I don't read that into the link you provided.

I got that email about 10:30 CDT today.  No phone call yet. I take this as evidence they are working to distribute our money to us, and I am, with some effort, refraining from calling and distracting them.

Did you ever get a working tracking number?

10:15 CDT 
moved to slush's pool.  this is a temporary move to see how it behaves.

I have.  I assume it is some combination of firewall and routing.  I am going to see if the firmware will load onto a retail TP-LINK 703n, and if so, I will explore a little.

The web page does not show hours for Friday, only M-Thur & Sat.

I wonder if anyone else got a phone call today?  It is about 5:42 PM on the East Coast.

I always live in college towns.  They are dynamic and hopeful, though with chaos and angst around the corners.  But you would expect that attitude from me, I suppose.  I even get respected as an elder.

But yes, anarchy is not a valid social plan.  Civilization is very nice.  I like it when cars don't menace me when I am walking across an intersection.  I like it that I can move across the country and still speak the same language.  I will keep good records and pay proper taxes on my bitcoin earnings.  I will administer my wallet so that many of my transactions have a good audit trail.

None of that is anti-bitcoin, and none of that is anti-individualism.

No, I don't.  However, I am a fixin' to buy myself one when Avalon opens the order books.  I trust that they will provide the necessary instructions and interface.  I would require the same of a third party vendor as well.

I once lived in FQ/NOLA just off Bourbon street.  Every day, many thousands of people go there wanting to be lawless.  They are surprised when they are surrounded by people who are acting lawless.

Do you want a refund and don't envision a mechanism to get it?

I am happy with the result.
The people who stayed in were confident when they made their payment.
Early people who lost confidence or otherwise were outbid have their money back.

So, while the rules don't work with your particular style, I myself don't characterize the auction as ridiculous.

I do, however, go to some effort to be sure that anything I post is factual.  Your post is not factual in the number of posts related to the auction, not factual in implying that I held any non winning funds for 6 weeks, and not factual in the implication that I am buying them back for a simple reason.

You can see the version number on the controller board if you remove the top.  The washers may fall into the unit, and you will need an M4 allen hex wrench.  My unit, delivered this week, is 1.52 and does not need modification.  I believe the controller that does need modification is 1.5

After taking 5 days to travel from Minneapolis to a remote small town in Minnesota, the unit arrived about 12:30 CDT midday on Tuesday.  It took some phone calls and patience to get the ma and pa "last mile" courier to bring the unit to me that soon.

It is a black Avalon with controller version 1.52.  I added an antenna from a spare D-Link DI-524 router, a spare power cable from who knows where, grabbed a laptop and a cable, and occupied the kitchen for an afternoon.  

I did some basic administration work, such as adding a password to the account.  I don't have the routing set up correctly, so the laptop cannot see the rest of the network and I am carrying slips of paper between floors of the house as I set up mining pool accounts and the like.

I let it hash overnight using WiFi.  I did see the dreaded amber many times during the night, but it always recovered.  The second day I flashed the new cklovias firmware image into it, 20130703, and configured the unit to select its own clock speed.  You can see the down time while updating the firmware, and the improvement in the hash rate that followed.

Thus far, I have connected the unit to ozcoin, btc guild, and eligius.  For a while today, I had it connected to all three in balanced mode.  At this writing, two of the three modules, or (2/3) of the hashpower is going to eligius.  It seems that 1/3 is about 27 GH/s, 2/3 is about 55 GH/s, and full output is about 73 GH/s.

Soon, surely within 24 hours, the BTC mined at ozcoin and btc guild will pay out to the payout address.  At that time, say 23:59 GMT Friday, we should have a preliminary lower estimate of the actual income production of the unit.  Eligius pays out directly in the miner's fee block, which means that those funds are pristine when I receive them.  I don't care about that, but some people want coins with no history at all, to increase their anonymous nature.

I am still configuring the unit, and I may let it mine from the basement for a while, in the near future.  The basement is 10-15°F cooler than it's current location, and the unit may hash faster there.  It is dank, and the unit may have a shorter life there.  

I have started the unit with clock speeds of 300 & 360 with the --avalon-auto parameter set.  From the lower clock speed, it seemed to stabilize to a clock speed of 347. From the higher clock speed, it has dropped to 343 but I don't think it has had time to stabilize.  In case any of my students read this and say "- 2 points for not giving units" I assume the clock speed is in MHz, but I don't know right now.


The preliminary hash rate indications, 81,000 GH/s, suggests that I will mine 8.683 BTC a little more frequently than once per week.  It would be simple to interpret a payment of 0.08683 BTC per share that you hold.  I am inclined to do it that way, but as always feel free to leave civilized but disagreeing comments.

Does anyone know the list price for a Batch #3 avalon without power supply but with:

3 modules
4 modules

I have over $3,000 refund due.  I did not give them a check for more. 

Well said.

I try to pay forward and be strong & honorable.  Bitcointalk strengthens and tests my resolve about this.

My Avalon is several firmware revisions behind.  I will flash it soon. 

As a routine matter, I am careful not to press against the threads when I back a screw out of an instrument.  I loosened the screw a half turn, then backed them out by hand.  The nuts did not fall out for me until I tapped one with my finger.  I used a bamboo skewer to hold it in place while I started the screw back in, and turned it by sliding my fingertip sideways so that the slots aligned.

The second time I removed the top, I did knock one loose.  I used two of the skewers like chopsticks and plucked it out of the bottom of the Avalon.

I really like the foam jig idea.  Jigs are great, I always forget to make them.

When re-attaching, I turn every other screw so that it is not loose, then finish all the others.  Then I turn them to where they are just starting to snug.  Then I try to wiggle the  case to anneal the alignment.  Then I tighten it down to snug.  My torque wrench is packed for moving, and I don't know the torque specification anyway, but my step-dad was a mechanic and I worked with lab instruments a long time, so I think I did ok just by "feel."

I think some of the screws were over tightened at the factory.  The lock washers were flattened, and the aluminum plate was severely galled in a few instances.

I am affirming that my Avalon arrived, and that it worked out of the box.  It connected to mining.eligius.st:3334 with account 1AYdAw8CcrQ2wx55LTbFHRn5bxgNZhaRLW while I checked the temperatures at warmup, walked around the house observing the noise level, explored the web interface, read the web pages at eligius, and set up my own account, and occasionally yelled "woo hoo!!" and wiggled in full view of my wife.  I may or may not have gotten distracted by more interesting things than configuring the Avalon.

There is a burst of activity at 1AYdAw8CcrQ2wx55LTbFHRn5bxgNZhaRLW, there is a burst of shipping activity, I am confirming that I account for some of the mining activity.  I think it is plausible that all of this burst is owners at first powerup.

Part of that is me.  My Avalon arrived yesterday and I powered it up as fast as possible, then I took a while to configure it.

To be clear, my Avalon mining at my location under my control used account 1AYdAw8CcrQ2wx55LTbFHRn5bxgNZhaRLW.  It connected to my network and mined correctly with very little difficulty.  

Rather than saying "the world is ending they are cheating oh FUD, oh FUD FUD, oh oh FUD FUD FUD" one could say "how clever, they have publicly demonstrated that the units are operational in user's hands."