You make good points. I see the problems with ASIC's currently as growing pains. And obsolescence is not necessarily the same as lack of utility. My '97 Caravan is definitely obsolete, but far from useless.

So far, the market has chosen Bitcoin as top dog, which is SHA-256, and LTC and DOGE seem to also be very successful outside of "just" the crypto community, and they are both Scrypt.

So it appears that both paradigms are viable, and as for ASIC's killing the small miner, I don't think that's the case. The network was going to grow, by design. If it didn't, then the experiment would have already been a failure. That it's growing differently to what was originally envisioned is just the way it is. You can't plan the future, you can only plan for the future. It has gotten to the point that the HOBBY miner is unlikely to turn a profit, but hobbies are usually not about making money anyway. But small scale businesses based on ASIC miners are not out of reach. You may have to set up in an office or workshop for power requirements now, but that is not a killer. It is a higher barrier to entry, but not a killer.

Even given that, it's also becoming true of LTC. You want a farm of GPU's, you're gonna be sucking power at a prodigious rate. Which leads to the same conclusion. "Alt" scrypts will still be profitable from home for a while, but that depends largely on trade FOR LTC and BTC, so it's again a "hobby" thing for the most part.

As you noted, where GPU's shine over ASIC's is availability. That likely will get sorted. Bitcoin ASIC's haven't been live very long, and GPU's have. Give it time. I think the preorder game has almost run its course, as people are sick of waiting for their machines. I didn't play that game, and I won't, so it doesn't affect me negatively. The companies that deliver stock on hand are NOT hurting for customers, and their prices are not outrageous.

I got more, but I have to leave Interesting thread.

Damn, ya beat me to it!

51% attack! Democracy is the ultimate form of tyranny.

It bothers me to agree with you. It really does.

But I have to agree with you.

I am hoping that this time they have a real timeline, and that they do get it together. The miner they sent me performed better than I expected, and I actually like the guys I dealt with. Free never hurts your rep either, but back then they promised to improve the front of the house, and they have not. I want these guys to succeed. But I want them to do it RIGHT.

As someone above said, keep us informed. If you set a hard date, and miss it for whatever reason, post that. Immediately. Bad news is still news. Silence for two days pas the date HARMS YOU.

if you haven't read it: Engines of Creation

And is this what you were referring to?

Funny how the big regrets are always the things you didn't do, ain't it?

Been into nanotech since Engines of Creation hit the market. Now I'm just waiting for the final breakthrough for assemblers Yeah, I'll definitely check it out. Thanks!

I like the way you think, sir!

You may be right, but I actually think it'll still be in the neighborhood of 25 percent max, because the "obsolete" chips are still being disseminated, and 28nm chips from at least one manufacturer are already being put out in multiple configurations as well. I don't see 20nm die shrink as a big deal, honestly. I think it will at best give marginal gains over 28. Optimizing the design, even at higher process nodes, will give a better yield. I think that's where it will go. As already noted, the current bitcoin ASIC's are basically reduced size FPGA's, whereas they could be completely purpose designed. Doing so would make larger silicon real estate more valuable. The race to the bottom on process nodes is kind of a stunt, and definitely a shortcut over what CAN be done. If people start to shy away from the preorder bullshit, I think we'll start to see more "ground up" designs, and more efficiency because of it. There is a lot of redundancy to an FPGA, because it's NOT application specific. Fewer functions equal more real estate, less power consumption. I don't think 110nm was really finished out for potential. There's still room for a lot of improvement, and frankly most of it's design work.

Quantum's a long shot. I don't think it's going mainstream in a decade. I could be wrong, but I've been hearing how it's "right around the corner" for two decades. Instead we still have expensive and impressive toys in a few universities.

I am utterly unfamiliar with grafeen. Wazzat?

Yeah, and those damn looms put hand tailors out of business and ruined our lives. Best go throw some wooden shoes in the works. That'll show 'em.

Be real. It was going to happen. You put geeks on a technical issue, they WILL make a better machine. Right now, it's the middle of an arms race. It'll settle down, prices will come down to meet reality, and there will be a place for scrypt as well.

As for ASICS enabling centralization, well shit me george, were there not pools taking up most of the network before Avalon? No? sure seemed that way to me. Face it: ASIC's are nothing new. They've been in watches and the like for decades. This is just a new application for an existing process. They do it more efficiently, thus they have taken over one type of cryptocurrency mining. Now there are beginning to be scrypt ASICS as well. Technology is in a constant state of flux. It always will be. Prior to the ASIC revolution, had Bitcoin actually gone mainstream and gotten the attention of the world's rulers, they would have soaked you via taxation to put a supercomputer or two on the job, and they would OWN that network. This has become much more difficult for them. It couldn't be done silently or cheaply at this time. BECAUSE of ASIC's.

Eventually, as others have pointed out, the improvement will become incremental rather than crazy. Already it has slowed somewhat. We're not seeing 40 percent jumps in difficulty anymore, and probably never will again unless somebody develops something even more efficient than the ASIC's. Evolution goes in fits and starts. The revolutionary part is an exclamation point, but it's not the end of the paragraph.

