Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s

[bobsag3]

I do have my X-1 up and running. So I als MS about the LCD for it. Here's the answere:

We expect to receive the LCDs for the X1s in the next 2-3 weeks. We have noted that you would like to receive one when they arrive. It will be shipped to you free of charge, though with the cheapest shipping method unless you would like to pay for faster shipping. Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
Minersource Support Team

I hope they can make the date happen .... ;-)

Do we have to explicitly ask for those LCDs in order to have them sent?
And what about mounting them by ourselves, wouldn't this void the guarantee (there is that seal/sticker)?

Since I allredy have mine in Hand I ask for it to complete the box.
I have mine for sale in a auction right know (well; actualy there is an bid on it, so it is sold) and I will send the LCD to the seller.

But thats a good Point to aks about the warranty ... Maybe they send a new seal with the LCD :-)

so for those of that haven't received our x1's yet, we actually have to email and ask for them to be included?

Nope. We will be shipping LCDs out to everyone once we have them, no need to ask. You only needed to ask if you wanted to have your order held for the LCD model, and that is no longer necessary.

[Atomar]

@bobsag
What about the warranty seal?? Do you ship some new ones together with the LCD?
Or how is that working? We have to open the Box to install the display ....

[bobsag3]

@bobsag
What about the warranty seal?? Do you ship some new ones together with the LCD?
Or how is that working? We have to open the Box to install the display ....

I honestly can't remember what the warranty even is?  what does it cover, what's the length? Is it transferable if the unit is sold? How is it handled if bought through a third party?

Only our units have the warenty seal, and new seal will be included with the LCDs, and your order will be marked that the customers were given permission to open the units.

The factory warranty is 1 year, standard manufacturer's warranty. Its tied to serial number on the unit, not who current owns it/bought it.

[Atomar]

@bobsag
Good news! That makes sense? Thanks for the info!
Looking forward to receive the LCD.

[eXOBeX]

Has anyone else just got email spam about an XBTec PACIFIC V2 machine to an email address they've only used at blackarrow? I'm wondering if they've sold/passed-on their customer/victim database to someone else, or had it exploited?

Yep, same here. Email address used only for the Black Arrow order, nowhere else. The bulk mailing has been sent via MailChimp, there's an abuse report address in the email header.

Whois search indicates it's owned by Artem Solodkiy. First registered 16th May 2014, yet the About page reckons they were founded in 2012.

The Pacific 1250 even uses the same PSU as the Prospero X3.
Rear of Pacific 1250


Rear of Prospero X3


X3 PSU (model AP188)


Looks to me like Black Arrow is getting ready to jump ship and start scamming under a new name (seeing as the BA name will be forever mud it's the logical thing to do). In any case XBTec have obtained email addresses without permission, which gives you some idea of how trustworthy they are. Scammer or spammer, you decide.

PACIFIC V2
The Best Miner Available Today
XBTec* unveils a 1.57TH/s compact bitcoin miner with the fastest ROI for a period of less than 3 months, for the price $1399! The power consumption is only 0.8W per GH, which is the most effective solution available today.
 
In development of this miner many shortcomings of previous miners were taken into consideration. In order to achieve such performance with such sizes and power consumption, we had to overcome multiple complex technical problems. Here are some photos of our first model PACIFIC 1250 which is available in stock:
 
XBTec PACIFIC V2 is a joint product of Chinese and Russian engineers. Today it is the most competitive bitcoin miner in terms of price, power consumption and size. Our engineers have optimized the architecture of the PCB board. While developing the miner, we took into account how important it is for the users that the hardware does not emit excessive noise. Indeed, many people use these devices at home, where unnecessary noise is undesirable.

The PCB boards and aluminum cases are ready now! The miners will be shipped on August 31st. We have a special offer on the pre-orders: just use this promotion code kdie8-rjdy2-274jf-3lroe and get $100 extra discount (valid for the first 100 orders only).
 
