Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[Puppet]

Amazing that HashFast is offering up to 400% more hardware to people.  

Not that amazing once you realize all you get is a chip (which costs them <$50) and you still need a module/controller board for which they can charge whatever the heck they want,  if they dont opensource the interfaces. Even less amazing if you consider they will only give it after 3 months, and without saying if its before 24 months. So all they promise is something which by itself is worthless at some unknown point in the future. Yeay. Its like BFL sending out some extra bare asics for their jalapeno's customers next summer; would that make you happy?

[Paladin69]

hey most of us here I think hope it all works out with hashfast..but I too think you will get a visit from "Murphy" don't ya know....(hey I lost money to bfl and put money into knc...only so much $$$ I can throw at this stuff) ...anyway hope hashfast follows thru at a high level .....the more that get their crap together customer service/output on time wise the better...I swear if there are too many more BFL's out there..we will all run to Litecoin...more noise...more $$ from gpu stuff but heck of a lot less drama imho...

Careful what you wish for. If hashfast delivers on spec, in time and in volume, the impact on difficulty will make it about as painful as getting BFL'ed. Thats the whole point with these preorder asic miners, either you get screwed because the vendors do deliver, or you get screwed because they dont. The simple reality is that the money already plunged on preorders in all likely hood exceeds total mining revenue for the next 6 months.  The only way to have any hope of breaking even is buying from a company that does deliver, while the rest doesnt.

I have not bought any asic, nor do I intend to, but if I were a KnC customer, I would sure wish for HF's chip to come out with a major unfixable flaw in its design.

you are probably correct I am a "savant" in doing the wrong thing at the wrong timing in the ASIC world of purchasing and/or lack of delivery...so yeah...do the opposite of me ...is the true plan on thriving with bitcoin....(hey any others on here we should start a club)

not real big on this 'savant' gift  by the by

Searing

The worst thing for miners was when the spot price went to $266 so soon.  It alerted the world.  Dollar signs formed in the eyes of those that could develop ASIC chips.  I'm willing to bet you got involved around March/April Searing?  So many other people did too.

I got heavily involved in the middle of 2012 when I believed the Big Fucking Lie could deliver near the end of 2012 when most still didn't know much about BTC.

I probably made a mistake investing in KnC.  Oh well, throwing money in the garbage is fun.

[Paladin69]

Amazing that HashFast is offering up to 400% more hardware to people.  

Not that amazing once you realize all you get is a chip (which costs them <$50) and you still need a module/controller board for which they can charge whatever the heck they want,  if they dont opensource the interfaces. Even less amazing if you consider they will only give it after 3 months, and without saying if its before 24 months. So all they promise is something which by itself is worthless at some unknown point in the future. Yeay. Its like BFL sending out some extra bare asics for their jalapeno's customers next summer; would that make you happy?

Yeah the difficulty is going to run away from everyone for sure.  I'm not even sure why KnC bothers to talk about "next-gen".  People are going to be very upset around January/February.  At the rate of difficulty increase, even an imaginary 70TH ASIC machine in October of 2014 will have a shelf life of less than one month.

I hate sounding like I'm spreading FUD, but I think people would be much better off getting November refunds and investing in BTC directly.  It's nice that KnC is the only company that does allow refunds.  It will probably be worth taking advantage of.  The fact that they allow refunds tells you they have more than enough orders to not care when people do.  Their parts probably are dirt cheap, like you say.  The initial NRE was a drop in the bucket in terms of how loaded with cash they are.  Like BFL and every other ASIC developer, that was all they cared about.

Internally companies know this whole thing falls apart some time around the middle of 2014 where nobody can chase the difficulty then.  They will try for one more round of "next-gen" before people realize this is a mug's game.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Could it be due to only having a load on the 12V rail? Havent read the entire thread, but assuming your mining rig didnt go up in flames yet, perhaps you can try connecting a hdd to the PSU to put some load on the 5V.
(note: AFAIK, most 3.5" desktop drives use both 12v and 5v, but to be sure, if you have a 2.5" drive or something else that uses 5V, use that).