I could measure it off the mic with a plugin for FLstudio, too. But it's wildly inaccurate. I used to have a proper meter, and I've never seen the software ones come even close. I'm a singer, so on that issue I'm actually less ignorant than on reviewing this damn miner I do have an old smartphone. It's pretty much shot, though. I use it as a web browser, cuz the mic and speakers are fubar.

Keep picking at me. I don't take offense. I want to do this right.

I'll shoot some more stills and put them in this thread. To be perfectly honest, I think they picked the wrong guy. I'm a veteran of computers, not bitcoin miners. I'm also pretty much a political theorist. I do NOT understand why I was the one they chose.

To answer your specifics on this, the power consumption varies somewhat, as does the hashrate, but the range is 165 to 180 watts, usually tending to about 170. The router/firmware unit is a TP-Link TL-MR3020 . The two hashing boards are Technobit HEX16B bitfury based units.

I want to address the "nothing unique to AMT" part. You are correct in this. They assembled it and configured the firmware. They are essentially a reseller, as far as I can tell. I think they are trying to make their own boards for the Coincraft series, but this one is a technobit, preconfigured and put in a nice case. While I find their lack of communication and transparency as egregious as the rest of you, I don't find any problem with this part. The very mainstream laptop I'm typing this on is under the "acer" brand, yet when I took it's twin apart, almost nothing under the hood was made by or even branded by acer. Same with Dell, HP, etcetera. It's been the model in computers for a long time. Components are rebranded and repackaged. We knew they were working with Technobit before they shipped a single unit, so they weren't even opaque on that one.

I am upset with them. I really wanted them to come through. I'm sure you saw my post in the main thread, and it's the truth. But unless they drastically change what they're doing within the next few days, I'll be buying Ants. Which sucks, because I DO like this machine. It worked as advertised, aside from the power draw, and that's pretty significant in this brave new world. But doing it once or twice and doing it en masse are different things. I can't endorse this company as it stands. I am grateful for the machine, but they didn't follow through.

I took a few shots at you early on. It was mostly in humour. I think you are one of the more objective, if pessimistic, people on this forum. I'm an eternal optimist, and it has burned me on more than one occasion.

AMT gave me a start in bitcoin mining, and have personally done well by me. It was unexpected, kind of flattering, and a lot of fun. But I'm one guy, and by now there should be hundreds. I'll keep updating this as I play with the machine, but I will not endorse AMT based on this alone. So far, as near as I can ascertain, maybe a dozen people have received these machines, and I've not heard of any major problems with them. But they have not addressed the minor ones, such as lack of proper documentation, shipping queue, refund policy, all sorts of frankly trivial things that even a small company should have resolved in this timeframe. I've withheld my criticism of the company till now, but they have not lived up to that. I still have hope that they will pull it out as I do not believe they are operating out of bad intent. But they cannot continue in the lackadaisical manner they have been and be a real contender, even as a reseller. If I were enough of a gambler, I could do better. I have a lot of business experience as a manager in food service, which is WAY tougher than this.

And from my own side, I have dropped the ball on this. I can't say "it's not my fault", as it's a copout. I can say that I'm under an enormous amount of stress with things unrelated to this, and it wasn't as high a priority as I think a lot of you would have liked it to be. I didn't ask for it, but I did accept it.

Again, keep picking at me. I learn from it.

Edit: Noise level. It's pretty quiet. The camera/mic was two feet from the machine in the video. The fan runs constantly, but it's unobtrusive. I don't even notice it most of the time. I'd guess 5-6 db above ambient. That is a guess, I can't measure it.

Chinga tu perro. I like SHA.

Somebody outsnarked YOU???

I am impressed!

Thanks for the link. I'm probably gonna go that route, but it was my understanding that you could get the miners to send work to a wallet, if you had the right port. I've either configured it wrong, or I'm just wrong I'd rather not set up a pool, because I'm a Windows guy. Before I get jumped, I actually think Linux is cool. But I understand Windows inside and out, warts and all, and Linux is... difficult. I don't process as well as I used to. Don't get old, boys, it sucks.

But that being said, I've always been able to bash things until they work. If that's the route I have to go, I have an old PC I can put linux on, and figure it out. Finding time might be a problem, but that's life.

On topic, I really hope Jack gets his shit wired. It would be nice if Bitmain weren't the only ASIC manufacturer that delivers in a timely fashion, and that 1TH machine looks sexy

Can you PM me how you do that (generically)? I've been trying to figure that out with my AMT machine, but that's offtopic.

I forgot about ASICminer. They've always been overpriced from my perspective, but they have delivered on time, for the most part, and what they said they would. Friedcat may be greedy, but he's got honor. I honestly haven't paid attention to their latest stuff. That's a mistake I intend to rectify

I hear you. I'm getting more hashpower when I get my tax refund. But I ain't tying it up for an indefinite period of time. This basically means Bitmain, used, or possibly LightningAsic as it stands. Used is going for more than new right now, because of this preorder bullshit.

I really wanted it to be AMT, for personal reasons, but it's not looking good. I'll probably get two ants.

Bitmain has come the closest, and if LightningAsic pans out, they seem to be playing the same way. But they do it in small batches, rather than continuously in hand. Still, far better than ANY of their competition.

At last, a man with a brain!