|
Fair enough. I'm just pretty sour on the whole mining scene right now.
|
|
|
|
Well at least this has taught me a lesson. Never spend bitcoin while drunk. on mining hardware.
FTFY. :-p |
|
|
|
I'm wondering where the boiled liquid is going, you said the tank is not a pressure vessel, so is it just lost?
I think OP just meant the liquid *looked* like it was boiling. I'm betting it looked like it was boiling because the pumps are continually circulating the liquid around the blades. |
|
|
|
|
I'm hoping they delay past the December 31st refund date. At this point I just want out.
|
|
|
|
|
Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I figure an update is in order:
Bitcoin Bounties got shut down in order to allow me to work with a startup building a larger product whose functionality was going to be greater that Bitcoin Bounties'. Said startup failed, and I haven't yet revived Bitcoin Bounties. I may do so if there is enough interest, though.
|
|
|
|
|
Okay, I've only had one person join so far. I'm giving this another 24 hours. If we don't have a full group buy by then, I think I'm just going to call this off.
|
|
|
|
Colin with hard figures: The unit that works perfectly runs at ~71wu, the others are 50, 35, 30 and 20. Those are relative and approximate since they change a little as it runs. 71wu/s is the full 5.5gh/s. |
|
|
|
|
As far as profitability goes, these chips are *not* the best deal out there, IMO. But some people had expressed interest, so I figured I'd give it a chance. And I don't doubt that Avalon will ship within their projected timeframe this time.
|
|
|
|
|
Understood. I would be packaging and sending the chips out as soon as I got them. One day turnaround, maximum. I'm working freelance gigs right now, so my time's flexible enough to do that. The rest just depends on when Avalon ships. Should be soon, since they are no longer selling items they don't already have in hand.
|
|
|
|
Official terms posted in the OP! Please let me know if you have any questions. so all in, about $20 a GH yes?
$120 in chips
$218 for the board?
My calculations work out to around $14 per Gh/s. Each chip supplies 1.5 Gh/s, and each board will have 16 chips. That's 24 Gh/s. Since each complete miner is roughly (due to the BTC component, which fluctuates) $339.85, that makes for about $14.16 per Gh/s. |
|
|
|
|
Okay, I've been mulling this over for a few days now, and I'm making a decision. I'm opening the group buy. For those of you who trust me and don't need a comprehensive group buy agreement to jump on board, send your payments to 1LZPtQvZejprmQUovDc7CGENm2cKCftyRX and PM me with the number of chips you ordered as well as the transaction ID for the payment. Minimum 10 chips per order, please. Chips are 28 mBTC apiece.
If we can get at least 20 2nd generation K16s ordered, we'll go ahead with that as well. Cost of components and assembly for each K16 at a total of 20 miners is $218 apiece. The price will go down if we can get more orders, since about half of that price will go to pay for JohnK to design the new PCB and to cover the cost of new components. If you're already a Stumptown Miners customer and you haven't requested a refund, your cost will be $110 per miner. Again, that price will go down with the number of orders we can get above 20, since the cost of redesigning the PCB for the new chips is fixed. Please use the Coinbase "buy" rate to figure what that comes out to in BTC.
As for buyer protection, JohnK still has my identity information, and will likely be willing to do another identity escrow like he did for the first Stumptown Miners batch. I've PMed him and will let you know when he gets back to me.
|
|
|
|
Oof. Not so fast. I just got this email from Colin: Unfortunately I've got some troubling news. After assembling a number of miners I'm getting odd test results. All of the miners hash to some degree, but at very differing rates with most reporting hardware errors now and then. I've been working for days now trying to figure out whats going on. My guess is some of the ASIC's are not contributing or are not hashing properly.
I'm not really sure what to do next. Right now, I have 5 fully built with another 10 assembled but not re-flowed. I stopped assembly and reflow when I started to get odd results testing.
Of the 5, 1 works perfectly (my first unit), another almost as good, and the others less then ideal.
Needless to say I don't want to keep going until I can figure out the problem, but I'm not sure its worth it at this point ? I'm burning a ton of time on this project, and while interesting there was never a budget for it.
