Why will they have a special interest in obtaining you as a customer?

Surely there's a reason the boards didn't run as intended in the first place.

I don't see how adding another voltage regulator will magically fix it.  It might improve efficiency somewhat, but that's hardly a complete fix.

Ah, right you are about me being off by 1 OOM.

Using http://tpbitcalc.appspot.com/, I show 4.5GHps capturing < 1 BTC/year a bit above 800 million.

I guess that's not *that* far fetched, if BFL ships.

I by no means mean to encourage someone to give money to BFL, but...

For that above to be true, network difficulty will need to be somewhere above ~8 billion.

Do you really expect that to be the situation?

For some reason the used FPGA market is really hot right now.  Finding them is hard.

I think it has a lot to do with the soaring bitcoin market value.  A ton of noobs are jumping in now, and they want to buy a miner.  Any miner.

They sure as hell can't get ASICs easily, so if they can get an FPGA, they'll pwn it up.  Beyond that, they're snatching up GPUs, 'cuz that's what they can get.

If you don't believe in the future profitability of your FPGA vs what you could make selling it, now might be a good time to sell while the market is strong.

It also means the Jalapeño won't run on 2 USB 2.0 ports, as was planned.

I guess it might stand a better chance of keeping keeping your coffee warm though, so hey, it's not all bad, right?

I think all he really said is that it took them 1.2 months from the time they received the chips until they were ready to ship something.

I don't think he mentioned encountering any mysterious power drain issues.

I was offered $10k, and then $20k for mine.  I said no both times.

It's soldered onto the board.  If I were doing it, I would probably use 2 soldering irons to melt both ends at once.  Alternately, you could leave the blown fuse in place and solder a new one on top of it.

To test it, I would use a multimeter on the "ohms" setting.  Put one probe on each end of the fuse.  If it measures much more than 1 ohm, it's probably blown.  Mine measured about 0.8 ohms.

I'd think a 2A or maybe 2.5A fuse would make an appropriate replacement.

BFL Problem: The board or something on it (but we don't think it's the ASIC chips) is drawing 2-3 times as much power as was expected, and we don't know what or why.  But we do know that the voltage regulator can't keep up.

BFL Solution: Add another voltage regulator so that together they'll be more able to handle the increased draw.

I think you should sell them.  Since they're obsolete now, I'll generously offer 8 BTC each.

Best hurry before I change my mind.

 

 

Avalon is now priced in BTC only, beginning with batch 3.

Like Yifu says "The loop has been closed."

I don't think it's a regular WR703N.  I believe it is modified to add more RAM, more flash, and an external RF connector.

Something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/SLBoat-The-TL-WR703N-Mod-64Mbyte-RAM-16Mbyte-Flash-And-TTLout-Inside-MicroUSB-/181078954797

42W at idle?  Good lawd.  My x6500 FPGAs only burns up 17.2W at full load...

Didn't they like...put a dummy load in place of the ASIC chips and actually test these boards or something while they were waiting on chip delivery?

I guess not.

You know what's more secure, if you think you'll need it?  A browser in a VM.  Save the VM state first, and when you're done browsing, just roll back.

So, to go back on topic, help me to understand the supposed state of BFL's chips.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about that.

Wafer #1: "Burned" for testing with some crazy wire bonded rig that was apparently of dubious benefit.
Wafer #2: Bumped, diced, packaged, and in testing.  Some soldered onto boards.
Wafers #3-6:  Are they still just wafers?  Have they been bumped yet?  Diced and packaged?
Wafers #7-12: Last we'd heard the top few metal layers were being held back.  Have they given the go-ahead yet to finalize them?  If so, when was it given?
Wafers #13+:

This.

Installing "antivirus" software is a sure sign of n00bdom.  It says that you have no faith in your ability to retain control of your own system.

Us real h4x0rz never use the stuff.

I would check the fuse first.  It's the component labeled F1, just to the right of the Molex connector.

If it measures more than 1 ohm, it's probably blown and should be replaced (or bridged if you like to live on the edge.)

I see my two transactions on the list.  All looks well.  Thanks.

Be that as it may, it's still a glaring conflict of interest.

Josh either needs to be an ASIC maker, or be a miner.  To be both is too dangerous.

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