Bitcoin Forum

That's what Josh posted yesterday on BFL forums:


It confirms what most of us already suspected/knew:

1) BFL is just a chaotic bunch of Cowboys with a great "can do" attitude (one has to admit this!), that somehow managed to get the funding done (e.g. with peoples pre-order money). But they have no clue whatsoever about technology, hence why they outsourced everything. Some of the egg heads fucked them over (which must have been pretty easy because BFL is a pure sales&marketing company), giving them wrong estimates (time & money). Hence all the fabricated updates from Josh and all the delays.

2) Whenever people asked Josh "do you have a working prototype?" he ignored them, insulted them or weasled his way out. Now we have the confirmation that, up until today, BFL does not know whether their chips work - or not. They do not even know if the design is OK.

5 month after the promised ("honest abe") shipping date BFL has no idea if their design is OK ?!?! WTF!

As I always said: They lie to us on purpose!
I am furious now ...  >:( >:( >:(

I'm glad I'm not invested with these cowboys.

At this point does BFL know if this supposed ASIC team even exists or if there is instead just some dude in Cali
- charging them for some supposed ASIC design,
- "testing" the nonexistent design on a "simulator", thus determining a need for repackaging
- charging them again for supposedly redesigning the ASIC to account for the repackaging
- stringing them along with renders of empty asic designs (see the render of an essentially empty chip BFL showed in January),
- milking them again and again for so called bullet runs and expedited handling (that invariably never seem to happen),
- is laughing all the way to the bank while Josh is staring like a deer into the headlights of the incoming failure train.

Bonus points if the dude in Cali is an extended member of Familia Vasileiadis siphoning off the funds out of the company for Sonny and Chris' benefit while the rest of BFL including Josh have no idea they are being had.

Honestly, I don't know how they're able to not touch a single satoshi of the ASIC pre-order funds, currently operating off the profits of the sales of FPGA products (no longer sold) and VC funding which, BTW, funded the FPGA rigs since none of that pre-order money was also not used during development.

We're talking about massive overhead here, and that's if those in upper management (above Josh) are not taking salary. Speaking of salaries, the best case scenario is that no more than a quarter million dollars has been paid out to the current staff over the past six months, based on prevailing wages and about a dozen personal (no more than 18 employees).

The new warehouse cost is probably their least expense, considering it's a least with a build-to-use clause. Even if the least payment is $3,000/mo (no way it should be more), they could have locked in by paying $36,000 down (year in advance least payments) at the worse case scenario if they couldn't show enough cred to obtain a conventional least. But that's probably not the case, for the Vleisides family has been a fixture around KC for decades.

The above only mentioned to drive the point home that the warehouse cost is one of their least expenses.

That said, unless I figured incorrectly, we're easily at a million dollars that only came from the profit of the FGPA sales and VC funding. Is this possible? Feel free to set me straight on my assessment.

~Bruno K~

None of this is helpful.

Every company I have ever worked for is a bunch of chaotic cowboys.  Heck, every person I have ever met is basically just muddling through.  We are all just making things up as we go.  REAL life is not like the movies.  BFL just happens to give you more of an insiders view than a regular company ever would, so you can see the frays and cracks of the actual process of getting shit done.

Give it up.  It's like you WANT them to fail for some reason.

Take a hint.   ASIC's DO NOT EXIST YET. (at least before Avalon)  Creating a brand new thing that never existed before is a shit-ton of hard work.  It's going to take time, patience and a bit of luck.  Bad things will happen along the way.  People have died trying to get to the moon.  They didn't cancel NASA after their first few disasters.  They are still at, trying to build satellites and mars rovers and the future.

So I say go for it, as long as they can, as long as it takes. NEVER GIVE UP.

If they do fail, it won't be because of their inadequacies, it will be because people like you have finally gotten to them and they have given up in frustration over the naysayers.  At the end of your life, what will you be able to say you created, or brought to this universe that never existed before?

 False. Application Specific Integrated Circuits have been around since the early 80's.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415979,00.asp


I wonder if there's a forum full of people bitching and moaning about it not being released...
If you are so concerned with BFL's business practices, why are you still invested in their products?  Pull your orders if you believe them to be so incompetent.

What are 18 employees doing? They haven't had product to work on in months.

I concur with with Yogafan on the "Its almost like you want them to fail" part. As someone who has a vested interest in their upcoming line and in addition to that a potential customer of other bitcoin mining products; I would like to ask you to please stop the FUD. What you are doing is not helpful at all for the community at large nor is it informative.

