Hi guys,
Here's the current status as of 8:30PM Moscow time 19th Sept.

* We received all packing material! However, we have yet to begin packing aything, but the night is young and we have caffeine
* Units up to order #7/23 (re: your contract), have either been tested or are being tested right now.
* Testing process is getting more optimized now
* I've started working on some basic documentation so you'll know what to do when you receive your units. I intend to put at least some basic instructions on paper for the German customers in German (google translated) to help with customs.
* The packing process is going to be time consuming. We are making our own boxes from other boxes as we couldnt find boxes that would fit perfectly (after calling and checking out 40 different companies!). So lots of exacto knife and duct tape action involved, but overall I'm happy with the solution we came up with. I will try to take some pics tomorrow of what they will look like packed.
* So as of right now still targeting Friday morning delivery of at least a couple of units, but we'll see. We're all a bit sleepless over here
* I will try to finally get to most people's correspondence after this post. Thanks for your patience.


Lastly, just in case everyone wasn't drooling enough, just thought I'd share some pics taken just a few mins ago.

1. Raspberry Pi connected to a triple unit


2 Raspberry Pi Ethernet connection through last slit in front of box. There is no hole in box for raspberry pi, so this is the best way to access it from network.


3. 750 Watt power supply of triple unit.  Singles & Doubles come with 500W power supplies.


4. Double unit hashing away.


5. Top view of triple unit


6. Showing motherboard type A & B interconnection cable.


7. Side view of triple unit. The white stuff at the edges of the heat sink is excess thermal paste that can be wiped off with a dry cloth if you really want to.



8. Top view of stacked units. The boxes are actually strong enough to stack them at least 10 high; however, I would not recommend it! We are in a hurry and don't have proper racks and shelves, so we are stacking a few. If you do this even temporarily, please make sure the power supply "flower" holes (same as drawn inside bitfury ASIC) are NOT covered, so air can ventilate. "S7", "D2", "T3" etc pencil markings just means Single#7, Double#2, Triple#3.


9. Aren't they beautiful? :-D


10. Sad and idle Bitfury ASIC mining machines, orphaned and looking for a good home ;-)  To be tested next.

No we did not update the list, that is somebody else's list and it's not 57 physical units due to a few doubles and twice as many triples. But logically, yes, 57.

We are starting to setup some units for testing. The first 4 units are now testing for the first 3 orders. They are each mining on Eligius pointing to the customer's respective bitcoin address. If you are in the first 3 orders, this is how you'd check your shares, hash speed etc.

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/1PCP6C9KuGgHzT9tF1UXYgHXXAmzFxkimA <--- put in YOUR wallet address from the contract you signed.

I think we will test each unit a minimum of 2 hours, but the total time for each unit after that will be pretty random. It will depend on how fast we work after we get packing gear, when we go to sleep, get breaks, etc. In some cases they will test for many hours overnight.

Our goal is to get through all units tested as fast as possible, because if anything is obviously wrong, we need to deal with it ASAP. We already found one unit that is 50/50 about powering on, so we are not shipping that single unit.

Luis

Hi guys,
Awesome news! We picked up ALL units late this evening, or should I say morning. It's 3:30 AM Thu Moscow time,

Tomorrow we expect delivery of all our packing gear by mid afternoon. So after that we can start packing the first few units and start testing the next set. If all goes according to plan we might be able to ship the first units Friday morning Moscow time. If not, then Saturday morning. So the last piece of the puzzle for us to start shipping is all the packing gear. We've ordered cardboard boxes, anti-static bags, foam support bags for the corner of the units and massive rolls of bubble wrap.

More details to come as I have time, but the priority right now is acquiring that packing material.

Also, I've gotten emails and PM's from various customers which I'm sorry I havent been able to reply to yet, but will do so very soon. Thank you to all who email/pm'ed about the power supplies.

That's it for now, I need to get some sleep.

Luis

Thanks fpgaminer,
Yes, the shipping costs are like 30% more than we anticipated. Moscow ain't cheap. If anybody else doesn't need the power supplies, we'd really appreciate it if you could let us know that you don't need them, as they are at least 1/4th to 1/3rd the weight of each box and significantly impact our cost.

