No, not because they are in a aluminum case, which actually could also not melt and would keep in contained. But the materials used to produce the PCB's are fire resistant and can handle very high temperatures before melting. They are unable to burn.

Just to be clear. I am not saying it is ok that they melt. It is a very serious problem and frankly unacceptable. However having the actual unit catch fire and light other things on fire is not possible.

Please note that the materials used to build these miners are fire resistant. The worst they can do is melt, which is what is show in the pictures above.

Power supplies - fixed

In the light of the issues encountered with a limited number of the Power Supply units, we have been pushing really hard the power supply manufacturer, Apluspower, to address all the issues. Apart from reliability issues, the PSU did not comply with EM emissions, although our contract with Apluspower clearly mentioned that the PSU must be CE and FCC certified.
As a consequence, after the PSU issues were fixed, Black Arrow went through certification procedures. Prospero X-3 is now CE certified. Please click here to review the certification.
We are happy to report that according to our knowledge, testing and 3rd party certification, Apluspower have now fixed all the problems discovered and reported and we have resumed shipping. Please note that the power supply is certified together with our Prospero X3 as a whole unit and not independently.
The old design PSUs failure rate is lower than 5% and replacement is only required to comply with EU/US legislation due to EM emissions. We will dispatch new PSUs on our own cost to all customers from EU&US who wish to receive a replacement, but please note that customs duty are the responsibility of the receiver. Customers outside of EU&US will be eligible for a replacement only if their PSU is faulty. We will not be requesting our customers to send the old PSUs back.

X1 manufacturing – in testing

We have stopped manufacturing X1 and we will be shipping all remaining customers X1.5 which contains 2 chips and hashes at 160-180 Ghash in an attempt to clear the compensation sooner.
Certification for Prospero X1.5 is in progress.

X3 manufacturing - fixed

We had issues with the speed of built for the new units therefore we had to make a contract with a new business partner who demonstrated that they can manage delivery of large volume in a short period of time.
Our new partner has just finished the first batch of units which will be dispatched today and tomorrow. Their assembly speed is a clear improvement and at this rate we will be finishing all X3 deliveries in next few weeks.

14nm Bitcoin ASIC

We are still heavily involved in the 14nm ASIC project.
We are happy to report that after bringing on board more talent we have exceeded our initial 0.3W/Ghash target by 4.3 times by employing all techniques possible in ASIC and algorithm design. Our current design efficiency is now 70mW/Ghash (0.07W/Ghash) which allows us to build a 1 Terrahash chip in a single die while using 70 Watts at chip level. This will allow development of a 20Thash machine while using 1.5kw.
We intend to make this chip available for sale only from stock (No pre-orders)

As it is clearly posted on our website I did not think the address was needed, but here you go.

5A03, Building 1, Huangduguangchang, Yitian Road, Futian District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, P. R. China, Postcode: 518048

You are welcome to come visit. Saying so before hand might be a good idea as people are running all over the place most of the time. You can contact me if you like.

I thought you meant the boss that is apparently nowhere to be found. Which I did not understand as he just at the office.

Regarding me, this has already been discussed on ecointalk. http://ecointalk.net/topic/392-black-arrow-weekly-production-update/?p=19680

how do you mean?

What is the ticket number?

We warned everybody as soon as we heard about the problems and stopped shipping immediately. We told everybody to shut down the units they have, if they chose not to do this is their own risk.

Please feel free to also post screenshots of your latest order with us.

We also are not letting this go easily, I'm making sure of that. I would like to know why you think our support portal has been compromised and that people have access to banking details. If you have any proof of this I would greatly like to have it so I can add it to the investigation.

Please don't spread theories without having information to back it up. As said before we are very actively investigating this.

Interesting. Guess you haven't really been reading the forum.

First you are offering a "A1 CoinCraft 1030Gh/s" miner.

After that you are offering a Cointerra X1 running 120GH/s and a Cointerra X2 miner running 240GH/s.

After that you say that "Those BackPanel are the back panels of the CoinTerra X3 1.2T Miner"

But, Cointerra does not make an X3 miner, nor do they have a miner which runs at 1.2TH/s.

Also those Cointerra X1 and X2 miners are interesting because Cointerra only makes a 500 GH/s chips.

Then the pictures you show are pictures of Black Arrow X1 hashboards and a single X3 hashboard (X2), with Black Arrow chips and Black Arrow heatsinks.

After that "If anyone doubts us you can ask around, Martino (TechnoBit) we sold him IC's A2 and A1, you can ask FryCat as well, or BlackArrow"

Now I may not be up to date with everything but I personally haven't heard of you before.

06 July 2014


Shipping has started!

Minion

We have tested the Minion powered at 0.6V and the efficiency is 0.5W/ghash at the wall while hashing at 50Ghash. This translates into $1.1/Ghash at this outstanding efficiency.

Prospero X-1
1.Shipping: This week we have manufactured and have been shipping Prospero X-1 miners (Control Board – Original Design). We will clear all X1 orders by the end of July. Customers will be receiving their shipping information as soon as their order will be processed.
2.LCD has been tested successfully with the touch panel using our hardware. Following this we are putting it to mass production on Monday and it will be attached to miners as soon as it arrives.
3.WiFi – For the reasons explained in our previous update, WiFi antennas will be delivered together with the units containing LCD.
4.Units will be dispatched without LCD and WiFi until the LCDs will be delivered to us.
5.User Manual can be downloaded from http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/prospero-support.html.
6.Photos from our assembly line are available at http://ecointalk.net/gallery/album/42-06-july-update/

Prospero X-2

1.Following market trends, we decided to manufacture a new product which can achieve a lower price per GHash. LCD, WiFi and build in PSU will be not included in the X-2. The idea behind X-2 is to use 1 hashing module from Prospero X3 and power it up with an ATX PSU. Several modules can be powered by one single ATX supply.
2.The hashing power will be around 240 GHash/s.
3.We are now in testing phase of the prototype and we will have a case designed and ready under a week time.
4.We will put this product to sale from stock only.

