You guys do know that the chargeback window normally closes about 90 days after the purchase is made, right?

Just sell the FPGAs.  You'll have no problem moving those.

When (if) trade-in time comes, just say "Oops, I don't haz them anymore.  I guess I'll have to pay the difference to keep my orders."

Is it a rev-3 unit with the red board and fans, or the earlier one with the blue board?

My red-board ones have 3 LEDs.

I don't know about a tag, but I do think that BFL ought to stop taking new orders until they actually begin shipping.

bASIC closed their orders after they had taken on "enough".  Imagine how much bigger that mess would be if they had left them open.

Looks like the shop doesn't have any at the moment.  Here's the ztex thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49180.0

Twice actually.  First they supposedly had chips in October, but they were fail because they had a "diffraction issue".  Apparently we're to believe that they were completely unaware of the need to apply OPC to the masksets.

Then they supposedly had another round of chips in December.  The ones with the "clock buffer issues", still in QFN packaging.

Seems like a good FAQ item for casascius.com.

Also, I too am interested in a series 1 5 BTC coin.  Not to threadjack or anything, but, uh, PM me with an offer if you've got one to sell.  Thanks.

I find the site is really slow to respond a lot.  Maybe they're being DoS'd or something.

If they could solve that issue I might use it more.

I like browsing through the "newly listed" tab to see if anything cool just showed up that I can pwn up quick.

I think asking $600 is more than the market will bear, especially now given BFL's uncertain future.

$500-550 was more the ballpark sale price a few months back, when BFL looked more rosy (and thus trade-in options looked attractive).  Given how things look now, even that may be asking too much.

If he actually wants to sell any, I think he will need to come down.

Actually most modern ATX power supplies are autoswitching, and can take anywhere from 90V to 250V or so.

I just plugged my GPU miner with it's regular Antec PSU right into my outlet that I had wired up for 240V and turned it on.  No magic smoke came out, just hashes.

If in doubt, the label on the side of the power supply will indicate acceptable input voltage(s).

Not quite on-topic, but Avalon/ngzhang had a track record of selling FPGA units too.

I'm mining on bitparking at the moment, so I can capture 3 altcoins via merged-mining in addition to the BTC revenue.

The altcoin revenue more than makes up for the pool's 2.5% fee, and being straight PPS I don't have to worry about variance, orphans, etc.

I have it set up to payout directly to the exchange account, so I don't even have to run the altchain clients.

I believe how it works is the utility's step-down transformer that supplies the house has 3 taps on it, one on each end of the secondary winding (the "legs"), plus a center tap (the "neutral").

To get 120V, you can wire a circuit using one of the two legs against the neutral.  To get 240V, you wire both legs against each other and leave the neutral out.

A typical house has a number of 120V circuits for regular outlets and lights and things, and then some 240V circuits for high current loads like a stove, heat pump, dryer, welder, etc.

By doubling the voltage on the high current circuits, the amperage is halved, so the wires don't need to be sized as large.  The tradeoff being that 240V is more hazardous to work with than 120V.

One of the front intake fans on mine is starting to make a bit more noise than it used to.

I'd love to be able to order a replacement to keep on hand as a spare, so I'm not faced with downtime or a hackjob solution if one fails.

I'm sure the fans used were chosen with a certain set of characteristics, and not just any old 120mm fan will do as a replacement.

When does the auction end?

I seem to remember a guy on IRC saying he had his paypal account suspended just for making an order from BFL, no dispute or refund or anything.  That he had to call paypal to get it unlocked, and that it was caused by the BFL account being involved in "suspicious activity".

I wish I could remember who.  Maybe it's in the logs...

'tis a slippery slope.

Wow you guys really don't know much about mains power if you think a modern US house is gonna be limited to 9.6kW.

The US standard for "regular" outlets is 120V, but they still run 240V into a most houses, plus a neutral leg which is used to make the 120V circuits.  A lot of the really high current appliances (electric stove, heat pump) are run on 240V circuits, for efficiency and to save on wire cost.

I have one of my "regular" outlets wired up for 240V, and I run my GPU miner on it when it's here.

I'll offer $200 for the 7950, assuming it's fully working.

Easily.  200 amp 240V service is standard in most modern residences these days.  That's good for 48kW.

I recommend that CoinHoarder power the Avalons all on 240V circuits, for efficiency's sake.