No, its not a PCI-e connector, though we are looking into that for future designs. That connector is for stacking boards together into the backplane and mini backplane.

Love it!

Yes, we do plan to build Drillbit boards for future chips. Currently though we're going with the Bitfurys. The hashrate is still good, and it looks like they will actually deliver. 

Hey guys.

Ok, time to address recent discussions that have been taking place here. I have been gobbled up by work deadlines lately but I've got a minute now to write some responses. I’m going to do all this in one post to save putting up a million posts. 

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No. These miners will still need a computer to run them. The computer can be anything, any platform. As others have mentioned, you could get a Raspberry Pi to run it if you want a compact mining set up.

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The board will run fine on its own. That said, once you start overclocking the chips, you will be looking at a lot more heat and cooling will become an issue. Basically, the cooler the better. A fan running along the length of the board will do a lot. From there you could look at heatsinks and liquid cooling. We are looking into heatsinks potentially being prebuilt into the board, or more likely being an optional addon. More on this when we get to it.

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The GUI idea is something we will get to if we have time. In the meantime though, the board and firmware will be built to run using Cgminer, which is cross platform, so you will be good to run this miner on pretty much any system.

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I’ve just written a response to Kano and the ball is rolling regarding Cgminer support. Will keep you all updated with our progress.

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I’d say your maths is off. Please see this post for details. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266235.msg2924259#msg2924259

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No, if you order from Paypal, the shipping prices won’t be automatically added. Shipping will be sorted out down the track.

The reason the first post still says shipping will be updated shortly is because I just haven’t had time to get the shipping details sorted out yet. Turns out to be quite time consuming running a project like this. That said, I WILL get the shipping details up in the next week. In the meantime I have been quoting people a rough guess of $50 - $100 for shipping, but this will depend on quantity and type of shipping.

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The boards are not specifically designed to run with a raspberry Pi, that would be rather odd. A raspberry PI is essentially a small computer. By all means, go out there and learn how to use one. They are cool. By as someone else mentioned, that’s another topic for another forum thread. 

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In terms of GH / $ ratio, The Drillbit system is pretty solid compared to other offerings out there. On the difficulty front, yes its quite scary whats going on there. There’s nothing much we can do about that other that make sure we get these boards hashing as quick as possible, which is of course, the general plan 

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OK, so there have been some recent developments to the board design. What we will probably going with now is making the 4 stack happen by way of a ‘mini backplane’ rather than connectors built into to each boards, basically this will be a more streamlined approach. So if you want to stack 4 boards you will get 4 boards (like the one you see in the picture) and a mini backplane to link them all together. The mini backplane will come free with any purchase of 2 or more boards. The other potential design variation will be connecting multiple mini backplanes to create larger stacks, either as well as, or in replacement for the large 16 board backplane. The functionality will be the same with these changes, just looking at a different implementation.

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No, there isn’t a working prototype yet. Where we are at currently is that the proto boards have gone off for manufacture and will be back in about a week. From there we will be assembling and testing. Trust me, when there is something to show off I will be showing it off. 

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Ok, that covers most of it. Sorry that was a mega post. Congratulations for making it this far. I have not responded to certain things because good responses were already given.

A couple requests, In the future, if your question is specific to your order, please PM me instead of posting here. Let’s try to keep this forum for discussions that pertain to everyone.

Cheers.

Barntech

Hey Guys.

Sorry for my absence the last couple of days. I've been busy with some hectic work deadlines, which are now done. I'll be back in front of the computer in a couple hours to answer everyone's questions.

Barntech

Got your payment. Thanks Chad.

And onto the website debate.

I know what you mean about shiny websites feeling untrustworthy. Especially in bitcoin land. There have been so many vaporware companies pop up with shiny websites announcing billion gigahash miners available for preorder now. Whenever i see one of these sites, i instantly think "yeah right, what a load of shit". I have written to many of them using their pretty user support forms and almost always got nothing back.

What we are doing here is not really a commercial enterprise where we want to lure people in and take their money using our shiny website. That website i set up was never really intended to be a "website" per se, but rather a place where people can go and make their orders for the group buy.

Now all that said, i have been intending on making that page slightly more attractive, and putting up some more information on their for people who stumble onto it without coming via the forum.

MRKLYE has offered to contribute some time to building the site up. To be honest it is a welcome offer as it takes one thing off my plate. I'm going to get him to have a run at it and see what he comes up with. Don't worry, we're not going to get another BFL or KNC esque site. I'll make sure it still stays true to the DIY nature of this whole thing, whilst being a bit nicer to use, clearer and more informational (if that is even a word).