If and when BFL turns out to be a failure / scam like bitcoinasic.net, that is when it would be appropriate to make comments like they are "cowboys" and bash them into non-existence.

I won't get into a pissing match about this, however, I was referring to bitcoin mining ASICs.  For the sake of brevity, I made the assumption that anyone reading my post would understand this.

Apparently not.

Wouldn't it be too late to warn unsuspecting investors of the risks/poor company performance at that point?

Well, to be fair, you may want to read the pre-order page:


Emphasis mine.

You're furious now?  Seems like you've been "furious" for months Frizz. I love how you come here and pretend to be incensed by the latest thing everytime there's a latest thing.  What a tool.  You're just making a fool of yourself.

I did it. I'm sooooo lucky. So far I already have 300% profit for NOT having a BFL's ASIC!

But you didn't get back the EXACT amount of BTC you paid.................so you LOST money,correct   ???  :P

If their true intention was to con investors, such warnings would be valid and warranted. However based on the evidence of their past endeavours and in addition to bringing one of CGminer's core developers to actually visit their headquarters in KC; its highly unlikely that they would go through all that effort to con unsuspecting investors.

Wow what a bad analogy/comparison...

I'd say the reason there's no forum with people screaming blue murder is because the company you linked is not taking "FULL PAYMENT PRE-ORDERS"

Can you see the difference from a consumer POV from pre-ordering a product and not paying for it until its shipped vs full payment pre-orders?  if you need a hint its all in the amount of risk the consumer takes...

The analogy is awful on every level. No payment until product ships, product isn't even scheduled to ship until May (2+ months into the future), and it only costs $80, half the least costly option BFL offers (1/5th the next step up, less 1/10th the most common option, etc.)

That said, I don't really have much to weigh in on the latest development. I'm not a customer, and I'm fairly glad I'm not, but I don't harbor any ill-will towards BFL, mostly just disappointment. ASICs were exciting and hopeful items to me, and now it all seems like so much scorched earth. I do hope that things turn around, and am excited for the time when everyone focuses on how awesome ASIC mining is. I hope BFL gets its' act together.

Pardon? They've been lying about shipping dates for EIGHT MONTHS...how is that not a con? The evidence of their past endeavors indicates that they're dishonest about shipping dates and power consumption specs. Hey at least they're consistently dishonest though right?

While I agree with you about the shipping delays; the delays in themselves don't constitute a scam it mostly show poor project management / lack of experience in the field of making ASIC chips. In addition to showing their inconsistencies with dishonesty in previous shipping date promises and power consumption specs with their FPGA products, they did actually prove that they could build a pretty good FPGA bitcoin mining product with acceptable power specs (although not what they had promised; 4 times the power is bad but 80w v 34w is not a deal breaker for me). Like I said, I'm not 100% for all their actions but it's not like their CEO went on a drunk rampage telling people that the "asians" were going to take over the project. I understand that everyone's view is different but I personally don't believe BFL to be scammers; just kind of inexperienced at the whole ASIC / chip manufacturing gig. I'm very much hoping that they pull through it all (half because i'm slightly invested in the pre-orders)  mostly because it would be good for BTC and this community in general to see another ASIC manufacturer succeed. It would strengthen the base of bitcoin (the miners) and allow for a more stable BTC economy to be flourish (maintain a stable value for once).

I don't find their ridiculous excuses for the delays to be at all credible and please don't get me started on comparing Van Riper to Vleisides.

Having worked for and managed several small businesses I can tell you that this doesn't seem strange to me at all. This really depends on how deep the pockets of the investors happen to be. How much venture capital was obtained over what period of time.

They're certainly going to generate millions in orders the first year after they ship. I personally am prepared to purchase a quarter million worth of rigs about a week after I see some 'in the wild' numbers on them. There must be others planning to do the same. How quickly I'm going to hand over that money or additional money really depends on real world numbers not projections.

Moving to a new location is an expense - it's dwarfed by the NRE of setting up asic production. In that you're correct. I couldn't comment on FPGA sales numbers... but I'd imagine that most of their operating costs have come from investor money. With the fpga sales money going to pay wages and costs of operating fpga business.

...uhh...they don't have an FPGA business. Nor have they for some time. That was part of the incentive for them to lie about their ASIC timetable, they effectively crippled the FPGA market which they were exiting anyway. Pretty slick.

BFL and BitcoinASIC probably sourced their chips from the same place.

