JohnK's spreadsheet is linked to in Raging's signature, so they're probably working off the same one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiYcEqkgyjc_dGU0VzhHRGpOOUxudWkxdWpDN3RmbFE#gid=0

Update: Yifu remains uncommunicative. John has been PMing him to no avail. I called him myself a little over an hour ago and left a message on his voicemail. I'm not very hopeful about getting a response, as it appears he's using a Google Voice number, but I'll let you all know if he gets back to me.

4 pins.

After looking at the components I have on hand and the availability of the components I would need to buy more of, I can't say I am comfortable with taking on more business at this point in time. I would recommend looking into steamboat's assembly service. Let me how things work out for you, though. If everyone else is closed up as well, I may be able to offer assembly again later on.

I'll take a look at my component supplies and see what the odds are of getting more of what I'll need, but no promises. And be aware that your chips will not be assembled until the components I ordered for your miner have arrived, which may result in your order being delayed relative to the rest of the orders from this group buy. I'll let you know the situation in my assembly thread once I've had a chance to make a proper assessment.


I hate to be the one to tell you this, but ragingazn628 is in the USA, not the EU.


Thanks for all the votes, people. I appreciate the confidence you have in me, and I'll do my best to not let any of you down if I'm chosen. I'm happy to have this chance to play a minor role in Bitcoin's early history. :-)

I'm sorry to hear about your death in the family, Raging, and I'm definitely sympathetic to your depression. My family has been affected by depression to various degrees over the years, so I get what you're going through. Thank you for getting back to us.

This update does make me feel a bit better. I'm glad to hear the chips aren't headed to an abandoned house or anything like that. If people still want me to take over, though, I'm still willing. Assuming, of course, we can get Avalon to change the shipping address.

Thanks for all your hard work on this group buy, John. You're definitely earning your commission!

HashFast seems to be legit. Not a CedarTech-style scam anyway. There's always risk, of course: BFL seemed to be completely legit as well.

Right now the mining space is just way too intense for me, honestly. Too many new players. I'm planning on staying out (aside from my involvement with the Klondike boards) until it cools down a bit.

If I do end up doing shipping instead of ragingazn628, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable taking the entirety of the management fee. Ragingazn628 got us this far, so I figure he's probably entitled to most of it. Though I definitely wouldn't mind some sort of compensation!

I haven't heard of any, unfortunately. They seem to be impossible to get ahold of by design.

Edit: Just called ragingazn628 and left a message on his voicemail. Hopefully he'll reply soon.

It should as far as I'm concerned. It sounds like they mostly just didn't want to have their resources diverted by people running an ad-hoc exchange on them.

I sent an email to the address Thomas (ragingazn628) had us use to send him our shipping addresses. In the email I asked him to chime in over here, because everyone's getting nervous. Here's hoping he shows up soon.

I've already verified my identity and address with JohnK as part of his identity escrow service for Stumptown Miners, so he should know what address to redirect the chips to if that is indeed the direction we're going.

It's too late in the game for me to put anything together in a timely manner, especially with the component shortages, but I might be willing to put together another assembly run if there's interest, and if everyone understands that it's going to take much, much longer for the miners in the second run to come together than it will for the miners in the first one.


I saw my name mentioned earlier. I'd be willing, if voted into that office (so to speak).

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.

Actually, that might not have been a bad idea. I'm betting that not all of the components that were sold are going onto Klondikes, so you would have effectively been securing components for the community. Of course, price-gouging would certainly not have been in the spirit of things, but selling back the parts at cost plus a small bit for your trouble? That might have actually saved some people here money once opportunity cost due to component shortages is factored in.

Oh, yeah. That's the right place. If you're only now looking for components, you're going to have a hard time.

I might have some components left over once I'm done getting people's miners made. I'd be willing to resell at a reasonable price whatever people need if that's the case.

As someone who's admittedly still waiting on a refund, I don't know if Avalon will continue to have these problems. Based on their recent statements, it sounds like they've figured out that they just can't handle direct consumer sales at this point in time. They've proved to be a decent vendor where bulk orders of raw chips are concerned. If they stop offering low-cost, complete miners in small quantities, then I'll say they've learned. If they hire on a bunch of people to handle customer relations, then I'll say they've learned. I'd like to think they'll learn, but time will tell.

Fact is that Yifu and his compatriots are engineers through and through. It's possible (though very rare) for engineers to handle customer relations and business operations as well as the technical side of things. If Yifu's crew is running tests against the live network against his wishes, and given that Yifu and co. have been pretty bad at communicating on a regular basis, then hopefully he learns from this and gets someone else to handle those functions. If you can't honestly assess yourself and hire people who are good at what you are bad at, you won't be in business very long.

I guess I feel a little sympathy, despite the fact that Bitsyncom has 101 BTC that they still owe me. My last job was in a cubicle at WebMD's Portland office. Before that I'd been in a small startup consisting of four people, myself included. I wasn't used to communicating regularly with wide arrays of people. Before, the friction around communicating was turning to the guy next to me, saying a couple words, and then continuing on with whatever I was working at. At WebMD, I was suddenly expected to write multiple emails to a variety of people throughout the day, keeping anyone who might be interested in anything I was working on abreast of my progress.

My natural bent was to just put my head down and code, and in my first couple months I sent almost no emails. I was an informational black hole. I got much better in the year and four months I was there, but it was a pretty excruciating learning process that really broke me down and never quite built me up again. So that's probably a big part of why I'm willing to give Avalon a bit of a "bye" on their poor communication this round. I understand poor communication. I was there just last year.

That said, I also understand why everyone's so pissed off. If people start breaking out torches and pitchforks at this point, though, I won't be among the mob. Maybe later down the line, if Avalon messes things up much more. And I certainly won't be among Avalon's direct-to-consumer customers in the future, though I would probably buy bulk components from them. They've proven themselves to be engineers, and I'll expect them to act like engineers until they take some steps to shore up their weak spots.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

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.)

You're looking at the tape and reel package page. Reels have 3000 components on them (in this case), so you have to order in increments of 3000 if you want reels.

There's a different page and DigiKey product number for each type of packaging. A little ways down the page, under the heading "Alternate Package", you'll see links for cut tape, and DigiReel. Here's the link for Cut Tape: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/74AUP2G02DC,125/568-9186-1-ND/2814104

Edit: For those of you having trouble finding parts, I've found http://octopart.com/ incredibly useful.