Yes, most folks on this forum would love to see the BM1385 chip used in something much smaller scale than the S7 (i.e. fewer chips, fewer boards, etc), but so far Bitmain is still pushing variants of the S7at 1100W+.

My feeling is that they are concerned about the impact that the halving will have on the appetite for hash (i.e.new mining hardware sales), and they want to sell as much as they can at a hefty price.

OK, so if the BitFury theory is that the "Mining light bulb" isn't an economic thing, why make it a light bulb? Why not a low priced "21 Inc Bitcoin Computer" like gadget? That seems every bit as useful to the "inovative solutions.....educational purposes and fun" plan as anything.

If they ever produce them for actual sale, we'll know what came of it. Of course maybe the "Everything that has electricity should be a miner"  hangover is finally setting in and they really don't have a clue about what to do with it.

Just my $.02 on the idea.

You would need to verify this, but my understanding is that their mining ASIC has a BTC wallet address as part of it's logic. I don't really understand the details of how that works, nor if it's accurate, but it really doesn't look like 21 Inc wants to make a general purpose miner.

It would be really good to get accurate info on the device, but that's not likely to come quickly.

While I am skeptical about the economics of it, at least the physics here are so much better than a "mining light bulb" (which really doesn't need the additional heat).

It's been a couple of decades since I had an electric water heater. I am curious about:

- What's the typical pressure relief valve set for? Will the 70C temperature cause it to "blow"?

- Do you expect to still have the down-conversion from 220VAC to 12VDC outside the tank? I would seem likely, but warrants consideration.

- Assuming you actually connect up 12V to the "miner heating element", then you'll need to supply say 100A through it's connector, along with Ethernet?

- If the water inside the tank is 70C, then the loss through the insulation will be greater, right? This is great in the winter, not so much in the summer.

- As you mentioned, you'll need some kind of mixing valve to limit the actual water temp to say 45C. It's hard to know what the actual plumbing in the house would tolerate in terms of water temperature. I doubt anyone has done ratings, but I don't actually know.

- Would the miner need to be a variable hash rate in order to ramp up and down in terms of actual heat production? At startup, and during a rush, the water hitting the element could easily be 20C or less?

When I had to screw in a new element, the cost of the element was maybe $25. This would be a $1500 (or more) element?

If I may:

+10.9 = alh

I am not as upbeat. I think the S7 and Avalon 6 push will mean serious jumps till 2016 at least.

But just think, when the light bulb part fails for whatever reason, you get to throw the whole thing away. That includes the mining chip that you paid for.  

I am with Finsky on this. These gadgets which combine mining with an unrelated function will do nothing of use for the purchaser. This also completely ignores the network infrastructure required to support hundreds of mining light bulbs in the store. It works to sell to 2-3 to the "Bitcoin Enthusiast" where two more WiFi gadgets don't matter. It's another thing entirely when there needs to be a 2nd private network once your WiFi environment balloons due to the mining light bulbs.

While I too am curious and will probably buy one, it will strictly be for tinkering. Here in Minnesota, our local Micro Center has the Raspberry Pi B+. Same CPU and memory as the Pi-Zero, but 4 normal USB ports, and the Ethernet jack, all put together for $20 (retail price). While I am sure it would be possible to embellish a Pi-Zero to run an ASIC miner, it would make zero economic sense. I suspect that is true for most folks as well.

I had a virtually identical experience with the Ebay China vendor for Y-cables. Two months of no news, finally a week after the maximum delivery date, and then they refunded promptly. Lost two months, and no money. I would rather pay a little more and actually receive a product.

Also going to put in a couple of Terahash hours for the cause this evening. Hoping for a block!

Sorry for the really late reply. Please just go ahead and roll this over as you did with Phillip. I have won one of these contests a while ago, so I feel it's appropriate for me to pass on this one.

Of course I'll continue to guess and hope to win another! 

Thanks again, suchmoon.

I think this will have zero impact on the choice of SBC (Single Board Computer) that is used for any mining gear by Bitmain, or anybody else. The cost of the SBC is such a small part of it, that this just wouldn't register.

As I read it, it roughly a Raspberry B-, with a different form factor and reduced ports. The CPU and memory infrastructure look to be straight out of the Raspberry Pi "B series". Even the existing Raspberry Pi B+ costs $20 at MicroCenter to the retail customer. That's got plenty of ports and Ethernet, and would make way more sense.

Yes I think the Pi Zero is a cute and interesting device, but it's impact on the Bitcoin universe will be negligible at best.

With all due respect notlist3d, you need to get out more if there is "life changing" firmware.... 

A little poking around on Google suggests that the 4004 and 8008 came before the 4040, and that the 8080 came after the 4040. Another entry suggests that the 8080 may have been a "sibling" of the 4040 in terms of time. Clearly the 8080 and 4040 were offspring of the 4004 and 8008, respectively.

I never worked with any Intel 4-bit processor. Was the 4004 the one that Intel designed to make a calculator? The 4004 and 4040 look like they were designed to do BCD math.

There are numerous listings on Ebay for 4040 processors and surrounding parts.

It would probably run faster than that SHA algorithm that guy implemented for an IBM 1401 computer (1960's vintage).

Actually, there is/was an Intel 4040. It was an upgrade to the 4004. I don't have idea how much traction it ever got. You are obviously correct in that it never ran CP/M. As you expected, the memory addressing limit was 8K, no cache involved. If you are interested:

http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Intel/MCS-40/4040.pdf

You might wan to consider placing the miner on one "side" or the other, to expose the "warmest side" to more air circulation. You might also want to just invert it so that the "warm bottom" becomes the "top".

YES, but just barely.

Way higher than I was willing to think back when I put in my guess......

Don't do this out in the middle of nowhere though, because then you might not have Internet access.... 

"Free" electricity without Internet access however isn't much good for mining.

My bet is that right now, the ASIC vendors (Bitmain, Avalon, etc) are looking at the halving and thinking that they will have a much harder time selling out gear leading up to that and some time afterwards. Something like:

"Make Hay while the Sun is shining"

Six months from now will be exciting (aka turbulent) times I think.

I would be truly stunned if you could actually buy a dozen SP50 miners and have them delivered, much less 100 of them. So far there are no public price numbers nor delivery dates. It appears that the merger with BTCS isn't likely to yield the result they both hoped for.

Unless you have a an inside source, how do you know what it would cost to purchase 100 SP50 miners? When would they be delivered? I really like Spondoolies equipment, it's just that the SP50 compounds the entire speculative nature of your enterprise.

I wish you the best of luck, you are going to need it.

There you go, messing up an exciting story with math and facts..... 

Yes, it's going to feel like a gut punch, but it's not going to even be 20%.