yeah, it looks like we won't be getting any K64s made. Fortunately everyone who has ordered a K64 so far has specified that it's alright to swap their K64s out for K16s, so that's what I'll be doing.

I'm not sure where everyone is taking their chips. There may be a little bit of psychological inertia keeping people with raging's assembly service, despite his unresponsiveness.


Thanks! I appreciate your appreciation.  ;D

Hi all. I'm considering dropping the K1s. Right now we don't have enough orders to make the target price, and there are only a few hours left before I stop taking orders. Would doing this affect anyone's decision to have K16s made via my service?

Nope, doesn't affect my decision...  thanks!

Just send me the extra chips with the k16's. No biggie.  Does that change the price now?

Nope, no price change. I'll be happy to send you your extra chips along with your K16s. :-)

the refund on the K1s?

K1 price: ~$40

" sent 4.5129 for two k16 & six K1 "

Yes, I'll be sending $40 worth of BTC to everyone's refund addresses for each K1 ordered, assuming we don't get a huge number of K1s ordered in the next couple of hours.

thanks - shame the interest is not there.. probably since they feel asicminer USBees will crash down to $50 soon anyway

I'm interested in buying any chips that people were allocating to k1's. I need 14 to make a full k16. Anyone interested?

Okay, I'm about to start emailing everyone who ordered a K1 and asking them to confirm the refund addresses I have on file. After I receive confirmation of the refund addresses, I will be sending refunds.

Also, I've had a couple PMs come in asking to buy more K16s. I've decided that *if* these people can pay for the K16s before the PICs I need to make the K16s they want get sold, then they can have them. I figure this will help us by potentially getting us to a bigger batch size. They will, of course, be behind everyone else who has already paid. And I'm not re-opening the order form, since any orders that come in at this point are contingent on my excess PICs not all getting sold off.

Finally, regarding burn-in: at present I think it would be best to have Colin, if he's willing, mine for a while against a Bitcoin address under my control (address TBA), and then disperse the funds at that address to everyone's refund addresses according to the percentage of Gh/s they contributed. I figure that will get everyone recouping their investments faster and will keep Colin from having to juggle a bunch of config files.

I haven't talked with Colin about this plan yet, because I wanted to see what you guys thought first. Does this burn-in plan sound good to you?

Edit:
Alright, I just finished emailing everyone who ordered and paid for a K1 regarding their refund addresses. Please check your spam and trash folders if you ordered and paid for a K1 and don't see an email in your inbox. If you don't see the email anywhere, please let me know.

Sounds fine to me...

- TBG

I have 128 spare chips that will be sent to ryepdx from raging that i'm willing to sell.  Anyone that needs chips for this K16 order are welcome to them at cost.  Otherwise I guess ryepdx will be sending me them with my K16s.

Interested in 128 chips, PM sent. Which batch are they from?

I'm from Ragingazn628 group by https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177994.0 .  You can look at his spreadsheet to verify this (row 22).  The chips are already being shipped here to reypdx.  I paid 20.535 BTC for 256 chips, so you can have 128 of them for 10.267 BTC at 1Fy9BFfPS614wcjaG6SoKB5tZUGC1kU48g

Completed! Thank you
Tx ID: d22c94a02bcc673899b6d2aebc917dea09090de290f79b1bbd6c4231f513e782

I will have 8 chips left over for anyone who needs to complete a K16, or if K1's go into production

I'm still getting requests for orders via PM, and that's fine by me. I would rather have these PICs on Stumptown miners than have to sell them. I am a little amused, though: it seems like a good number of people waited until after the deadline to make their decision, since we've gone from 71 K16s ordered from before the deadline to 167. I have capacity for 256 K16s, and once we reach that, or once I sell the remainder of my PICs (whichever comes first), we are closed. Full stop.

If anyone still wants to get in on this, feel free to PM me. All orders taken through the order form earlier are covered, but any requests for orders I receive via PM will be contingent on component availability. I also reserve the right to suddenly snap shut the "extended ordering window" if it looks like component suppliers are running low on one of the components on the current BOM.

I need 14.

Assuming I can get the 14 chips, I'm interested in one more k16.

Okay, so BkkCoins needs some of the components I bought for Stumptown Miners. I managed to snap up the last few 360nH power inductors before he could get any, so I'm lowering the number of K16s I'm producing from 256 to 250. That means there are now only 56 K16s left.

If anyone has any objections, speak up now. I personally feel like this is fair, though, since without BkkCoins none of this would be happening.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. We would all be dead in the water without him. I hope people tip the everliving fuck out of him when this all comes together (or at the very least that he makes a pretty mint from royalties / licensing).

Ah, BkkCoins found more. I'm still donating the parts he needs, but it looks like I can still offer 256 K16s total.

Good news:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.msg2732864#msg2732864

Yeah, I saw that! Looks like everything's coming together.

