Thanks Glasswalker, will give these a go, since I do crave stability in my bitstream, No offense meant to Makomk's bitstream, my boards just are not cooperating. So for at least a while I will try the hashvoodoo and provide any feedback on them. So these use it's own bitstream and controller and flashed the same way, via usb? Okay. |
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For me it is going to be 2.
Even though I have been mining as a hobby for a year, I have not had access to an FPGA and so have limited experience with them.
As I am in the UK where do you think is the best place for me to buy my first FPGA to use as a show piece?
I have checked out Enterpoint but have not had an email back yet.
Any other places?
Find it strange you've not got an email back yet, I've always had contact back in a matter of hours, at reasonable times of the day. Have you tried reaching Yohan via these forums he's active here. Yes enterpoint would be the best option. Out of curiosity what questions were you asking enterpoint? |
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What advice would you give for me at the moment?
Hold off until October (I have a feeling that the roll out of the new ASIC's is going to take a long time) or at least find out what the investors/Government think or can assist me with?
Depends: 1) Can you afford to spend a £10000+ on FPGA's and Pre-order ASIC's to build your farm now? or 2) Do you need to prove it to backers to fund this? If it's more 1, go ahead buy what seems to be the most cost effective option and a lot of them, mostly FPGA's at first later ASIC's so you got something to mine with. Looking into generating your own security on GLBSE for people to buy shares in the company for a portion of your hash rate. It will help you keep building the farm up. If it's more 2, buy 1 or 2 as example pieces and invest anything you have left and generate into investing in shares in ASIC based securities. Once the backers decide to invest, Buy up some ASIC's since their is no chance they'll do it any time soon and it easily be october or later. ASIC's will be the it thing to buy by then and you'll have ASIC's on the way and shares to hopefully bring a nice ROI. |
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Well, I do not have any bitcoins, this was the only site that I have found where people trade services. I'm trying to find a programmer that can create a bot on the iphone that can create new accounts on a game, play the tutorial, use a referral code, get to level 10, use udid faker and pull a second, third and so on email address and create another account. Rinse and repeat for about 100 email addresses and account names. If you are interested, you can contact me by personal message and we can figure out a price.
Openly admitting that you want to create something that is probably against most games TOS, or at the least highly unethical. Then in a bitcoin forum you want to pay for their highly expensive services via paypal to someone they don't know (seriously?). I'm not going to event comment on it's difficulty, but as a programmer I'd not want anything to do with it. |
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Customs and delivery costs can be pretty expensive, for the bulk buyer buying internationally, especially since BFL use heavy power chargers, instead of the more energy efficient PSU powered route many FPGA makers went with.
I'm personally holding off buying more FPGA's and holding out for ASIC, I've put more into securities based investments and seeing what ASIC provides.
Since I've already got a few FPGA's I figured I'm set into the next generation comes around.
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Would it not be good for Bitcoin to have a Bitcoin mining company that pays TAX?
Having official registered companies that pays the country that they are operating all legal TAX's might bring other companies into the fold and gain trust from people who are still on the fence with Bitcoin?
To be honest, it don't think it would make a big of a difference as you might think. Banks and governments are still on the edge about bitcoin, not because we aren't paying our taxes (or even if we are), but because bitcoin threatens the "system" as they see it and like it. It's something they don't control, can't regulate and it's not owned by a corporation, it's owned by the people. It will certainly help your long term goal to be paying your taxes, since the government will have less of a reason to hassle you, if it makes you feel better and you want to do your bit to promote your business this way and bitcoin of course. Taxes are not exactly cheap in the UK, hope you got a good accountant who can use a lot of the same loop holes those investment/financial companies use. |
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Anyone who is looking to load Rev 1.4 of the Controller please don't currently. It looks like we have somehow broken the programmer with this version. I will update you all when we know more.
Oh dear... |
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I agree, It is a time of uncertainty, but it's also a time for great profit with the value of bitcoin keep rising due to I expect is a nice mixture of an increased activity in the currency exchange and securities markets, as well difficulty rising to an increase use of FPGA's. News of ASIC is also fueling a buying craze right now, which drives the price up. Speculation is driving the market right now, it's great but crazy time.