Prospero X-3

1.We have completed the assembly of first prototype using the new Backplane of Prospero X-3. Testing results have been successful. Following this we progressed to next stage and we have placed the order for mass production.
You can find a short video with our testing at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfwnKZTeAG8
2.We have already manufactured 10% of the X-3 backplanes which are now in SMT line for assembly. We expect to deliver them by 12th of July
3.Deliveries of all X-3 current orders will be completed by the end of the month.
4.LCD will be attached to the miners as soon as they are delivered. All units will be dispatched without LCD. until LCD parts will be delivered to us
5.To prevent interference in the datacenter this product does not have WiFi module/capabilities.

Rent-A-Minion

The service will start according to the place in the queue as soon as the hardware is ready.

Compensation

Currently we are unable to raise the compensation more than announced previously. The final decision will be made after we complete all deliveries in order to calculate the yield and our final costs.
However, we have done all preliminary calculations possible right now and due to our design focused on quality including:
-8 layer PCBs
-heatpipe heatsinks
-aluminium case
-included power supply
-long life 4 wire 5000 RPM fans
-genuine parts (capacitors, resistors, mosfets, inductors etc)
-capacitors that cannot explode
Our current design will not be able to directly compete on price with competitors’ design most of which are using one or more of the following:
-4 layers PCBs
-extruded aluminum heatsinks
-steel cases or case-less units
-no power supplies
-1500 rpm 2 wire fan (no speed control, no rpm reading)
As currently there are lower cost designs for our ASICs, at this point we would like to offer our loyal customers the possibility to exchange their order to Minion ASICs. We are now offering to exchange your order to ASIC at a discounted price of lower than $0.5/Ghash as follows:
-Each X3 preorder can be exchanged for 100 ASICS
-Each X1 preorder can be exchanged for 6 ASICs
-Each $55 paid for Rent-A-Minion service can be exchanged for 1 ASIC

Note that customers who choose to exchange their orders for ASICs forfeit the compensation announced previously.
Dispatch for the Minions is available immediately

Yes, also to the resellers.

First off I would like to apologize for the loss of communication and information. The past few days have been very busy for everybody, and contact was a bit difficult at some times.

At the moment we are in full production. The X-3 backplanes we tested are working and we are producing them now. We are also busy shipping the X-1's. We have a few X-3 backplanes that are made by hand undergoing tests and software tuning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfwnKZTeAG8

The noise in the video is not from the miner but background noise. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Here are also some more pictures: http://ecointalk.net/gallery/album/41-05-07-2104/

27 June 2014

Shipping: the shipping of the X-1 (Control Board) test batch has been completed. The production of X-1 (Batch1 and Batch2) is close to completion and shipping will resume within days. Please note that the X-1 (RPi) units have been discontinued and are no longer available on order.
The delivery for the boards for all X-1 currently on order will be completed by the SMT factory tonight. Product assembly for mass production is already booked.
Following a thorough reviewing, the X-3 backplane has been put in production. The first batch will be delivered this weekend. We have several designs to our disposal and we have to decide which one was the best choice. We will be able to inform our customers on the X-3 shipping schedule within a few days.
LCD - The software team are modifying the driver to work with our MCU. The LCD feature will be added to the miners within 10 days after the driver will be released. We kindly remind our customers that the LCD has been added on their request. Our initial design did not have this option which was added at the beginning of this year. However, once available, the LCD will be installed on all units regardless of the time of the order being placed.
X2 – First batch of Prospero X2 will be assembled and tested next week. More detailed updates on X2 will be provided with our next weekly progress update.
Wi-Fi – External antennas have been tested and Wi-Fi is working. Please note its functionality is linked to LCD/touchscreen functionality. Units with Wi-Fi will be delivered as soon as we have LCD available in our products.
Rent-A-Minion: the first site to host this service has been completed. The delivery for the mining equipment will be done in parallel with the shipping for Batch1 & Batch2. Customers will be notified when their quota will be available according to the shipping queue.
Compensation Package: this has proved to be a hot topic over the past few weeks. The internal assessment on a potential compensation package is under way and the final decision will be made public when the shipping of Batch1 and Batch2 will be completed.
Customer Service: it was reported to us that some of our customers who are not active on forums would be happy to receive the important notifications by email. We will also send newsletters to our customers when we post the progress update on our website. However only the subscribers to our Newsletters will receive email notifications.
Communications:  please note that we will suspend the weekly progress update as soon as the shipping for X-1 and X-3 Batch1 and Batch2 will be completed. All queries should be addressed to the Customer Service Team.
The surprise: there were various speculations regarding the nature of the surprise. We are not keen on sustaining the suspense any longer however we believe that the moment of disclosing the secret has to be well prepared so it can benefit our customers. Without disclosing any details, we can only ask for our customers to bear with us. We are hoping that the waiting will be worth it.

It was already said back in November and is public knowledge. Nothing new.
https://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/35/0/what-are-black-arrow-plans-for-the-future-are-you-developing-new-devices