I'll take 3 units, 0 pi's, 0 psu's shipped to Texas, USA

I could see the group buy being worth while if 2-5 people came together to make the purchase quickly. Otherwise, like philipma said, with fluctuating btc prices it and not a huge price break, it would be a crapshoot.

I haven't had problems ordering from them over the years and they definitely aren't insolvent. One guess would be they have a backlog of tickets or orders.

I recall having this problem on a R4 unit from their first batch. I never figured out what was causing it, but eventually that hashboard went offline permanently and quit working. I left it alone as numerous complaints about the R4 failing were pouring in, and it just didn't seem worth the expense of shipping to China. Several months later I sent it to BitmainWarranty (in Colorado, USA) and they had to replace the board as one of the chips had gone bad. If it wasn't for the BTC price spike I probably wouldn't have bothered fixing it.

Search eBay for: 684532-B21
That's the part # for HP's 1500W PSU's. Then just buy a common slot PSU breakout board for it somewhere. They are platinum plus so not exactly dirt cheap, but definitely cheaper than buying a 1500W ATX PSU.

Everyone keep in mind that there are only three people handling customer support and hundreds of backorders (read Steve's post one page back). Just give them some time to go through the backlog of shipments, catch up on support tickets, and then figure out how much stock is available before they update the site for new orders.

There is nothing to gain by doing that. The whole point of an ASIC is to allocate the burden of work to a microprocessor that is specifically design to do that work efficiently and fast (thus the name). Why connect a board of ASIC chips to a computer when a small ARM processor is more than enough to fetch and submit work over the network?

Did you hold the reset button for 5-10 seconds and wait for it to reset to factory settings?
The cron tasks are in /var/spool/cron/root
You do have something running multiple instances of a process named "M5" on eth1 interface. If the reset button method doesn't work, try to ssh into the device and look at this /root/m5
You can also try ssh'ing into it and editing /config/cgminer.conf  with your pool configuration.

My first guess would be that the 4-pin pci connector could be used to link other PSU's and activate all of them by turning on one. You could test this by checking for continuity between those 4 pci pins and the HP's contacts. If they connect to contacts 33 and 36 (and probably a ground pad) then that's likely what it's for.
These are pads 33 and 36 highlighted:

The coating on the hashing circuit boards.

Did you try doing all the reset and restore options (holding down reset button)? Can you load the S9 image onto an SD card and insert it?

Anyone know what coating is on Bitmain's units (at least on their newer ones, S7 onwards)? It's tough as nails. I'm wondering if it's an epoxy.

Who made them? Did you check the maker's documentation?

Received a BTC payment address yesterday, thanks Canaan. 

You'll probably want a PDU for your 220V outlet(s), and if you're using that Delta PSU you'll need a power cable with a C19 connector.

I've purchased a breakout board from Parallel and they delivered. You realize that the PSU you linked requires a 200-240V outlet and you'll also need a C19 power cable.

Thanks for the response about issue, Steve from Canaan.
I replied as soon as I received the ticket that stated:


My reply of "Yes" was over 24 hours ago and I have not received a response with the price + wallet address, and so once again I'm thinking "crap, it nearing the end of the work day in Beijing and it's Friday..."
It would have been nice to simply get this notice along with a BTC address if you are taking pre-orders, that way I could have simply made a payment (which is what I have been waiting on doing) or said no thanks. Now I'm waiting on all other open tickets to be addressed, getting someone to read my "Yes" reply, generating a BTC address and finally responding back to me. It just seems like there are a lot of unnecessary steps here. Nonetheless, I really do appreciate your effort and post here about what's going on.

Well I'm guessing Canaan isn't going to be responding to, nor updating, my payment ticket. Eight days has past since getting the scripted statement about "Lily will handle this issue."
I have always thought of Canaan as decent and reliable seller, this is a huge letdown 

That is strange; they used to prefer bank over btc, I've always paid in btc and found Avalon to be one of the most reliable companies (up there with Spondoolies). I can only speculate why they are cutting wire transfers (especially if you're in the USA)—maybe issues with monetary fungibility in China, or perhaps a government bureau is making international wires difficult—but these are all guesses. I've read on their twitter recently that they were having an issue with a bank wire but I don't know that's related. Exchanging $10K into BTC may be tricky if you need it asap and you don't have established credit with a credible exchange like Coinbase, but it is probably doable some way or another. Even if you manage it get the amount in btc, it looks like you will still be waiting.

I wouldn't been so disappointed with Canaan if they had just simply told me (within a couple days of my purchase) that they were experiencing a huge influx of orders and that there may be a delay in fulfilling my order. Instead all we got was this pre-scripted comment about "Lily will handle this issue..."

It's times like these that I miss the days of an Israeli–Swedish–American–Chinese competitive asic market (damn, three years seems like a decade in this corner of technology)