Speaking of power supplies, here's some pics from the sample box we got that may help people make decisions. Keep in mind this is for the single (120GH potential) box. Again, I'm told power usage peaks at 165W (probably during power on), so 500W power supply seems like overkill to me. I will try to ask metabank tonight why they are shipping with 500W.  Note that if you intend on overclocking the hashboards eventually, then 500W may not in fact be overkill, as power draw goes up substantially with even minor GH/s gains.

Note the "230V only" to the left of "Attention" section.

Good news folks,

I met with Timur and Legkodymov face to face today at Metabank. Long story short, Metabank will start delivering large portions of our batches starting late tomorrow, and hopefully by Saturday or Sunday we will have received all units. This also means that shipping is likely to start by Friday at the latest. The first few units will take a lot more time, until we get the packing process assembly line well established.  I will be sure to provide updates on which order #'s have shipped, and will be emailing tracking numbers etc. The other good news is that Timur confirmed that they will provide sufficient single units to cover all individuals that ordered only 1 unit, as well as 1 or 2 individuals that did group buys through us that also required some single units. For others, we will be shipping double or triple units depending on how many were ordered.  Timur said he would be there tomorrow for the start of the deliveries, but also I made sure that we were all on the same page as far as what would be delivered to us tomorrow so that no more flip/flops (pardon the FPGA pun) of information occurred.

Further to this Legkodymov  also started talking about that they are working on a way to do away with the motherboards and just interconnect the hashing units with IDE-like cables via various board pin-outs, and that a design should eventually be published. The goal of this is to increase the physical space between hashing cards such that double fans can be mounted on every heat sink to better cool the chips and overclock them closer to 3GH/s. Your units won't ship like this, this is just a work in progress that you may choose to implement yourself down the road once the design is published, so keep an eye out for that.

As to failure rates of equipment. The explained that they test all gear for a few hours before handing it over to their customers such as ourselves. In their experience they have aprox a 10% failure rate which we, the customers, should never see.  From all the units they have shipped out so far (not sure the number, but easily several dozen by now), only 3 hardware problems have occurred (including mine, which perhaps I triggered myself). I asked what most of the 10% of the failure rates were, and they said it was PCBs or something gone wrong in the assembly process. The bitfury ASICs themselves appear to be quite reliable, and no problems with power supplies, fans or raspberry pi's (which BTW have a 4GB SD card). If we do encounter any faulty parts during our testing process, Timur has confirmed that we will be given priority to have hardware either fixed or swapped out such that everything is dealt with before I have to leave Moscow.

In regards to the power supply voltage, even they weren't 100% sure if they were dual voltage or not as nearly all their customers are from Russia and they have no need for 110V, but they believe highly likely they are not dual voltage and only 230V. So customers in the USA, unless you have specifically modified your power panels to support 230V outlets (not something that is ever done by default), do NOT plug in and use the shipped power supplies as it may cause major problems or even be dangerous, you will have to source your own 110V power supplies that should be readily available at most computer retail or online stores. Estimated power wattage use at the current un-overclocked chips for a single unit is believed to be around 130 Watts, with spikes up to 165W. This is second hand information, and unfortunately I don't have my KillaWatt here to inform you ahead of time, but I hope as a community we can share some info with each other.

The sample box will be swapped out tomorrow, I decided not to bring it in today for a few reasons.

That's it for now folks, look for another update after we collect a bunch of units less than 24 hours from this post.

Cheers
Luis

Oh and PS., we also did a stop over at DHL to confirm a few details, and guess what... "In Soviet Russia..."  - http://tinyurl.com/insovietrussiahaha - ... The customs people work for DHL ;-)  No conflict of interest there huh?! But hey, this should really work to our advantage and hopeful minimize any outbound issues. We actually showed the DHL lady the box and the insides, and she said "hand made computers" should be no problem to ship.

Ok, I just called Timur to see if he was in the office. He is out in meetings with his suppliers, but he has acknowledged the unit that is not working and requested I bring it in. Very likely it is a short somewhere. More importantly, he stated that he is able to get enough single units for us from his supplier(s) and will try to deliver as many as possible tomorrow and Thursday.

