Avalon batch [2] countdown!

[uhoh]

Mine have cleared customs and I will have to pay about £145 for each unit before it is released.... on Monday

UK (EMS)

Seems a bit steep. I paid £75 charge for each

(DHL)

[1714263067]

1714263067

[1714263067]

1714263067

[bennybong]

Mine have cleared customs and I will have to pay about £145 for each unit before it is released.... on Monday

UK (EMS)

Seems a bit steep. I paid £75 charge for each

(DHL)

Is there any way to contest it? I did question it and they stated that anything over £50 is required to pay import duties...

[candoo]

Mine have cleared customs and I will have to pay about £145 for each unit before it is released.... on Monday

UK (EMS)

Seems a bit steep. I paid £75 charge for each

(DHL)

Is there any way to contest it? I did question it and they stated that anything over £50 is required to pay import duties...

EMS charges a lot of money for doing the custom papers for you. EMS are known "scammers" in germany for that.

[Wayne_Chang]

Mine have cleared customs and I will have to pay about £145 for each unit before it is released.... on Monday

UK (EMS)

Seems a bit steep. I paid £75 charge for each

(DHL)

Is there any way to contest it? I did question it and they stated that anything over £50 is required to pay import duties...

EMS charges a lot of money for doing the custom papers for you. EMS are known "scammers" in germany for that.

That's why in China most of people prefer to use SF-express than EMS.

[uhoh]

Mine have cleared customs and I will have to pay about £145 for each unit before it is released.... on Monday

UK (EMS)

Seems a bit steep. I paid £75 charge for each

(DHL)

Is there any way to contest it? I did question it and they stated that anything over £50 is required to pay import duties...

EMS charges a lot of money for doing the custom papers for you. EMS are known "scammers" in germany for that.

Yeah I think your charge will be more to cover their customs brokerage fees, but considering the declared value is only £335 you're paying a 50% fee for this 'service'. Seems ridiculous. Probably best not to contest it, as it's been known for them to search online for the actual value... and, as we all know, an Avalon is worth more than 335 quid.

[bitdude]

I have picked up mine personally at the airport and thus saved 3 precious days

[Anenome5]

I have picked up mine personally at the airport and thus saved 3 precious days

How did you manage to do that???

[bitdude]

I have picked up mine personally at the airport and thus saved 3 precious days

How did you manage to do that???

I saw it in DHL system online that it arrived to my city. Then there was a note that the package was put on hold due to Friday state holiday + weekend, which means 3 extra days. So I picked up a phone and tried to reach DHL, but only reached automatic response that it is not a work day ... However, there was an option to have connected to some express delivery operator, which means a guy that cares about you when you want to SEND something out. Anyway I tried to ask him and he was kind to give me a contact to the airport DHL personal and after a few calls I was able to arrange holiday personal pickup. Did not expect that really. But somehow DHL people were nice and kind and everything was very smooth and better than expected. It is just about reaching the good guy in the first place.

[onealfa]

..... But somehow DHL people were nice and kind and everything was very smooth and better than expected. It is just about reaching the good guy in the first place.

In which country it all happened, bitdude?
And how you managed to pay al those taxes, VAT?  In the airport? 
All sounds a bit hard to believe...

[bitdude]

..... But somehow DHL people were nice and kind and everything was very smooth and better than expected. It is just about reaching the good guy in the first place.

In which country it all happened, bitdude?
And how you managed to pay al those taxes, VAT?  In the airport? 
All sounds a bit hard to believe...

Czech Republic, EU it is. Yes, DHL actually does have its office and customs department in the airport here, so probably everything that comes in from a foreign country has to go through that depot. And this office cares about these VAT payments, which was 21 % (standard CR VAT) from the declared 580 USD value ($500 HW + $80 shipping). So they counted it, printed an invoice and I paid it and that was it.

The only thing that I was quite shocked about is that absolutely no verification of my identity was done. Any guy from the street that would know the tracking number would be able to track it on the web and arrange the personal pickup just as I did, paid the VAT and go with my package.

[uAboMQOp]

we are almost done ( less than <10% left ), although it'll take some additional days for it to get into HK and actually be on their way of course.

now to finish up the trade-in system, might just manual it though if it takes too long.

I got broken shipping number "No tracking information for the shipment, or overdue tracking. "
(10feb and 11feb orders #110XX, 110XX).
 http://support.avalon-asic.com/support/tickets/1182  http://support.avalon-asic.com/support/tickets/1181

6 day. Unanswered.

Track start working.

Note to who get EMS tracks numbers- 7 day.

Track number point to another (not my) address

[phoenikx]

Happy to report that my unit is received today and is (quite loudly) hashing away in the guestroom. I payed EUR 90,-- for customs.
No dust, btw! No gloves either.

[cosurgi]

woohoo. Just got two avalons and they are working! That was Feb18 (evening) order.

However I see some problems with one of them.

- avalon1 had firmware 20130419 when it arrived, but soon after I saw some problems I reflashed to 20130607
- avalon2 has firmware 20130607

avalon1 has problems. Sometimes the orange light is on - I suppose that's overheating? But that is rather not possible, because they are both 1 meter away, in front of, an air conditioner. Sometimes avalon1 stops responding - I cannot ping it. I am not sure if it is restarting automatically. I have a web-controlled power outlet, so I can do remote restarts. But still I would prefer to fix the problem.

any hints?

btw: Which thread was for this kind of questions?

