By any measure I'm no FPGA expert.  But from what I've learned it really depends on the board. Icarus seems to have possibilities beyond btc mining. But the issue really becomes one of expertise in FPGA design too.  BFL is a one-trick pony (apparently not reprogrammable except by BFL)
Same for X6500 (can be reprogrammed), not sure about ztex (can be reprogrammed).

 "easily" might be relative to your skills.

The goal is to recoup your expenditure by mining. Then once the board's paid for itself and turned a profit who cares if it's useful.
Well some of us do care and if you can use the board as a dev board you can learn something too. 

Destroying a $40 part is about as high as I'd want to go. And if I destroyed the first one I may not try another.

But the power company can also shut off your clothes washer remotely, in the middle of a wash, during "peak" times. Is this why it's so cheap?
i.e. they spread the power consumption out evenly over 24-hr period.

Were you able to mine btc with the $40 part? Since I've never done anything like this I would rather try with the cheapest parts first.
If I could mine with the cheap parts (i.e. didn't destroy everything in process) then I might do a couple of the cheap ones before graduating my self to the $175 parts.

Are you also mining with the xl150 ($175 part)?

The value of your improvements, if they are for real, might be diminished as time goes by. It seems if this is legit you should have a kickstartr going real soon.
Also may be that a project has been announced, due in May (see icarus thread) that will be as fast/efficient/inexpensive as your target.

So you toil away, achieve your goal, then find out you were beaten to market. Ouch.

How about using thermogenerators to power wireless and cooling fan or a peltier? Once programmed via USB then they only need to connect to a power source.
See micropelt.

Start a project on kickstartr? Buy-in is $479 then if you get 30 you order, then you have to ship them to each funder and funder pays shipping.

Updated

Do you know of any gray market chip dealers? Govt. surplus?

Not a precise guesstimate "really takes off",  but I don't think mining will ever come close to the kind of market that some FPGAs are designed for,
like consumer markets or large markets like network switches, etc. I agree, don't think prices will change due to BTC mining.

The icarus is an open design. I recall seeing a BOM, not sure about the design files.

Real nice teardown here. Gotta like teardowns.

www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/recent-teardowns/2012/02/inside-the-asus-amd-7970-graphics-card-tsmc-28-nm/

Interesting idea, what does secure mean though? Would each share holder have access to the "secure server room"?
Who is the keeper of the keys? You know why this is important.

I got my hands on an FPGA just couple weeks ago. No experience before then. Mostly intellectual curiosity, which brought me to BTC too.
Anyway the description that made the most sense to me was to think of an FPGA as a processor with no instruction set, you design that and program the FPGA with your design. Where as a CPU, for example AMD Athlon, comes with an instruction set that's immutable/unchangeable.

Here's what I have gleaned regarding resale value of FPGAs, if the device has been programmed with an encrypted bitstream then only the original programmer can alter the design and so the FPGA has that limitation. BFL falls into this category from what I've read but not the other FPGA miners.

As for uses, they are limited by the device capabilities, as was said, and are practically infinite.

They have to do with eldentyrell (as his post said). There is no price mentioned only that eldentyrell has put many hours into the work and wants money for the time spent. But no one knows how much $$ will be needed for eldentyrell to release the code, if it's ever released. It seems that the alternative is to
have people send boards so the encrypted bitstream can be loaded. Not a very popular idea I'd say.

I would expect that all the currentt board makers based on the xilinx xl150 would really like to get 300MH/s per chip.

Did you get a refund? A horse has to win a race or two before I'd put any money on it.

From the site:

"Power Consumption

The PCI Express specification limits slot power to 25 watts. The DNBFC_S12_PCIe is capable of consuming power significantly beyond that. In addition to the PCIe fingers, a separate HDD connector adds a second path for power. This product is shipped with adequate heatsinking to consume 75 watts, but airflow is required in the chassis to dissipate the heat. Contact the factory if you require high reliability, no-fan heatsinks."

That thing would need lots more cooling.

As the topic of this thread is about contracting out the design, I was asking what that would cost for an FPGA from a real company.
i.e. don't take it all the way to an ASIC

I am collecting a list of vendors and will see.

Ok so an ASIC seems to be out of the question as of now. But what about just an FPGA design?

I'm new to BTC and FPGA. I see lots of discussion and lots of good-intended vaporware. I see the real thing too in ztex,icarus,x6500,bfl. (I miss any?)

But has anyone actually talked with a company that is in the business of creating FPGA designs and products?
I know there are some companies that take FPGA designs and automate the FPGA design to an ASIC product.

I may look into it just for the experience and see what happens. I'm sure some of you here already know where this will take me so chime in.

I envision getting some quotes, settling on one and then crowd funding for that.
Part of the request for the quote will require that the entire design be free (as-in freedom). Will that change the price?

Has it been tried already?

[UPDATES]
Wed Mar 21, 2012 I have sent out three requests in the past week or so. No replies yet.