They never seem to mention the possibility of the silicon failing testing and needing a respin.

Their 65nm chips needed 2 respins before they were able to ship anything.

Logically 28nm is a good bit harder to get right than 65nm.

I don't think the thermal paste is the cause of the problem.

Have you tried any other clockspeeds besides 350MHz?

I just held an unsoldered pinheader diagonally against the pads and flashed mine that way (careful not to short against R42).  I had some failures, but just tried again and managed to get all 6 boards flashed in the end.  It helps that the pins bend a bit and are slightly springy.

It is kinda tricky to hold it still with one hand and work the mouse with the other.  You may want to have a partner work the mouse.

http://projectklondike.org/how-to-program

Ppl have speculated about exactly this occurring with a number of vendors and products now.  I guess it's no less likely to occur now than before.

I'd like to keep my orders with you for my 112 chips.  PM me the details of the balance to be paid plz.

This is an unfortunate situation for both of us, and I place 100% of the blame on BFL.  I mean, the purpose of sample chips is to have a solid reference to design against.  The production chips are not supposed to be freakin' *DIFFERENT* in any way, but BFL went and changed them, and now it's costing both of us time and money.

Edit: So I guess there isn't any way to change the low-voltage-at-startup behavior of the existing boards, eh?

No offense meant, but I feel like you should just refund me now and settle-up with BFL on your own.  I entered into the purchase agreement with you, not with BFL.

I feel like you've dropped the ball in not managing the order or responding to my emails or PMs in a timely manner (usually not responding at all.)

I'm looking to receive the 27 BTC I paid for 55 chips directly to your 1garr255 address, plus the $2080 I paid for the first 32 chips via the bitpay button in the OP.

Thanks in advance.

That's cool, but, uh...do you think you could get the Cointamination boards working before you dive into this project?  A lot of us are really hoping for some success there.

With respect.

I won't be participating simply because tradehill is not very accessible.  I much prefer bitmit for auctions.  (Am I the only one who sees a big middle finger when looking at the tradehill logo?)

Then there are the other reasons, like BitSyncom's history of screwing customers (trade-ins anyone?), and the availability of cheaper and more efficient mining hardware.

I'm gonna go out on my limb again and say that IMO they will not ship any finished miners before April 2014.

And no, Luke-Jr "receiving" a miner that lives on a bench in a lab at HF HQ does not count as shipping a finished miner.

I mostly say this because I think that producing a working chip with 250W TDP is an enormous challenge, even for a seasoned chip-maker.

I thought this deserved its own thread.

I'm learning that a lot of the later shipments of KnC's miners have an issue where die #0 out of the 4 on each chip does not function.

This can be seen by installing BertMod and looking at the output current of the DC-DC converters.  Affected units will show a much lower current on #0 than on the other 3.

I'm afraid I can't contribute a lot since I have an early Saturn that is not among the affected units.

There is a much better summary of the issue over on the KnC forums:

http://forum.kncminer.com/forum/main-category/hardware/13049-read-me-first-known-issues-slow-performance-dc-dc-problem-bad-core-map-etc

I thought that a thread here would reach a wider audience, and may make for a more productive discussion.

In the US I received a 3 module Avalon with a declared value of $299.  Then later I received one declared at $2500.

I did not have to pay a fee for either.

I had 2 BFL sample chips stolen out of my mailbox, along with an AVR Dragon in a separate package.

I'm pretty sure that whoever took them has no idea wtf either item is.

I don't wish them cancer or castration.  Instead I wish for them to see the error of their ways, and to learn to change them.

I guess I'm not very Russian at heart.

To add another plug (pun intended), I'm selling ATX jumpers:
https://www.bitmit.net/en/item/66854-jumper-plug-for-atx-power-supply-psu-jump-start-bridge-12v

I actually have a fairly nice Hantek DSO on hand, but I'm not really sure of where I should be attaching the probes to measure something useful.



Thanks, I'll look at that, as well as adding some fans.

Well, that kinda worked.  I successfully programmed my 6 K16s using the PICkit 3.

The 3 that I'd gotten halfway working before now appear to be fully working, though I now need to address cooling.  I keep getting "critical overheat" messages.

The 3 that weren't working are still not working.  One gets 100% hw errors, one has a zero hashrate, and the third isn't even detected (I get "usb 1-4.1.4.4.4: device not accepting address 91, error -32" in dmesg, and the USB hub light turns off.)

I used 100% linux to program them BTW, no Windows, and it worked just fine.

Old topic is old.

Ppl have been having this same discussion since pools first came into existence.

This.

Unless you are confident in your software setup, and have monitoring in place to ensure that everything is working correctly, and that you will know if it's not, the risk of mining for days/weeks/longer on a broken or underperforming setup outweighs any disadvantages you may encounter mining on a pool.

</my_two_satoshi>

Dead program is dead?

I went ahead and ordered a PICkit from a US seller.  Hopefully I'll have it in a few days.