Bitcoin Forum

Quote from: SLok on Today at 18:01:56
 
English teacher.....

shill  (shl) Slang
n.
One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic BFL supporter to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.
v. shilled, shill·ing, shills

"United Breaks Guitars" is a protest song by Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell.
It chronicles a real-life experience of how his guitar was broken during a trip on United Airlines in 2008, and the 
subsequent reaction from the airline. The song became an immediate YouTube and iTunes hit upon its release in 
July 2009 and a public relations embarrassment for the airline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

This 6.02GH/s is reached in 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time it wants to hash at 5.7GH/s. 
The +/-10% of the advertised 7GH/s requires that the device hash at least 6.3GH/s.

TL;DR Josh STFU

They've pre-sold more then 60,000 monarchs which have missed their power targets by about 70% 
and the bullet run is expected to now be late march.

Quote
"some units might hit 350W, but most will be 500W or more, expect high end to be 600W"
"which means we may revise the estimate to 350W for the 300GH version, 600GH version being 600W"

Apparently they're also now having thermal expansion detach bumps (like Nvidia in 2008).

In the meantime, their RMA queue is huge (with the RMA email address refusing emails) with the amount 
of people who's devices have engines which have just died. And that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, 
the PSU blew which has then fried the device.

I know there are people from November who are still waiting for a reply to their RMA requests. 
It could be potentially earlier...

Purchased a 5GH/s miner in August, received it in November. Miner hashed at 1.5GH/s. 
Requested an RMA to replace the miner. RMA was accepted. I shipped it back, received a 
package 1 week later. No miner, just a power supply. So now I have a power supply for a
 $300 miner, still can't mine.

Some bullshit man.

edit: Yes, I was aware of the many terrible experiences people have had with them, and even 
the theory that they mine with the machines themselves before sending them out, at the time 
of my purchase. I made the purchase with money to blow, even in the event that by the time
 I had expected to receive the miner (april 2014) it would be unprofitable, I wouldn't feel that 
bad. I'm just complaining here because of how absurd this service is. Blows my mind.

Butterfly Labs experience. Lets your dollars fly away…
by Wire Master • February 1, 2014

I always had something telling me that the financial system we live in has something wrong. 
Growing perpetually in a physically limited world is simply not possible. Capitalism surely matches 
the nature of human kind which strives to have more and more, but we cannot go over the limits 
given to us by mother nature. Unfortunately in history, the extreme growth periods were followed 
by mass destruction wars, giving the grown “graph” a pulse trend.

Besides that, the financial system is driven by banks that together with the states governments 
have gotten into a sick mechanism of debts and money generation, going into a very dangerous 
direction.

So a few months ago I got fascinated by the Bitcoin idea. It’s a virtual currency that is not 
regulated by central banks and governments instead it goes into a different direction than the
 current world we live in. A limited number of Bitcoins will be issued in the next decades and they
 are released at a slow pace from the “miners”. Similar to the gold mining era, mining Bitcoins is
 not an easy task and this has to be performed by more and more powerful computers the more 
the mining fever raises.

Once it was possible to mine with a normal PC CPU or GPU, but as more power was required, 
dedicated hardware has been produced by a few companies around the world. This hardware is 
very expensive and most people who buy them are aware of the fact that they will not be able to 
mine the cost of the miner itself, so it’s not about becoming rich, it’s more about being part of a 
revolution.

I am one of those, believing that the instinct to grow is part of the human kind. It’s not all bad, 
it’s also the fuel to our progress. But probably I’m wrong and growth of ideas and progress can 
be unlinked by money growth or probably the other alternative Cryptocurrencies (virtual currencies) 
can give this opportunity. Not growing forever otherwise we are again in the same situation like now, 
but I am curious to see what happens. Or probably growth paths can be driven instead of being left 
to it’s own exponential destiny. Driven by the money eager parts of this system like banks, and as a 
consequence governments have to cope with that growth pace. Isn’t it so that nowadays the power 
is not anymore within the governments hands but in the moneys hands and that all the world has 
to run after that? Think about what you read in the first pages of all the newspapers around the 
world.

So I checked the web and the most popular Bitcoin mining hardware 
(ASIC Application Specific Integrated Circuit) producer is ButterflyLabs in the USA. The price of their 
products vary from few hundreds to several thousands of dollars.

In December 2013 I bought a Jalapeno 5GH/s from Butterfly Labs which I connected to my PC and 
after 5 days I had a power outage at home. It happened during a weekend I was away from home 
so I had a bad surprise in my fridge upon returning… After that, the device turned on again but could n
ot be detected by my PC anymore. I wrote some emails to Butterfly Labs, wrote in their forum but never 
received a feedback. If you are extremely lucky you get a standard email with their usual procedure: 
“apply for RMA (return merchandise authorisation)”. Not a word saying that they are sorry or that 
they will improve their products… nothing. So I had to ship this box to the USA with additional costs. 
Who knows how long the repairing procedure takes…

Before it broke down I decided to buy a more powerful one, a Single SC 50GH/s from Butterfly Labs. 
It’s a product worth around $1000 and when shipping to Europe that price becomes roughly $1150. 
Initially they send the parcel to China instead of Switzerland… but they blamed USPS for it. After several 
mails, forum posts, etc I got a mail from a human in Butterfly Labs telling me that they would send one
 of these devices they had in stock with FedEx so I didn’t have to wait for the one in China to go around 
the world. That was appreciated. I got the parcel on 28 January, unpacked the box, plugged in the device 
and after 20 minutes of mining the PSU (power supply unit) started to turn on and off by itself. Basically 
it was looking dead. According to the forum community they delivered a PSU that was supposed to be 
used with a smaller model. That’s why after 20 minutes the PSU could not cope with the power 
required by the device I bought. I filed another RMA.