EDIT: what means the column labelled "NMW" in Cgminer Status / Avalon?
And what mean columns labelled "HW", "Utility" and "WU" in Cgminer Status / Summary ? - are "HW" a hardware errors? Looks like I have plenty of them...

[GenTarkin]

cosurgi - update both firmware on the machines to conman latest...
http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/avalon/

HW errors is hardware errors - should be less than 2% of diff1shares stat .. optimally
NMW is the no_matching_work stat seen on the cgminer_api_log tab
If I had to guess, NMW probably represents comm errors between asics themselves & the fpga controller or USB .. I ono  ....perhaps, but not entirely sure. Im not sure what an ideal % of matching work it should be, but if the number is small in comparison to the matching work stats, should be fine.
The Utility & WU I believe have the same meaning they do for GPU mining...

[phoenikx]

woohoo. Just got two avalons and they are working! That was Feb18 (evening) order.

However I see some problems with one of them.

- avalon1 had firmware 20130419 when it arrived, but soon after I saw some problems I reflashed to 20130607
- avalon2 has firmware 20130607

avalon1 has problems. Sometimes the orange light is on - I suppose that's overheating? But that is rather not possible, because they are both 1 meter away, in front of, an air conditioner. Sometimes avalon1 stops responding - I cannot ping it. I am not sure if it is restarting automatically. I have a web-controlled power outlet, so I can do remote restarts. But still I would prefer to fix the problem.

any hints?

btw: Which thread was for this kind of questions?

EDIT: what means the column labelled "NMW" in Cgminer Status / Avalon?
And what mean columns labelled "HW", "Utility" and "WU" in Cgminer Status / Summary ? - are "HW" a hardware errors? Looks like I have plenty of them...

For support go here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140539.0

[onealfa]

Happy to report that my unit is received today and is (quite loudly) hashing away in the guestroom. I payed EUR 90,-- for customs.
No dust, btw! No gloves either.

Haha...exactly the same here. Except -have paid 97 EuR  taxes

Q. to the experts:
if I reflash latest firmware - will all settings be kept in place?   
There is so many settings, options, etc, which  I may not properly understand (even half of them)
Should i take the  risks to upgrade the FW???

[GenTarkin]

Happy to report that my unit is received today and is (quite loudly) hashing away in the guestroom. I payed EUR 90,-- for customs.
No dust, btw! No gloves either.

Haha...exactly the same here. Except -have paid 97 EuR  taxes

Q. to the experts:
if I reflash latest firmware - will all settings be kept in place?   
There is so many settings, options, etc, which  I may not properly understand (even half of them)
Should i take the  risks to upgrade the FW???

Just go to the area to flash new image. You can download a copy of current settings in case something gets screwed in the config during upgrade process. But, I flashed my avy no problems and settings stayed.

[SolarSilver]

Q. to the experts:

I'm not an expert but I play one on the Internetz

if I reflash latest firmware - will all settings be kept in place?   
There is so many settings, options, etc, which  I may not properly understand (even half of them)

if you use the web interface: System -> Backup / Flash Firmware
and you tick the "Keep settings" radio button then you will keep your general settings like root passwd, network config, cgminer config (which is what you probably want)

Keep in mind that upgrading from a very old version (like Batch #1) to the latest version of cgminer might result in conflicting parameters that will prevent you from launching cgminer, so for older systems I always do a complete reload (don't keep settings) and reconfig the system from scratch

Should i take the  risks to upgrade the FW???

Yes, the latest image from ckolivas is rock solid and offers many advantages like fan speed control and automated overclocking (--avalon-auto)

http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/avalon/20130703/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg2643818#msg2643818

Unfortunately the official Avalon software maintainer just got his first born so he'll be busy and ckolivas is away for 6 weeks traveling Greece. Talk about a summer dip ;-)

[snaxion]

Got my two batch #2s over the holidays. Up and hashing (after getting past some networking issues on my side).

I can't get over how inexpensive these units were. Custom hardware with custom ASICs. They appear to be quality devices. Thumbs-up to the engineers implemented this. I just wish I had them sooner...

[ArticMine]

My order:

User         Order Number   # Modules      # Ordered    PSU (Y/N)   Date Paid      Shipper      Dest. Country     Date Received  
                      
ArticMine          24XX                       3                       1               Y                     2/18              DHL                   Canada              7/03

I received notification of the shipping information from Avalon on June 29. The order showed up on the DHL site about 12 hours later. DHL uses Loomis for local delivery in my area so it was held at the local Loomis depot pending payment of GST/PST and small brokerage charge. I picked up the unit on the same day it arrived in town. There was an extra day delay in the delivery because it was not a major destination.

Some things I noticed.

Performance: Slightly above the specification provided the unit is kept cool. Room temperature should be well below 30 C, the very maximum, and ideally in the 23 C range or lower. This keeps the temperature 3 below 50 C. If the temperature 3 reaches 50 C it will stop and reset etc.

Both the wireless and wired network connections use the same MAC address. So I would not connect both at the same time to the same sub net. This can cause problems. On the other hand if one has separate routers connected to separate ISP connections to the Internet then connecting the wired to one router/ISP and the wireless to the other router ISP works great and provides an extra level of redundancy.

The unit comes without a power cable but also without the wireless antenna. I connected the antenna from an old router and this makes a huge difference to the stability of the wireless connection. These antennas can be purchased online.