By BFL's own admission they do not know if the chip design works and if the specified SPEEDS they are selling products at on their website is in fact going to be realistic.

If you haven't tested anything (nor have a working prototype) with ASIC chips, then how would you be able to make estimates on hash power?

Here is my guess, which might not be that off:

A third and likely forth party relayed to BFL that they could get X amount of hashes/sec with said ASIC chips to be developed. Not looking at the possibility that the specified hash targets could be unrealistic for the time frame they thought "Damn we can make a ton of money being the FIRST ASIC distributor/developer/whatever you wanna call it".

If BFL had anything to tout that was real technology they would have already done it and Inaba/Josh would have been slamming everyone on this forum that he was right we are idiots.

Do you have preorders with BFL? My advice would be to cancel them, get your fiat back, buy bitcoins and hold for 6 months.

Much of what you are seeing on their website, ads, CES, etc....is a Dog and Pony show. Typical of people who do not have a 100% working product.

Their intentions may have been right when taking customer money, but because the goal was likely unrealistic to accomplish, the developers/engineers/ASIC team said to BFL whatever they wanted to hear in order to get the funding to do their "development".

I call it delaying and sweet talking. "oh yeah we SHOULD be done by X date...oh well things didnt go as planned wait another Y days/weeks....oh Joe Schmoe didn't get back to me about the Clock Buffers so I couldn't do anything....blah blah blah."

Here is Josh's logic fail ^

How can the chips be working if the design isn't correct? oh wait it's a technicality that no one even cares about. If the design or reason for the chips to be designed isnt working how it was intended then it doesn't work.

Wrong again. AVALON has confirmed multiple shipped devices.

Likely more than were confirmed. I wouldn't post if I have a working ASIC from them.

But my point was that your comments are just rubbish based on no research or facts.

It's obvious from the context that he's saying that this test isn't looking for defective chips, but to evaluate to make certain that the design itself works.

I think you need to sharpen your troll-claws smoothie, you're slipping.

My definition of a working chip = working design.

Sorry but claws still in tact. Come again next time.  :D

I think the difference josh is talking about is checking for physical/production flaws vs. design/logic flaws.

How very nice of you to be so concerned with my financial well-being, that you would offer me your unsolicited advice.

Seriously, Fuck off and stop spamming these BFL threads. We get it already. You hate them. Josh said some mean words to you. You want everyone to refund so BFL will fail.

Honestly, the naysayers just shut up and go troll somewhere else.. its just like watching kids in a play ground arguing over which footballers wife can beat which other wives in a snooker final in an Olympic swimming pool filled with smarties whilst being on a diet.

Seriously get a frickin grip!

Just cos Avalon have shipped first, doesn't mean they are better, and just cos BFL haven'y shipped yet, doesn't mean its a scam.

If you don't like x then just shut up, if you don't like y, then shut up!
You should only be offering insightful and calm information and dialogue, not slinging crap about like pigs in a mud bath.


You lot are supposed to be professional miners, supposed to know what this fledgling industry is about from the technical to the economic side of things, you all act like kids arguing and counter arguing over something that's just only been born!! Geez... once they are both out and the figures have been tallied and facts counted then you can start comparing, that's the adult thing to do.

I read these forums everyday, and everyday i feel more and more its a struggle to sift the wheat from the chaft.

I'm almost ashamed to say i respect some of your opinions and your technical prowess when you start acting like kids in the play ground.

I have an order with BFL, i don't care it might take a while to get it, i feel its the superior product that fits my needs, but i don't involve myself in the arguments one way or another as im only interested in the development, factual data about the development, and valued opinions from you guys on its eventual direction, which is becoming scarce.

Please for the sake of the community, please stop this needless and self destructive bickering.

Their only investors are those that have invested in their promises, aka "pre-orders".

That's nothing more than your opinion. Care to prove it?

Not me, they have to prove they have investors!

Where the hell is the thumbs-up button?

It's only on BFL's forum. You must be pretty accustomed to it?

Aren't you the same guy who had a thread re-named to highlight something you failed to do? Oh yeah this:

Re: WOW! Becoin failed to read and comprehend BFL's policy on BTC refunds
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137026.msg1468414#msg1468414 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137026.msg1468414#msg1468414)
*Note: The title was adjusted by a moderator.

Yepper,that's him  :D

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/BFLrobbedme.jpg

ZOMG ANOTHER POINTLESS THREAD BY FRIZ23

As far as delivery time for user ASICs go, they're all fucking liars.

