Its overpriced at wholesale 2.0BTC. Your 3.0BTC is daylight robbery. Put it on ebay and let the mugs looking for magic free money machines take the hit.

I wouldn't advise anyone attempting to reflow solder a board of that size at home, but at least they are not BGA chips (eg BFL) which are virtually impossible to DIY with any reliability.

PS, just saw "single layer with jumper wires". NO, just NO! You won't get proper power distribution and decoupling, so even if it works at all its going to be unreliable as f*uk. Stick with the experts folks, don't DIY!

Much sweeter deal than a Block Erupter, but http://www.coinish.com/calc/ (expert) is still showing it never pays for itself. But perhaps difficulty will level off a bit, and there's also the resale value, so good one. Congrats.

I missed the early boat (insufficient BTC in hand for even the 10 chip group-buys), but I may take a punt on BitFury. Let's see how they test out in the next few days.

Solo mining is hopeless unless you've got several hundred GigaHash, and even then needs to be set up carefully to avoid orphaned blocks (no money!!). Join a pool instead like the rest of us.

You just described mask-programmed gate arrays (uncommitted logic arrays), technology from the 1980's (I know, because I worked on them). They were superceded by field-programmed gate arrays FPGA (which did away with the final metallzation mask, changing them from a custom Application Specifc Integratd Circuit (ASIC) to commodity devices). They still exist to some degree (I think the Altera Hardcopy FPGA conversions use similar technology ... [edit] yes, its called "Structured ASIC", much more sophisticated than the original ULA's  with up to 6 layers of customizable metal and via, but essentially the same sort of beast, and exactly fitting your description).

AFAIK all the current mining ASICs are full custom designs (using standard cell libraries), not that that helped BFL who made a right dog's dinner of their design flow.

Applied pablovium Phlebotinum (TV Tropes)

Edit Oops mis-remembered, took a while to cross-check  (doesn't help that I'm on a RasPi with two background vanitygen's running). Still pablovium sounds pretty good too.

We did this already https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227285.0

But I'm new, so it probably comes up twice a week. Newbie forum is like Groundhog Day (the film), stuff just keeps happening, again and again (and again)^oo.

Btcguild stopped doing that a few months back. Just a gimmick really. Don't choose a pool just because it gives you free alt coins. I can recommend btcguild, even though he's upped his fees to discourage users (he pioneered ASICMINER and is worried about getting too close to 51% of the network).

Anyway bedtime for me.
CUL8R.

OK, good. I use paper myself (I'm playing with vanitygen at the moment, hence the sig. Cool, how random is that?). Can't help with name coin though, but did you catch my mention that its almost worthless. No point mining it really (unless you need to pay for domain name hosting?) Even then, I don't know how it works. Why not ask on the alt coin forum https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0  since you're able to post there now.

I don't know anything about name coin (other than its almost worthless), so I can't help. But that does sound odd since they also trade bitcoin. It sounds to me like you don't have control over your own private keys on this site. Unless they mean for solo mining (the "coins generated"), but that does not make sense either. Either way that's just weird. No matter for the tiny amounts you currently have, but I'd feel safer with an independent wallet (bitcoin_qt, electrum, armoury or paper) for any substantial amounts.

0.01BTC is not bad as a freebie. Most of the faucet websites are just giving out unusable dust. Anyway good luck with your missing payments.

EDIT. None of this applies to name coins, sorry. This is just for bitcoins. I should have read more carefully.

But you do have some bitcoin at https://blockchain.info/address/1HejHPpk91zs7rByhBszsk2TjUX59mSvxz including a 0.01 BTC payment on 31st May. Was that your pool payout?

But it can be prohibitively difficult. If you're solo-mining coin, its going to be almost completely untraceable. Mining via a pool might be tracable depending on what contact details you disclose and whether the pool logs your IP address (and is subpoena'd to disclose it).

Of course who knows what the NSA are logging, but since they deny everything, you'll probably get away with it unless you're on their hit list (then maybe expect a visit from a nice shiny drone).

Here 1Jest66T6Jw1gSVpvYpYLXR6qgnch6QYU1 ... what can possibly go wrong? 

Except the 58xx will have a resale value at the end. Actually the best thing you can do with your Block Erupter is to put it straight on ebay as soon as it arrives. You'll probably make a good profit from the mugs trying to get into that new free money next big thing. 

This will tell you what you need to know https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220905.0

Buy your block erupter from one of group buys, not ebay. I won't recommend one (caveat emptor!), but take a look here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=76.0

You'll have to source your own pi, just go googling for it (but again, not ebay). Farnell are pretty reliable (UK based, but with international branches). There may be a waiting list.

Other things you need ... hdmi TV display, keyboard, mouse, cables, powered USB hub (see notes in link at top, not all are equal), SD memory card, SD card reader (so you can flash it), an internet connection (wired ethernet preferred, else you need a wifi dongle too).
Not looking quite so cheap now is it? You may already have some of this stuff though. Some good info on http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub

Hmm, maybe this isn't your cup of tea? You're not a banker, but do you do geek?

Have Lots of Fun (old SuSe Linux reference) and don't blame me when you fail to make a profit.

OK, go for it then. Get yourself a Raspberry Pi so you don't tie up your main computer 24x7 (its really cheap to run too at a couple of watts), and mine away. When you'r bored with mining (or you're just earning dust in about 6 months time), you've still got yourself a really cool linux box to play with 

Plenty of info on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=14.0

And yes, they are overpriced for what you can expect to earn over their lifetime. 2.0BTC, wholesale, you purchase at 2.5BTC (or more in USD on ebay). Will probably only earn you 1.0BTC through mining, and worthless resale value at the end of life. Don't do it (unless you're mining just for fun).

I think this is part of the reason why punters are "investing" in overpriced Block Erupters, BFL's etc. Its a bitcoin laundry. USD or trackable BTC in, then mining gives untrackable BTC out.