On another note, we've gone a little over budget on parts due to only 203 of the 256 available K16s being ordered. This means we have some excess inventory on some of the components that went out of stock early at some of the suppliers. This is relevant because it means a smaller refund for everyone. I'm working to increase our margins a bit again. If you know of anyone considering using Stumptown Miners, please have them PM me as soon as possible. We should be making our final component purchases in the next couple days. I was planning on making them today, but I've decided to follow BkkCoins' lead and let the final design sit in peer review for a couple days first.

We may also go over budget on heatsinks due to the supplier I was talking with becoming unresponsive. If anyone knows of a place where I could get some cheap heatsinks to fit the K16s, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update.

Also, can you please let us know if we need to purchase anything on our side, so we'll be ready when the units get shipped., i.e. preferred power supplies, adapters, fans, splitters, etc...

Thanks.

you're in Oregon, right?

You need to order power supplies and fans.

The recommended fan is the SilenX EFX-10-12 Effizio: http://amzn.to/1bCQDfj
(Affiliate link: trying to cut down costs however possible.)

If you're getting a lot of K16s, you could probably just put them all in front of a big box fan and be alright. I'm toying with the idea of making a platform and setting them out in front of my air conditioner's fan. From what I've read on the Klondike thread, the chips are pretty easy to cool if you have a decent-sized heatsink on the board.

There isn't a single recommended PSU, but you'll want a gold or platinum certified PSU from a respected brand like Corsair. The K16s are powered by a 6-pin PCIe connector, so you'll need to have enough of those to power your Klondikes. You can also get splitters and adapters to increase the number of PCIe connectors your PSU can handle. I'm thinking about getting this one myself: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153145

I also have a bunch of Corsair Gold PSUs left over from my GPU mining operation that I might use.


Yup. Why do you ask?

I got an email asking for more details on how many splitters/adapters one might need in order to power 24 K16s. I'm posting my response here in case anyone else finds it informative:

i'm close so if i get involved i suppose i could come pick up and avoid shipping.

That would certainly be an option for you, yes. :-)

EDIT: Depending on how close you are and how many miners you buy, I might even be willing to drive out to you. The cost in gas would be a lot cheaper than the cost in unused components if you're able to buy a sizable percentage of the remaining 53 miners.

so if i understand your OP correctly, you provide and assemble everything except for chips, PSU, cables, and fans for a 5% markup?

if i don't have chips, i can't participate?

Yes, that is indeed the case.

Hey guys, I'll have 6 chips left over after ordering some k16s. I was originally planning to use them for k1s but since that's no longer available I'm looking to sell them. I am from Zefirs batch #1 group buy which was placed around April 10th and was one of the earliest orders placed so should be some of the first chips arriving. I'd like to sell them for around .2btc apiece OBO.
PM me or post here if you are interested.

Since we're all going to need a PSU, cables, fans, and a host controller to actually get our boards from this group hashing, does anyone have any insight or plans they'd like to share?

I've got a PSU that can handle all of my boards (1x PCI-e per K16, right?), but will it actually provide power without the mainboard connector plugged in? Does anyone have a workaround for this?

As for the I2C connectors - where's the best place to get some for a reasonable price? Same for the fans - the boards are 10x10, so are 120mm fans appropriate, or do we already have some sort of heatsink solution...?

I'm planning on using a raspberry pi for the host - cheap ($35+shipping), small, and easy on electricity. cgminer should do the rest.

I also have some spare chips that were planned for K1s. 8 chips ordered in SebastianJu group buy batch 1 (can verify ownership).

1.2 BTC for 8 chips. (0.15 per chip)

How many of those fans per k16?
Each k16 is ~75W and powered by one 6-pin pci-e connector, right?
Finally, we'll need a usb cable. What's the board end of the usb cable? How are they chained?

I would recommend a single rail PSU as that way you don't have to worry about load balancing the rails.

The 6 pin PCIe is rated 75W, while the 6+2 pin PCIe is rated 150W.

The K16s should be 32W but not confirmed, also it could be double that with some crazy overclocking  ;D

So without overclocking, and using splitters, a 6 pin PCIe could power 2 K16s and a 6+2 pin PCIe could power 4 K16s or a K64.

Load balancing the rails?

I've got a PSU with 6 PCIe plugs, plus 2 from molex adapters. It'll need to power 8 boards. Is that a bad idea because the load will be so small on each rail? (PSU is 1000W)

You will be fine with that PSU for 8 boards. If anything, you may experience issues as the PSU will have only about 25% load. Some PSUs require 50% load to work efficiently   ;D

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

Awesome.

Miners or boards?

Same thing. K16 = 1board

I meant like miners (people) or boards. I consider myself a miner since I am into it and want to do it. We didn't call picks, sieves, or shovels "miners" during the gold rush. That's all I was asking. I was just curious how many people we were talking about.

ryepdx,

tldr; Are the pcbs being manufactured at a facility other than the the assembly facility?  I ask because of time differences between the different group buys. What does the timeline look like now that BKKcoins has finished the design?  If memory serves me correct, ragingazn's group buy order was submitted on the 27th of April meaning those chips could potentially hit US soil within the next 2 weeks.

