Any idea what happened to the top board? Roasted VRMs?

I'd offer 0.75BTC for the pair if there's no further information or pictures of the innards as a reference for the damage.

Someone mentioned the SP20E had some slight case improvements made to keep boards from popping out and tearing stuff up during shipping. I don't know what electronics were changed between the two models, but as someone that's had to fix damaged internals on these, that change is certainly welcome.

Additionally, for what it's worth, I've known and done some business with sunbreak (through internet means) for over a year and he's a straight shooter knows what he's doing.

Yeah, we're still ironing out the details on a driver (novak is busy with some other pretty sexy engineering these days and some cgminer code is labyrinthine) but it enumerates in stock cgminer 4.9 as a U3. Volt setting is irrelevant since that's hardware-implemented, but the frequency setting works and it works with a single chip without issue. Multiple chips we're still working out, and the miner init pulls extra power that wouldn't be a problem with a proper driver, but in general, it works. I've used stock 4.9 for all the single-chip testing so far.

Do you want a jerryrigged one to play with? If I have time tomorrow I might put a few more together, since I already have some mostly assembled that would need to be modified. The end result circuitry would be pretty much identical so efficiency and such would be unchanged.

I'd be okay with flat pricing no matter how many were purchased. That way you're neither specifically favoring nor specifically disfavoring anyone.

I also don't like the idea of pool-locked or 75/25 hardware, since as has been mentioned, it's dispersing a single-control farm rather than decentralizing the control of mining in general.

So, I think I found the problems with the Compac as designed. The ground noise issue was pretty well solved by tying the SGND and PGND together at the ASIC, which neutralized the potentials between local grounds for the VCore and 0.9/1.8V logic power. I also noticed some issues with the regulator occasionally dropping out during startup of the device, because chip init can draw a heft burst current (as noted in previous tests). The output capacitance on the buck was being overwhelmed and tripping out the regulator. I solved that by adding output capacitance in the form of a 470uF tantalum scavenged from a dead Habanero. Which, if anyone's ever stolen parts from a dead Habanero you know that whole PCB is one giant friggin' heatsink. Seriously those things are stout. But with the added output capacitance I was able to start the stick at 650mV all the way up to 250MHz (13.75GH) without issue.

I think the reduced output ripple also caused the ASIC to run more stable, because power consumption was down a bit overall.

Right now the stick is hashing away at 610mV 150MHz (8.25GH) drawing right around 520mA off my test hub. That's 0.32W/GH, not too shabby.

The burst output issue will probably be resolved when we have working dedicated drivers. The S5 code ramps the chips up pretty slowly and I don't see that burst on init like we see with the U3 driver. Hopefully we have working code by the time an Amita is released for testing, since there's no way to test it without working code now is there?

Anyway, so now I have about a dozen PCBs that can be modified to work as a single-chip stick miner. I'm thinking of sending some to my first-wave testers even though it won't be the final product (and probably a homemade heatsink approximating the final) so they can at least start playing with it. I'll be working over the PCB design, checking over the 18-board design, and probably sending off both to fab tomorrow. Once the PCBs for the Compac return and test functional, I can send off for Amita PCBs also since it's an extension of the same design. Boy I sure wish I'd had these errors fixed a couple weeks ago.

The final design will have a different UART level shifter setup, a slightly changed regulator layout (to accomodate the changes in input and output capacitance) and probably a different potentiometer because I don't really trust the one I got right now. If you're playing rough with it and the wiper gets disconnected from the contact surface you'll sorta feed the ASIC with 2V instead of the <0.8V you were going for. I tend to adjust the pot with the Compac unplugged and using a multimeter to set it (which requires the formula for voltage based on pot resistance). I'll probably change the design up a bit to make that fault safer, but probably also spec a new pot anyway.

Call me old school, but I really like owning things. Means I can break them and then fix them without anyone else getting involved. Or improving them. Or loaning them out to friends. Leasing stuff forever makes it easy to be transient, but it also makes the guys that own the stuff you're leasing that much richer.

Not every company building mining devices into every single thing ever is going to allow you to choose your own pool. Not saying BitFury's lightbulbs will be that locked down, but I expect it to happen to a lot of other things.

I don't always assume only bad things happen. I always assume the rich and powerful base all decisions on being more rich and/or powerful by taking advantage of the customer base (sometimes deceptively).

Decentralization is securing the network from a single entity controlling the majority of the hashrate. It's considered cost-prohibitive for any one company to build that much hardware, so overly popular pools are a more likely threat.

But if one company is able to put a few hundred GH in every household (paid for by said households) and controls the pool being mined at...

Thanks, guys. So my "days off" turned into a 23-hour excursion with about 9 hours on the road, two hours walking around a stupid city, three hours at a concert, seven hours sleeping and two hours (instead of two days) visiting friends I hadn't seen much in a few years. Not a complete disaster, but certainly a fraction of the intended entertainment.

Maybe that's an indicator that I'm supposed to be at work doing awesome stuff instead of farting around the state.

I was handed a bunch of these busted and I fixed most of 'em but they're just sitting on the shelf. They're decent little units, and you're right it's an excellent size/volume/power-draw for hobby desk miners.