Hey shitface, how much did you lose?  ;D ;D ;D
"BFL will deliver ASIC devices before March 1st": http://bitbet.us/bet/7/bfl-will-deliver-asic-devices-before-march-1st/

 :D  There's the "love"  :D

It's great this forum is no longer dominated by BFL threads, and this one is interesting, thanks OP.


Best wishes to all BFL 'investors'...

Wow. How did you guess that? You must be very clever?

Well.....he's smart enough to know what "current market price" means  :D

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h148/Bigblock462/DataRetard.jpg

Altho i'd agree on the normalcy of these kinds of situations i'm still convinced that BFL should not have communicated concrete dates.
By doing this they effectively lied to their customers as they must have realized that none of the original dates were in any way realistic.

If BFL had ANY kind of real contract with a factory to deliver on a certain date then BFL could (threaten to) sue them for being this late.
They haven't so they didn't.

BFL also deliberately counted the minimum possible time it will take to finish. This is an utter lie because there is no way in the world all things will go perfect, never mind for a new device.
Mind you, some forum posters and i already decided last year that the BFL asics won't be delivered untill around march this year.
So howcome they didn't know that themselfs?
Well , maybe they did and maybe they didn't. But in any case they never made any realistic projection concerning time.

I just hope that BFL customers realize that they should have been hashing the hell out of their asics for some months now and that their to-be-delivered boxes will now have competition from a similar product from the competitors.
In other words, their BFL hardware is worth much less now than 4 months ago...

I hope you have noticed that BFL have, at several points in time, represented fiction as fact...
My guess is that you're actually interested in the 'after-the-fact' stuff because the most valuable information that came from BFL in the last 4 months was that they once again managed a delay. And that information always came after they missed a date.
The thing with facts is that they're not supposed to change. BFL manages to inform their customers post-facto about facts not being facts.

I think that you have a lot of cropped up frustration but have absolutely no way of controlling the BFL situation and so want everyone to just shut up and leave britney alone..
Am i right?

But somehow missed that bitcoin is not a $ derivative?!

Ah, thanks for that.  The name was familiar but thought I'd forgotten why I'd put him on ignore.  I must have remembered at one level though because I knew I didn't even want to press 'unignore' to find out.  Now I remember - Thanks :)

Never forget, you just can't handle the truth - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hopNAI8Pefg

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=136615.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137026.0

Happy reading!

Fuck off will ya, and take that stupid crawling bug with ya!

FFS...

Translation: "i'm pissed at BFL so i will take it out on you."

Grumpy much? Cold turkey because you're out of Crack ASIC?  ;D

http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/k9l5-v-c16a.jpg

Trolls be trollin.

Their mums must be on the rag, so no sexi time for them.

So you lost your bet, your ASICs haven't been shipped, and we're trolling?

No just stating the facts. Can't handle the truth?

1) Did you place any BTC on that bet?
2) Have you personally received any working ASICs?
3) When was the last time you went 24 hours without trolling?

Pot calling the kettle black?

1. Nope. I don't need to bet in order to make a point, dumbasses do.

2. Yes I have a pair on my feet.

3. Two days ago.

No. It's orange.  :D

Kinda funny....someone who has no ASIC orders at all is sooo bent on "preventing a scam"  :D

I went from 8... to nine bitcoins

I didn't have a satoshi in Bitcoinica, yet lost just under twenty grand. I'm still bitter over that episode, but slowly getting over it. It was from that that I went on a fucked up crusade, causing my ignore to turn color.

Since when does one have to be invested in a SCAM to prevent a SCAM? Your logic is funny but failed lol

It's the same "logic" people applied when they were vehemently defending pirate.

They think "detractors" are jealous because they didn't order an ASIC/invested into pirate at the first opportunity.

They think kindergarten logic still applies. "I wanna play with that." - "You can't have it, it's mine." - "Yeah, well, that toy sucks anyway."

It's not too surprising when you realize that a lot of these people are manchildren really who are looking for an easy "out" to avoid having to work for their income.

Oh smoothie, he's my hero!

SAVE ME FROM TEH EVIL ASIC SCAMMERS SMOOTHIE!

Hey genius,

How's that BFL shipping in February bet going for you? Enjoying taking it in the pipe? Lol

Just ignore him already.

Yes ignore me. We all know that when I speak the truth it hurts.

Trolling =/= talking about the facts/truth.