Thanks,
Dave

Hey davecoin, sorry I didn't reply to your post earlier. I've been pretty busy these last few days.

The PCBs are not being manufactured by Colin. Originally the plan was to go through Colin's usual PCB supplier, who resides in Taipei, but last week he recommended I go through BkkCoins to make sure we get the latest revision. I was also in favor of going through BkkCoins, not only because he is offering boards at a price below what we had budgeted, but also because he does deserve whatever business we can give him. Since we're ordering enough boards to fill a production run all by ourselves, BkkCoins is going to have the production plant he's working with ship the boards directly to Colin to save time. He's told me they should arrive the first week of August. Given the delays on Avalon's end, I think that'll be early enough.

Right now almost everything is together. The one thing I'm worried about is the shipment of 166 PICs from Microchip that was supposed to arrive ten days ago but still has not shipped. I've got a support ticket open with them and will be calling tomorrow. I'll also see if I can get blank PICs from BkkCoins in the event that Microchip completely falls through.

I'm also somewhat worried about steamboat's ability to supply heatsinks. I've been talking with him on the boards and responses from him are generally pretty slow. I've got the final price on the heatsinks from him, but I'm still waiting on a payment address.

Aside from that, all components have either been received or are in transit and should arrive sometime next week.

I've also bought a bunch of these for anyone who wants to connect their K16s together: https://klondikedesign.com/?product=klego-connector

What version of PCB are you ordering the one using the PIC QNF ?

also I guess those of us with chips from ragin have to wonder about those shipping to you....

I'm using the SSOP version. I already have 90 of them on hand and I'm trying to get more from Microchip. (More on that further down.)


I imagine he's pretty busy with moving, but the fact that he's moving to a new house at an address unknown to the escrow holder does make me a little nervous as well. Still, it's too early to freak out. I did that prematurely during his group buy and I'm going to try to not do that again.

Regarding the PICs I ordered from Microchip, I called them first thing this morning and waited on hold for about an hour before someone picked up. According to the customer service representative, the PICs that were *supposed* to arrive July 11th won't be arriving until August 21st "due to availability issues." They said I should have received an email notifying me of this change. (I didn't.) The "arrival date" on my order still says July 11th as well.

I'm pretty pissed off. This won't affect those of you coming from Zefir's batch 1, though, since it looks like those chips will be arriving first. I have 90 PICs on hand and only 21 miners belonging to Zefir's batch 1. That means I'll have 69 PICs on hand to handle whoever's chips come in next.

I did manage to find a vendor who appears to have the PICs in stock. Unfortunately the stock displayed on their website did not update after I placed my order, and my order is still "processing," so it's entirely possible that it's just giving me false hope. Still, I called the vendor's customer support line to verify that the stock was actually there and that my order would be shipping today, and the representative said, "oh yeah, you're fine." I plan to continue bugging them at various points throughout the day until I get a tracking number.

Alright, I called the vendor I mentioned earlier and talked to another customer representative. Their system is apparently broken, such that orders from their website were not registering, and there's apparently nothing they can do to route me around the damage. I tried to get him to escalate my call, and got told "it's a system thing and there's nothing we can do until we get the system fixed" about three or four times. He told me to call back later and maybe they'd have the system fixed, but that they couldn't help me until then.

The guy I spoke to also told me they were seeing lead times on that part well into September, so I'm glad I did not cancel my order with Microchip. I'm still very frustrated, given that there is about a month's difference between the shipping time I was promised and the shipping time I'm actually getting.

I'm going to call Microchip again and see if I can at least fix our place in line. I have a feeling we've been getting bumped in favor of bigger customers, based on some observations BkkCoins made to me in a recent PM. If I can't get our place in line fixed, then I'll see if I can find out if any of the customers we've been bumped by are resellers.

Turns out the vendor I was speaking to earlier (Newark) didn't even get my order in their system, despite the fact that I called about it several times throughout the day. The last guy I spoke to said someone bought their entire stock of PICs and, since my order wasn't even in their system, there was nothing they could do about it.

Again, I'm pretty pissed off about this. Not only has Microchip failed to deliver on the date they promised, but Newark's broken system and crappy customer support screwed us out of our chance to get them earlier than we would have with Microchip. So right now I'm going to be able to deliver 90 miners and then there's going to be a delay while we wait for Microchip to *finally* ship us our PICs. The projected delivery date as of now is August 21st. I'm going to be calling them just about every day to make sure that date doesn't slip again.

If any of you happen to hear of a way we can get our hands on a few PIC16LF1459-I/SS or PIC16LF1459-E/SS, please let me know. Or just buy them and I'll happily reimburse you. I want to get these miners hashing as soon as possible.

