damn. whatever happened to just dropping some good acid?

perhaps thats sarcasm. but if its not..

remember books? face to face communications? snail mail? playgrounds? community centers? churches (or whatever your flavor of religion, if any, calls places of worship). town halls? town squares?

heck i could do fine with no connectivity as long as the local library and places of learning stayed open.

yeah, pretty much this.

at least they could of hired a good PR guy. i wont go as far as saying they were misleading people with their roadmap/timeline and such, but things sure went into the weeds as time went on. i do think they have been way more honest and open than most companies in this space. but not everyone can be sidehack, who basically sets the standard as far as openness and honesty.

but as i said before, some of us like the bleeding edge. some of the fun is figuring out how to get things running with minimal instructions and help. im one of those as im into hardware and while profit is nice, learning is fun too.

but for people with profit as 1st priority. well this wasnt the way to do it.

be interesting how things are in a month or so when things are (hopefully) all up to snuff and user friendly.

to be honest, finding info in discord is a pain in the arse. info is too scattered. i just found the alpha miner link by accident.

they should have set a forum up early on, or had a much better mailing list with much better and up to date info.

from what i heard, they took a poll/vote as to releasing the hardware without the software, or wait till the software was done and then ship. i never saw that poll but i would rather have the hardware 1st, as then i was able to test fit stuff and install drivers etc. also, if the hardware is in customers hands, they cant be accused of mining on them while delays (real or imagined) happen.

but i do know what you mean. could of been handled better but hey it is what it is. those who wanted refunds got them.

messing with the alpha stuff is fun (to me at least) but yeah, hardware that more or less just sits there and  blinks lights at you while producing nothing isnt the greatest advertisement for a company.

try this link.. i think it will expire in a day though.

https://discord.gg/sh8EMf


EDIT: sign up here too, its starting to collect info from discord and present it in a more orderly fashion.

https://thefpgaforum.com/

a joke? hardly. rough patches? sure.

delays and such, they are to be expected. i hope you didnt go into this thinking money was just gonna roll in.

please note, i am not defending squirrel. personally i figured 50/50 on roi in any decent (like a year) time frame. and i am disappointed in the delays, but i factored them in when i ordered. and if i lose money, well thats another factor i took into consideration and am willing to accept.

there are folks who have approached me publicly and privately, asking to buy some of my gear, notably the 215+s. im sure someone will contact you if youre selling.

me, im hanging in there. bleeding edge is fine by me, and i dont mind alpha testing.

this alpha release is purely an unofficial effort on gpuhoarders part. it is not part of squirrels official miner.

no acorns were permanently bricked (from what i understand), some in m2 slots did not come back up after flashing until they were in nests, then they came up as normal. its thought by some its related to pcie timing or something, but that stuff is way beyond my understanding.

i have had no problems with my two 215+s in two different systems aside from occasional lockups.. most likely due to me messing with clocks and such. they are both in nests, one in a nest4x, one in a nest2x.

so please keep in mind this is all unofficial playing around. i just loaded a new bitstream on both. from what i understand these new bitstreams have two cores instead of the one the original alpha bitstream had (may be wrong on that).

so those who arent comfortable messing around with alpha stage stuff obviously should wait. and do not take these results as final by any means. wait for the official squirrel miner for real results.

me, im having a blast. but im a hardware guy 1st.

not sure on power (it can be over/underclocked but i heard 10 to 15 watts somewhere) but its showing like 12 cents USD a day each at the zen protocol mining pool lol. im running just over stock.. 260 vs 250.

this is after all just a quick and dirty test miner to work bugs out (there do seem to be some). gpuhoarder is messing with the bitstream right now. im sure it will do more with more algos and tuning. and of course who knows what kinda difference it will make when its boosting gpus.

i will keep this updated as i go.

btw never mined zen before this.. its the only algo the 215+ has a bitstream for at the moment. i also have a 101 but no bitstream exists for it right now.

basically as soon as you fire the miner up it hunts down your acorns and flashes the new bitstreams to it before it starts mining. pretty straightforward.

runs around 60-65C at 260. and very quiet. as for temps i heard around 80C is ok but thats not official that i know of i just heard it mentioned on discord.

here ya go.. sorry about the real crappy photos

also this is an alpha miner, just for 215+ in stand alone mode. no boost to gpus. more a "get something out the door" kinda thing.

acorn 215+ in nest4x on onda D8P



acorn 215+ in nest4x in gigabyte Z97X



acorn and zenemy mining on the onda



acorn mining alone on the Z97X

gpuhoarder now has a standalone alpha miner out for the 215+,  alpha 0.11c.  running on my two rigs at zenprotocolpool.

it has begun!

find the miner on discord.

lotta people in medical work every other weekend.

back in the 70's software (trs-80 stuff is what i remember most like this) came in ziplock baggies with photocopied instructions.

those were the days.

anyway care in packaging pretty much means a lot of effort went into other areas too. well, hopefully.

yup.

word is they asked folks whether to ship the hardware without miner software rather than wait for the software, then ship. (i dont recall that but whatever, i would of wanted the hardware 1st anyway).

theory is, they cant be accused of mining on your hardware in secret if its in your hands, not theirs. and we can set our rigs up and make sure all stuff is recognized as it should be.

of my two rigs,  the gigabyte Z97X has a 215+ in an m2 slot and is recognized. in my onda D8P, a 101 in a nest2x is not, but a 215+ in a nest4x is. same slot (1st one, runs at x8 gen3), no changes were made when swapping the 2x and 4x in the slot. dunnowhatsupwitdat.

probably my error, i will play more today with it.

all in all, delays etc, i more or less expected it. sure im a bit disappointed in the delay, but realistically it is what it is. i knew delays could happen when i went in.

i must say the quality if the hardware is very good. they also gave 4 risers with the nest2x, which was a nice touch.

so in the meantime, they (the 215+ in the m2 on the Z97X and the 215+ in the nest4x in the onda) sit there in my rigs with pretty green light that blink every so often.

give that speech today and 90% of the usa population would just give a blank stare and complain that people need more handouts and free stuff.

man im glad i grew up when the usa had people with balls and dealt with reality, not snowflakes that need special rooms to go cry in when something happens they dont like.

overbuild them. like 100% overbuilt. i like huge safety margins.

and have a licensed electrician do the power delivery lines.

when i started mining in 2011 it was easier to acquire btc by gpu mining than buying.

as im a hardware guy who likes to tinker, i never really stopped except for a year or two around 2013-14. that was when asics really took hold. asics were pretty much a suckers game except for 1st batch folks (assuming they werent outright scammed). then around when eth mining with gpus became profitable i got back in. trading eth for btc of course.

something about that soothing white noise from the fans and the tweaking that just gets me.

and now i have squirrel acorn fpga gpu accelerators to (hopefully?) breath new life into my aging gpu rigs. plus an bcu1525 fpga on order that may or may not come anywhere near making roi, but will at least be fun to play with.

for me, mining as a hobby is a lot safer than some of my other much more expensive hobbies. and some of those  hobbies tend to cause death or other undesirable results when you screw up. so there is that advantage.

ive heard next week. we will see.

btw just got my order in too. pretty lights is all they do at the moment..

another vote for keepass

they also sell other devices (not at 7-11s though) that you aim at the problem, pull a trigger and the problem goes away.

well, aside from cleaning the mess up. minor inconvenience compared to the original problem of course.