BM1384 Pod Miner plus trade-in/recycling - an interest and feasibility poll

[sidehack]

Searing, how many times has someone responded to you with a comment about "whatever you're smoking"? Just, you know, just wondering.

To be honest, the only time I've ever seen anything KNC in person was the one day we visited MinerSource in January 2014 to talk about PSU boards. I didn't realize until about half an hour before that we were in the same town and that was during the big move to Colorado but there were still a few miners on site. I don't really know anything about anything KNC has made. Except that the Neptune will kill you in your sleep, but then everyone knows that.

If you buy an S5 off eBay, you should probably mine on it. If you buy one that doesn't work, make sure you don't pay a lot because it doesn't work. Or you could buy a pod directly? I dunno. Do the math and see what pops out.

I'll probably hole the board for LGA1175 coolers. I believe that's what the few HEX4M actually delivered used, which is why there are hundreds of unused coolers in my shop that I've asked about purchasing for this project. Also seems like something fairly standard/common and easy to get parts for. A clip-on cooler for 1-2 chips doesn't make much sense unless your cooler is awkwardly tiny, because top-clock performance on the BM1384 is 10-12W per chip so you probably aren't remembering the max power draw correctly.

[bmoscato]

Can you recycle anything from the U3 miners?

[sidehack]

Probably nothing that would offset the cost of sending it in.

[hurricandave]

Just bought Holybitcoins last two advertised BTCGarden V2's, if this project goes thru, I may send them your way for conversion once I've had a chance to play with them a bit.

[sidehack]

Nifty. I think I have two Garden boards that work, and about 20 that don't.

Also, I'll be basing the chip field dimension on the base of the "ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro" cooler (3cm square). For aftermarket coolers I also have a couple waterblocks but the contact area on them is substantially larger. 8 chips will fit in that area, but it'll make routing and bypass caps interesting.

[chiguireitor]

Nifty. I think I have two Garden boards that work, and about 20 that don't.

Also, I'll be basing the chip field dimension on the base of the "ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro" cooler (3cm square). For aftermarket coolers I also have a couple waterblocks but the contact area on them is substantially larger. 8 chips will fit in that area, but it'll make routing and bypass caps interesting.

Maybe have a clearance area so everyone can fit their selected cooling gadget. I think that would need to be done anyways if you want to support either AMD or Intel heatsinks for the pod.

[sidehack]

There'll be room for larger footprint. What I'm saying is, if you don't use at least a 3cm square contact base, your chips won't be cooling properly. I'll leave plenty of space around it for a bigger (probably at least 6x6cm) base cooler because I know some folks will want it. I'll try to keep all tall parts outside an 8x8cm square to allow for cooler mounts and such. It's gonna be a bit tight because the board is planned to be about 10x10cm but I'm pretty sure I can make it work. Right now I'm planning to have holes for LGA1150 coolers.

[chiguireitor]

[...]

Right now I'm planning to have holes for LGA1150 coolers.

Way to go, this is the best plan imho.

[philipma1957]

[...]

Right now I'm planning to have holes for LGA1150 coolers.

Way to go, this is the best plan imho.

works for me I have a few .

[notlist3d]

[...]

Right now I'm planning to have holes for LGA1150 coolers.

Way to go, this is the best plan imho.

works for me I have a few .

I'm going to have to go through my parts area.  I have a few but been so long I don't remember what they were all were deals at one time or another I bought incase I needed.

Hopefully I have a LGA1150 in there.  I guess not a huge deal if I don't.   Normally I don't pre-order.  But do you think you will do pre-orders on the pod?  I for one feel safe enough for you to pay in advance if it helps you through dev.

[sidehack]

I might do a limited pre-order to help offset initial costs of PCBs and other required parts (all the controls, jacks, signal logic and LDOs), but as always I'd prefer not to take in money until I have a working prototype. I'll probably do some refining on my proof build tomorrow and hopefully test out some stuff that doesn't work quite so well right now which I think I have solved already but it's not implemented on the old board. Did some recalculating on buck design today as well so I'll have a few more parts to replace on that and get it closer to what should be final design. I don't want to get too far into the specifics of a prototype PCB layout until I have all the problems "thoroughly licked".

As is always the case, controls and code is Novak's domain. I assume he'll be testing communication and control stuff while I'm testing power and whatnot. To be fair, I don't actually need his code to work when I do the board design so long as the hardware portion is intact - parts selection, pinout decided upon, etc. He can code firmware and bench-test stuff while we wait for the PCBs to arrive. But once I have a working prototype with my hardware and his software, I'll take stock of what parts I have and how many we're to build in the first batch and see what people want to do. Right now I think ordering prototype PCBs in a week is somewhere on the optimistic side of realistic but not quite impossible. Since I won't be building more Compacs next week I should have a good bit of time for R&D.

Speaking of Compacs, I think I'll reopen an order queue for the next batch.

[Meech]

Yay! More blinkedy blinks!  
I think I can speak for most that this time around a little preorder whether it be funds or equipment is completely understood.

[VirosaGITS]

I might do a limited pre-order to help offset initial costs of PCBs and other required parts (all the controls, jacks, signal logic and LDOs), but as always I'd prefer not to take in money until I have a working prototype. I'll probably do some refining on my proof build tomorrow and hopefully test out some stuff that doesn't work quite so well right now which I think I have solved already but it's not implemented on the old board. Did some recalculating on buck design today as well so I'll have a few more parts to replace on that and get it closer to what should be final design. I don't want to get too far into the specifics of a prototype PCB layout until I have all the problems "thoroughly licked".