Well,greyhawk,why don't you move here in fla & see how much money YOU can make  ???

Yes,I hope to"supplement" my income with mining.Currently my "skills" here are worth 30% less due to the"economic downturn" (depression in my book).

BTW,I have worked jobs that I bet you couldn't do,roofing,crawling thru 140 degree attics,under mobile homes,pumping 800 yards of concrete with a 52 meter boom pump for 26 hrs straight thru.........

My "lifestory" is posted in my history,if you chose to look thru my posts,thanks  ;)

I'm sorry to hear you are in a bad situation. A lot of people are in the US, I gather. However mining Bitcoins is unlikely to be the answer you are looking for. I hope you aren't putting all your hopes on it. You would be better off trying to think of another solution to your financial issues.

Nope,just reinvesting BTC mined since June 2011,watchin it "roll over" is great  8)

In terms of Old West themes, I find 'Fritos Banditos' more fitting.  Or "All hat and no cattle."

I pity the saps who gave these jokers hundreds of BTC 6 or 8 months ago and still have yet to perform a single hash while the exchange rate has gone past $40.

Yeah $9500 for a 60Gh ASIC mining gizmo doesn't sound so great.

BFL would be making bank on that money through interest payments.

Hey! I said save me smoothie!

Not Berate me

:(

My answer: No!

Now enjoy the tail piping you're getting!  :D

Are you Rorschach?

Them BFL Cowboy's have time to put up ad's on Google's ad network, yet they can't ship out my SC Singles? Come on now...

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

Just a bad situation for everyone involved.  What bothers we is that this was supposed to ship in Oct 2012 and that June 2012 announcement sent shivers through the mining industry at the time.  There is no excuse to make that ballsy of an announcement and fall that far behind.   I hope they fully understand that.

Anti-competitive business practices and FTC violations. tsk tsk

Naughty BFL. :P

BFL is probably an FTC front to set a precedent for intervention in Bitcoin. They are fucking scumbags. I haven't even bought their vaporware but if pisses me off to see their stupid fucking fake ads plastered around.

Are Josh, Sonny & Luke Jr. already in Mexico? Or the Cayman Islands? Or are the unbelievers starting to gain the upper hand in BFL forums lala land?

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/

http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/k9l5-15-d645.jpg

That's been happening every few hours since the weekend. I wonder what kind of package deal they made with cloudflare. Cloudflare is usually much more stable.

Rough week for BFL. Testing rig problems, web site down and no customers' update. Can't be good for business! Customers are losing thier patience while Avalon is delivering Thier products on a daily basis. I hope this is not a sign for what to come!

http://www.abinashmohanty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/My-Site-Got-Hacked.jpg

Surely, they're not planning on playing the Hacked card.

I just went to the site and it's back up now

Chen Jianhai did it.

The lack of progress updates from BFL is a little concerning.  They've had three full working days to test their chips since the last update. 

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/announcements/692-bfl-asic-status-2.html

No news is usually bad news in terms of delays. 

We got an update. the jist of it is that it's possible they might have a working test unit by the middle of next week. Might just be a cruel april fools joke on josh's part.

Three weeks is not too bad for testing and tweaking. It's just: You usually do this before you go into mass production. And before you advertise your product as "available".



http://i1343.photobucket.com/albums/o798/buddy3315/preorder_zpsc1b476f0.png

lmftfy:


And this is exactly the explanation why BFL is so bloody late (and will possibly never have a working product): They are just some cowboys that managed to get the funding done (venture capital, pre order money), outsourced everything and naively took the best case scenarios from their subcontractors for their estimates.

They are seriously claiming the ddos to be coming from china? God... What a scam. What a scam!

? DDos from China?

I love that quote. Yes, Josh, designing an ASIC is hard. We knew that, which is exactly why we kept laughing at your utopian time estimates. The ones that absolutely clearly spelled out "we have no idea what we are doing."

If there is any naivety to what BFL is doing then it must be a pretty deliberate and consistent form of naivety.

How did the production projection go down from 500 a day to 300 units per day?

Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results."  ;)

I do not trust BFL to know how to be properly insane tho..
Being deceitfull is just so much easier.

Well, they got some realistic prognoses from Avalon so they had to tone their figures down a bit.

What is Nasser's full name?

LOL.  He is calling the gear Kano photographed "high-speed and high-volume inhouse assembly".  LMAO.  

Notice he carefully he says nothing.