Most high end modern PSU no longer need any load on the 5V or 3.3V rails.   They rectify the AC and produce all the output on the 12V rail.  If their is some 5V or 3.3V load it isn't produced by AC power they just use low cost solid state DC to DC conversion to convert some of the 12V power into 5V or 3.3V power.

Honestly there is absolutely no reason that ATX isn't updated to be 12V only.  Nothing runs at 5V or 3.3V anyways.   It sure would make the connectors and PSU design simpler and more efficient. 

[Puppet]

Most high end modern PSU no longer need any load on the 5V or 3.3V rails.  

Yeah but most =/= all and that PSU is a few years old. Certainly worth trying.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Amazing that HashFast is offering up to 400% more hardware to people. 

Not that amazing once you realize all you get is a chip (which costs them <$50) and you still need a module/controller board for which they can charge whatever the heck they want,  if they dont opensource the interfaces.

It doesn't matter what it costs them it matters what the market price of 1 GH in chips is worth.  At $1 per GH market prices 1,600 GH/s is $1,600.   HF has indicated they will have third party board designers.  They might screw over their customers but that would be insanely stupid.  Future versions likely won't have an MPP and if they are as efficient as they say they are they can go very low on prices over the next year.  Not saying they won't "scam" their customers but it would be making a few quick bucks over a cut of the entire market for the near future.

[Its About Sharing]

Could it be due to only having a load on the 12V rail? Havent read the entire thread, but assuming your mining rig didnt go up in flames yet, perhaps you can try connecting a hdd to the PSU to put some load on the 5V.
(note: AFAIK, most 3.5" desktop drives use both 12v and 5v, but to be sure, if you have a 2.5" drive or something else that uses 5V, use that).

Most high end modern PSU no longer need any load on the 5V or 3.3V rails.   They rectify the AC and produce all the output on the 12V rail.  If their is some 5V or 3.3V load it isn't produced by AC power they just use low cost solid state DC to DC conversion to convert some of the 12V power into 5V or 3.3V power.

Honestly there is absolutely no reason that ATX isn't updated to be 12V only.  Nothing runs at 5V or 3.3V anyways.   It sure would make the connectors and PSU design simpler and more efficient. 

Hey D&D, now that you mention it, there is actually a reason to run something at 5V. Would you mind giving your opinion here? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309687.0
Much appreciated for my hardware power supply "issue".
Anyone feel free to chime in.

[Searing]

hey most of us here I think hope it all works out with hashfast..but I too think you will get a visit from "Murphy" don't ya know....(hey I lost money to bfl and put money into knc...only so much $$$ I can throw at this stuff) ...anyway hope hashfast follows thru at a high level .....the more that get their crap together customer service/output on time wise the better...I swear if there are too many more BFL's out there..we will all run to Litecoin...more noise...more $$ from gpu stuff but heck of a lot less drama imho...

Careful what you wish for. If hashfast delivers on spec, in time and in volume, the impact on difficulty will make it about as painful as getting BFL'ed. Thats the whole point with these preorder asic miners, either you get screwed because the vendors do deliver, or you get screwed because they dont. The simple reality is that the money already plunged on preorders in all likely hood exceeds total mining revenue for the next 6 months.  The only way to have any hope of breaking even is buying from a company that does deliver, while the rest doesnt.

I have not bought any asic, nor do I intend to, but if I were a KnC customer, I would sure wish for HF's chip to come out with a major unfixable flaw in its design.

you are probably correct I am a "savant" in doing the wrong thing at the wrong timing in the ASIC world of purchasing and/or lack of delivery...so yeah...do the opposite of me ...is the true plan on thriving with bitcoin....(hey any others on here we should start a club)

not real big on this 'savant' gift  by the by

Searing

The worst thing for miners was when the spot price went to $266 so soon.  It alerted the world.  Dollar signs formed in the eyes of those that could develop ASIC chips.  I'm willing to bet you got involved around March/April Searing?  So many other people did too.

I got heavily involved in the middle of 2012 when I believed the Big Fucking Lie could deliver near the end of 2012 when most still didn't know much about BTC.

