I think a lot of people are all talk as far as getting a lawyer and suing.  I'm not against people doing this.  I just doubt anyone actually will.

I've been out of the loop for a bit on bitcoin talk and Avalon over the last 3 or 4 months.  Why are people getting refunded on their batch 3's?  Is Avalon forcing them to take refunds, or are people looking for a refund on their own, and if so why?

Josh has stated today that the Fedex tracking # shows it arriving at the bumping facility in California on Thursday.  Personally I think they start shipping the final week of February, but we'll see.

Hopefully they will release it today.

Just to clear a few things up about what was stated so far by Josh

On the 13th of January par of the original post was

Week of January 26th
Final chips roll off the line

Week of February 10th
We implement the 1/3 shipping plan en mass

The next week on the 22nd he made a change

Week of February 3rd
Final chips roll off the line

BUT this stayed the same. 

Week of February 10th
We implement the 1/3 shipping plan en mass


We will see if this changes in  a future update.  I don't really care as much about what happens in the middle as much as I care about what happens in the end.

I think if one group was basically in charge of the network it might have a major impact on bitcoins and what they are worth.  Distributing the network goes more towards a free market idea, and a decentralized network.   

Think about this for a moment.  If they did start mining themselves with all of there hardware, and just kept producing more of it for them to mine, would you compete against them with your fpga or gpu?  They would kill the market and the network. 

That all being said if I were in their shoes I would have kept the first unit and turned it on to make a profit so they wouldn't have to be so weird about preorders and preorder funding for the second batch.  If I remember reading correctly the 1 unit given to Jeff makes about $240 a day.  They probably could have mined for a 2+ weeks, and proven they had the product while they were producing the remaining 300.  Once all of them were produced then they could ship all of them out to people at once and not given anyone other then themselves a distinct advantage (aside from geography and how long it takes you to receive something from China).

True true.  If I could get my hands on them now I would put them where I could to get paid.  The one issue though is that they aren't shipping the second batch for a bit.  Based on what they have said, and customs I think 2nd batch people won't see there's in America until late April early May.  I'm hoping BFL ships out before then to most of there customers but that remains to be seen. 

Good luck to those that get there units soon though.

Mighr be a stupid question but are you sure that your office isn't doing anything on the network that might be giving you an issue?  Like proxy server settings?

Im a bit surprised by how many people tried ordering 3+ units today.  That's a lot of power to support.  I might be able to support 2 of them at home before I run into trouble but I'm not sure about 3.

So does this mean that the 4 module unit will pull around 800w?

Is posting other people's personal info allowed on this board?

The same men of their word said they wouldn't start a presale on a second batch until an Asic review.  They might get it on time, but more through luck then their word.

That all being said I hope this is all legit and they delivered as promised and this thing works out great.  I don't think I would do business with this company because of their customer service, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone that does.

Interesting.  Wierd if it is the package since they never got him a tracking #.  I guess we will wait a few more hours and see whats what.

 . . . what???  I've ordered several products straight from mainland China last year that I was able to track while it was still in China, and it came through DHL.  I can't be 100% sure when they issued me the tracking number in relation to when it cleared customs, but I know I had it before it came to America.  

On the flip side of that, I do remember the the tracking info didn't seem accurate until it did arrive in America.

Edit: As a side note, almost every time I have done it, it has taken about 2 weeks to get the product even with faster shipping.

How does cgminer know how to use the asic?  It doesn't need any extra programming or drivers? (I'm honestly asking because I don't know. )

With any OS on a writable drive I have a chance of screwing myself.  If I accidentally delete a necessary file or misconfigure something that is written I don't see a way of resetting this.  Hopefully whatever it is running the OS from isn't soldered in in case you need to remove it and work on it in a different box.   This is probably a minor concern though.

Its kind of annoying that at this stage of the game the info isn't out there on how this will be used and we are all guessing based on pictures.

I wonder if a manual is going to come with this thing.  This seems like its going to be a small pain in the butt without a usb port.  Whoever buys this will have to have at least a small knowledge of networking because either

A) It will come with a static address so you can plug in directly to it and telnet/ssh in to change the it to the appropriate address so you can use it normally

B) it will pick up a dhcp address and you will have to log into your router and figure out the address based on that.

Then there is the issue of actually configuring it to work with software remotely . . .  If you misconfigure something and block yourself from the box, how do you reset it to get back in?

I have a feeling that even if you got this device tomorrow, you still won't be able to use it for a while.  Maybe I'm wrong and they already have it working with a miner.  While I bought into BFL I'm honestly not hating or trolling.  I'd like to see this thing actually work.  Perhaps this is why there isn't any video yet.

I haven't done any actual investigation on how this unit is supposed to work, or even thought about it until now.  Is this thing running its own operating system like linux, and you have to telnet/ssh into it?  How do you even know what ip address it picked up if its running dhcp?  Maybe they will all come with a static address and you have to connect directly with a pc through ethernet?

If it isn't running linux, and it is just acting as a dumb box that you control via a pc over ethernet, then how will the software you are using on your pc communicate with it?

Does anyone actually know how this thing is supposed to work?

Possibility #5, Chinese customs are holding the devices.

I wish that picture had something else next to it so I could get an idea as to how big it actually is. . .  and how about some videos?