Thanks MRKYLE for the offer.

 

Use Gox for exchange rate. Most people seem to still use them as the benchmark (correct me if i'm wrong)... but yes, so far everything has been done following the Gox rate.

Pleased to announce that the chips have been ordered. 

We have made a deposit with Megabigpower to secure an October reel of chips, so this is going ahead regardless. Basically now it is a matter of whether we fill the chip order with orders from the community or buy whats left out ourselves once we get to October. Honestly though i highly doubt it will get to that. As others have mentioned, the orders are moving quite quickly, the whole thing seems to be generally picking up steam. At this point i'm confident people will snap up the remaining chips.

Barntech

Yes, trust m,e i understand the frustration of bad communication in this crazy world. I'll always be here to answer your questions. 

And yes i hope Bitfury delivers. It all feels pretty solid, but you never know. Gonna make sure we're all ready to go when they do though.

Yes, basically, its a balance of fairness and efficiency. If you order one now and one later, it would be silly to send them in two separate packages, so they will be packaged together. I guess the main thing is for everyone to be reasonable about this with their ordering. I don't want a situation where people are taking advantage by placing a small early order then hoping to add lots to it later on and maintain an early spot in the queue. I guess if this happens, ie 1 now, 20 later, then the 1 will probably be bundled with the 20 rather than the other way around, or perhaps i will offer the option of separate packages in the interest of maintaining the queue. If you place multiple orders, i will contact you and we can work out together how they will be bundled

But really all this won't make too much difference to anything. The situation i am anticipating is that we will get all the boards back, sit around for a few solid days packaging them all up and send them out. Biggest delay between first and last package going out will be one maybe two weeks at the most (at a guess).

I think all the boards will ship fairly quickly. We will be doing all of them together in one manufacture run, so they will all be ready at once. From there its just postage. We will post them in the order that the orders were placed. If you only ordered a few boards then they will all ship together. In the interest of fairness though, if you say ordered one board at the beginning and 30 at the end, we will have to stay true to the queue and send the 30 in their appropriate position. Basically, it will be done in the most fair and efficient way we can manage. 

We will do all that we can to keep the shipping costs down. The prices will be charged in weight ranges, so i'm guessing 1-4 ish boards would probably cost the same shipping, then a higher price for 5-10 etc (total random numbers btw, just to give you an idea). I will get onto all those details soon.

In terms of ordering, basically, if you are wanting us to assemble a board for you, then you will need to either order a fully assembled board now, or order chips now and assembly down the track. That option is there to allow people to get their order in for chips, then get their money together for assembly. However if you have the money now, and know what you want, it will be easier and simpler to just order fully assembled boards to start with.

We are configuring the miners to run with cgminer.

I think that's all your questions covered. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know.

Cheers

Hey Unnaceptable

Yes we ship worldwide. Approx quote for shipping is $50 - $100. I'll get proper details up soon.

And yes, the available chip count is in big red letters on the first page of this thread.

Cheers

Yes i hope so too. I have faith that we will get the chips in october, but you never know in this crazy world.

Regarding postage, i have been saying $50 - $100 so far as a rough estimate. I will get a comprehensive table up on the page in the next week.

Cheers

Hey Milkbottle

The board will run on a normal ATX power supply with a regular 4 pin molex (the kind you find inside your computer). The USB thumb will be bus powered requiring no extra input. There will also be the option of the backplane (and now mini back plane that we are looking at too) which will be able to feed power to the rest of your boards so you don't need a million connections.

Cheers.

Barntech

Haha.

Yeah fair enough. Its certainly not the most exciting and awesome website ever built. In fact "website" is probably a generous term for what is basically just a bunch of paypal buttons. The honest story here is that this project has all been coming together quite quickly, and i have had to be juggling all this with my real life job, and not really having much time to do such things as build a pretty website. I am however finishing up the project i am working on and will be coming into much more free time soon. I'll make sure to get that website nice and pretty for you MRKLYE. If you're doubting our legitimacy, please check out the John K verification and various other comments from people on the thread. You are welcome to give me a call too if you like and / or come visit us in Sydney.

And if that offer for a hand with webdesign is real, sure, would love it. 

Cheers.

Barntech

No, you will have the option of overclocking the chip or not, so you can choose how hard you run it.

Will have pics and specs of the board up in the next couple days. 

Yes. Late October, early November is our anticipated delivery time.