"Someone mentioned the backlog is already 5,000"  - he isn't saying what the backlog actually is, he's just citing 'someone'.  Maybe it's 50,000.  He doesn't commit himself to anything.  Probably they don't even know since their order system is such a disaster.

"On a production speed of 500 units a day for instance, 5,000 will only take 10 days. We've already prepared the
infratructue for very high volume production, since the great portion of the orders will come in after the SC is released to the public."

Again, notice that 500 / day is a for instance, not a statement of what they can do.

These guys are so full of crap.  Tomorrow they are going to desperately try to stem the tide of refund requests before they go bankrupt.  I suggest anyone who can think for themselves consider if they want to try to get their money back before or after insolvency.

Entropy. You are a moron. Yes, they missed the power targets so far, but they are shipping, and the asics work.

God you are a troll.

Shipping?  Really?  Do you have one?  What's your tracking number?

Call me when you can order from them and get a tracking number the same day.

BTW:  Do you understand that the power miss they are talking about probably means they cannot use the board design they have shown because the power density will be too high to cool properly?  It's not a small issue.  There is a reason Avalon boards have their chips so widely separated.

They pull those word games constantly and it's very disturbing. To someone casually reading the statement "We've scheduled shipments for October" it appears to read "We will ship in October", but it doesn't mean the same thing. Their statements are similar to those you get from banksters, they're inefficiently worded and it's done intentionally so that the statements mean nothing.

Where are those Avalon same day tracking #'s for batch 3 orders,hhmmmm,or even batch 2 orders,hhmmmmm,let me see,hhmmmmm  :D

Yeah,yeah,at least they shipped,I know the drill  :D

Mid of April we will know more !

BFL's FPGA need 6.5 month too if you remember

Wow, are you a sheep! BFL is shipping? When, next week? Yes, I have heard this several times before = bullshit to buy more time.

Nobody will see a BFL ASIC in the month of April -  mark my words.

They're not serious about shipping till they request FPGA trade-in customers send their gear in, and as far as I know that hasn't happened yet.

Talk is cheap.

If any of you BFL fan boys haven't already notice....BFL is in the stage of stringing their investors along (like is done in a ponzi scheme)...they are hoping more investor money comes in so they can pay off the previous investors and their "orders". If no new investor money comes in (more than previous batch) it all falls apart.

this wholeBFL ordeal stinks of the Pirateat40 drama.

Stock up on your popcorn, I have an inkling before the end of 2013 drama fireworks will be flying very near BFL.

Ahahaha LOL

Suure, now they're shipping..

Worst case power consumption is now apparently 195w for a single SC. More than 3x advertised. Do these people ever tell the truth? :-\

Scarier still is that Josh's worst case estimates often turn out to be the nearer to best case.

I wouldn't wanna be a batch #1 customers. Don't wanna be a guinea pig.

195W for such a tiny case, such a tiny heatsink and such a tiny fan - how is that supposed to work?

195W is about the same amount of power a 7970s uses - and they have huge heat sinks.

http://assets.vr-zone.net/14438/Arctic_Accelero_Xtreme_7970_02.jpg

No, now they said they're gonna ship next week.

I think they've said that about 10 times at least.

I read Josh posts, he agreed they didn't manage to build a SC Single yet, only prototypes with random characteristics. IMO it would be adventurous to talk about shipping date without a finished stable product in hands.

Love how the power numbers are all over the place. entropy, how high are the chances of one of these thing blowing up in someone's face?

waaaa, yo kung fu very good!





----

Have they really said they would ship next week like 10 times???

---people still talking about power, hash-rate, chip design and sh**..

I would imagine being a BFL customer feels likes like getting an arse whoopin while being stuck in a loop shadow boxing yourself and in your mind your calculating what to do if and when and how your gonna kick his arse ... But there is nobody there!

Its like some clint eastwood s*** at the republican convention ..

the miner, i mean fighter in a chair and people are saying look at the reach and their walking up to the chair and measuring the reach and then screaming out yeah buddy long arms for sure!! Better plan on staying inside and uppercutting..
 http://www.poynter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/eastwood-chair-rnc.jpg

Let them deliver 1 miner , 1 video, ANYTHING before people continue with round 8 of shadowboxing!

I cant believe its been that long .. How have people who have ordered not gone ape s***!

Its the 10th time they said they are shipping? looks like power bait and they are looking for trout!


 


 
 

You're cute. Here's where I remind you the total amount of finished wafers is 1 (one) <- That's the small number representing a single thing.

