hi


Glad the forum is fixed


Apparently the boards work but the incredibly crappy low grade sample chips were mostly dead.

out of two boards 1 of the chips works on one, and 8 chips work on the other.

As far as I know the board design and assembly we did here in USA worked fine, it is just some of those sample chips are very very low quality.


I would expect a statement from Lucko today about how to order from him - for assembly at his facility in Slovenia.

I am waiting for him now on irc to see how things are moving forward.

-jj

Good Morning,

sorry I never came back on IRC last night. You can count on me to be here every day for a period of time but right now there is no possible way I be online all day long. I am in the process of setting up a 6 th/s datacenter  way up in northern NY near the Canadian border. (cheap cooling and electricity!)

So heres what I did because I know people want to see the board hashing and I will be completely honest I don't really understand how to setup this board properly, there is a bit of a language/time zone barrier between form, lucko and myself its possible I didnt understand the instructions properly and its possible I just did something wrong they are much more technically inclined then myself, and this is their design after all.

so as I stated yesterday I have two fully assembled 16 chip production boards, I had three but I killed one of them because I loaded the firmware too early.

At any rate here are the problems:

1)I don't want to kill any more boards.
2)People want to see video of this hashing before they place an order which I understand.

So here are my solutions:
I send two boards out:

One went to Luke-JR, he will have it today or tomorrow at the latest, and this will allow him to test with latest bfgminer and also post video of board hashing so everyone can see proof that the board works
which we already know it does, but I understand people want to see for themselves.

The other board I sent to fedex express directly to Form in Germany he should get it by early next week at the latest.

Now as far as contacting me it would be better to email me at jj@cointamination.org - the limitations of the PM system on this forum are cumbersome and I do not have time for that.

Right now I have only accepted one order for six boards, his ship date is coming up very soon and to be honest I really want to see how this first customer order turns out before I accept any others.

Because I am not sure If I am going to be setting the boards up after production or if someone else will do this role, but either way it will get done and we will make sure your boards are set up, running properly and shipped out to you ASAP, we really appreciate customer trust and loyalty and we will take care of you. It will be awesome to see these boards finally made with real high grade chips.

If anyone has any problems with this they can certainly place an order with Lucko, even if you are from the US if you have your chips already and are in a hurry to get them made your welcome to place an order with him, he has an assembly facility in Slovenia and I am sure they can make these boards just as well. My main concern here is that everyone gets a good product and in a timely fashion, and I don't want to be in a situation where customers are unhappy.

My role on this project was to get the PCBs made and the production Boards professionally Assembled, which I have done. I thought I could handle setting them up but as I stated before I ruined one board in the process and dont want to make that mistake again so I am sending the other two production boards to people who already know how to set them up and there is no learning curve involved here.

As soon as Luke-JR/Form receive their boards you will see them in action and we can move forward.

If you have any specific questions you need answered right away please contact Lucko I cannot guarantee I will be able to respond right away but I will make sure I respond to emails everyday so if you have a question that needs answering right away I would contact him.

I have to run, lucko - form I will see you on IRC in a little bit

-jj

af_newbie,

we really appreciated your donation and it helped us a lot to get this developed, you should get whatever discount that was offered to you for making a donation. If you were a part of the group buy from Lucko you get what $5 per chip deducted from your price? If no discount was offered PM me and we can work out a deal to reimburse you for your donation.

now onto the board itself, I have some pictures of it with cooling system on, we certainly wont have any problems with heat dissipation! this fan is a monster.

I think it would be wise to have it incorporated into mining software or firmware to control the fan speed, but thats something to take care of down the line.

I'm not hashing yet because I am having a little problems getting the trimpots right and I dont want to blow any chips - each one has to be set to 1 volt (according to form), so I just have them all turned way down right now, I have to buy a better multi-meter today because the one I have is not cutting it, and I want to get these trim pots set exactly right so I dont blow the chips.

anyways heres the pics, I gotta run to radio shack.









ill be around all day playing with this thing. if you need me send email or Pm I will respond shortly.

-JJ


p.s. after just reading some mail from lucko, I realize now that I did probably kill the first board because I loaded firmware without heatsinks, and thats why I was having problems yesterday, ive got two boards left.

so I think what im going to do is keep testing this board, and send the last untouched but fully assembled board to form along with cooling parts so he can get it working himself, he is much more technically inclined than I am with this type of thing, looks like im going to fedex this morning

that way he can get it working and then give me some better instructions on how to set the thing up, its actually much more complicated than I thought it was, these trimpots have no stopping point so you really dont know when your all the way down or all the way up for that matter, without the correct voltage measuring equipment basically all you can do is turn the damn thing counter clock wise 20-30 times and hope you turned it down all the way These boards work for sure and the last thing I want to do is destroy another one.

form, lucko I am on IRC now we need to talk about this, I really need your help to set these up ,I dont want to destroy another good board for no reason
thank god they are just sample chips on here

hah, finally found out where those missing parts are, going to pick them up now, lol


looks like you wont have to wait until tomorrow to see them hashing.

btw: if you live in north america you will order from me regardless of group buy, this is the way we are working things out
do not worry I will honor your coupons/discounts

see you soon!