I probably made a mistake investing in KnC.  Oh well, throwing money in the garbage is fun.

yep april 12th order left 65gh already upgraded (2 months ago forced to I thought update) 60gh to a monarh for 2k extra (dumb)....now I see that BFL is shipping 3 days of stuff a week and are on march 11th I think...my current theory is they just gave up even trying ...and are 'recommending' you xfer all your stuff to their GH hosting farm at 10.38gh available in FEB 2014 ...so my 3519 bucks I have left would be 339gh .....I'm stalling...figure I'd be better off getting the 6 units I have coming yet from them of the 65gh and just mine ALt sha256 coins in the future (hey its like gonna be 450watts)....my only hope is all the "outdated toys of toyland" will make their own 'asic island of lost toys" and pick a sha256 coin to mine out of  stubbornness and denial in thowing them in the river ...god knows there will be enough of us....in 6 months (denial all i'm good at these days) but NO 339gh to BFL I won't even get doorstops...if they manage to stay in business after this....i'll be surprised...but they running to full fledged cloud hosting imho asap or so it looks.

sorry off topic ...I do find it amusing that the guys with "line drawings of the miners" on their web site have come thru..just goes to show learn from my mistakes only go KNC imho intent means a lot they still may mess up..but intend and circumstances matter ....silly hobby this btc is (see denial in april is was a business now its a hobby..sigh)

[soy]

Will that take some heat off the PSU to cool it down some?

Find out. Many (though mostly older) PSU's need a minimum load on the 5v or they dont regulate properly. This can cause severe issues, like high fluctuations on the 12V.
Just connect a cdrom drive, light bulb, hdd or whatever to put a minimum load on the 5V and see if it makes a difference. If it doesnt help, its not going to hurt either.

Steady the 3.3v Rail

http://www.ebay.com/itm/JUMP-START-EPS-ATX-24-PIN-POWER-SUPPLY-WITHOUT-A-MOTHERBOARD-MADE-IN-USA-/251029042274?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a727f3462

what do you all think is this iittle add a 3.3v load device on  the power on your knc miner power supply really gonna help any?

or is it smoke/mirrors..?

need to get one anyway if this seems better then making my own ...what the heck I can spring 9 bucks for 2 of them

(alas I know zip about this just trying to cover my butt in that they sent me 11k of stuff with no SWITCHES.....jeez...I must be outta my frigging mind btc/asic endeavors!)


Searing

Might be.  Without a motherboard in place one is making the supply fill a role for which it was not designed.  It very well could be that with the unconnected pins on the motherboard connector, except for the usually jumped pair, will see a voltage and some will retain that voltage.  The motherboard might present a resistive or partly resistive load to those pins that when otherwise using a jumper are left hanging.  When you turn off a computer power supply with a motherboard in place the resistive or partly resistive load will allow the voltage on those other pins to be drained.  Left hanging, a la jumpered pin pair, those other pins might have a voltage that remains after the supply is shut off.  Who's to say beside the power supply designer, that a voltage remaining on a 3.3v line doesn't cause a wrong startup the next time the power supply switch is thrown.  Perhaps a normal buildup of voltage on the 3.3v line has a role in shaping the slope of that current source building up the 12 vdc to its full voltage.  Perhaps if the voltage remains on the 3.3v line after the power supply shuts down, then when the supply restarts, its current ramp to bring up the 12 volts starts very high rather than low!  Then it happens so quick that it can't back off before a capacitor blows.

[soy]

Will that take some heat off the PSU to cool it down some?

Find out. Many (though mostly older) PSU's need a minimum load on the 5v or they dont regulate properly. This can cause severe issues, like high fluctuations on the 12V.
Just connect a cdrom drive, light bulb, hdd or whatever to put a minimum load on the 5V and see if it makes a difference. If it doesnt help, its not going to hurt either.

Steady the 3.3v Rail

http://www.ebay.com/itm/JUMP-START-EPS-ATX-24-PIN-POWER-SUPPLY-WITHOUT-A-MOTHERBOARD-MADE-IN-USA-/251029042274?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a727f3462

what do you all think is this iittle add a 3.3v load device on  the power on your knc miner power supply really gonna help any?

or is it smoke/mirrors..?

need to get one anyway if this seems better then making my own ...what the heck I can spring 9 bucks for 2 of them

(alas I know zip about this just trying to cover my butt in that they sent me 11k of stuff with no SWITCHES.....jeez...I must be outta my frigging mind btc/asic endeavors!)