Things are starting to look better today. Yesterday I managed to get in contact with a vendor on Alibaba who said they can supply the chips within 7 to 10 days, and then later Steamboat messaged me to offer some of his chips. I think we're covered. If both of those fall through, then any K16s beyond the first 90 will be most likely stuck in the queue until August 21st, when the PICs from Microchip should finally come in.

I'll be putting my own order at the back of the line until we've got all the PICs we need. I think it's a business's duty to do whatever is in its power to make sure its customers are not left with the short end of the stick, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

Thanks for the hard work ryepdx. Not that I'm wishing chip deliveries to be delayed, but it looks like there will be some time before some of our orders arrive. Hopefully that means you'll get the opportunity to build your hard earned miners :)

This is very good to hear. I wish I had the confidence in ragingazn628 that I do in this group.

In my opinion: certainly pursue the Alibaba option (since it's probably cheaper) - but don't take their commit dates for granted.

If Steamboat has chips in hand, I would trust his offer much more than I'd trust something on Alibaba. Better to snap it up if he's made a reasonable offer - it'd be quite unfortunate to be stuck without PICs because somebody in China didn't ship on time.

If Microchip didn't come through, then Alibaba seems risky. That's probably where Microchip gets THEIR chips...

Microchip is the designer, they get their chips from a fab.  The problem is they plan production a long time ahead and, unless somebody tells them, they can't plan for blibs in consumption like this.  I can see them puzzling over why everyone is buying these chips, because of the open source nature of the project, the buyers will be all over the world buying hugely varied quantities.

True facts. I had a feeling that components would be the bottleneck for most of the DIYers, and we're starting to see that a bit on the Klondike thread.

Steamboat does have QFN PICs in hand and has agreed to sell them to us at a reasonable price. He's going to be shipping them today, along with the heatsinks he's supplying us. I am quite grateful to him for stepping in and helping out when Microchip started stringing us along. Without his assistance, 59% of our miners would have been delayed until the rest of the PICs came in on August 21st, assuming Microchip didn't bump us again.

With everything ordered and either in Colin's hands or on the way, all that's left for now is to wait. :-)

BTW, these miners should be stackable, as I've decided to go with the right-angled molex connectors. Sorry I didn't discuss that particular point with you all before making the decision. I figure this will give us more configuration options, though. If any of you are interested in keeping your Klondikes stacked, let me know. I may look at sourcing some spacers and cables for shipping with the miners for those of you who want them and are willing to pay a little extra. (At this point, though, it looks like your partial refund should easily cover the cost, if that's the way you want to go.)

The first batch of Avalon chips have shipped!
http://imgur.com/YEi58QQ

Zefir received the first batch last night, repackaged them and is shipping them out from Germany today. Let the games begin!!

May the odds be ever in your favor. :D

Out of curiosity, does anyone have a timeline of the different group buys? Zefir, Ragin, et al? I'm part of Ragin's first group buy and would just like to get a rough feeling for the time lag between group buy orders.

Ragin is AWOL..  i guess we picked the wrong horse in this race

I'm hoping it's due to the family emergency he mentioned. I'm hoping he shows up again to tell us what's going on before the chips ship to him. The natives are getting restless over on his thread and they're talking about maybe having the chips sent to someone else.

Hey guys, just posting again. I will have 6 chips left over and I'm looking to sell them to somebody looking to complete theirs. My chips are from zefirs batch 1 which has since been received by zefir. PM me offers looking to sell this ASAP.

Hey Ryepdx;

I noticed in OP:


In light of the ragingazn628 group buy issue, have you considered doing an additional run for the stranded raging participants?

I had some inquiries regarding that, and no, I'm not willing to do an additional run at this time. Components are just too scarce. With that said, I *am* willing to sell a few of my own complete miners. I'm working for an unfunded startup right now that can't pay me, so I'm looking to extend our runway a little bit by selling things off. (I've also got some 6990 video cards I'm selling, if anyone's interested in building a gaming machine.)

I've got 28 miners in this right now and I'm willing to sell up to 8 of them at $260 apiece at this time. (This includes chips.)


That said, those of you in Zefir's group buy should be seeing your miners shipping by the end of next week.

tldr;  What's going on with the ragingazn group buy?

All is quiet on that front, it seems. Ragingazn628 had a bout of depression following a death in the family, but he's back now. The chips haven't been sighted yet, though. It's possible that they're among the ones being held up in customs.

If I didn't already have a couple of K16's lined up with ryepdx I would sell my chips like many others have form the ragin buy


good to know that zefir's buy went through and boards made and shipping but not sure why ragin's got held up

Hi all!

As you may know, Zefir's chips have been received. However, BkkCoins is not yet done with the firmware for the K16s. As it currently stands, we're the guinea pigs here. Bogart has volunteered the use of one of his boards to test the current K16 design and firmware, so we should be getting validation on that later today or tomorrow. If everything checks out, Colin will solder the remainder of the chips from Zefir's batch.

