[Work in progess] Burnins Avalon Chip to mining board service

[AMD FTW]

Just got my boards from UPS. There was a $130 and some change brokerage fee I had to pay, but I don't really care as I have my boards and I can make that up pretty quickly. Time to get these parts on my table with my anti static mat and wrist band and start assembly as well as checking the firmware on these. I already missed my environmental science class this afternoon but physics will also be blown off tonight. I think I'll be running these together off of my alienware m11x laptop for the short term, but I'll need to look into the raspberry pi eventually once it's all up and running.

SEXY! congrats + good luck.

Well, I'm half way through unwrapping them and there's definitely some damage from shipping. Few pieces ripped off the boards, and tons of bent pins which I should be able to bend back. I will take pictures once I'm finished unwrapping them. I'm good with a solder gun, only problem is so far one board looks like part of the copper trace was pulled up from the board. I'll post pic in a bit.

I think somewhere during shipment my box had some airtime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzRPga6uDg

[roy7]

Hah nice video. Now we know where all the Avalon chips are. Sitting on some runaway.

[AMD FTW]

Here's pics of all the damaged boards. It's pretty obvious the box was thrown around and even though it was intact you could tell the box wasn't nice and rigid. I'm pretty sure even though the boards were taped together and packaged in bubble wrap the adjacent boards heatsink would hit the capacitor/other components and did all the damage. I think one way around this is to either have all the boards in tiny individual boxes which would cost more to ship and up the cost. Another idea is to have the end consumer install the heatsinks themselves and tape all the boards together and put them in one box and all the heatsinks in another box. Then combine these 2 boxes in 1 bigger box to ship it. I'm sure on small orders the boards will arrive in much better condition because of the package being lighter.

Burnin I'm pretty sure I can fix most of these boards. I'm sure Mouser electronics would carry the parts and I get parts from them quickly as I've ordered parts in the past from them. I just need a bit of help finding the parts if you don't mind.

http://www.mouser.com/

Most boards have broken part 1(choke coil?). Its a through hole so I can solder that no problem

One board has cracked part 2 (haven't powered it on yet, I may later today on a separate smaller psu).

Four boards have damaged capacitor part 3

One board has damaged part 4





Here are the damaged boards








You can see the capacitor pulled up part of the copper trace, but it may still function.










Night shot of 16 boards hashing away...who needs a Christmas tree.

[eraziel]

Is there any kind of compensation that you can get from dhl/ups/whoever delivered them?
Did the package had some "fragile" markings on the outside, etc?
Was the package insured?
Even if not I think you can still try to get something out of them due to the fact that it's clearly their negligence that led to the damage...
In the light of recent UPS employees being recorded on tape throwing packages in their delivery van and being fired afterwards, I guess it wouldn't be too hard to get some attention...
Otherwise if you have to send them back to burnin and then back to the US you might even not be able to break even...

[scotjam]

In case someone is asking what to buy to monitor cgminer without having to use a big monitor. Here my little monitor i use for the raspberry pi. I like its so small and can be taken with you easily...

Its a sweet little thing but its not made for showing a full screen though so i have to raise the size of the letters a bit to see enough. Thats a downside. But i can connect it directly to the rpi (with a cinch-connector in between), it gets powered from the atx psu i power the bitburner with and its really cheap with 17€ including shipping.

Im not sure if it can be bought outside of germany. 3.5" Auto Monitor

In case anyone is interested:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/inch-Digital-Rear-Monitor-Square/dp/B0056WJP1M
http://compare.ebay.com/like/380662284579?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes
http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/380662284579?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes

I would order one from your country (look for ones that say free shipping - they're most likely local to you) - if you're not in Asia, ordering one from Asia would take ages and likely incur import duties.

And if you want to hook it up to anything other than a raspberry pi, maybe one of these?
http://www.focalprice.com/CA037X/VGA_to_SVIDEO_and_RCA_Composite_Adapter_Cable.html

[Beastlymac]

In case someone is asking what to buy to monitor cgminer without having to use a big monitor. Here my little monitor i use for the raspberry pi. I like its so small and can be taken with you easily...

Its a sweet little thing but its not made for showing a full screen though so i have to raise the size of the letters a bit to see enough. Thats a downside. But i can connect it directly to the rpi (with a cinch-connector in between), it gets powered from the atx psu i power the bitburner with and its really cheap with 17€ including shipping.

Im not sure if it can be bought outside of germany. 3.5" Auto Monitor

This is also a good display

[slastar]

In case someone is asking what to buy to monitor cgminer without having to use a big monitor. Here my little monitor i use for the raspberry pi. I like its so small and can be taken with you easily...

Its a sweet little thing but its not made for showing a full screen though so i have to raise the size of the letters a bit to see enough. Thats a downside. But i can connect it directly to the rpi (with a cinch-connector in between), it gets powered from the atx psu i power the bitburner with and its really cheap with 17€ including shipping.

Im not sure if it can be bought outside of germany. 3.5" Auto Monitor

This is also a good display

http://www.raspians.com/cgminerlcdstats-with-usb-2-8-tft-lcd-aida64-lcd-smartie/

[SebastianJu]

Can these other monitors show the normal rpi-desktop too? I chose this one to be able to check out when something goes wrong with a miner so that i can edit things in raspberian for example.