With all the rushed dicing and testing and what have you that comes out to maybe a couple a hundred chips.

All the other wafers are unfinished. They still need to get their final layers, need to get cut, need to get bumped and need to get packaged.

Last time this took two months. Last time they had at least a vague schedule. This time they're "Oh, hey, I think we're good now, can you finish our wafers real quick? Oh, you're booked out for 4-6 weeks? That's a bummer."

+1
And if they think they can shipped next week  we missed the mail for upgrader so they doesnt know it imo.... Only a new failed timeline and a new delay from a month ...

It isn't that bad.  If they shipped with the kind of number Josh is talking, fires are a real possibility.  You may remember videos of AMD cpus catching fire back in 2002-2003 time frame.

But I don't think they are stupid enough to ship.  If they had working test sockets (they don't) they could sort packages, and maybe build some mini-singles to ship.  But their yield loss is going to be catastrophic.  And even a mini-single is going to sound like a blender with the fan speed required.  And probably hash well under specification.

Remember what a pentium 4 sounded like when it was working hard?  That is less power then they are talking about.  And Intel spent about ... well I can't say that.  But we spent hundreds of engineer years getting the cooling solution right for those beasts.

Right, the Thunderbirds. Those were neat. Instant heat death.

I kinda recall that to have the AMD Athlon release the smoke one had to remove the cooler? I worked more with Intel Itanium and Itanium 2 machines and those indeed were beastly: the CPU replacement required the wrenches from the car mechanic's toolset.

I love the heatsink holder design for the i3. The sound they make when putting them in is very satisfying like typing on a Model M. Cronk-crunk-cronk

oh u love the heatsink design taht was not designed for duble or triple power consumtion =triple heat?

i bet u love snakes also then like josh

bfl really faked up just total disaster

If you read the shout log transcript, it is clear that they won't be shipping any 195w singles. Not saying this makes the issue go away, but it won't be as bad as 195w.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b8hvt/bfl_josh_updates_on_asic_status_full_transcript/

Relevant excerpts:

SgtSpike: What's the current power usage?
BFL_Josh: We are trying to nail it down. We have some boards at 1.76w, some at 2.5 and some at 4 and one at 6 <- although I think the ones at 4 and 6 have either a broken power regulator and/or a bad power brick, because they power brick is only 120w and it's drawing like 195 watts which is ridiculous. When I get hte firmware here in KC, I'll be running it off of an ATX PSU to eliminate the power brick as the culprit. So you see, this is why the power issue is causing some difficulties.

BFL_Josh: If the cooling becomes an issue, like I said, we'd scale it back and ship multiple units.

smracer: So you will get 2 30Gh machines for each 60?
BFL_Josh: If need be, yes.

BFL_Josh: We will ship whatever we have to to get people hashing at their expected GH.
Lab_Rat: well then worst case scenario for a single would be 360W???
BFL_Josh: No, worst case is 195w, but the power systems on the board aren't rated to handle that really I don't think, so we'd back off the hashrate before we'd let it get that high.
Lab_Rat: ok thank you. they can handle up to what 120W?
BFL_Josh: Yeah I think 120w is a nice comfortable number. It can probably got a bit higher than that, but 195w is probably not where we want to be.
onryo: Wont a x4 unit blow the power unit?
BFL_Josh: Yeah, so we'd have to back off the hashrate on a per unit basis if that were the case.
BFL_Josh: We'd do like 2x 30GH/s singles in stead of 1 60 GH/s one
BFL_Josh: We will ship the purchased hashrate regardless of what it ends up costing us.
MrTeal: @BFL_Josh, do the LIttle Singles have all of the power supply circuitry populated, and could they run at 30GH/s even if the Big Single can't run at 60GH/s?
BFL_Josh: Yes
HTL2001: I think he means, if you ordered a big single they might do 2x little singles since the power limit is per board, not per chip
BFL_Josh: [HTL2001 is] correct

jjiimm64: Josh, will the paired down units still have all the chips in them?
BFL_Josh: Yes they will

beside the heat sink fan issues

out of 1000 chips withc would mean 125 singles

they would need to ship dule aka use 16 chips at least per 60gh

so out of delivery will be 60 orders out of 27000

aka u will not see ur asic in 2013 if u didnt order in june or july last year

Their were field reports of fires in white box AMD computers at the time.  AMD adamantly denied it was possible, which lead to the video demonstrations that you could cause one to catch fire by removing the heat sink.