However, the PIC firmware does not currently allow for updating via USB, so I will be holding off on shipping anything until BkkCoins gets that part finished. If you are comfortable flashing updates to your PICs yourselves and want your miners shipped before then, please let me know. I just figure holding off is a good default option since flashing PICs requires special equipment and knowledge.

Thanks again for your support in this! Here's hoping Avalon gets the rest of our chips to us soon.

As far as I know you will be the first to test the new revision PCB hardware changes.
Seem a little strange TH or SB hasn't done this already.
Or if they have they haven't shared the results.
It is possible that some minor parts changes could be necessary to improve reliability and reduce HW errors.
But because no one has tested the new board and changes we just don't know for sure.
Thanks! Bogart! Thanks! ryepdx!

First a disclosure - I didn't participate in your groupbuy so you can completely ignore or take my thoughts below -

For the PICs reprogramming all you'll need is a cheap ($10-30 on ebay) programming kit and the (free) software from Microchip. Alternatively, it is a weekend project for someone to write a custom programmer that would use just the serial port (or a USB-to-RS232 adapter for $5-10). I've done that several times in the past for the old PICs.

My point is - the programming/upgrading really isn't that much of a big deal.

On the other hand, writing a boot-loader and all the other software pieces necessary to support in-place-upgrade may take much more work.

The bottom line is that you may be better off to mine for a week or two with the old software (as long as it is stable enough) and then spend a few bucks to buy the programming kit/cables (which is also a one-time investment). And the more boards you have the more it makes sense to get them hashing as soon as possible.

That's just my 2 cents though.


And by the way - kudos for the great work! This is one of the better group-buys that I've seen around!

Is this your test build rye?

http://placedroid.com/blogs/news/8625479-place-droid-assembles-first-of-many-klondike-k16-bitcoin-mining-engines

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0222/4886/files/IMG_9938_grande.JPG?104

Yup, that's ours! :-)

Update on the test board: Colin's successfully run ktest and it's passing all the tests. However, it currently is only hashing for a couple of minutes before disconnecting. We think this is due to a software bug, but we're not sure yet. Colin will be working with BkkCoins to figure things out and get the Klondikes working as soon as possible.

Thanks again for all your patience. Sorry these aren't out the door yet! As a chip-holder in ragingazn's group buy, the rising difficulty is making me at least as nervous as it's probably making you guys.

With all this crazy news about Avalon refunding chip orders is it likely that bkkcoins will ever finish klondike?

Not sure. I know he was starting to lose heart earlier. I really hope he doesn't. :-/

With that said, there's been a lot of talk about refunds. I've already ordered and received all the components for everyone's miners, save for chips. Colin has already been paid as well. At this point, I don't really have much in hand to give you guys. On top of this, the terms of sales you guys agreed to state that refunds won't be available once components have been ordered.

However, I don't want to leave you all high and dry either. I've just emailed Colin to see how much of what I paid him he'd be willing to refund for those who want refunds. I will not be seeking a refund myself, though I am fully aware that this may be more due to having invested a lot into this emotionally than due to any cold, reasoned calculation.

Thank you all again for your support.

Maybe the group buy leaders should do a conference call and try to work this out somehow with the DIY builders / fabricators. If we can get enough chips to cover the builds asap and refund everyone else then all would be good. But of course Yifu needs to be in that discussion and work with everyone to help that happen. I want to do whatever we can to help you guys out it is insanity that these efforts are withering on the vine.

Maybe there is a way to nego all this for a win win for those who want out now and those who are still pressing ahead or are ready to fab. We want more project like this so the effort we put in to saving these projects will pay dividends for everyone the next time chips and designs are available for the DIY community.

I'm not really interested in a refund as I understand all the craziness this has become. However since you do already have my chips from Zefir's batch 1 if it's not looking like klondike will ever materialize I'm wondering if there's any other option to make them useable or if they are just gonna have to be paperweights.

There is virtually no chance that little prick would get involved. 

First, most of the group buyers are not Chinese, so they don't matter.

Second, Yifu is a narcissist, so they don't matter.

Third, he's a criminal, so they don't matter.

Why is the Klondike in jeporady ?   Did bkk get samplechips?

I think that he might *IF* approached in a reasonable and respectful manner.  He did respond to Zefir's PM about the matter:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.msg3035535#msg3035535

Hi all,

I just got an update from Colin. It looks like he hasn't gotten ahold of BkkCoins yet, but he's going to be going over the test board some more with his scope this evening. So far everything looks good, which further confirms his hypothesis that there's a problem with the software somewhere. He also confirmed that he would be willing to refund the cost of assembly for anyone who wants it. Assembly cost comes out to $40 per miner.

For those of you considering getting a refund and taking direct receipt of your chips, please be aware that we still haven't received most of them. Zefir's batch 1 is the only batch we have at the moment.

Thanks for bearing with us. It's just as frustrating to me as I'm sure it is to you guys.

+1 Class Act.

At times like these one wonders if BKKCoins or ryepdx, Burnin or Zefir were part of Avalon would we be waiting for chips?