Given this is a complete 180 from what I got from their lead engineer just a few hours ago, at this point I'll believe them when I see them delivering all the units. Until then, just need to stay on top of the situation. Hopefully, I will manage to see Timur later tonight and confirm things when I drop off the unit that is not working. We now have several of their cell phones and they haven't ignored calls, so that's something.

Thanks everyone for your patience and sorry for the ongoing drama.
Luis

@fpgaminer, I don't have a multimeter with me unfortunately. What I did learn from the lead engineer is that one of the things that causes the power supply not to start is if there is no hashing unit seated in the very first slot - that is the slot closest to the power supply on Motherboard Type A. If this happens, you have to wait at least 15 minutes or so for the power supply to clear the short (excuse the non-technical terms), and then try again with a card seated in the first slot. I've tried this and just heard a little "poof" sound from the power supply, whereas before just turning it on and off with different slot configurations didn't make any sound, but having said that I haven't been able to replicate the "poof" either. LOL@Purple dinasaur. The case actually looks nice from a distance.

@trinsic - You are correct, units shipped to North America would require a power supply swap out for 120V; however, please don't rush to buy one just yet, I will try to remember to double check this detail, that it is indeed only 230V power supply, with metabank tonight. I can confirm that I don't see any voltage button switch on the power supply and it only says 230V on a sticker, so it is highly likely it does not support 120V. I'm hesitant to remove the power supply and look under it or even inside. The entire system appears quite finiky (sp?) so I'd rather not touch it too much. And yes, we will definitely be individually wrapping each card, likely with bubble wrap after they are inside anti-static bags.

Hi guys,

Here's the latest update:

- We went to Metabank late yesterday evening to pick up our sample unit (a single).
- After 1 hour wait in the reception, legkodymov came down with our unit.
- We opened it up, 1 motherboard type A , 5 hashing cards, 1 raspberry pi, 1 power cable, and (first) surprise... a 230V-only power supply (no 110V/120V switch on it).
- Over the course of an hour we waited there, another 7 or 8 people showed up, and we saw at least 4 or 5 other units go out the door. So they are definitely starting to ship.
- I asked legkodymov how many units worth of components I could pick up tomorrow (Tuesday) and he said, we can't pick anything up until the 20th (surprise #2) and they can only ship triple units to us (surprise#3), and that any spare parts would only be available after the next weekend or probably october (surprise#4) - some of these are obviously a deal breakers.
- Obviously this is not what we had agreed to on Friday, and so I immediately asked to speak to Timur. He wandered off, and never came back.
- After waiting a long while, we tried to call Timur directly (we have his cell), and nothing, no response.
- Another Metabank employee was also there helping to deliver units and get signatures of confirmation from customers that they received units. When I asked him where was Timur, he said he did not come in today and that at this hour (around 9Pm or so) he is sleeping as he was supposedly programming all day and working long hours. I also learned that he only comes into the office maybe twice a week, which they neglected to tell us before, but that he expected him to be at the office tomorrow (Tues).
- Once we got to our place, I immediately tried to power up the box and (surprise #5), the box was DOA. The power supply would not even power on.
- Thinking it was a short with one of the cards, I disconnected one at a time from the motherboard, then after that still didnt work, the fans, then tried different wall outlets, power cables etc. Needless to say after 1 hour of troubleshooting, I gave up and called Metabank.
- Surprisingly, I got a call back from legkodymov. I asked him why he wandered off and didn't tell me TImur was not even in the office that day, he appologised and that he misunderstood what I had said. In regards to the DOA unit, he was surprised it didn't work as he explained they had just finished testing it. He requested I take a picture of the unit, which I've done, and am now waiting for his reply (after 11AM Moscow time).
- We have also in the mean time found a store with anti-static bags, and are going to buy a few this morning to confirm they fit properly.

All in all not a great experience (understatement), most troubling was the change of direction in what they said from Friday; however, I am going to talk to them again ASAP, specifically Timur if I can to sort this out, as obviously this is not a good situation for any of us.