I took a pair of old speaker cables like this: http://www.google.de/imgres?um=1&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&hl=de&tbm=isch&tbnid=aDIr3yEfEplxaM:&imgrefurl=http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Cinch-Stecker.jpg&docid=yCBcv7BHYf9EJM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Cinch-Stecker.jpg/1280px-Cinch-Stecker.jpg&w=1280&h=863&ei=DcsdUsHJC4no4QSd94CAAw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=149&vpy=422&dur=567&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=195&ty=101&page=2&tbnh=150&tbnw=229&start=18&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:34,s:0,i:190&biw=957&bih=764, cut the cables and put them together so that one connector is at each end. Then i could connect it to the rpi and the monitor. The power comes from the atx-cables directly. I only sticked the power cables into the psu-connectors.

@burnin... regarding the broken boards. Another workaround probably would be to put the boards in heatsink on heatsink. The heatsinks cant hurt the other and between two top of the boards you could put a bit more bubble foil or styrofoam.
I believe i had so few boards that they all were packaged heatsink showing to bottom. So nothing happened.

[tarmi]

Burnin, will you please answer my question? I sent you an email, and asked you here, but you didnt address the issue.



I have (pre)ordered more then 30 boards, and paid more than 3000 euros for them. How much money will I receive if I decide to cancel my order?


order #:

489
661
711

bump.

[ajw107]

Why not do what other people have done with their chip orders, and actually sell your board and chip order combined as an auction?  That way you will get back far more than Burning could give you (you may make a bit of a loss, or even a profit, but I doubt that).  Also burning won't be left with unused stock.  Also you won't sound so ungrateful, which is what you do now.
I understand the panic because of the delay in chips, and how much money you invested, but so have others and they are not acting like you.  The phrase "grow a pair" comes to mind, you just had to think of alternative solutions, as I have done for you above.
Alex

[tarmi]

Ungrateful? Are you kidding me? He is not doing me a favor, this is business.

After 2 months I am loosing my patience. I want a simple nand straight answer on hthat issue.  Once I get it, I will  think what is my next step, but I need that info.

[juve4v]

I really don't get the logic of certain people. So they ordered dozens of boards, payed a couple thousands of dollars for them but dont have the money for a second hand lousy Asus EeePC for example and yet they choose to mine on RPi ? I mean c'mmon....
All of that for what, 20 W more than RPI? Or 80 $ more is too much?

[-Redacted-]

Why would I want to do that?  The RPi is way cooler...

[ajw107]

He he, I have to agree that it is the hobbist/enthusiast in us that is wanting to use a Raspberry Pi.  We may as well plug them into our main PCs or as you say a second hand laptop.  But that's not a challenge, the Raspberry Pi means you have to keep on playing with it and tweaking it, and keeps you entertained.  The cost has nothing to do with it.

[AMD FTW]

@Burnin I have 18 boards up and running while 17 are DOA right now. If you can get me a part number for part pictured 1 on Post #2533, I can probably get 12 more of those boards up and running in the next 3 days. The other 5 maybe questionable.

Link to where I want to get replacement parts

http://www.mouser.com/

[CumpsD]

Burnin, will you please answer my question? I sent you an email, and asked you here, but you didnt address the issue.



I have (pre)ordered more then 30 boards, and paid more than 3000 euros for them. How much money will I receive if I decide to cancel my order?


order #:

489
661
711

bump.

Send a mail through the shop, works better than posting in a busy thread

[tarmi]

Send a mail through the shop, works better than posting in a busy thread

Already did that, didnt receive any answer.

on the other hand, I saw Burnin making plans to make bitfury board. I am not feeling comfortable with that.

[-Redacted-]

Because?  I'd be absolutely thrilled to have Bitfury based boards from Burnin.

[AMD FTW]

Send a mail through the shop, works better than posting in a busy thread

Already did that, didnt receive any answer.

on the other hand, I saw Burnin making plans to make bitfury board. I am not feeling comfortable with that.

You need to understand that Burnin is just the middle man. He can't control when he'll receive the Avalon chips and he stated this clearly.  When you purchased your Avalon chips you accepted this risk. My order was delayed over 60 days. While this sucks, I don't blame burnin at all as he didn't have anything to do with this. You paid him to have components ready to assemble the boards once those Avalon chips came in. It's not like he can just go down the street and return these components as the pcb boards were probably already made up and electronic components are sold on reels typically which would have been purchased.

As far as Bitfury chips go, why shouldn't he get involved. He has a company that needs to make money. Both chip manufacturers are separate and he has no vested interest in either one besides selling fully assembled boards and turning a profit.

[marto74]

Send a mail through the shop, works better than posting in a busy thread

Already did that, didnt receive any answer.

on the other hand, I saw Burnin making plans to make bitfury board. I am not feeling comfortable with that.

You need to understand that Burnin is just the middle man. He can't control when he'll receive the Avalon chips and he stated this clearly.  When you purchased your Avalon chips you accepted this risk. My order was delayed over 60 days. While this sucks, I don't blame burnin at all as he didn't have anything to do with this. You paid him to have components ready to assemble the boards once those Avalon chips came in. It's not like he can just go down the street and return these components as the pcb boards were probably already made up and electronic components are sold on reels typically which would have been purchased.

As far as Bitfury chips go, why shouldn't he get involved. He has a company that needs to make money. Both chip manufacturers are separate and he has no vested interest in either one besides selling fully assembled boards and turning a profit.

+1