So I sent 64 chips in to Stumptown, and I think 1 16-chip test board has been made from them so far.

If you want, feel free to put the rest onto boards and send them out to any devs who can help with the problem.

+1 class act. ;-)

Thanks, Bogart. I'll let Colin know.

rye can you please remove my link from the first thread..

I closed evilminers yesterday and issued refunds on assembly to those concerned..

Done. Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. :-/

What's our potential course of action if our particular group buy majority implements a refund? Is there a way for us to still get chips rather than being pushed to the back of the line? I'd like to see if it's possible to get the miners regardless. The issue that everyone is forgetting about is that it's not profitable at current exchange rates. If you think adoption will increase, so will value. And therefore, what's mined will probably be worth more than current cost. Then again, the argument is that it would be more of a return if you took the refund and just held the BTC.

Unfortunately there isn't really a course of action if your group buy implements a refund. You can try buying out someone from another group buy that *isn't* opting for a refund, but that's about it. Original terms would still apply, of course, with your place in line being determined by when your chips are received. I don't think assembly is going to be the bottleneck here, though.

In deciding whether to get a refund, keep in mind that the amount you can get back as a refund is your new ROI target. If you get back half the total cost as a refund when you would have recouped 75% by staying in, you would've been better off staying in.

Best of luck to everyone. Here's hoping the gears in the Avalon machine get moving again soon.

Well, the 75% ROI vs 50% return argument ignores a few factors, like labor and general emotional distress. I unfortunately have already decided it is best to cut my losses, as an additional 25% just isn't worth it at this point.

Best of luck to those still committed.

Ryepdx - I think I speak for everyone here when I say that your hard work and professionalism has not gone unnoticed. I hope there will be more business opportunities in the future, hopefully under less adverse circumstances.

Thanks for the kind words.

As a heads up, I've just terminated the EC2 instance I was running stumptownminers.com on. I figured there wasn't any sense in keeping it up since the ordering is over now. I've updated the OP with the terms of sale that were formerly on that page.

Hi ryepdx!

I have many chips on order in steamboat's batch 4 and I've requested a refund. As such, I'd also like to request a refund for the un-needed assembly labor ($40-45/device?). How do we go about placing a request for that refund?

In addition to the assembly labor refund, I want to confirm that I will still be entitled to receive a shipment of the non-refundable hardware that was purchased for my assembly? That's nearly 2/3 of the cost and I'd like to recover that as much as possible of that investment, too.

As far as I understand, Colin is willing to refund all of the labor, and in addition, there is a hardware investment that is non-refundable. Correct?

As others have stated, your ethics are commendable - I appreciate you doing what you can here to make customers happy during this difficult situation. As someone else said, I too look forward to the opportunity to do business with yourself again. You've certainly proven yourself trustworthy to me!

If you would like a refund of your USD returned as bitcoin, I can do an immediate transfer to the Bitcoin address associated with your order, assuming that address is still valid. I'll be using Coinbase's exchange rate.

If you would prefer a USD refund, please PM Colin (username TheDroid).

Yes, we can ship you the non-refundable hardware that was purchased for your assembly.

Thanks for the additional endorsement. I will definitely be launching additional business ventures in the future (probably outside the mining space), so keep an eye out for my posts. :-)

Yes, my address is still good so please do refund the labor (in BTC) to that address at your convenience. In addition, I look forward to receiving the non-refundable hardware when it's available.
If anyone is reading this and wants all of the components for qty 16 K16's (sans chips, obvs), please contact me.

I can't imagine a better outcome for this, ryepdx. Thank you so much for coming up with such an agreeable refund policy, considering the situation.

Is there still a demand for the k16's on your end ryepdx?   Think we can sell them on consignment?

I have 2 and the post above has 16 so if there is demand I guess you would have a lot that could be resold.

if no demand, well..... :-\

+1 Kudos for handling these refunds the right way... too bad not everyone does the right thing.

Any plans for DIY with BitFury or another chip?

UPDATE FROM AVALON 9/9/13

"Avalon Generation Two Chips 55nm
..Those who have invested in time and money on Avalon Generation One based devices and clones can rejoice in the fact we had the foresight to make Avalon Generation Two chips completely backward compatible in every way with 110nm generation one chips, which can be expect to go on sale Late October 2013 for immediate shipping..

Developers and Hobbyists should keep an close eye on our github account as we will be releasing the 55nm chip specification and reference design soon."

This is excellent news - it will still be possible to have these boards produced. Thank you to everyone working on this, there is still hope to get these boards hashing with a positive ROI

who cares about these clowns anymore.   their 15mins of fame has gone up in smoke

Yifu is a fucking genius.

He got everybody stuck on his hardware platform even though he didn't have the chips ready. Now the money has all been spent and it effectively costs next to nothing to get the new chips mounted, because of all the parts and designs already floating around.