-JJ

Good Morning, we are all settled in new place, and I just placed an order this morning for new cooling hardware with frozencpu who happens to be a company that is fairly local, I ordered UPS overnight delivery so I should have it tomorrow morning and will make sure to have pics and video of hashing for everyone tomorrow, just remember the speeds wont be accurate because these boards were made with sample chips because this was started before BFL shipped chips to anyone.

Dwdoc already has his order started in production he had his 100 chips sent directly to assembly house and he already has his shipping date from the assembly house, its his business so he can share it if he wants to, but its really not bad turn around time.

I will answer PM's and emails a little later, and dont worry Ill make sure I will provide more some eye candy tomorrow because that is what some of you are waiting for.

I have had some questions about ordering process and basically it goes like this.

1) You notify me by email,  PM or via website of your order and when your chips are coming in.
2) When chips are ready to come in you make payment
3) I will give you a .pdf you can print out with a postage label with your unique customer order number
4) shortly after you will receive an estimated ship date
5) boards ship to me where I load with firmware and put the cooling system together which I am ordering in bulk so I will have it on hand
6) I ship the boards out to you
7) you plug them in mine some coin and be happy


I will also take special requests like PCB sales, DIY Kits, and boards without cooling systems , contact me to find out prices

will be around later got lots to catch up on!

-JJ

hi,

sorry to freak everyone out, I tried to warn a few key people before my hiatus, that I would be gone for 1-2 days.

this weekend we were moving and it wasnt a short move 200 miles, we started friday morning and just finished today.

Dont worry, The boards are all fine, I was able to load them with firmware using the avdragon and it was recognized by linux and mining software, I can not mine them at the moment because somehow during the move I lost the cooling hardware and have not found it yet,  for those who want concrete video evidence of it mining before you order, I dont blame you, I will make it available to you within the next couple of days, I promise.

Tomorrow morning I will be back at it and I will take care of any unanswered PM's that happened over the weekend, and anyone that wants to order we will get you all setup.

We already have customer boards in production:

dwdoc , your estimated ship date has been posted from the assembly house, Ill email you the date.

any customer service stuff, if you have chips coming its better to get the orders in ASAP so you can get your order out
its a 5 day build time but can take 7-10 days from the time your chips arrive until the day you actually receive working boards.

Ill be back in the morning!
Sorry to disappear for the weekend!
i need some sleep...

-JJ

Hi,
Production Boards are in. As we suspected my assembly facility had no problems mounting the chips.

Here is some eye candy...






I will be mounting the cooling parts and loading firmware in a little bit, and will post pics when these bad boys are hashing away.

If you are in North America you can place an order with me via PM, send email to jj@cointamination.com, or by placing a secure Bitcoin order at our website. Build times are 5 days, expect about 7 days for delivery from time of order, production starts the day we receive the chips.

After your order is placed you will receive a .pdf of postage label of where to send chips along with your unique order number.

talk soon

-JJ

yes once we have the chips production starts

Hi,
Production Boards are in. As we suspected my assembly facility had no problems mounting the chips.

Here is some eye candy...






I will be mounting the cooling parts and loading firmware in a little bit, and will post pics when these bad boys are hashing away.

If you are in North America you can place an order via PM, send email to jj@cointamination.com, or by placing a secure Bitcoin order at our website. Build times are 5 days, expect about 7 days for delivery from time of order.

After your order is placed you will receive a .pdf of postage label of where to send chips along with your unique order number.

talk soon

-JJ

contact me for north american orders
thanks
-JJ

hi friends

My regular UPS guy was out sick today so there was a substitute that knows nothing about delivering in this remote area. (just my luck)


I talked with the local UPS hub  at length today and I will get the shipment of boards for sure tomorrow

looks like we have to wait one more day :/

-JJ

hi

According to UPS I should have the first boards from the assembly facility this morning

I will post pics and updates as soon as I have them!

-JJ

It makes much more sense to just send the chips to the assembly facility

When the time comes I will send you a .pdf with postage label including your unique order number


Just PM me to set it all up

thanks

(this is just for customers residing in North America)

It's cool man don't worry about it, I wish I had the capacity to accept other forms of payment but its just so much of a headache its not even worth it.