Some other things we learned:
- Weight of a single unit is 4.61 Kg (without packing material).
- Width = 45cm by 44.5 cm length and 10 cm height - this is the same as was posted a couple weeks back in the PDF file provided by Metabank in this thread.
- How the raspberry Pi is powered isn't confirmed since the box was DOA, but only the IDE cable was provided, so I am assuming it is through that.
- All the hashing cards are very loose in the box, any tilting of the box and you can hear things drag around, especially the raspberry Pi.
- The hashing cards don't have to be installed in sequence. There can be gaps in between. Below in pics you can see how metabank delivered it to us. They set it up so each card was in front of a fan.
- Another miner at Metabank reception mentioned to us that the triple units come with more powerful fans. Not sure on the power supply. They said ours was 500W, which is way overkill for a single, but there was no easy way to verify this as there was no sticker indicating this. We didn't remove the power supply out to see if there were stickers on the bottom side.
- Here's 3 additional pictures we took of our DOA sample box:

1. Top View: https://i.imgur.com/7tJTo6J.jpg

2. Raspberry Pi & power view: https://i.imgur.com/AXuyuBF.jpg
- Note the carrugated cardboard under the motherboard. The motherboard is not screwed down either, but doesn't move too much due to the weight of the hashing cards unless you tilt the box.
-  Legkodymov at one point explained that if anyone unplugs the raspberry Pi IDE cable and puts it back backwards (observe the red line on one side of the cable), it *will* kill the Raspberry Pi and possibly kill the motherboard. So users beware!

3. Top view of hash cards: https://i.imgur.com/GLCfWr1.jpg
- Note that on the flip side of the PCB, just under each capacitor, the heat sink for that card has been drilled or sanded down forming 3 concave grooves. In this picture it is very evident on the left most card, but this has been done to every heat sink on each card. I imagine this has been manually done to prevent some kind of a short with a connector on the PCB. Stuff like (drilling/sanding holes, not to mention cutting out pieces of cardboard to put under the motherboard) is probably adding to the labour required to prepare each unit. Also note that the cards sitting right beside each other have the heat sinks touch the capacitors. This happens at the top (seen in the picture), but also to the capacitors below the heatsink (not visible in picture). I dont imagine this is a problem unless the heatsink gets excessively hot.

Overall, this definitely looks like something that came out of a workshop, rather than any kind of professional fabrication.

Regards,
Luis

Good questions. Like I said, we only got a couple of quick minutes to look at the box, so after Monday/early Tuesday, once we have one in hand, I can confirm these and other details.


We have sourced some types of packing material such as bubble wrap, certain sizes of boxes and we are going to confirm on airbags as soon as possible. Nearly all the packing companies are closed on weekends. We still have some details to finalize which are specific to the size of the various components we are packing. Thus we can only provide more information late next week after we get the sample box in hand and can take precise measurements and then confirm packing material with packing companies. I will provide details and pictures as soon as I am able.

Cheers.
Luis

Hi guys,
As promised here's some pictures of the Metabank box we saw when we met them on Friday. We only had about 2 minutes to look at the box, so didn't go into many technical details, but picture number 2 explains a few specifics. I forgot to mention two details yesterday: 1) the plastic box indeed has its various walls glued together and the plastic may not survive international shipping if the box is dropped. The plastic is thin and I can bend it with my fingers a bit. We will of course do our best to pack it well. In image #2 you can see all the silver colored capacitors. Not all hashing units are like this, as seen in previous pictures, Metabank has confirmed that we may get random hashing cards with the bigger capacitors mixed with the silver ones.

Image 1 - Overview of box (excuse my fuzzy picture). I believe this is what a double unit would look like with 10 hashing cards.


Image 2 - Main picture explaining details. Behold my awesome Photoshop skills!


Image 3 - showing power connectors of Motherboard Type A and B, as well as Raspberri Pi IDE-like connection.


Image 4 - Zoom in of inter connection of motherboard Type A and B


Image 5 - Picture of the Metabank building. There are many business' in there, and in fact Metabank isn't even a business recognized by the reception desk, they are registered under a different name. You can make out the word "bank" in the blue/white Cyrillic sign outside, but that's actually for a different bank inside the building.


Image 6- Proof that capitalism thrives in Moscow   Although the guy on the left doesn't exactly look like he's "Lovin' It"

Привет из Москвы!  

