Things are starting to look better today. Yesterday I managed to get in contact with a vendor on Alibaba who said they can supply the chips within 7 to 10 days, and then later Steamboat messaged me to offer some of his chips. I think we're covered. If both of those fall through, then any K16s beyond the first 90 will be most likely stuck in the queue until August 21st, when the PICs from Microchip should finally come in.

I'll be putting my own order at the back of the line until we've got all the PICs we need. I think it's a business's duty to do whatever is in its power to make sure its customers are not left with the short end of the stick, and that's exactly what I intend to do here.

Turns out the vendor I was speaking to earlier (Newark) didn't even get my order in their system, despite the fact that I called about it several times throughout the day. The last guy I spoke to said someone bought their entire stock of PICs and, since my order wasn't even in their system, there was nothing they could do about it.

Again, I'm pretty pissed off about this. Not only has Microchip failed to deliver on the date they promised, but Newark's broken system and crappy customer support screwed us out of our chance to get them earlier than we would have with Microchip. So right now I'm going to be able to deliver 90 miners and then there's going to be a delay while we wait for Microchip to *finally* ship us our PICs. The projected delivery date as of now is August 21st. I'm going to be calling them just about every day to make sure that date doesn't slip again.

If any of you happen to hear of a way we can get our hands on a few PIC16LF1459-I/SS or PIC16LF1459-E/SS, please let me know. Or just buy them and I'll happily reimburse you. I want to get these miners hashing as soon as possible.

Alright, I called the vendor I mentioned earlier and talked to another customer representative. Their system is apparently broken, such that orders from their website were not registering, and there's apparently nothing they can do to route me around the damage. I tried to get him to escalate my call, and got told "it's a system thing and there's nothing we can do until we get the system fixed" about three or four times. He told me to call back later and maybe they'd have the system fixed, but that they couldn't help me until then.

The guy I spoke to also told me they were seeing lead times on that part well into September, so I'm glad I did not cancel my order with Microchip. I'm still very frustrated, given that there is about a month's difference between the shipping time I was promised and the shipping time I'm actually getting.

I'm going to call Microchip again and see if I can at least fix our place in line. I have a feeling we've been getting bumped in favor of bigger customers, based on some observations BkkCoins made to me in a recent PM. If I can't get our place in line fixed, then I'll see if I can find out if any of the customers we've been bumped by are resellers.

I'm using the SSOP version. I already have 90 of them on hand and I'm trying to get more from Microchip. (More on that further down.)


I imagine he's pretty busy with moving, but the fact that he's moving to a new house at an address unknown to the escrow holder does make me a little nervous as well. Still, it's too early to freak out. I did that prematurely during his group buy and I'm going to try to not do that again.

Regarding the PICs I ordered from Microchip, I called them first thing this morning and waited on hold for about an hour before someone picked up. According to the customer service representative, the PICs that were *supposed* to arrive July 11th won't be arriving until August 21st "due to availability issues." They said I should have received an email notifying me of this change. (I didn't.) The "arrival date" on my order still says July 11th as well.

I'm pretty pissed off. This won't affect those of you coming from Zefir's batch 1, though, since it looks like those chips will be arriving first. I have 90 PICs on hand and only 21 miners belonging to Zefir's batch 1. That means I'll have 69 PICs on hand to handle whoever's chips come in next.

I did manage to find a vendor who appears to have the PICs in stock. Unfortunately the stock displayed on their website did not update after I placed my order, and my order is still "processing," so it's entirely possible that it's just giving me false hope. Still, I called the vendor's customer support line to verify that the stock was actually there and that my order would be shipping today, and the representative said, "oh yeah, you're fine." I plan to continue bugging them at various points throughout the day until I get a tracking number.

I suspect you'll need these: https://klondikedesign.com/?product=klego-connector

I've already bought a bunch for the people in my assembly service who want to connect their K16s together. I'll be distributing them with the miners.

Hey davecoin, sorry I didn't reply to your post earlier. I've been pretty busy these last few days.