The project Novak's working on involves signal injection into a power feed sorta like powerline networking, so we might get around to playing with messing with mains one of these days. I was just thinking the other day that one of Philipma's favorite ideas, the oil-radiator spaceheater miner, would be a good thing to have mains networked. Stick a receiver "hub" plugged into the wall at your switch and send signal to two or three heaters around the house without needing any wifi infrastructure (or range limitations). Using a central "controller" with mains signalling to controllerless lightbulb miners might work if the chips are designed to use a basic protocol like UART; cook up a simple transceiver chip that basically converts addressed packets and sends them directly to the chips' data bus. Your receiver hub could enumerate each lightbulb miner as a separate device, like sticks in a USB hub, and pipe it all off a single cgminer instance if you wanted. Most of what you need to run data over mains is a carrier wave modulated with your signal data and a really really good highpass filter to block your 50/60Hz from the transceiver. Not really all that cumbersome.

Not saying it's a particularly efficient idea, but if lightbulb miners are going to happen I'd rather see something like that than I would a separate controller, cgminer instance and wifi transceiver in every single bulb. It makes a whole lot more sense for machines whose existence is to produce heat. Lightbulbs are a stupid idea because all the developments in lighting from the last several decades are designed around making them produce less waste heat, so taking a 60W-equivalent efficient light and making it a 60W light again (with several times the initial cost) seems pretty backward.

Oh yeah, we also like SP10s.

If he'd rather sell it to you and do whatever with the proceeds, that's on him.
If I couldn't get it working pretty readily I'd strip it for parts, might use chips for prototyping or something or have a second working controller for Novak to play with and have the chassis to stick boards on when/if we have some later.

You're gonna want to put this in the buy/sell forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0)

Additionally, going rate on an S3 is closer to $80.

Assuming the bulbs are placed below a large fan. This is not always the case, and running a ceiling fan specifically to cool your light bulb miners adds how much power dissipation to the total?

How much heatsinking and/or airflow is required to keep a 50W device cooled below about 80C? Incandescent light bulbs don't really have that temperature requirement, so can run 100W or more with only ambient air. But what's the added material cost to dissipate 50W passively inside a glass shroud (common on ceiling-fan lighting installations) while maintaining less than 80C internal (chip) temperature?

Are these bulbs gonna run wifi, or have some in-built mains-wiring network interface? What's the added cost (and size) of building wifi or mains-network transceivers for each device? What's the added infrastructure cost of a wifi or mains-network access point for your local network? How are you going to configure all of the individual devices? Will they need another separate central machine to coordinate pool settings and such, or will each one have its own config page to keep track of?

Will it be possible to continue mining even when the light is turned off? By what means do you enable and disable the light without cutting power to the entire bulb? What additional infrastructure (or changes to existing infrastructure) is required to support this?

Considering all that, how is it a better idea (cost-effective, power-efficient, reliable, easier to install, maintain and operate) to build a network interface and additional heatsinking into a dozen independent devices requiring you to run multiple ceiling fans (if that's possible with bulb covers) to cool them, and then rewiring your house or adding additional devices to be able to mine during the 18 hours a day the lights are turned off, than it is to build a compact device with a couple 10W fans and a single ethernet connection that you can tuck in the laundry room and forget about most of the time?

Does anyone in favor of microtransaction services like what's surrounding the 21e6 embedded miner plans discussion also specifically disfavor increased block sizes? If stuff like that is supposed to be "the future", the protocol needs to adjust in order to not be thoroughly overwhelmed by the millions of fee-free dust transactions which would be produced by all those DVRs and refrigerators.

Port forwarding to multiple machines is almost trivial even without access to the miner itself (and zero firmware changes), if your router has even basic config ability. Set one incoming port to one miner's port 80, and another incoming port to the other miner's port 80. In a browser navigate to your IP and the first port, you have the first miner. Your IP and second port, you get the second miner. No firmware changes, no local remote access server required.

Not saying that's a great idea, and you'll definitely want to change the webconfig passwords since it's open to the internet.

Also I know that doesn't help you find the cables you want, but it does negate some of the reasons. Also I have some of those cables that I might not need, thanks to an acquisition of some dead S5s a while back.

Sure. Maybe if I get another whole unit working I can auction it off for dev funds. I've been considering doing that with some New R-Box units we have laying around. Once I get some Compac prototypes working and the first set delivered for testing, I might have four or five more I could auction off as well. That'd be interesting.

I don't like the idea of putting a few chips in every device. It becomes almost the same arguments that everyone has against USB stick miners, with the addition of not being able to actually play with it making the idea less attractive. One main concern I have is that the manufacturer won't tell the customer it's in there, and the customer may not care to spend the extra $2 a month in power even if he knows about it, but that's fairly evil by my standards regardless. Then there's the concern over locked pools. If you can find a more efficient, reliable and still actually fully usable way to make a miner than to actually make a dedicated miner, sure. But if companies can hide things from their customers and thereby increase profits, odds are good that they will. I also don't mind seeing big farms take a hit, but I don't want to see them take a hit because they're being replaced by big dispersed farms with no power costs. But there's plenty of that discussion going on in at least two or three other threads already.