He happily gives refunds on the chips he never even meant to sell, and walks away with guaranteed second-gen sales to squeeze value out of the otherwise useless chips/boards, allowing him do a cheap high-volume second generation batch.

I admit it, I got outplayed here. Well done Yifu, you felonious son of a bitch.

True but at least we don't have to lose 60% of our investment in hardware (boards and parts). It may take a little longer but the production run can continue

Agreed. I'm going to be trying to get 2nd gen chips on my Klondikes, given today's announcement.

Maybe... some BitFury's would be better. Not sure what modifications are required... but given the last order of chips will Gen2 be any different?

Well, I'm going to wait for the specs, but that's seeming like the rational course of action.

Me too and I would love to support you, ryepdx, as a group buy coordinator if you are so inclined to oblige...

I'd certainly oblige, if they sell in batches of 10,000 again. There's a possibility they won't this time, since they'll be selling on-hand stock. Then again, they may sell in batches anyway in order to reduce their shipping workload. They're definitely not keen on handling customers directly, that's for sure.

Guess we'll wait and see.

ryepdx, given the latest update, please ignore my last PM.  ;)

Thanks.

ryepdx, are our K16's assembled or you just have the parts waiting for chips before they would be assembled?

Just wondering..  I wouldn't mind selling my 2 on consignment, at a discount, if anyone wants them


thanks

I would be surprised if they changed the 10k minimum order. It's up to you, of course, but it may be worthwhile getting ahead of things and start the process for a group buy. Don't take any funds, of course, but the closer the group is to a completed order, the faster we'll get it once they are released. We would have to make some assumptions, but I think it would be a fair start to assume the same price, same minimum order (10k), and you already have assembly figured out for however many you ordered parts for. Plus, if you get people to commit to the assembly, you can order the required components before the rush (and avoid the problems we ran into last time). Hell, you may even be able to get them cheap with so many people pulling out. Anyway, just a thought. I'm rambling. :)

Same here. I've requested a refund for my 1st gen chips. I plan on getting 2nd gen chips and hopefully the parts you have can still be used for that.

No, the only K16s assembled so far are Bogart's 4 K16s, for testing purposes. We have the parts and are waiting on chips.

I'll start a thread later tonight to gauge interest in getting gen 2 chips through me in the event that Avalon requires bulk purchases again, or else offers discounts of some kind.

Thanks again for everyone's patience through this.

Hi Ryan, when you say you have the parts, does that include boards? We had previously discussed with my refund that I would like to have all of the parts I purchased shipped to me since, understandably, they are not refundable. Is that possible at this time? That is the last step my refunds with the project (you've refunded labor, steamboat has refunded chips, just need components now).

Thanks!

I have yet to hear from ryepdx since August 26th. He has my chips from batch 1 and I have no idea whether he's sending them to me or going to be able to build them into a miner. I'd like to hear from him when he gets a chance.

Sorry about that. I did get your message and thought I had already replied to it. On top of this, Colin emailed me later that day about a customer who'd been asking for their chips and for some reason I thought he was talking about you. So I figured the two of you had handled it. Looking back at the emails, though, I see now that he was *not* talking about you, but about another customer, and that I had *not* in fact replied to your message. Mea maxima culpa.

Last I heard from Colin, he and the other developers had discovered that some of the component values needed to be changed. He was going to try the new components on Friday, but I haven't heard anything from him about it yet. I just sent off another email asking for a status update. We are still planning on getting chips on boards, but I understand if you want out at this point. Please let me know what you decide. If you do want out, I'll go ahead and refund the cost of assembly plus my margin to the address you PMed me.

Edit: Have you gotten the six chips you requested earlier? They were supposed to have been sent around the end of August.


Yes, that includes the boards. We can ship your components to you at this time. Colin has all of them at the moment, so I'll make sure he does that ASAP.

Thanks for your reply, If boards can still be made I'd definitely appreciate it as if I receive the chips they'll probably end up just being paperweights. As to the 6 extra chips, no I have not received them thus why I was messaging you asking what was going on.If they were sent can you get a tracking number for them when you get a chance? I don't think I gave you the wrong address but mistakes happen.

Thanks Ryan! Appreciate the response.

If anyone wants these components, let me know!

I'm going to post this in the marketplace too, but if there's anyone looking for a good price on ~100 or fewer BFL chips, please let me know - I would expect these to be delivered soon.

Tolan, I'll send an email to Colin asking about the six chips. I'm sorry you haven't received them yet.

Speaking of Colin, he sent me this update last night:

ryepdx,
You mentioned you were going to create a new thread for gauging interest in Gen 2 chips for the boards & components that have already been ordered and / or received. I didn't see any though. Any way to get on board with that? Without question I would back / trust you as a group buy organizer (of course would prefer on-hand stock rather than pre-order). Any info?

Sorry, I haven't done that yet. Must have gotten busy with other things that night and forgotten to put the thread together. I'll do it now and put the link here. :-)

Edit:
Thread's here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=301010 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=301010)

Thanks again, everyone.