- Today we went to the Metabank offices and met with Timur (owner) , Anatoly (aka. legkodymov - main hardware engineer) and Vasily.
- When we asked when our units would be ready for pickup they explained not until late Thursday but more likely Friday, the 20th of Sept, as per one of their original posts.
- I asked then, why they kept saying 15th on the phone, and what they meant was they would receive all the PCBs and various other components by the 15th ready for shipping. So obviously a miscommunication/lost-in-translation there somewhere. My apologies for this.
- We requested to receive as many units early as we could (before the 20th), but they agreed only on the basis if we would assemble them ourselves.
- We agreed to this, as their main obstacle to deliver all units by 20th (assembled) is the man-power required to do so.
- By late Monday or Tuesday morning, we will have a fully functional "sample" Metabank box, which we will use as the blueprint to assemble all the other boxes.
- To be clear, assembly does not mean soldering components - I made sure we were clear on that. We will just receive motherboards, hashing units with heat sinks already attached, power supplies, raspberry pi's  and the exterior cases as well as all necessary cables and screws.
- Between Tuesday and Friday we are expecting to receive many of these components, hopefully all of them; however exactly how many we will receive on what day will be further discussed when we meet with Metabank again first thing next week. They needed more time to review their inventory; however in theory if they get all components by 15th, this should not be a problem - but I will provide another update after our next meeting.
- They also confirmed that if we found any components that didn't work, we could just come back and exchange it. They are keeping spares for this purpose.
- In regards to the issue with the single units, they explained they would be able to give us some (less than 20). This should cover all the customers that ordered only 1 unit, but is not enough for those that bought multiple units through us for their own group buys.
- We really pushed to get more single units, but they said that their contract with the external box manufacturer has ended and he is not going to make more.
- I conceited that, ok, we (Bitcentury) will use some of the external boxes from the units we bought for ourselves and give those to our customers, but we still need more single motherboards.
- They explained that, this too could be problematic because their order of PCBs was completed a long time ago, and they are almost all delivered already. To make a new order would take many more weeks, not to mention cost. They said, possibly some time in October, perhaps they could do it.
- So I requested for them to just take some of the double or triple units (which have 2 motherboards) and split them into single units.
- They said it's not that simple because overall there are 2 types of motherboards. I'll call them type A and B. Type A is used for the single devices and has 8 slots for hashing boards and an onboard connector for the Raspberry pi. Type B has also 8 slots, although only 7 may be used for hashing boards, and it has no connection for the raspberry pi easily accessible.
- To build a double or triple unit, you need a little small IDE-like cable (excuse my ignorance, I will post pictures tomorrow) that interconnects motherboards type A and B together.
- A single unit is filled with 5 hash boards on type A motherboard, a double with 10 (using TypeA+B motherboard), and a triple has a total of 15 hashing boards (8+7).
- They mentioned that one possible solution is if we split a double into a single, the Type A will accept raspberry Pi, but to do the same for the Type B requires some minor soldering and a small component. I will post some pictures tomorrow to explain this more clearly, and so after the pictures, feel free to also ask any technical questions you may have so I can write them down and ask them for when we meet Metabank again first thing next week.

Thanks everyone for your patience and especially your civility, considering all of what goes on around these threads
Have a great weekend,
Luis

Hi guys,
So we made yet another call tonight, as the guy rushed us off yesterday. Here's some additional info:

1. They (Metabank) are having a meeting tonight as other people and other group buys also ordered multiple individual units, so they will have to deal with individual units one way or another. Right now, they are preparing most of the units as either doubles or even triples, but the reality is they have already shipped individual units, as many of the first units were individual units. I have a feeling this has more to do with their costs and time/effort to have to assemble & test more units, than if they combined many of them - but that's just my speculation.

2. When we asked for an ETA, the guy really would not commit to any date at all. All he said is that we (Metabank) really have to stick to the order sequence and if we have any problems and have delays we can not have people show up because we told them to come on X date based on an estimate. When we have units ready, we call the people in the sequence to come pick up the units that have been assembled and tested.

