Personal? I don't quite understand.

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Here is what happened shortly after I got my Avalon Hashing away at 67 to 74GH/s:

I realized that I should order something with ALOT more hashing power. I was about to invest 30k into a BFL Minirig. Keep in mind, I paid actual Fiat for my Avalon. I didn't just do what alot of miners did (as in charge up their credit cards nor take out a loan).

I paid money out from my own pocket and savings. It was my first mining rig. So it was a leap of faith to be honest. I looked over most products and decided on Avalon because it was one self contained unit. The BFL rig was a close second, but after witnessing Inaba/Josh and BFL Engineers queries, statements and attitude...they didn't look all that hot or right. This was back in October/September 2012.

Speed forward to almost the end of March. I decided after seeing my first miner racking up Bitcoins and watching the wallet fill up (and to be honest the price of BitCoins skyrocket) I decided I should buy one of the MiniRigs @ 1.5TeraHashes/s.

Problem. I had to clear the money through my family for such a large purchase. (I swear on Gods good name I am telling the Truth)

They were fine with it, then I mentioned Inaba's name. DAMN...

As soon as they heard that and they asked me if this was the notorious and infamous Inaba/Josh...they pulled the rug on that purchase. They asked me all the smart questions that everyone with common sense on this forum usually asks. Has this guy or his company shipped any units? My painful answer was a clear no.

Then I was asked if this was the guy in the CES video. I said yes, it was. Then they asked me why in the world I would order from this guy. I really only had one defense to go by, because he has promised to ship Minirigs of 1.5 TeraHashes/s. I explained that this was a good chunk of processing power at any mining pool. (They more or less understood the idea.)

The problem was, they didn't think Inaba would ship especially after several months. So they said "no way" not gonna happen. I couldn't get their approval.

------------------------

They instead asked me what was "Avalon" doing and if they couldn't buy "more modules" or more devices. I said they hadn't really mentioned much on the extra modules and at around that time the batches weren't open yet. No one was against buying more Avalons they just were rejecting the whole BFL idea.

In hindsight, I guess I was impulsive on that idea. I am glad I listened....about within the span of 10 days later, the Minirigs disappeared from BFL's website, replaced with an "OutofStock" message. Inaba then came out and said there were serious power issues. The Minirigs were going to be broken into several pieces. People did the calculations and came to the conclusion that a Minirig would take 8 to 10 kilowatts of power. More than is probably safe to run in a standard residence.

(Or risk getting a raided by the FBI or DEA for suspected pot growing from an abnormally high electric bill. It's an indicator they look for in case people don't know.)

So, as far as I can see, BFL entire product line fell apart....

Right now it is pretty much impossible to buy a Minirig. It is also impossible to get anything above a Jalapeno in the short term. So like it or not, I guess I will be ordering from Avalon once again. I am not as biased against BFL as most people think. I would buy from them if they fired Inaba for omni-potent incompetence and if they actually shipped in volume....well....and if the product actually remains stable over a short term of being in customers hands....which I think won't be the case as they are practically dev units at this point. (In my opinion)

====================

So the short story is, in my eyes, as well as in the eyes of others....BFL fell apart, raised their prices, and will probably be impossible to buy their high end devices...let alone the lower end ones.

This is the type of story where you have a rolling turd that just keeps getting bigger and bigger down hill. At each step BFL has always been one issue after another. To examine that for the last 9 months and not come to a conclusion that it is a bad buy in more ways than one....

It would be a great products to buy (well not really anymore) if it actually worked, and they actually delivered...but it just doesn't materialize en masse.

Ah, no tinfoil hat necessary. It's been mention before on BFL forums that they shipped to reviewers, magazines, developers and hardcore supporters. Everyone else was left out in the cold.... (as far as I know)

Better yet,

Allow customers to buy hashpacks at lower rates but charge us more fees per month.

Right now a 50Gh/s hashpack is about 20btc.

I'd be willing to pay 8% or 10% in fees a month if the hashpack is re-rated at 10 or 14BTC. It might be an idea worth considering.

Looks not so good. A good concept...but there is no way to get your hardware.

The hashpacks are a good scheme to create a hashing cluster. The only problem is that he doesn't give you an option to get your hardware. Worse comes to worst, the pool goes broke and he will keep all the hardware. I was tempted but then realized his rates are set for BFL hardware. Right there, that is a major unknown.

The policy needs to change:

--You can redeem your hardware *at any time*, you the customer will pay for shipping to get it to your home.
--You need some kind of verification that if the hardware dies and the RMA process fails, you are sent your hardware. Each BFL box should be engraved with a number if he is going to sell his packs. Otherwise there is clearly alot of room for someone to walk away with all that hardware any time things go south.
--If you are going to buy a hashpack then he should set a fee rate that remains constant and is deducted instantly from each reward. This is to cover operating costs at his co-location and prevent doubled fees for the same.
--There needs to be some rocksolid way to verify that the fees and profits being being paid are accurate to the eighth decimal place.

You mean...pull a BFL? Are you Joshin'?