In the meantime the forum community was saying that the PSUs delivered by Butterfly Labs are very bad 
quality so they suggested to use a ATX (one of these PC desktop square power supplies). I went the day 
after to buy one of these ATXs, with additional costs. I didn’t want to wait another month for the new 
PSU to be delivered from the US. Besides that, according to the community, the ATX is of much better 
quality so you can avoid sleepless nights, thinking if your house will burn down. So I connected the device. 
It worked for 3 hours and then went dead. And could not be detected by my PC anymore.

Tired of this waste of time and money, I wrote them a mail asking for a refund and at the same time I asked 
them to keep the PSU and the first device delivered (Jalapeno) and again got silence from their side. While 
waiting for their reply, they sent me the tracking number for the new PSU. I immediately replied asking to 
check my refund mail… Silence. After half a day I get the confirmation that the PSU was delivered. Incredible…

I have been working in technology since 20 years and I’m passionate about it. I have all kinds of electronic 
devices popping up from any drawer in my apartment and I can tell you with absolute certainty that 
ButterflyLabs is the worst company I’ve ever dealt with. They are lacking all the components to make a 
company a good company:

- the quality of their products is an absolute disaster;

- their shipping department has big problems. They even don’t check what is in their boxes and I have 
   my doubts that USPS misunderstood Switzerland for China;

- after sales support does not exist except for their robot-like rma procedure.

But the worst is, that they seem to fix products that have been returned by customers and send them on to 
other customers selling them as new and therefore at the full price but without properly testing them. Only this 
can explain, why a new product stops working within the same day you put it in operation. Besides of course, 
that they provide a thousand dollars product with the wrong power supply.

So be aware! I don’t know how the other producers are (Coincraft, Cointerra, Hashfast, KnCMiner, etc) as I 
didn’t experience them, but for sure my Butterfly Labs experience is the worst I’ve ever had in my life.

Support Bitcoin, don’t support Butterfly Labs!

User	Date	Risked BTC amount	Reference	Comments
Pokokohua! 0: -0 / +0(0)	2014-03-30	0.00000000		
Pathological liar. Cheats forum members repeatedly with false information over BFL, 
their employees and their products -all successful- while his business fails, has absolutely 
no technical knowledge, qualifies non working usb hubs as bfl product failures. 
Falsely rates people who are producing hardware and are an asset to the bitcoin 
community negative, and ridicules any forum member that confronts him on his lies. 
Too bad a lot of these types hang around on this forum, no orders but crying scam 
over legit companies, while they are never seen in the real scam topics.

My BFL Jalapeno Experience So Far
March 29, 2014, 03:54:06
Reply with quote  #1
First I want say a quick 'hello' to everyone, it's been a long time since I posted, 
but I'm sure glad the forum is here when I need it.

So, getting down to business..

I received my little JillyJally back in late November, (mid-April order, sans upgrade) 
Sad and to my dismay, it would never reach 5gh/s, it averaged about 4.7. 
Things were going well with it and it was hashing along fine for about 2 months 
without major issue. Valentines Day I noticed that the hashrate started to drop down 
to 4.5 (I love you too BFL), but I didn't think much of it at the time. Given that 4.5 
is still within the 10% range of variance, I simply chalked it up to getting the bare 
minimum from my order. Yippee!!

For almost a month it had been running pretty smoothly at 4.5 and then over the 
past week I've noticed that it's dropped again and now sits around 4.25. All along
the temps have been around 44C and HW errors around 5%, which from my research 
is about normal. And oh yes, from day 1 I have had the outer casing removed, but 
top and bottom plates are still on and switched the fan to blow downward, as per 
the research I did before my unit was shipped.

Today I was a little frustrated knowing that I was supposed to get a Jally with a 10% 
variance from 5gh/s and my unit is now more than 10%. Grrr.. So I decided to shut 
her down and check her out, given that I haven't touched her in a few months.
Even before I had her unplugged I noticed that my heatsink was loose and was like 
"WTF?" So I popped the feet off, grabbed a torx and took it apart to tighten it up. 
And Ughhhhh!!!  Huh Angry Huh

[b]The screws holding the PCB to the heatsink were completely loose. The thing wobbled 
like my grandmother behind the wheel. So, being curious if the chip(s) were damaged, 
I pulled out the screws and wanted to check it out.[/b]

Stupid ZAIRA (292 or 274) or whomever put my unit together didn't use any thermal paste. 
SRSLY WTF? Is this normal? Two chips. No paste. WTF?

I had some thermal paste leftover from building my Hackintosh, so I put a dab of paste on 
each and put her back together. But I still don't get close to my original 4.7gh/s. 
I didn't see any damage to the chips or anything else during my inspection. I do 
however get close to the previous 4.5gh/s with 4.41gh/s

As with the consensus, I'm very unimpressed with BFL. Does anyone have 
experience with RMA their sub-par Jallies?

Quote from: jborkl on April 02, 2014, 23:09:41
I took mine apart to see what was going wrong a long time ago.  
The 3 main caps and main fuse going into the PCB are blowing- creating the white powder.

Daklore:
I know what your saying, I had a small cap fall out as well.   I had one almost blowout in my face. 

Question:	 What is you personal experience with Technobit products

Very good	- 12 (22.2%)
Good quality but late	- 16 (29.6%)
Good quality but very late	- 13 (24.1%)
Poor quality	- 0 (0%)
Poor quality and very late	- 6 (11.1%)
Disaster	- 7 (13%)
Total Voters: 54