BFL Miner Delays?

[blackshards]

Are there still BFL miner delays when you order? One of my friends told me he's been waiting months to get his and I'm reluctant to order until its within 30 days.

[gibsonmh]

Yes there are very long delays.  I ordered with a friend in July of 2012, and we just got our 5GH Jalepenos this past week.  I have placed orders in March and June of 2013, and they are still listed as processing.  They must have a huge backlog.
In their defense, I work in Semiconductors also, and all their issues getting their products to market seem very very legitimate.  I've personally seen any and all of the same issues in my 10+ years of working in semiconductors.  Products are very very seldom released on first silicon.  First silicon is almost always simply for debugging, and samples, and seldom ever reaches the end consumer, let alone the customer.

That said, i'm very happy with the Jalepeno I have. It's been cruising along with cgminer 3.3.1 on ubuntu 13.04 for a few days and i'm pleased as heck with it.  It's been stable and much easier to manage than any of the last 9 months of GPU mining I"ve been trying.

You'll have to wait if you order now that is for sure, as I'm sure their backlog volume went up enormously during the bitcoin peaks earlier this year.

Good luck!

[blackshards]

Yes there are very long delays.  I ordered with a friend in July of 2012, and we just got our 5GH Jalepenos this past week.  I have placed orders in March and June of 2013, and they are still listed as processing.  They must have a huge backlog.
In their defense, I work in Semiconductors also, and all their issues getting their products to market seem very very legitimate.  I've personally seen any and all of the same issues in my 10+ years of working in semiconductors.  Products are very very seldom released on first silicon.  First silicon is almost always simply for debugging, and samples, and seldom ever reaches the end consumer, let alone the customer.

That said, i'm very happy with the Jalepeno I have. It's been cruising along with cgminer 3.3.1 on ubuntu 13.04 for a few days and i'm pleased as heck with it.  It's been stable and much easier to manage than any of the last 9 months of GPU mining I"ve been trying.

You'll have to wait if you order now that is for sure, as I'm sure their backlog volume went up enormously during the bitcoin peaks earlier this year.

Good luck!

Well that sucks to hear. Are there any other ways to obtain these? I've tried ebay but the prices are WAY higher than normal and are still just pre-orders.

[gibsonmh]

There is no other way to order one that I know of, and I don't know that I would trust an ebay auction of a pre-order, personally.  I went out on a lark to order mine last June with a friend who is a bit of a bitcoin evangelist and the one who introduced me to this latest tech obsession. 

Now that it's here, i'm very glad I did make the order with him.  So far, BFL seems like a reasonable company who just ran into product development delays.  ( and no, I don't work for them.  My earlier comments are based on my 10+ years in the semi industry.  It's a crazy industry with faster and faster business cycles.  It's a far worse rollercoaster than construction ever was )  I read the CEO of Avalon's comments on getting to market first, and most of his points rang true.  Business in Asia is very much about personal relationships, and you do get more done if you are there or have trusted contacts that know you and will work in your interests.  If you don't have that going for you, business can be difficult or impossible.

personally, I would say if you can afford/stand to wait 3 to 6 months, go ahead and order from any of the shipping companies.  I am personally worried that my other orders were a mistake now, with the Knc and avalon products coming to market.  BFL looked like a smart move in 2012, now it's more of a crapshoot.

On a good note for BFL, It appears to me that the jalepeno is very well built so far, and consuming only 26 to 28W at full tilt, is alot better than my 7950 card ever did.     I was never able to get my GPU mining setups to run more than 24 hours without them dropping offline.  The Jalepeno through USB to ubuntu has been rock solid.  The only downtime has been for me messing with power strip.

Good luck!

[polrpaul]

You can follow us on Twitter @polrpaul for updates on order dates being shipped:

http://bfl.miningrigstuff.com/

[Duffer1]

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody

With the projected difficulty increases, I don't see how anyone can make a profit from any of the advertised ASICs if you don't get your machine on or before Dec 1, 2013.  If it's anytime after that when you get your hardware you could very well never see a return of the purchase price without a significant increase in BTC price.

BFL is just now getting around to filling orders placed this time last year....