Hey Ryan,

Is there any update on Gen 2 chips?

If not, I'm thinking it's about time to extract whatever value is left in these boards... what is left over per K16, less parts?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=301010.msg3277416#msg3277416

Any word? I have yet to receive anything in the mail nor a reply via pm since Colin's latest update via email that you posted here. Curious what's happened since.

Hey Tolan,

Sorry about that. I'd told Colin to hold on sending those chips and to reply with a status update since you'd mentioned your decision hinged on whether the K16 design was ready to go or not, IIRC. I've just emailed him telling him to go on and send the chips.

Also, here's a status update from Colin a few days ago:

And another from him 23 hours ago:

http://chrisstrangeauthor.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/goodnewseveryone.png

Woke up this morning to these two emails from Colin:





So those of you still in, it looks like we're good to go!

Fantastic! That is great news!

Are they testing these boards with Gen2 chips yet?

Afaik there are no gen 2 chips in hand yet, other than those shipped to board designers for the contest. 

From tradehill.com:

That's some crappy stats

If they work with the existing board design for the gen 1 chips, then they're great stats.

that would be nice, two K16's would be around 50 Gh

but if the lead time to tweak things takes 3 more months it just becomes a scholastic endeavor

Quick update:

The firmware on the miners does not yet allow for chaining K16s together using "klego" adapters, nor does it allow for updates via USB. If you take receipt of your miners now and you want to be able to chain your miners together sometime in the future, you will eventually need to flash them with a PIC ICD3 or PicKit programmer. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, I will gladly host your miners for the cost of electricity until the firmware is updated and I can flash them myself.

Colin has begun cranking out miners, so you will be receiving yours shortly unless you decide you want me to hold on to them for the time being. Please PM me if that's the case.

Thanks,

Ryan

+1 Ryan.... nice work.

Glad to see the finish line on these I bet?

Oof. Not so fast. I just got this email from Colin:


Since these are your miners, I thought I should get some feedback on how you want me to proceed now. I don't know how many hardware errors there are, nor do I know how much of a performance hit the miners are taking. I emailed Colin asking for some hard numbers to help with the decision-making.

Thoughts on this?

Tough call.  Precise performance numbers may help in deciding.

I'm inclined to take delivery even if they're not fully up to snuff.  Some hashpower in the hand is better than none in a pile of parts IMO.

Colin with hard figures:

I guess I'll take delivery of mine, even if they're underperforming.

At least I can hash with them while searching/waiting for a solution.

Please just send mine out unless you're planning to make any headway on it soon. It's really hurting that I put about 8btc into these chips and this project :p

Hello? Any word?

So far I've received and shipped on Bogart's miners. Nothing yet on yours, tolan77. Sorry. I emailed Colin again today and will hopefully hear back soon.

:/ I ordered 4xK16 miners from Zephirs Batch 1 of chips is there any chance I'm actually going to be receiving any of these? If you don't mind me asking how many orders with chips batch 1 Zefir did you have besides Bogart?

I just sent this message to a couple of my customers, and I'm posting it here as well:


As it says above, please let me know if you have any questions. Sorry this has turned out so poorly for everyone.

as I said months ago, thanks for being above board on everything as this ship hit rocky waters and hope you can resell the few components of my small order to help you out.  You refunded me enough even when the exchange rate wasn't in your favor.

hopefully most of your customers know that some of the money is in 'sunked in' cost

Sorry for this all going sideways but kudos are deserved for demonstrating how to handle a bad situation professionally Ryepdx. There is literally very little you can do when the people who promise the chips basically refuse to honor the timetable and I was amazed that to see you push things forward given the difficulty.  Knowing that feeling of dread when you just have to chuck in the towel and start again sucks been there but things will get better.

Given the entire Avalon mess, I think Ryepdx has handled the situation very professionally and at times going above call of duty to satisfy individuals involved in this group buy.

Thanks Ryan, this community needs more members like you.

Ryan, is there a refund (or partial refund) for those of us that paid for boards and assembly but never received chips?

I appreciate how you've handled this Ryan. However I can't help but feel shafted. Still haven't received anything other than the 6 extra chips.

I would be interested in building a couple of these for fun.

If anyone has a couple of full sets (pcb+components) that they are willing to let go at a price reflecting there current value (almost zero) please PM me.

I cannot justify paying there hash rate value as am gonna screw them up anyway probably so please keep the price reasonable, this is a just for fun project now..  ;D

Sorry for your losses.

Yes i would also be interested depending on price.

Thanks, Kushedout.


Yes, there's a partial refund available. I'm also in the process of kitting out the components for those of you whose miners Colin did not complete. I'm trying to get everything done as soon as possible, but it *is* a very time-consuming process.


As I stated above, I'm in the process of kitting out the components and chips I received from Colin. I've also received his funds, so I'll be sending out your labor refund tomorrow.

Thanks again for your support, everyone. I'm sorry this turned out so poorly.

Thanks for the update.