3. We asked if they were still targeting the 15th of Sept to have all units assembled, tested and delivered. He said, yes that is still their target date, but this is only an estimate and goal and cannot be guaranteed in any way. Also given they are already about 1 week late on their "40 boxes per day" initial target, I seriously question all units shipped by the 15th, but we'll certainly be ready if that's the case. The 15th is only a few days away now, so it's not like they are saying "two weeks" ;-)

We also confirmed a bunch of other details, like pickup address, procedures, time of day they are open etc not so much relevant to our customers.

As far as the units not being 120 GH, we totally hear you guys on that, but there isn't a whole lot we can do about that, believe me, at least 75 pages (!) out of the 350+ pages of the Russian 65nm thread are people complaining they didn't get the 120 GH and only 96-105 or so. Hopefully like the avalons and BFL units at some point somebody will figure out how to overclock them and share with everyone.

Regards,
Luis

Hi guys,
We managed to get another call into Metabank yesterday after many hours of re-dialing due to busy signals.  They didn't want to talk very long due to the call volume, but here's the latest updates we managed to get from them:

1. By default Metabank is assembling double hashing units. This is to save on assembly time, but obviously cost (to them). If you've ordered a single unit from us (BitCentury) we'll obviously need to get them to provide an individual unit. If for example you ordered multiple units but for a total of an odd number (i.e. 3), expect to receive a double hashing unit + a single unit.  Whether this is good news or bad news, depends on one's perspective I suppose. If you have a major objection to getting double units, please email me ASAP (luis@bitcentury.io) so I can take note and see what I can do about it, but given we're a proxy service, I make no promises - we get, what we get. In short their explanation/justification was that: " We sold GigaHashes, not boxes. So, so long as we deliver the gigahashes sold, it's not our problem if it all fits in 1 box or 3".

2. All units will be tested and assembled by Metabank prior to handing  over to BitCentury. This is contrary to what a few select customers were reporting earlier in the 65nm Russian thread, where they picked up all the pieces individually, then got home and realized something didn't work or fit together properly.  On this note, we will still test the units ourselves prior to shipping to you - just in case!

3. On that note, if we do encounter faulty parts, Metabank says they will offer replacements, so this should be relatively easy for us to do, given we will be doing the testing in Moscow.

4. The software, contrary to some suggestions in the 65nm Russian thread (one guy reported having to reboot every 2 days), is not buggy, but expect updates for "optimization" - whatever that means.

5. When we asked for ETA of when we can start picking up devices, the guy on the phone said he didn't have the list in front of him, but he said assembly/testing is rapidly ramping up this week and they are still targeting to deliver everything by 15th. This is somewhat noticeable in the Russian thread, as more and more people are claiming they received their units, but actual official numbers are not available it seems. As of the time of this posting, we still have no email from Metabank requesting we come pick up the units.

That's it for now.
Cheers,
Luis

Ok found the source of the "10% of all units shipped so far" (As of yesterday). It's directly from Metabank, so that's good.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3096944#msg3096944

Cheers
Luis

Hi fpgaminer,
You're welcome. No, I had read 2 estimates. One That they had shipped a total of 5 units which I think possibly was just the number of people that came forward on the thread talking about their units, and then a few pages later, somebody posted that according to their estimates a total of 29 have shipped (over the period of several days - so not 40 units a day as Metabank had initially estimated).

The last thing I read yesterday was that one guy believed (not sure where he is getting his info) that they have now shipped aprox 10% of all units, although I have no way of knowing if that's accurate or not.  (sorry I lost URL)

Another guy just yesterday...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3095676#msg3095676

...Thinks that perhaps this week they finished May 31st orders. Since our first order is from June 2nd, this doesn't sound promising unless they quickly ramp up production volumes, which they say they are doing.