The PCBs are not being manufactured by Colin. Originally the plan was to go through Colin's usual PCB supplier, who resides in Taipei, but last week he recommended I go through BkkCoins to make sure we get the latest revision. I was also in favor of going through BkkCoins, not only because he is offering boards at a price below what we had budgeted, but also because he does deserve whatever business we can give him. Since we're ordering enough boards to fill a production run all by ourselves, BkkCoins is going to have the production plant he's working with ship the boards directly to Colin to save time. He's told me they should arrive the first week of August. Given the delays on Avalon's end, I think that'll be early enough.

Right now almost everything is together. The one thing I'm worried about is the shipment of 166 PICs from Microchip that was supposed to arrive ten days ago but still has not shipped. I've got a support ticket open with them and will be calling tomorrow. I'll also see if I can get blank PICs from BkkCoins in the event that Microchip completely falls through.

I'm also somewhat worried about steamboat's ability to supply heatsinks. I've been talking with him on the boards and responses from him are generally pretty slow. I've got the final price on the heatsinks from him, but I'm still waiting on a payment address.

Aside from that, all components have either been received or are in transit and should arrive sometime next week.

I've also bought a bunch of these for anyone who wants to connect their K16s together: https://klondikedesign.com/?product=klego-connector

My assembly service is currently closed to new orders, but I may do another batch if it turns out there's enough interest.

If you submitted the refund request through their customer support system, odds are that they never received it. I think we were supposed to use that Google Forms thing they set up for us.

Alright, I've sent out the order for the PCBs and I'll be grabbing the last of the components tomorrow. The ordering window has slammed shut! We're at a grand total of 220 miners now. :-)

Look at the address in the blockchain. All told, it was refunded ~101 BTC. The refund was sent in four smaller installments.

Order changed to "refunded," but no coins received yet.

Order #8xxx. How do you like them apples?

While I share the trepidation others seem to feel about wearing something built by Google on my face, there aren't really any other options right now. I would rather have one than not, so I'll be buying Google's. I would happily back any viable open source alternatives that crop up on any crowdfunding sites.

If you're going to have an exchange rate ticker, please have it tied to something other than Mt. Gox. They are no longer a real exchange as far as I'm concerned, since you have to be able to get money *off* the exchange in order for it to work properly. The sooner we get off the Mt. Gox "standard," the better.

It looks like this is a Wordpress-based store. Your Python knowledge won't help you much there. I have quite a bit of experience with PHP, but not much with Wordpress.

I noticed you want to take payment directly. How do you plan on managing exchange rate fluctuations? I imagine your costs are denominated in fiat, not BTC.

With heatsink.

From what I understand, the only way to overclock the current revision is to under-populate the board, using only 14 Avalon chips instead of 16.

SebastianJu, please change the price per K16 for my service to $107.

Thanks!

Yes, that is indeed the case.

That would certainly be an option for you, yes. :-)

EDIT: Depending on how close you are and how many miners you buy, I might even be willing to drive out to you. The cost in gas would be a lot cheaper than the cost in unused components if you're able to buy a sizable percentage of the remaining 53 miners.

I got an email asking for more details on how many splitters/adapters one might need in order to power 24 K16s. I'm posting my response here in case anyone else finds it informative:

You need to order power supplies and fans.

The recommended fan is the SilenX EFX-10-12 Effizio: http://amzn.to/1bCQDfj
(Affiliate link: trying to cut down costs however possible.)

If you're getting a lot of K16s, you could probably just put them all in front of a big box fan and be alright. I'm toying with the idea of making a platform and setting them out in front of my air conditioner's fan. From what I've read on the Klondike thread, the chips are pretty easy to cool if you have a decent-sized heatsink on the board.

There isn't a single recommended PSU, but you'll want a gold or platinum certified PSU from a respected brand like Corsair. The K16s are powered by a 6-pin PCIe connector, so you'll need to have enough of those to power your Klondikes. You can also get splitters and adapters to increase the number of PCIe connectors your PSU can handle. I'm thinking about getting this one myself: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153145

I also have a bunch of Corsair Gold PSUs left over from my GPU mining operation that I might use.


Yup. Why do you ask?