It's not too late to get in on buying ASIC's, pre-orders I admit, or investments into the development of ASIC's, it's not just BFL anymore. Check out Block Erupter, they are based in china, very open about the entire process. FPGA are doing pretty good right now, nothing wrong with doing a mixture of building a small farm and investing in bitcoin securities yourself, to help invest in the future costs of doing business.
Do your research, calculate your risks and see if it's worth it. If you at least start planning now, by the time you need to act, you won't miss your chance.
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Yes, if you think you'll profit from it (you should) then yes it would be a good idea.
Enterpoint is based in England so you will at the least have a local supplier of FPGA's.
Also once you grow, like some get yourself listed on GLBSE and sell a portion of your mining as a security as shares.
One thing I've learnt since I got into bitcoin, don't wait around to do something if you think it might be a good idea, atleast give it a go.
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Is it just me or is some piece of the puzzle missing, I mean ductaping two boards together and tossing out one usb-cable wont be likeley to work.
Well that Ribbon cable as glasswalker just mention is part of it yes, they do need to be connected to each other. Think of it abit like how multiple hard drives used to configured back in the day of IDE, where you specifically had to setup a master or slave for them, each of the 2 drives on the cable. Auto didn't work all that well for quiet a while. But with this they are physically connected to your pc, down a single cable to the first one (master), then with another cable between each other (slave). Personally I didn't opt for this, I figured it was overcomplicating it. I only had 2 CM1's and have way more than 2 usb ports available. If their is more to it than 1.4, like improved stability, I'll give it an update. |
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It's not unfair,
sigh It helps if you read and comprehend what I actually said. Oh well. Just because I am critical of your trying to badly defend them based on the difficulty of being the first to market you think I didn't read it? Yes there is many people who could of done it better and given the chance I'm sure they will prove it. I've been a consultant and developer quiet a while, so yeah customer support wise I would of done a lot better job than they did. But it's not my area of speciality, so I support those who's speciality it is and do a good job that aspect. Of course did read, but it's not an good excuse to use (first market mistakes). It would maybe held up better if they hadn't continued to act the same way with later products. By the fact you keep quoting just a tiny portion of what I say, I could be childish and accuse you of the same (not reading/comprehending). But will it get me anywhere not really. I am happy BFL finally has a competitor that stands a chance of beating it to market this time. |
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We should be making Rev 1.4 of the Controller available later today or tomorrow if our testing today goes ok. The main feature of this build is the first usage of the up/down cabling and it is a very simple implementation that we have done to use it. With Rev 1.4 you have the option to pair up boards to use a single USB interface. On the Master board all 4 com ports are used to support 4 pairs of FPGA 2 pairs on the Master and 2 pairs on the Slave. So long and short of it is that you get to use half the USB cables that you needed previously.
If you don't want to use up/down cabling Rev 1.4 will operate pretty much as Rev 1.3. There is 1 dip switch change for Master/Slave selection but otherwise pretty much what you have seen in Rev 1.3.
We are still looking at the implementation of more complicated schemes that will use up/down for either bigger board clusters or even an entire rig and that will come later. Meanwhile the Rev 1,4 will hopefully make it a bit simplier on the USB setup for all of you with multiple boards setups.
We are also experimenting with removing the power feed from USB to the controller to see if it is just better to power the Controller always from the 12V feed. There is a possibility that might cause an ennumeration issue so it's not confirmed we will do this yet but if does look the better configuration we will cut that in to production on boards serial number 0700+.
We are also closing the general pre-order now with the general intention that it will become a stocked item from October onwards. Large orders will possibly still have a lead time and also tend to clean out available stock so it won't always be immediately available.
That is what it's good for Isokivi. Mostly it was an update for those with a lot of boards. |
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his reputation is far better than BFL right now.