I don't think it's public knowledge exactly how many  all units add up to, but if the public spreadsheet is any indication, there's at least 419. So with the more optimistic 10% estimate, that's 41 units shipped would still put us well below our initial order (aprox #113 best case scenario); however, there's also rumblings in the forum now that metabank may be delivering at least some of the units out of order, which is concerning (look at green highlighted sections of google docs spreadsheet I posted before), especially since we still haven't gotten any communication from them to come pick up any of our units. fsb4000 also just wrote yesterday "Well finally the first person who received the device and that does not look like a friend MetaBank. This gives hope that soon I'll call"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3095766#msg3095766

I'm going to try to arrange for my translator to make another call early next week, and see if we can get some realistic ETAs, even though Metabank has asked people not to call - but what else can they do if they don't offer info up front!? Lastly, sometime this coming week, I will be away on my way to Moscow. My visa has officially been approved, so now just waiting for the courier gods to send me my passport back before I have to leave.

Have a great weekend everyone,
Luis

And here's a few other useful posts I was able to gather by skimming through over 100 pages of the Russian 65nm threads....

Tech related posts:
How to edit cgminer.conf through ssh/WinSCP to point to another pool other than ghash.io
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3067979#msg3067979
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3068380#msg3068380

Sept 3rd bullet point summary of past ~100 PAGEs of 65nm Russian thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3069643#msg3069643

NEW Russian tech thread related to configuring and optimizing Metabank units. This one will hopefuly have way less spam and more useful content. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287147.0

I've stopped reading (for the time being) the main 65nm Russian thread after page 310 (Already at 330). If anybody else has other useful info they extracted, by all means share it.

Cheers,
Luis

Hi guys,
Just thought I'd drop another update. In case you haven't noticed the page count of the 65nm Russian thread has increased by 100 (!). Sifting through all the trolling has taken many hours. A large portion of it is people bitching about only getting 96-105GH instead of the 120GH, the delivery time and number of units delivered per day (as of yesterday estimated to be somewhere around a total of 29 - not the initial 40 per day they mentioned). First, let me start off an update with an email that came directly from Metabank yesterday and that we've translated without any omissions as we want to be 100% transparent with our customers - you'll know what I mean when you are done reading it. Anything in brackets () are my comments. I've also highlighted key points.

METABANK EMAIL:

In regards to the last section on refunds, we regret to inform that unfortunately, it is too late for us (BitCentury) to extend this offer to our customers. As per our contract, the offer was available only for the first 29 days after purchase. At this point, we've incurred substantial operational costs that as it stands if we're lucky we'll either break even or make a small profit - we too were surprised at the abrupt end of sales by Metabank and had counted on selling many more units. In a way we were lucky we had just broken even on the day it ended - given our operational cost assumptions which thus far appear to be very close to our estimates. Any refunds now, even a small volume, would put us in negative financial territory.

Ok, so after reading the plethora of posts today in the Russian 65nm thread it seems nearly all the questions we had, have already been either asked, mostly answered or sufficiently implied ;-) Here's what we were able to dig up in response to our own questions. Anything in ( ) brackets is my commentary.

When questions are asked about Metabank and legkodymov replies, he always replies with "we" and offers technical info nobody else has, so it may be safe to assume he works for Metabank or is heavily involved with them on the tech side of things.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3041979#msg3041979
"alexxy: 'in the meantime, metabank, as i was told today on phone, yesterday started sending the orders "

then 2 posts down... from user fsb4000:

"1) The first shipping started yesterday, strange that the first buyers didn't spread the good riddance.
2) Expansion options are going to be similar for 120gh/s devices and more powerful ones (double devices). 120gh/s will have slots for 8 boards, but with 5 installed. The double units with 240gh/s devices there slots for 16 boards, but 10 are installed 10. So i'm not that much against double devices anymore. At least, as many extra boards can be installed.
3) power supplies are sized appropriately for the number of boards provided"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3042096#msg3042096
"Sergauskazz: interesting... i paid for my devices in the first several hours, the page wasn't public yet, but i haven't gotten any emails or phone calls...Ok, I now called Timur, unloading of the first devices was confirmed. mine aren't ready yet, apprently, there must be more earlier comrades. waitin'."

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3043321#msg3043321
"hooray (the user who posted the pics): Tonight at 1:11 AM (not a typo) near to metabank's office I got the first 240gh/sec devices (in one case [meaning double]) it happened that the first lucky owners are me and my colleagues. During the meeting we got a feeling that metabank guys are sleeping at the office, assembling the devices. They were very tired, but full of enthusiasm. Respect them for the work that they're doing, and that they aren't feeding the trolls on this forum instead.