Bitcoin is literally the best payment option period for merchants and consumers in every way. If you have a hard time getting Bitcoins contact me and I will help you to get some.
-JJ

Well most of you in Lucko's group buy will be buying from him but not all.

If you live in North America and are in Lucko's group buy, you will purchase from me, and yes I will honor your coupons and discounts you were promised. This is the agreement we have worked out.

Last time I talked to him he will be charging the same price as me, unless he gets an order for 1000 boards or something I don't think that is going to change much, but thats just my speculation.

-JJ

Hello

I just want to clear a few things up here, based on some PM's I received.

One thing is I have not made any profit, or received a single bitcent from this group buy thing.

This is something I had nothing to do with what so ever.


However: If you are a North American customer, and you were involved in the group buy and received some sort of discount I will honor your coupons.

If you are not a north American Customer you will be going through lucko to buy your boards, and he is certainly welcome to charge less money for his boards if God Bless him, he can find a way to make a profit here.

Also everyone is up in arms because I guesstimated that I am making a profit of less than $100 per board which apparently to some is a staggering amount, please key in on the word "less than" and not on $100 - when all is said and done, I add in logistics, shipping costs, , the money I paid just for the rights to this design, my own time and headache  the profit is much much much less. So in reality if you count the money I have already spent on this development process it is very likely I will not make any profit at all.

The main reason I got involved at all is because I have a lot of BFL chips coming, and I wanted to support the project that I thought had the most promise.

Also I had someone suggest buying a cheaper fan. You are welcome to save some money by designing your own cooling system, however you are going to have a very hard time cooling 16 chips with anything less than a very high end fan. A cheap $5 fan is not going to work here.

These boards are being made in very small batches at a time and in the USA, this is not a cheap process,

Please also understand this includes a 5 day build time because personally I think it makes more sense to spend a little extra now and get the units hashing sooner than later. However if you want a 10 or 15 day build time I can lower the price for you.




I hope this clears everything up and I wont get any more angry PM's

-JJ

Just to address this issue of price, I want it to be known that our profit margin is extremely slim.

From the gold trace 4 layer PCB's to the $40 top of the line fan on the cooling system we did not skimp anywhere.

Not to mention the fact these boards are assembled in the USA, and include free express usps overnight shipping.

You might be able to manufacture these boards slightly cheaper than we are but they would have to be done in another country and with cheaper parts.

for $600 your getting an extremely well made product, with a 5 day build time.

If anyone is interested in 10 or 15 day build times I may be able to lower the price a little.

Thats the only way to get the price down, either that or a huge order at one time, but as we all know time is of the essence.

These boards cost me almost $400 each assembled and that is before the cooling system parts, and the time spent to load firmware , package and ship them out. When all is said in done we are making less than $100 profit per board, we are not doing this to get rich, we are doing it to provide a solution to the community to utilize these BFL chips in the best fashion possible. I have personallly purchased hundreds of these chips and have my own stake in this.

I hope this clears some mis-conceptions up.

If someone claims they can make these boards for $200-$300 they dont know what they are talking about. Sure I can provide a cheap PCB and use the lowest priced cheap chinese parts and assembly and save some money but your units wont hash long enough to even ROI in that scenario plus you will have to wait longer to get the unit which threaten ROI even further.


For people outside North America - you will need to talk to your sales rep Lucko about his assembly plant at what they can offer you.

thanks for listening!
-JJ



btw: for the cooling system we use these heatsinks

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/18193/
(one over each cluster of chips)

and this fan which is distance bolted over the whole thing:
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/8147/fan-500/Delta_Mega_Fast_120mm_x_38mm_Fan_-_252_CFM_-_Bare_Lead_PFB1212UHE-F00.html?tl=g36c15s562

we even put little "feet" on the boards like this:
http://de.farnell.com/hammond/1421t2/feet-stick-on-pk24/dp/1876514

Its all about timing, and beating the difficulty rises, My first generation Avalons paid for themselves in 5 days.

I will have the first cointamination boards that were manufactured in a factory by wednesday the 25th and will post results once they are hashing away. If you have BFL chips coming let me know we can get you in on a 5 day build time at my west coast assembly facility.
Complete cost including board, chip mounting, and cooling system is $599.99 paid in Bitcoins. This includes free express shipping.

If you have chips in hand or on the way I wouldn't wait I would get the assembly process started.

-JJ

Just to note we also have boards being assembled in our US assembly facility, which will ship on 09/24

Here we have state of the art pick and place machine and industrial level equipment and will not run into the problem lucko described above

Form is very talented engineer but doing this by hand is extremely difficult even for the most talented of hands.

Weather form succeeds or not (I hope he does!) we will have professionally assembled production boards hashing away next week, either way.

-JJ