Searing

Might be.  Without a motherboard in place one is making the supply fill a role for which it was not designed.  It very well could be that with the unconnected pins on the motherboard connector, except for the usually jumped pair, will see a voltage and some will retain that voltage.  The motherboard might present a resistive or partly resistive load to those pins that when otherwise using a jumper are left hanging.  When you turn off a computer power supply with a motherboard in place the resistive or partly resistive load will allow the voltage on those other pins to be drained.  Left hanging, a la jumpered pin pair, those other pins might have a voltage that remains after the supply is shut off.  Who's to say beside the power supply designer, that a voltage remaining on a 3.3v line doesn't cause a wrong startup the next time the power supply switch is thrown.  Perhaps a normal buildup of voltage on the 3.3v line has a role in shaping the slope of that current source building up the 12 vdc to its full voltage.  Perhaps if the voltage remains on the 3.3v line after the power supply shuts down, then when the supply restarts, its current ramp to bring up the 12 volts starts very high rather than low!  Then it happens so quick that it can't back off before a capacitor blows.

The typical way to get a straight line ramp up is to charge a capacitor with a current source.  Breadboarded a switching-servo-amplifier for a division of Kollmorgen back in the late 1970's (patented for sure), the designer used that technique for a saw tooth.  Constant current source charge then discharge at the same rate.  That sawtooth would sit at a precise voltage.  That would be fed to an input on a comparitor.  The other input of the comparitor would be held high and brought down to increase the duty cycle.  The level being brought down onto the sawtooth created a fixed frequency square wave with a duty cycle that changed smoothly from 0 to 100%.  Beautiful and elegant, the harmonics were much more easily handled than with the approach IBM was using, fixed pulse with increasing frequency.

So, perhaps some effort was not duplicated for each voltage the supply produces.  The sawtooth could be used for multiple voltages each having its own comparitor.

[Mota]

So, in your opinion the money "plunged" into preorders exceeds 127 million usd? Are you stupid or did you not do the math before posting that?

BFL was estimated to have 3PH worth of preorders with their 65nm products. Using the cheapest option, that amounts to $135M
So yeah, IMO the total is likely higher than $127M especially since  I doubt BFL has been a big recipient of preorders lately.

Again, Bullshit. http://bfl.ptz.ro/  Even if you triple that number you have only 30 million. and you need to remember that even if, after all those who refunded got their money back, the rest ships, those are peanuts hashing wise.

And you think  more than a tiny fraction of BFL customers reported their orders to that site? Dont make me laugh. Most people never heard of it. If anything Im shocked so many did report it.

This is what I used for my 3PH estimate:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283820.0

Oh and that $300K in refunds changes exactly nothing.

But you can look at it in different ways too, like by valuation of the asic vendors. Asicminer is hardly a major player anymore, but its still valued at $40M. Cointerra value themselves at $20M (pre IPO, Im sure investors would pay much more for it).  Combined they form only a small fraction of the miner market these days, with Bitfury, BFL, KnC and HF likely being the biggest ones right now.

So, you used guestimates of people who counted order numbers and came up with over 2 MILLION Chips from BFL?! instead of taking the estimates from both this forum and bfl's own forum? You don't think that over the course of more than a year pretty much everyone is accounted for in this list? Who do you think ordered those units in the first 6 months? Housewifes who don't know how to use linux or Bitcointalk users who are active in those forums? Where exactly should those 50k+ orders come from? They were/are only present in the bitcoin community and until avalon shipped the first units pretty much no one except those in the forum did know about asic mining at all....
Asicminer is still a major player and ofc valued that high! They dominated the Btc market for some months with 30+% and have their next gen chips coming. You don't think what they mined and what they made in shares is worth at least 40 mil (and they even made money out of their old hardware...)? I would say that they are worth about 60-70 as soon as those new chips are installed and running... Valued themselves`Please, I could value my balls at 40 trillion dollars, that is how much they are worth to me.

