I've just had a brand new Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W Gold that I purchased yesterday burn up (literally!) after powering an Avalon A6 miner for about 30 hours. Luckily I was in the room when it went and smelt it before it actually burst into flames.

Wondering whether I just got a bad power supply (seems to be my luck) or if it just wasn't up to the job. Thoughts?

[LATEST NEWS]

Announcement: Australian P2Pool Backed Low-Rate Friendly Pool

CryptoMiner is pleased to announce the release of our modified P2Pool mining node based in Adelaide, Australia specifically designed to provide low-rate (<10GH/s) P2Pool users with a lower variance reward than standard P2Pool nodes. We have the benefit of the P2Pool network hashrate (6TH/s) with scoring based on diff 50 pseudo-shares rather than 22k diff P2Pool shares.

Work is broken up into 12 hour shifts (starting a midnight and noon UTC) and miners are scored for all submitted pseudo-shares with a diff >= 50. For each shift, the system calculates the user's shift score and percentage of the total score submitted for that shift. The miner is credited with their calculated percentage of the total amount received by the pool during that shift, minus a 5% admin fee.

Payouts are automatically made when the miner's credit balance reaches BTC0.25. By registering for an account on the CryptoMiner website, the user is able to modify their payout address and threshold and also see statistics about their miners. Please note that registering on the website is completely optional as the node will act as a standard P2Pool node, paying out in BTC0.25 minimums instead of every block.

Website: https://cryptominer.org/bitcoin/
Statistics: https://cryptominer.org/bitcoin/stats/
Scoring Information: https://cryptominer.org/bitcoin/scoring/

LATEST NEWS

• 14th October 2013 - Removed 5% admin fee - all payouts are now 100% of the mined percentage,
  
• 12th September 2013 - We now have an SSL certificate for our website, and all web traffic is now forced to HTTPS by default!

I have uploaded to my github repository the tools I use for configuring my cgminer clusters with Puppet and monitoring them using Nagios: https://github.com/daemondazz/bitcoin-utils

The puppet scripts support automatically installing the GPU or non-GPU build of cgminer depending on if an AMD video card is detected (I only have 7870's and 7950's, so feedback on other device identifiers may be needed) and configuring the pool details from within Puppet.

The Nagios script is designed to be run via NRPE (does not require the API port open to the Internet) and returns feedback on the number of devices and pools that are detected and working and the total 5s average hashrate for the node. Future expansion plans are to also output Nagios performance information which could then be fed into something like Splunk.


[commercial plug]
If you need Nagios monitoring, the company I run can provide this service (payable using Bitcoin), with monitoring access to your miners performed over an IPSEC or GRE tunnel, access to our Nagios web interface and unlimited email alerts. Contact me for more information.
[/commercial plug]

[CLOSED: Perpetual Australian ASICMINER USB Block Erupter Group Buy]

CLOSED: Perpetual Australian ASICMINER USB Block Erupter Group Buy

I am now completely sold out and will not be re-stocking.

Thank you to all of my customers who have purchased these from me, it has been a pleasure to be able to provide this service. The number of repeat customers who have returned 3 or 4 times has been amazing to me, and tells me I was doing something right.

For any future sales, please see Julian's thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292676.0


I am putting this perpetual group buy together to service other Australian users who have had difficulty purchasing these for a reasonable cost. This group by will be open until further notice and I will place an order approximately every two weeks, or when we reach enough units. My first group buy was successful and is at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244263.0

Pricing
PRICE DROP The price per unit is BTC0.165.

Ordering
Ordering is performed via the CryptoMiner website at http://cryptominer.org/asicminer/. This will provide you with a unique payment address and provide a count on the number of Erupters ordered and countdown to the next estimated order date and time.

Please only send BTC from an address you control and can use to sign messages. I will require you to sign your shipping address before I am able to send any units out.

Refunds
Refunds will be possible up until the point that an order is placed with ASICMINER. After this refunds will not be possible.

Shipping
The price covers express postage within Australia, although we can negotiate for alternative shipping methods if required. Buyers from outside Australia will need to request a shipping quote based on the number of units and destination.

Local pickup is available from the Adelaide CBD during business hours, or the North Eastern suburbs after hours.

Order Status
As the USB Erupters are IN STOCK orders will be shipped the same day if payment is received before 7am ACST, or the next day if received after the cutoff.

[Australian ASICMINER USB Block Erupter Group Buy]

Australian ASICMINER USB Block Erupter Group Buy

GROUP BUY IS NOW CLOSED
I was very kindly approached by another group buy operator who offered to bundle the orders I have to date with his order. I have taken this option and payment has been sent, so this buy is now closed. I will cover the difference in the shipping cost compared to buying direct from ASICMINER, so the price should be the same for my purchasers. The final tally was 30 Erupters ordered.

