It wouldnt be a bad thing if you kept a few in hand as there are bound to be a few duds amongst the batch.

Yes that would be fine.

Does anyone know if the dualminer version of cgminer will work with the 5 chip units?

That unit would, on paper, drive one 5 chip unit in dual mode but personally I would rather use a supply with a little bit of extra capacity, say 6 or 8 amps. These things are never exact and a 5 amp device might use 4.9 amps or it might use 5.1 amps. Running a power supply flat out is usually not a great idea anyway.

Yes you could use an ATX power supply to give the 12V needed. ATX units come in various ratings and can supply different amounts of current on their 12V rails. It would be a messy solution though as you would need to join some pins on the motherboard connector so that it would run standalone and in my experience you would need a unit which was specified over your needs as I think they are not designed to cope with continuous flat out use. You would need to know what you are doing to wire it up and the cost would be likely be way more than the simple supplies shown in your pictures.

Suitable power supplies are cheaply available on ebay for driving LED lighting strips. For instance -

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Stock-DC-12V-Universal-Regulated-Switching-Power-Supply-for-LED-Strip-CCTV-/161081134308

These look like the same type.

As far as wiring goes, the tails from each power lead need to be terminated on the power supply itself, as shown in the pictures you have published. If you use an octopus type of splitter you would be putting far too much current through a single small cable. How thick is the lead to your kettle? That is carrying about 12 amps. A cable carrying 25 amps needs to be quite beefy. One miner uses about 5 amps so wire each tail direct to the power unit.

You seem to be giving some bad advice here. If the power connectors are 2.5mm why suggest that a 2.1mm connector is what is required? Maybe yours did take a 2.1mm, that is no garantee that all will. Much better to have the correct size surely?
Also that cable you are suggesting there is not rated for the sort of current in use here. Ok for LTC only mode but if you are using 2 of these with 30A each going through them that is asking for a problem. A single socket of this type cannot possibly handle 30A.

Your second post still states that the power plug is 2.1mm

You say that the power plug is 5.5x2.1 but on the lightningasic website the mass of chinese text against the picture of the power cables ends with the number 2.5mm I would guess this is the power plug size?

Also the cable you show 8 into one does not look suitable, as it would need to carry 30 amps through the single plug to the power supply and I think that is way over the spec for those.

Will these include any cables?

Dean, do you know if these will include any cables? Some on the forums have received them with a power cable and USB cable included.

There is a lot of info about these units here -

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=13314.0

Is there a version of cgminer, bfgminer or sgminer to drive these if I wanted to run them without the controller card?

Ok I have placed an order. Any chance you can let me know the size of the power connector so that I can get some power cables ready?

Any idea when you will actually be receiving them? and is your initial order of 200 already sold?

Considering the USB version, it doesnt seem very feasible really. It would take about 30 of these to be the equivalent hash power of one GPU rig. Whilst the power saving would be good, the sheer numbers involved in building any decent amount of hash power would be crazy, and about twice the outlay at current likely prices. It might be good for selling on ebay but this unit is just too small to be of real use.

Perhaps you should concentrate on getting hold of a more powerful unit.

I am interested in the dualminer but lets hope it happens fast. Preorders suck...

Is anyone intending to run a dealership for these in the UK or EU?

I have decided not to keep my freshly arrived HEX16B. I have tested it and it runs at an average of 42-43GH/s.

If anyone is interested PM and I will give you the eBay link. (The auction might say UK only but I can ship elsewhere also).

Well if this doesnt dazzle you maybe it will give you a laugh at least. Email from Alpha T today -

Task Name                                                Duration        Start                 Finish
Viper ASIC Miner Project                              238 days       Tue 16/08/13     Tue 15/07/14
Scrypt Core and Chip Architecture                 15 days         Mon 06/01/14     Fri 24/01/14
System Architecture                                    5 days          Mon 06/01/14     Fri 10/01/14
FPGA Implementation and Testing                  131 days       Tue 16/08/13      Fri 14/02/14
ASIC Development                                      85 days         Mon 20/01/14     Fri 16/05/14
Viper Miner Board Design                              95 days         Mon 13/01/14     Fri 23/05/14
Viper Miner Firmware Development & Testing   118 days        Wed 01/01/14     Fri 13/06/14
Mechanical, Thermal & Misc                          69 days         Mon 13/01/14     Thu 17/04/14
System Assembly & Testing                          2 days           Mon 16/06/14     Tue 17/06/14
System Integration & Testing                       20 days          Wed 18/06/14     Tue 15/07/14
User Manual                                              12 days          Fri 18/04/14        Mon 05/05/14

Doesnt this just fill you with confidence?

The pool is dead, there have been no payouts for a long time.