I still recall Inaba throwing crap at Avalon customers for the size of our units. Except we got them early (enough) and they have been hashing for a little over a month. They are on spec, they work (99% of the time) and they did what was promised.

Now the story with BFL is entirely different....
Products disappeared overnight, and all prices for new customers doubled:
The Jalapeno disappeared and now has evolved into a two chip monster. Don't ask him about the number of chips shortages to come and how that will affect people down the line. The Mini-Rig also disappeared.

Now Inaba is virtually silent on the power and "being green" issue. He probably does not want to tell his customers that each BFL product is an electric hog compared to the original specs. What he was always adamant would never happen to his products. Their profitability over the long term is now closer to that of an Avalon (or much less) with two key differences.

A) The Avalons came out ~on time~ so each customer has plenty of Cash or Bitcoins. The BFL ASIC customers in contrast have lost all that time as "unrecoverable funds" from each delay after delay in the face of increasing difficulty. Their customers are late to the game.
B) The Avalons are actually upgradeable. The Avalons are 66~74GH/s while the BFL's are stuck in nuetral at 60GH/s....we hope....
BFL's 65nm chips perform nearly as bad as 110nm chips.


Inaba is also silent on the fact that their product has grown larger in it's footprint by the day. The compact nature and selling point is all but gone.

Inaba is silent on "competitive GigaHash performance" upgrades owed to their customers. (BFL hampsters are getting 60Gh/s units while Avalon customers got nearly 70GH/s+) Which means BFL customers now have the inferior product.

I could go on, but you'd pretty much get the idea...

Oh shit!

erk you have been found out! Quick jump out the nearest BFL window to hide yourself as an piece of evidence...

(Note: The interesting question is why is erk is defending BFL in all their screwups? There isn't a logical point to doing so. There isn't anything to be happy about except that delivery of a sub-par product is finally trickling out. Beyond that, there isn't anything to be happy about. Overpower, oversized and later than Jesus's second coming.)

What do you guys think of this Power supply as a suitable replacement for the Avalon?

http://www.corsair.com/en/power-supply-units/ax-series-power-supply-units/ax1200i-digital-atx-power-supply-1200-watt-80-plus-platinum-certified-fully-modular-psu.html

It has voltage correction for brownouts and seems to be spec'ed to run at 50C temperatures. (Summer is coming)

It actually is. I am going to die my avatar head red just for this occasion.

Quoted from Josh at the link above this post:

"While I appreciate the sentiment and I would gladly act on it if I could, the simple fact of the matter is we can not ship anything but Jalapenos this week and next week. We simply do not have the boards and cases to ship anything but a Jalapeno. We aren't intentionally holding back Little Singles, Singles and Minirigs. The Jalapeno 5 GH/s miner is the only thing we have both the boards, chips and cases for at this time. We had to push all units up one level, so the mining device formerly known as the Jalapeno is now in the Little Single/Single case and the little Single/Single are moving to a larger home. The minirig is moving to a smaller home and will have less hashrate per unit, which also necessitates a case redesign and will use the new Single/Little Single boards as well, hence we have none at the moment.

The new Single case should be in tomorrow and the boards sometime next week, hopefully."

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Sorry higher-end BFL customers....your sorely out of luck. (SOL)

You'll be getting your in "a while". Just keep charting your declining profits on a graph paper somewhere (since October 2012)...in the meantime...while you are waiting.

What is the utility number for?

I get ranges from 1000+ to less than 15 depending on my difficulty settings.

Are there any Fibonacci plugins for Sierra charts? (Beyond the Fibonacci fan)

@ Slush
If you needed anything for the pool, but it was too expensive, what would those items/services/<insert here>...what would it be?

If you think things could be better than they currently are, what would you change about the way the pool operates or functions?

Is there an ETA for when this is going to be implemented?

Thanks, the current time (in UTC) is 4-25-2013 10:56pm.

Is that setup any good for litecoins or namecoin?

At what time UTC did the pool become compromised?

Was it profitable? What kinds of spec did the instance have?

Offline Wallet


Online Wallet at Pool

Consider for a moment that ASIC miners don't have a choice. We generate coins faster than they are confirmed. I didn't want to have almost 10 coins there. I had the default setting set at 1.0

Unfortunately, the pool fell under the attack. There is no "right" way of doing it if the confirms take about 5 hours per BTC to clear.

Right now my counter is at 6.65847142 BTC instead of somewhere around 9~10. something. I haven't had anything deposited since the "2013-04-23 16:31:27" according to my offline wallet transactions deposit list. Now that I am checking things carefully I just noticed that one of the deposits went missing into thin air.

The pool records says it deposited another coin at "2013-04-23 20:31:27" yet that is not showing up in my wallet and has gone missing. So it seems there is a missing coin in there somewhere. I believe that is roughly when the pool got attacked and went down. If that is the case I am up to about 11 coins and some fractions. Again, it's not like some of us have a choice in the matter. The confirms take quite some time.

(Alright, I am going to go ahead and crunch the numbers on my account and see how much has gone unaccounted in the meantime.)