To make matters worse, I've got to head out of town Wednesday morning, so I'm running out of time. I'll be back in two weeks, but trying to ship these in a timely manner is looking unlikely. It's bad timing but I never expected to still be working on these.
At this point, there's a couple of options:
1. Pull the plug. I can send the few working units and all the parts. I'd be willing to refund 75% of the assembly cost.
2. Keep at it. I can't do much before leaving, but can attempt to debug the units when I return. I'll send the two units that seem to work the best asap.
Right now, most of the parts/asics have not been reflowed, meaning I can take them off the assembled PCB's, clean them and try again or just send them back.
To figure out whats not working I'll need to setup a test environment and probe the boards until I find a dud ASIC and then try to make it work. ktest may help with that. Unfortunately the firmware as is contains no diagnostic code or report of ASICs not responding.
The biggest issue is time. Time spent and time to get them delivered.
Not the news I wanted to give you. Let me know your thoughts asap and we can figure out what to do next.
Since these are your miners, I thought I should get some feedback on how you want me to proceed now. I don't know how many hardware errors there are, nor do I know how much of a performance hit the miners are taking. I emailed Colin asking for some hard numbers to help with the decision-making. Thoughts on this? |
|
|
|
|
I'm personally very wary of getting into this, as much as I want to get back what we put into components. With that said, Colin has offered to design a PCB for around $2k. This will bring up the price of the 2nd gen miners a bit, but since it's a fixed cost I'll try to spread it out over however many orders we get (if there is interest) in order to minimize the impact.
At any rate, given that there are zero bids on the Tradehill website, I'm inclined to think that we'll see the chips again soon at a lower price point. Unless enough people disagree with me to drive this thing forward, I think we should wait this first auction out.
Thoughts?
|
|
|
|
|
Quick update:
The firmware on the miners does not yet allow for chaining K16s together using "klego" adapters, nor does it allow for updates via USB. If you take receipt of your miners now and you want to be able to chain your miners together sometime in the future, you will eventually need to flash them with a PIC ICD3 or PicKit programmer. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, I will gladly host your miners for the cost of electricity until the firmware is updated and I can flash them myself.
Colin has begun cranking out miners, so you will be receiving yours shortly unless you decide you want me to hold on to them for the time being. Please PM me if that's the case.
Thanks,
Ryan
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks for the heads-up, TomKeddie and southerngentuk. As time is at a premium for me just now, I'm going to hold off on drafting a formal group buy agreement until I get some insight into the viability of creating new PCBs for the generation 2 chips. It doesn't sound like it'd take much alteration, but I could be wrong.
|
|
|
|
Alright, it looks like the Avalon generation 2 chips auction will be starting soon. I got the same email TomKeddie did. With these on the K16s, it looks like each one should produce 24 Gh/s now. However, even with the increased performance, ROI isn't looking too good. (I'm using the calculator over at http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/.) With that said, I'm still willing to facilitate this group buy if there's interest. It does look like there is, so I've already transferred some of my own BTC over to Tradehill in preparation for the auction. Unless I hear a bunch of "nays" in the face of the released numbers, I'll be writing up a group buy agreement and posting it here in the morning. I'll also send out a PM to JohnK asking for his escrow services. |
|
|
|
 Woke up this morning to these two emails from Colin: They found the firmware bug!! So far two people report 0 (Z.E.R.O.) HW errors and over 5gh/s.
It's really late, so I'll confirm mine in the morning.
I've got a few work items to deal with tomorrow am, but after that (and I confirm myself) I'll start running boards. Also need to order the replacement parts.
It was a dumb bug. Just a matter of time before it was found.