[DPoS]

if anyone is interested in a detailed account of dealing with 4 VRM boards pre-.95 I posted it here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306969.msg3325981#msg3325981

For anyone that has been running overclocked 4 VRM boards (since that was the only firmware we had to choose from) then you might want to really think before switching to .95

If you have a new miner without a lot of HW errors (cores turning off) you may be fine with .95 but just know you are stuck with a substandard miner compared to one with 8 VRMs

[ur0pl]

If you have a new miner without a lot of HW errors (cores turning off) you may be fine with .95 but just know you are stuck with a substandard miner compared to one with 8 VRMs

Why isn't a 4 VRM board just as good as a 8 VRM in terms of hashrate?

[Phoenix1969]

If you have a new miner without a lot of HW errors (cores turning off) you may be fine with .95 but just know you are stuck with a substandard miner compared to one with 8 VRMs

Why isn't a 4 VRM board just as good as a 8 VRM in terms of hashrate?

I gotta call BS on that. I have  4VRM boards on my saturn that can do over 300Gh/s with the right firmware. .095 slowed it down
your 4vrm board is like that because there is a bad vrm, like you stated...  it has nothing to do with the amount, except if the other 4 were there, it would have had redundancy
I appreciate the firmware info, and am thinking of reverting to an earlier firmware also
which do you feel is best?

[jelin1984]

which software for 300gh?

[Puppet]

So, you used guestimates of people who counted order numbers and came up with over 2 MILLION Chips from BFL?!

1.2M. And FYI, that amounts to a little over 1000 wafers (http://www.silicon-edge.co.uk/j/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68), or ~$2M which coincidentally is around the amount you would need to be able to order directly at globalfoundries without having to go through intermediaries.  GF has several 100,000 wafer per month capacity, 1000 per year is not exactly a big deal for them.
BFL recently said they could now order directly at GF.  SO yeah, that sounds entirely believable to me, and it also rhymes with claims made by BFL earlier about their % of the installed asic base when you contrast that with their order queue.

Of course you are free to dismiss all those estimates, call me an idiot and actually believe published orders on this forum are more accurate. If so, you would also believe that KnC only sold 158 Jupiters:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=249065.0

Not the ~1500 most people assume.

[Phoenix1969]

which software for 300gh?

0.94 & 0.93 both worked fine for me

[Mota]

So, you used guestimates of people who counted order numbers and came up with over 2 MILLION Chips from BFL?!

1.2M. And FYI, that amounts to a little over 1000 wafers, or ~$2M which coincidentally is around the amount you would need to be able to order directly at globalfoundries without having to go through intermediaries. BFL recently said they could now order directly at GF.  SO yeah, that sounds entirely believable to me, and it also rhymes with claims made by BFL earlier about their % of the installed asic base when you contrast that with their order queue.

Of course you are free to dismiss all those estimates, call me an idiot and actually believe published orders on this forum are more accurate. If so, you would also believe that KnC only sold 158 Jupiters:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=249065.0

Not the ~1500 most people assume.

1,2M was before the update, that update was 22 April, since then with his calcutlations and added +2M Gigahash it's at more than 2M. Read the sources you quote right.
Recently said? They have those orders standing since about half a year according to your source!
Stating anything that BFL says as believable puts you in a new level of troll.
Also, I did NOT state that my previous comment is valid for KNC Orders. They had not more than a year in wait time and therefore not all orders can be accounted for. Also, they do not have that many orders stated on their own forum AND they are way more public with the upcoming independent movie and their general publicity is way better. Don't compare stuff that can't be compared.

[Phoenix1969]

can someone explain exactly what the "hard reset" does...   does the firmware stay, or revert to...?

[tolip_wen]

if anyone is interested in a detailed account of dealing with 4 VRM boards pre-.95 I posted it here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306969.msg3325981#msg3325981

For anyone that has been running overclocked 4 VRM boards (since that was the only firmware we had to choose from) then you might want to really think before switching to .95

If you have a new miner without a lot of HW errors (cores turning off) you may be fine with .95 but just know you are stuck with a substandard miner compared to one with 8 VRMs

Based on reports from users with Bertmod, 4 of the 8 VRM's were NEVER supplying power.

It IS possible they had some benifit but it was not to supply power.

If they did by some wierd fluke add some benifit, that could be added back using less expensive components.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled tangent.