The problem was that AMD went cheap and didn't have thermal diodes in the silicon.  They left it to the motherboard manufacturers to put cheaper thermocouples on the motherboards.  So it turned out there were a number of manufacturing defects^* that could lead to a flaming Thunderbird.

So Josh, do you have thermal diodes on those die?  Do you even know how to calibrate a thermal diode properly?


^*  One of those manufacturing defects would be bad underfill.  :o

Yeah, I've heard about smoking, flaming and fires too in the white-label reseller channels (like MWave, etc.). Because the people in my company were involved in the reselling of the AMD products I have some additional inside information:

1) on-the-motherboard thermal protection was too slow acting in the most common failure mode: spring loaded heatsink mount unsnapped because it either:

1a) was never snapped in properly all the way
1b) was snapped properly but snapping-in caused cracking of the plastic socket latch

2) rampant remarking and overclocking of AMD Athlons, including defective chips destined for industrial waste disposal. AMD Malaysia was the leaky culprit here: chips that failed tests were shipped to Taiwan or Singapore for intended destruction/recycling but it fact were remarked and shipped back to Malaysia for reintroduction into the reseller channel. This was made easier by the fact that the clock selection and feature selection (Athlon XP/MP/Mobile) traces were easily accessible on the Athlon OPGA package. Additionally AMD was really tardy in investigating and prosecuting the in-the-channel diversion.

In my company they dealt with 1) and 2) with simple visual inspection after dismounting the heathsink, remounting it and doing additional burn-in with memtest86. I came at the tail edge of the problem and changed the burn in to use PRIME95 from the GIMPS prime number search. The before-burn-in failure rate was apparently quite high, I don't know the numbers because it was essentially free to us, MWave covered that. After-the-burn-in failure rate was very low, lower than what we were getting later on with white-label Dells and Supermicros. Cheap ECC RAM support in Athlons was a real godsend. I still have several of those machines in the QA farm alongside Slot-1 Intel Pentiums III.

I wish somebody who was really involved in this in South-East Asia would write some sort of war memoir of the whole story.

I've been to our Penang sites.  AMD has a factory in the same industrial park.  Our security makes the airports seem hands off.  All scrap goes into grinders on site with every part accounted for by the kind of security guards you really don't want to annoy.

It was a very competitive time.  We learned as many hard lessons as AMD did.  And BFL is so far outside of the design rules learned from those lessons that I can say with complete confidence that from here, they are going to have a really bad time.

Hence... http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/corporate/contactus/faq/general/background/


Now read the following: http://www.bureauveritas.com/wps/wcm/connect/bv_com/Group/Home/About-Us/Our-Business/Our-Business-Consumer-Products/Resources/Frequently+Asked+Questions/FCC

http://s7.directupload.net/images/130607/5qx6iupk.png

What's up with this mischievousness?

This poor customer waited almost 12 month.

Every other company would have said something like: "We are very sorry that you had to wait 12 months! But your order goes into production at this very moment! Would you prefer if we ship it?".

BFL is such an asshole company.

They see how BFL ponzi time is ending soon. This is why they are so nervous about every refund request.

The real problem here is, as has already been at least partially mentioned:

1. The lack of transparency in the process.
2. The lack of communication.
3. The lies and false promises made by BFL Support Staff.
4. Delay after delay.
5. The just plain ludicrous decisions.  Perhaps transparency would clear these up.
6. The fact that most decisions made by BFL seem completely arbitrary, and nothing... NOTHING pisses off customers more than arbitrary decision making.  When your actions are not predictable in a given situation, you are wrong.  Period.

So while this post is nice and all, I'm not sure what you're hoping to accomplish other than to distract from the real issues surrounding BFL.  My situation, that has been on going since October 2012, is still unresolved.  I am not the only one in this situation and there are plenty of others in similar situations. 

...
Maybe this is the wrong thread to bring any of this up, but I don't want people to be distracted by this kind of thread from the real issue of BFL being unable to meet their obligations to even moderate sized customers, especially when you are trying to gain new customers who will end up completely screwed when the BFL house of cards comes crashing down.

Sound familiar? Well, it is  ;D



Nice to see that Josh Zerlan / Inaba has the same problems with MtGox that the Bitcoin community has with him and BFL.

Is it a Bitcoin issue that it attracts so many felons and scumbags? Or is BFL only one black sheep?

I more and more come to the conclusion that this unregulated Bitcoin Wild West Cowboy territory will finally eat itself.