Ok.. Couldn't wait  I can confirm no errors on my unit. We're golden. It's hashing right now. So those of you still in, it looks like we're good to go! |
|
|
|
On the spreadsheet it states I'm entitled to refunds for 480 chips, but I *did* end up selling 14 chips to redphlegm. So that should read 466 chips instead. |
|
|
|
To aid you in the transaction, I have created the transaction... ... Here's the code version with the unnecessary comma removed: sendmany "" '{"1xbbjJcbeD4Qi88QmJmMgTFSdm7b5WCG4":5.013261,"1L5VE93qbbepo5CJtyeQaVF6sM8PnqrmPL":3.1284,"1QG2H6u9KvjyrgSpEB8sAQH2qzjUPDGmYp":5.013261,"19xZgcRduMiZENg8etHgW3R8KzakHGHvj":1.0026522,"1FKJzNP3bc81Ch2tchffKDs2J7Qj7cjmUN":5.013261,"17S1mgHyWHdpXSSDUtK9jY4Gpwi4sCeSAv":4.6926,"1NhSSrRW5Kqzki6TC2HVvHviEtQdxEBTeB":2.9008089,"17oDXLNifckeMjKk5CioRPHKu4txWAXPMG":1.0026522,"1Dq9q8MBbXFVSSHBtoysxnMwRzeG6rGtTo":6.64785,"1Ky1TKDV2cvHiNxE45sY4CfKyzkst8P4me":1.0026522,"174zoHrPuXNWVsRaNQYxYesihHYoKEKnsc":20.334600000000002,"1NpJWh55tae9Zd7VKRiWknVn8orDBDRi9V":50.1349563,"12hv7UcFgrBWLjWs5McPYP63Yza6ufT6Sw":23.463,"1GrEWEN9hMUAcKkCEtTKD6f2dQn68XKznt":2.0678724,"12KHW3i2Hamk1irY8b181N4vMXUnVYL1ah":4.0106088,"1HwrMG83oVJKABuLHouUvArCGsBuHqafTt":1.5305697,"1PVPGVQGfT8xiUYTNFkBxH7yRBQdUtNrvX":2.03346,"1Ki3sFg6bCasB6tkuMW41DCCpGFDgDHVgL":3.0079566,"17RXcRMUiXqsQkCqqYKXJkP1B4Lqm47hFB":1.0222047,"1CCa1scp5vLrbaha4MZ4sUFn3uboAjpRGX":20.053826100000002,"1F6WM3rjDzVDWRTMz5Q3pwU2T6dZ6Nrb9C":1.01673,"1Q1img1shsDS2sjy3781hpkSAW6eG1rUBm":39.105000000000004,"16SSPCBRxzaiXjA6XoCpq8tBvJdhoSSPmA":3.1635945}' 1 "RaginAzn's Avalon Group buy 1 Refund"Thanks for putting that together, redphlegm. |
|
|
|
Tolan, I'll send an email to Colin asking about the six chips. I'm sorry you haven't received them yet.
Any word? I have yet to receive anything in the mail nor a reply via pm since Colin's latest update via email that you posted here. Curious what's happened since. Hey Tolan, Sorry about that. I'd told Colin to hold on sending those chips and to reply with a status update since you'd mentioned your decision hinged on whether the K16 design was ready to go or not, IIRC. I've just emailed him telling him to go on and send the chips. Also, here's a status update from Colin a few days ago: ...
Now for the parts, I'm thinking we may do better just building more K16s for other people with chips or re-purposing the parts on a Gen2 design. Not sure. Just that kitting them out in 'refunds' isn't really doable. If I do get a Gen2 design going I may buy them myself, but that's really speculative at this point.
As for the K16, I'm not sure at this point. They are hashing, but with ~25% HW that just doesn't seem to be getting fixed. It looks like there is a problem with the PIC and USB and CGMINER, but I really can't tell if its fixable on the current PCB. It is taking way longer then I figured it would which is a bad sign... The PIC seems to be underpowered for the task at hand.
...
And another from him 23 hours ago: ...
I'm really sure the problem with the current K16 is firmware. The group seems to be having a hard time as well with CGminer itself. It all revolves around the USB being the trouble spot. My hunch is the little PIC can't handle feeding the ASIC's and dealing with USB traffic at the same time. Should be able to fix it, but who knows how experience the guys working on it are. It isn't trivial code that's for sure. USB is a dragon.
I've already written a simple stand alone stratum client. I'll try to write K16 firmware from scratch that doesn't use USB or CGminer. This may at least help the others find the issue. Right now it seems a struggle to debug with CGminer/USB being so complex. I want a really simple test setup. This will lead right into doing my own Gen2 board as well.
I'll be back home later this week and should be able to get my test client running with the K16. If that works, and I suspect it will, we'll be able to figure out some kind of solution.
...
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