I think that's a little unfair on BFL. They have shipped hardware, not particualry successfully, but they're in a bit of an awkward position being first to market (albeit pre-orders). How would you do it? It's very difficult to do a direct comparison between the two, as their operating models are so very different. Like I said, I prefer the Bitfountain model overall, but that will be completely irrelevant if Bitfountain don't succeed. Under those circumstances, Block Eruptor cheerleaders will be purchasing their units from a parallel universe  It's not unfair, how many exact details do you know about the new ASIC product from BFL? Outside of the PR stunt provided info, that already has a lot of speculation surrounding how they will manage those numbers. How far off was the first BFL stated numbers for their singles; massively off because they were guessing. Lab work and predictions based on real numbers didn't factor into it. Now compare that to what Friedcat has provided that about his. Big difference, he has been more open and provided more answers. They are providing numbers and info from the lab as it comes. It's the same reason why I supported Yohan (enterpoint), they are honest and open and discuss their product. Customer support comes first with these people it makes a difference. BFL could have been more open from the start like other FPGA developers, they choose not to, it still hasn't changed, Inaba might change this, but it's early days. I however don't think one person can pull it off, if it stems further up the chain. ... sorry to derail your thread Friedcat. |
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Interesting extension, I've just got into GLBSE and a little help to make it abit easier would be nice.
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What this thread is entirely missing is where the production would be done. (masks, wafers, packaging and bonding). And some really good explanation of why it would be so cheap.
No "LOL we are in China" is not sufficient.
Which software is used to design the chips? Where do the models for the gates come from?
FYI: I am almost certain this is a scam.
There is more details being provided here than anything BFL is doing (and historically provides) I know you don't like them either, so for that I believe them more than them. It might not say much, but it's understandable when doing new things in your field you can't go telling everyone everything, without needing to have those answered in confidence. Maybe not all your questions are answered, but their is a fair amount in the first post (updated) as well as scattered through out the thread, as well as friedcat answering the more techy questions you wanted with your accusation of being a scam. They are formed in the city of Shenzhen (China), which has a well known technology manufacturing background, many of the "big boys" in tech in china are based in that city. It's slightly more specific than somewhere in china, don't forget a good portion of electronics today are made there, and with it being done on 130nm (old now) it's ideal for their first design chip. Every question the community has asked, he has managed to give a good open answer, his reputation is far better than BFL right now. |
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Update
Just to mention, since the IPO hasn't finished and bulk purchase at 0.1BTC/share with extra shares offering is still going on, it is not suggested to buy them at a very high price at this moment. Thanks.
I'm still seeing 0.12 BTC/share to buy. When are you selling more shares at 0.1BTC? |
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I'm just glad I got to buy some before they all went at a decent price.
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- Reflashing it via linux atm with a much lesser bitstream. Will update.
Now I'm sitting infront of it, wondering why is it not working. It flashes successfully, for both, but won't mine.
Goona try a few other things, if anyone has a suggestion let me know.
Reflashing with a lower bitstream which also worked fine made no difference. Oh dear... It appears only temp flashes work now, for board #2 more permanent flashes now don't work. So, while I don't need fixing it really. Anyone know why this happened and is the only way to fix this is with a JTAG cable right? |
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- Reflashing it via linux atm with a much lesser bitstream. Will update.
Now I'm sitting infront of it, wondering why is it not working. It flashes successfully, for both, but won't mine.
Goona try a few other things, if anyone has a suggestion let me know.
Reflashing with a lower bitstream which also worked fine made no difference. Oh dear... |
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Okay guys, have a small problem I can't seem to fix.
My Ubuntu rig that I run my 2 CM1's on happily mines away while I do other things on it, like play movies via XBMC.
Today for the first time XBMC decided to crash and nothing would respond, It actually did look like it was still mining so spent 30mins trying to get XBMC to exit but eventually had to resort to pulling the power cord. In hindsight, I could of handled different, but I was running low on options.
I don't blame my other software, like cgminer or anything, just making that clear. They usually coexist fine, have done for many hours of film watching. XBMC is the problem, it looks nice though.
Upon rebooting, 1 board mined fine, the other gave me an error. "Got 0000000, expecting 000187a2" or something, the sort of error I have seen before, but was puzzled this only usually occurs when I do something silly like have left it in the wrong setting.
1) Checked all the settings, all the switches are where they should be.
2) Redid the modprobe command (I had done it once already), no change, also checked the usb #, they are the same.
3) Left it offline for a while, so I could update the working one (yes still works and is abit faster), but still no change.
4) Reflash it via linux, with the bitstream it had before, no change.
5) Reflash the bitstream controller via windows, no change.
- Reflashing it via linux atm with a much lesser bitstream. Will update.
Now I'm sitting infront of it, wondering why is it not working. It flashes successfully, for both, but won't mine.
Goona try a few other things, if anyone has a suggestion let me know.
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