Some ASICs are hamstrung with non-working engines but hash away with a lower output.  I understand a little about the ASIC assembly, such as the chip gets soldered to conductors that pass to the balls of the ball grid array.  Reflow of BGA Nividia graphics chips on Presario motherboards is a classic case of saving a motherboard with a little skill, heating the solder under the BGA to reflow where opens may have occurred.

Has anyone tried increasing the number of functional engines of an ASIC which is in place, e.g. heating the ASIC to 400°+F for some minutes or putting a miner board in an oven to reflow the ASICs and if so has it improved the mining capability of the miner?

Thanks.

I had been running 4 or 5 machines donating computer time to Folding@Home for years.  Using only CPUs it was a lot of energy.  This was for team Soyrunner.  I quit when another distributed computing effort at a California university that in conjunction with a southeastern university developed a deactivation for herpes virus(es).  Not just herpes but a whole slew of similar viruses, this with a small molecular dimer that would block the clamshell trigger.  It should cure and/or prevent a whole class of cancers and autoimmune diseases.  Then a cousin's grandson, a teen, died of gaseous gangrene most likely as a result of a herpes infection.  The dimer discovery was a couple of years old at the time, about the time the Germans developed a molecular attachment for insulin that would increase its size and prevent insulin from passing from the system as quickly so much less insulin would be needed and less often.  That balloon molecule would probably work for the small molecule dimer that blocks the herpes clamshell.  So I quit FAH.  Sure, maybe it wasn't their distributed computing that contributed to the finding of that small molecule dimer but heck, the small molecule dimer still today hasn't made the news as being medically available.  You'd think they'd have a crash program to get it out there and available since it cures and/or prevents many cancers and autoimmune diseases.  So, I have some years with distributed computing spending money I really could have used much more effectively.  

Right now, looking at my Bitcoin miner expenditures and what I've mined, the whole Bitcoin adventure might end up costing me a lot more than I spent on distributed computing for FAH.  I have hopes the Mercury will be profitable.

Yes, I see under the Big Dutchman, chicken feet.  Feed must be passing before the chickens just above where the eggs roll out.

Okay, how are the eggs getting out from under the chickens to the tray?

You're leaving out that now the paper is written, is the word typeset still used?, say in NYC, then transmitted to satellites then towns across the county have a factory looking building with a sat downlink which shoots the image to whatever they use now-a-days.  In the '80's they moved away from cameras and to something called newsplaters.  Big scanner devices.  Early use of the revolving disk with mirrors like you see in checkout scanners.  The news was beamed to a revolving disk with flat mirrors, the disk of course was spinning very fast.  As each new mirror moved under the beam a new line feed happened.  This reflection onto an aluminum sheet having a special coating that was then the image of the newpage.  So, if you were comparing newspapers that had lead type mashing down onto paper, bundled and sent off to cities via aircraft, like the ASICs from China to Sweden, doesn't happen with newspapers that way any more.

I agree.  From USNWR:
Every time you go to post a status update, remember: WWMBT? (What Would My Boss Think?): http://ow.ly/pcFO7

Annoyed at a microwave that had stopped working properly I had posted that I got it working again by running the touchpad over the edge of something as one might do with a bill before putting the bill in a machine.  The microwave worked for a while.  Some years later I did a search to see what I'd find about myself online and there was that post relayed to a number of forums.  Still there somewhere today, couldn't get it to go away.

I heartell dentistry, e.g. crowns, are so much better priced with quality work if one travels to Asia for the work.  So much so that for multiple crowns it pays for the flight.

If manufactured and shipped from China would we see a higher probability of customs/homeland delay than if shipped from Sweden?

My mistake, should have used the term in natura not in situ.

Sometimes you breadboard a circuit and it works right the first time.  Sometimes no.  I believe they'll be happy with their ASIC's performance in situ.

Arachne browser.  I offered a canned ham but times they were already changin'.

Perhaps users who figure getting bitcoin to spend on the slik road is safer via mining then legal tender.

So, some manufacturers or at least one will dump massively into advertising while not really shipping so as to take in as much money as possible while skewing the projections.  So the easy $/GH/s needed for 12 months would quickly kill sales of overpriced miners.

And add a separate Delivery Projection button.  Say, x miner ordered on March 15, 2013 expected to be delivered on .... all based on historical data.

I would like The Genesis Block main page to have one large obvious button that gives a calculation of what cost, $/GH/s for a miner, if starting mining that instant, using the best projections for future miner shipments obtainable to estimate future difficulty, will produce ROI in 12 months - you enter only kw cost.

So, looking into the future, the best profitability would be to buy when the cost of miners is just a bit more than cost of production and the manufacturers are about to quit.  But, somewhere in the future before that, the cost of buying then presently available miners which can truly see ROI within 12 months might happen?  One might assume that would be within 12 months of one of more major manufacturers permanently halting production.

Difficulty and network hashrate, how do they differ?  If one were to look at at the return on a fixed hashrate, say 10GH/s, and the network hashrate doubles, would the BTC returned per week on that 10GH/s halve?  Or does it take a doubling of the difficulty to halve the return on that 10GH/s - understanding we're talking probability not absolutes.

I liked it when I started running back in the late-'80's as it has a 10 minute beep on the timer.  Ten minutes out and 10 back before breakfast then off to work.

Take the miner, a wireless AP, and head for an internet enabled pub with any of the KnC staff up for drinks, set it up there and raise a toast to Bitcoins!

Early in the BFL ASIC production threads there was speculation about what was causing the high error rate.  Heat causing wrong firing of FETs or impure silicone and heat causing misfiring of FETS was speculated.  Back in the late '70's I read somewhere about IC's failing in space due to radiation causing misfirings and that a special grade IC was then made for high radiation exposure.  If  the miner is scanned by a radiation emitting device it would probably not cause damage as the miner doesn't have power and disallowed states that may be created would likely be cleared later at boot.

If it's a carry on then an X ray I assume.  Baggage within the US sometimes is scanned with a device that bombards with neutrons, counting those in versus those out as explosives absorb neutrons, hence the advice not to put wool clothing in airline baggage as wool absorbs neutrons and gets slightly radioactive after passing thru.

I don't recall exactly what interface KnC using.  I wonder if the ball grid array in general was preferred over pins for the cost benefit or if it had to do with switching speed and spurious signal transmission in the radio frequency range.  But, BGA seems to have a higher failure rate than a pin/socket arrangement I think.  I'm not well versed in these matters so this is just speculation.