I am putting this group buy together to service other Australian users who have had difficulty purchasing these for a reasonable cost. This group by will be open until 5.00pm CST on 5th July 2013. If there is still further demand at the end of this period I will consider running another buy.

Pricing
The price per unit will be BTC1.15. This fee covers paying GST on arrival in Australia and express shipping and handling from me to the seller.

On a case by case basis I am able to accept Australian Dollars via direct deposit, although I recommend the buyer purchasing BTC directly through Bit Trade Australia. If you require a direct deposit option please send me a PM. The 4 hour MtGox AUD average exchange rate will be used for AUD purchases, plus a purchase fee. The current value can be seen at the top of my website at https://afoyi.com/.

In the event that GST is not charged upon the units entering Australia (this will depend on what value ASICMINER declare), I will refund a portion of the fee paid. The exact amount refunded will depend on what unforseen costs I may encounter (not expecting any, but that's why they are unforseen!)

Ordering
Send me a PM with your requested number of units and I will provide a unique payment address. Orders will be confirmed using the Bitcoin block chain. I will post regular updates to this thread with the number of units ordered so far.

Please only send BTC from an address you control and can sign messages. I will require you to sign your shipping address before I am able to send any units out.

Once I receive payment and there have been 6 confirmations, I will send a confirmation message via PM signed using the payment address. For payments received in AUD, I will sign confirmation message using my GPG ID 0xB98F8E89.

Refunds
Refunds will be possible up until the point that the order is placed with ASICMINER. After this refunds will not be possible.

Shipping
The shipping fee covers express postage within Australia, we can negotiate for alternative shipping methods if required. Buyers from outside Australia will need to request a shipping quote based on the number of units and destination.

Local pickup is available in Adelaide. Discount on the shipping fee applies!

Order Status
We are currently up to 30 out of minimum 50 units required.

It was delicious!

[Project: Caterpillar]

Project: Caterpillar
Website: http://cryptominer.org/caterpillar/


Update 16th August 2013: The Caterpillar team have had a meeting and in light of the currently exponential increase in network difficulty and the continual delays regarding the Avalon chips come to the conclusion that it will not be possible to ROI with the Avalon chips, and have hence decided to cancel our project based around these chips.

This decision was not taken lightly and it was with a deep regret that this decision was reached. I currently have the components to build a single board with 7 chips and will be looking for 1 more sample chip, if anyone has one, so that I can build one board with 8 chips to prove that the design works. Once this has been completed I'll upload my design files to github under an open hardware license and will not be touching anything Avalon in the future.


The Caterpillar is a modular Avalon ASIC miner based on the Klondike16 project that is designed to fit into a rack mount server case using the drive bays as carriers. It is being designed by a group in Adelaide, South Australia who plan to form a small mining company. At this stage we will not be taking any orders for completed hardware, although we may be able to provide unpopualated PCBs for a small fee.

We are also investigating the feasibility of building a tray around the BitFury ASICs when they become available. More updates will be posted once details become available.

The people involved in this project are:

• daemondazz
• stripykitteh
• dancoin

Version 1 Preliminary Specs:

• Norco RPC-3116 or RPC-3216 3RU rack mount server case
• 24 ASICs per tray
• 6 temperature sensors per tray (1 per 4 ASICs)
• 16 trays (384 ASICs) per chassis (approx 108GH/s in 3RU)
• Custom USB/power distribution backplane to replace SAS/SATA backplane

The design will be fully open source with all schematics, PCB layouts and BOM parts available.


Update 7/Jun - Schematics
I have uploaded a draft PDF of the ASIC component of the schematics to our website. Components have not been numbered yet, but it does show the values.

Update 14/Jun - Sample Chip
We have been sent 1 sample chip so far from SebastianJu's group buy batch 1. Thanks Sebastian!

Update 14/Jun - Design Change
The team here have decided to simplify the design dramatically, so we're going to switch to a design that's very close to the BkkCoin's Klondike16 design. The plan is to use a customised version of his firmware. The changes from BkkCoin's ("reference") Klondike16 will be:

• 12 ASICs per bus instead of 8,
• No I²C for board stacking,
• 6x I²C temperature sensors instead of a single analog temperature sensor.

Update 16/Aug - Project Cancelled
The team have decided to cancel the development of this project and seek a refund of our pre-ordered Avalon chips. I (daemondazz) will complete a single board with 8 chips to prove the design but no futher work will be performed.

So in the last 12 hours, my p2pool log files show that 4 blocks were found:

232422
232452
232471
232473

Block 232452 does not show on the p2pool website on my node or any other that I've checked, which I figure means it was orphaned, but I received a generate payment of 0.04891343 for that block?

How's that possible?

Note, I'm not mining anything except for on my p2pool node.