As is always the case, controls and code is Novak's domain. I assume he'll be testing communication and control stuff while I'm testing power and whatnot. To be fair, I don't actually need his code to work when I do the board design so long as the hardware portion is intact - parts selection, pinout decided upon, etc. He can code firmware and bench-test stuff while we wait for the PCBs to arrive. But once I have a working prototype with my hardware and his software, I'll take stock of what parts I have and how many we're to build in the first batch and see what people want to do. Right now I think ordering prototype PCBs in a week is somewhere on the optimistic side of realistic but not quite impossible. Since I won't be building more Compacs next week I should have a good bit of time for R&D.

Speaking of Compacs, I think I'll reopen an order queue for the next batch.

Hah, dibs on pre-order if i can afford it in the short window. I think waiting for a prototype sound reasonable if that work for you. Worse case scenario, you do a pre-prorder for trading-in parts first? Dead S5 boards, components you actually need, etc?

If i'm tight on money when the window open, i can always ship that board to the US. That should be relatively cheap to do.

[sidehack]

I'll have to take stock of what I already have, which right now is enough scrounge parts for 50 pods. What I don't have right now is money for non-scrounge parts for 50 boards, so if I do take preorders I'll certainly be open to people paying for pods. I'll also be open to people trading S5 boards, assuming interest in the first batch exceeds 50 pods.

[philipma1957]

I'll have to take stock of what I already have, which right now is enough scrounge parts for 50 pods. What I don't have right now is money for non-scrounge parts for 50 boards, so if I do take preorders I'll certainly be open to people paying for pods. I'll also be open to people trading S5 boards, assuming interest in the first batch exceeds 50 pods.

anytime you want 50usd to 250usd in btc let me know. I will keep a coin on the side for sidehack.

[sidehack]

Well, good news. Looks like routing is possible with the chips that condensed. I haven't dropped in power bypass caps yet but there's room for 'em and all the signals are routed in and out each chip with DRC compliance. That's seriously a relief. Maybe now I should go home for the night.

[notlist3d]

I'll have to take stock of what I already have, which right now is enough scrounge parts for 50 pods. What I don't have right now is money for non-scrounge parts for 50 boards, so if I do take preorders I'll certainly be open to people paying for pods. I'll also be open to people trading S5 boards, assuming interest in the first batch exceeds 50 pods.

anytime you want 50usd to 250usd in btc let me know. I will keep a coin on the side for sidehack.

I'm keeping a tad away for it aswell.  Sidehack has shown very qood quality on the compacs.  I have enoyed playing with them a lot.

This pod sounds like fun in a bigger miner even a pretty cool pod design with being able to add your own cooling allows for some personality to it.

And so far it seems like all good news.   And a lot of work going on.  Cant wait to play with one though.

[Searing]

Searing, how many times has someone responded to you with a comment about "whatever you're smoking"? Just, you know, just wondering.

To be honest, the only time I've ever seen anything KNC in person was the one day we visited MinerSource in January 2014 to talk about PSU boards. I didn't realize until about half an hour before that we were in the same town and that was during the big move to Colorado but there were still a few miners on site. I don't really know anything about anything KNC has made. Except that the Neptune will kill you in your sleep, but then everyone knows that.

If you buy an S5 off eBay, you should probably mine on it. If you buy one that doesn't work, make sure you don't pay a lot because it doesn't work. Or you could buy a pod directly? I dunno. Do the math and see what pops out.

I'll probably hole the board for LGA1175 coolers. I believe that's what the few HEX4M actually delivered used, which is why there are hundreds of unused coolers in my shop that I've asked about purchasing for this project. Also seems like something fairly standard/common and easy to get parts for. A clip-on cooler for 1-2 chips doesn't make much sense unless your cooler is awkwardly tiny, because top-clock performance on the BM1384 is 10-12W per chip so you probably aren't remembering the max power draw correctly.

yeah the knc comment was just to get you riled up ..you would hate me forever

ok still unclear on what I'll need for any of this i will wait for it to firm up some etc (ie lurk)

ie likely i'd have to 'tweak' my way into being one of the 1st 50 pods you have stuff for I guess (if i am following this correctly on this thread)

keep up the good work

[edonkey]

yeah the knc comment was just to get you riled up ..you would hate me forever

ok still unclear on what I'll need for any of this i will wait for it to firm up some etc (ie lurk)

ie likely i'd have to 'tweak' my way into being one of the 1st 50 pods you have stuff for I guess (if i am following this correctly on this thread)

keep up the good work

If you want people to hate you forever, all you have to do is use an emoticon on almost every single line of all your posts.

[sidehack]

I also get pretty annoyed at run-on sentences with zero punctuation, putting an apostrophe before ending "s" at random, the classic their/there/they're and common spelling errors. Nothing against y'all but my mom and sister are both English teachers and I grew up on classic literature (my toilet book right now is Chaucer) so I kinda start twitching when I spend too much time reading the forums.

Also, nobody has to cheat to be in the first batch of pods. Right now nobody at all is in the first batch of pods. When I figure out the final plan of action I'll let everyone know and then it'll be first-come first-served.

My end goal is still to build a bigger miner. The nice things about this project are it allows me to use parts I already have so it'll move quickly and cheaply, it does something people apparently want but can't really find on the existing market, and the entire communication and control system would port directly over to a larger board which makes design work for the next thing that much easier.