I ordered 2 of the big bit rigs in the first round. (I got lucky, and I'm pretty sure I inadvertently exploited a flaw in their shopping cart to cut in line, but that's another story) They were shipped within the projected time frame, and arrived a few (agonizing) days later (I think it was just under a week). I took half a day off work to be sure and be at home when they landed, and the boxes were opened, and there was great joy. I got them set up and running on my dining room table, and they worked (at least for Scrypt only) out of the box. Granted, the wiibox controllers and their interface are really rather awful, but that's being taken care of by the simple expedient of replacing them with Raspberry Pi's running an open source OS of Hashra's own devising (or firmware, or whatever you want to call it; hell, you can call it a cupcake for all I care) Anyway, I've been emailing back and forth with a fellow there named Simon, (well, I assume he's a fellow, but what can one really know from a first name in an email. He could be a girl, or a damned koala bear or a magical 1964 Chevy carburetor with email powers for all I know or care) and he's(?) been very forthcoming about what's going on on their end of things, and what they're doing about the various inevitable issues with the first few rounds of an endeavor such as theirs. It took me a while to all the gridseed units running dualley style, but I did eventually get them all pointed the same directions. The bottom line is this. I ordered them, they were shipped and arrived, and they work. There are some inconveniences, sure, (Chinese? I've got to learn goddamned Chinese to make these things go?!?!!!) but that's to be expected in the first release of anything; if you want something more polished, then you should wait a version or two for the kinks to get worked out.

Hashra maybe bit off a bit more than they could chew at first, but now they've got more staff, and they're working their collective asses off to address the issues that have come up. As for why they're not posting here, well, at a guess I would say it's because they're too busy working on the issues to post about how they're working on the issues. Were I in their shoes, and found myself presented with a choice between addressing the issues, and posting about how I was working on the issues so people felt all nice and comforted, I'd spend my time making it work right, and let people gripe their little hearts out. It's the age-old conflict between customer service and tech support. With only so much in terms of available resources in terms of brains and bodies, what percentage do you want to be working on the problem, and what percentage do you want talking to the people who are yelling about the problem? Personally, I'd be cranky if they were spending time on the customer service side, because that would mean they were spending less time actually making it work.

I've got much love for Hashra at the moment, and I've even gone so far as to take out a loan against my house to help pay for 4 more of their BigBit doohickeys. Yep, I'm either an damned idiot or a damned genius, but the only way to know which is to wait and see how this works out.


Anyway, the folks at Hashra are not running a scam. They maybe bit off more than they could chew at first, but their stuff works, and they're addressing the issues as well as can be expected. That's the bottom, bottom line, I guess.


PS- If anyone's interested, I'll put together another post with the juicy details of the mini data center I've built in my house for these things, and what I've done to handle their power requirements and the heat (wow, the heat) without making my central AC bawl like a little bitch with a skinned knee.