After receiving the box, because of some weather-related circumstances, it took us long to reach the installation place and only started it [since this point he speaks of one device] early in the morning, then i fell asleep, that's why i'm writing just now.
At this moment the device is stabily generating 196gh/sec with 0.7% of rejects (chips aren't overclocked). As the guys at Metabank said, the software has to be improved a bit, updates will be published on the website (blog?). Apart from that, the web interface isn't working properly, they also promised to fix it in the upcoming days. (Then he posted pictures and the video)"


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3043424#msg3043424
"DarkSova: What is the temperature of aluminium heat sinks on chips when you tuch them, not overheating?
UserPC: Heat sinks aren't on chips, but on the rear side of the board (This is expected due to QFN48 chip package, heatsinks must go under not on top). Temperature of the chips is easily tolerable by a finger. I don't think it's more than 60 degrees. (So this sounds like the heatsinks are doing the job, but obviously chips aren't hashing at 3GH either.)"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3043618#msg3043618
"integ: Is it possible to sleep nearby the device? (question about fan noise)
userPC: [Yes], normal pc tower makes more noise"


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3043977#msg3043977
"SectorZero: I doubt that just by software fix you can get 240GH from the current 196GH. Chip simply doesn't work on 3gh (this is not necessarily true), and if you take it as 2.7gh [consider its real power] then apparently there wouldn't be enough chips for everyone. maybe the buyers will get extra boards in the future. Otherwise it's not nice.
legkodymov: boards come in standard form without extra tuning. If you work on each board for an hour, you could get 3GH. If you're interested in that kind of a device, it'll be delivered LAST."



So, as per some of the above posts, it looks like Metabank has actually started delivering!, at least in low volume. Now before we all get very excited, note our first machine wasn't purchased until June 2nd, and Metabank started selling several days before that according to this spreadsheet put together by  fsb4000...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmyZBD2EHCEEdG9SdENBV0l4YnNuNklrdDItMTJwdlE#gid=0

... which is not entirely accurate of course, but a good effort none-the-less. You'll note we have 57 devices listed which is accurate, but they were not all ordered on the same day, but rather spread over about 10 days. Also, please note this spreadsheet was put together from forum posts that he was able to find, so in all likelihood there are even more orders not listed. If you do the math, before June 2nd there were at least 113 boxes ordered. So it may still be a while yet before we start getting ours, but I will be checking our email daily now, and will try to call metabank tomorrow to see if we can get any kind of ETA. Failing an ETA, as per legkodymov, he hopes to have all orders delivered over the next 3 weeks, so if they manage to achieve this timeline, this would put us at Sept 20th to receive the last boxes from them.

Again, I expect to be in Moscow well before the 20th (assuming the Visa/customs/consulate gods allow me), and I can tell you I plan to be there past the 20th, so we should be covered.
Cheers,
Luis

Ok, and now it looks like somebody from Metabank is blogging about their Bitfury products. Finally, some official info:

http://bitfury.metabank.ru/

Thanks for that stripykitteh,

I've just checked my email, nothing in from Metabank.

As for, legkodymov (according to my translator 'oolex') appears to be a Metabank employee or contractor  but we are not 100% clear on this. Oolex explained that the previous guy we were getting forum info from "mu3" was having his questions answered by this "legkodymov". So at minimum legkodymov is  very well connected with Metabank, but we also couldn't find any "hey I'm legkodymov and I work for Metabank" type posts though.  These Russian guys sure like to keep everyone guessing, heh.

At any rate, legkodymov also stated here... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183368.msg3045506#msg3045506
.... "Let's keep our fingers crossed that everything is going to be alright and in 3 weeks time we'll have everything unloaded (shipped)"

Oolex also analyzed the video, no major clues there, just observations of the color "like a new year spruce tree" (because PCBs are green), and "the case is made of plastic".

I've asked oolex to post some questions as follows. They should be up within the hour or so. Questions will be:

We will evaluate the best way to secure the blades once we have a box in hand, but I am definitely open to suggestions on how to minimize the blades coming lose. I am quite aware of the avalon shipping horror stories, so, I too would like to avoid those!