Moreover, XBTec is preparing to bring a cloud mining solution into the market. The capacity of the data center will be 1 Petahash.
 
*The company’s headquarters is located in Hong Kong. Its developers are based in Moscow and Shenzhen. Factory is located in Shenzhen.

[sorehammer]

I would still like to have a fully functional X1 eventually I tend to hold on to things way after they are useful, But I've traded in my 2 x1's for the chips so will wait till they are selling for penny's

[sorehammer]

Maybe was told 2 weeks for assembly and that's up Friday

[bobsag3]

So now on top of their utter incompetence and failure, one of two scenarios is happening...

One, either they have sold your email to a third party company, which they probably made a lot of money on as a targeted list of emails associated with people who they know have purchased bitcoin miners, will be pretty expensive.
Or
Two, they have spent the last couple of months developing a mew company/brand as anything that has to do with BA is synonymous with fail and utter incompetence.  They have developed slightly different looking cases and are trying to sell products with the same specs as the X-3 to you.

Either way, Bobsag you need to confirm as to whether email addresses from purchases through you have been given to BA?

Nope.

[subseaguru]

What kind of timeframe are we looking at here to finally be free of this madness; end of August? What about compensation units; September, October?

We'll be approaching a year long wait for some customers.

next week

[OgNasty]

Has anyone else just got email spam about an XBTec PACIFIC V2 machine to an email address they've only used at blackarrow?

Yes.  Very disappointing.  Black Arrow continues to amaze.

[Unacceptable]

What kind of timeframe are we looking at here to finally be free of this madness; end of August? What about compensation units; September, October?

We'll be approaching a year long wait for some customers.

next week

Please use this with the next week motto,   ™     

[Yaki]

Are there more X-1s due to shipped from Minersource on Monday?

[nexus99]

This XBTec development might give us some great insight into why the multiple redundant design teams (for example, on the backplate) and why compensation promises are not being honored. Definitely a possibility, the hashing screenshots they show are not inconsistent with it being minions, and the specs they quote are totally consistent with an optimistic over promise of minion performance.

This is pretty exhausting now, for the next several months to a year every new ASIC manufacturer is basically going to have to prove that they aren't Black Arrow!

With bitmain shipping the S3 companies are going to have to have a product availed for shipping. As long as bitmain is shipping everyone else will have to be shipping too.

[eXOBeX]

This is pretty exhausting now, for the next several months to a year every new ASIC manufacturer is basically going to have to prove that they aren't Black Arrow!

Isn't "several months to a year" Black Arrow's motto?

Ultimately BA's mailing list can now be considered a scammers' "sucker list". Anyone who emails a reserved-for-BA email address will be outed as such (and not all BA-only email addresses in the list will be obvious ones, so they can't just be weeded out). This means that BA's mailing list is pretty much worthless as a sales tool. Send to it and you'll get tarred with the BA brush and you may as well pack up and go home.

"Our immersion cooling systems are 3 times cheaper than their counterparts from the United States, China and Germany." -- XBTec

This statement raises more questions than it answers.

Like how come they're not using it in their scruffy-looking "datacenter"? The mains wiring in those cabs leaves a lot to be desired, too. No strain relief on those stripped-back mains cables and if you're going to use DIN rail, at least use some proper terminal strips instead of stuffing all the neutrals into the breaker.

[mazedk]

The comments on ecointalk are that XBTec is a Russian BA reseller that jumped ship.

That's interesting but doesn't explain how they got my BAS specific email address, that's the part I'm most curios about.

+1 - I was wondering why I got an email from them.

[urbanBTC]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=626694.msg8176028#msg8176028

Seem these two companys shares more then we thinks.....

[mazedk]

I asked xbtec what the deal connection is and they said:

"Hello there,

1. We have tried to work as the resellers of Black Arrow in Russia but rapidly understood that they are can not produce their hardware in time and stopped all the relations.
http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/reseller-status-of-xbtek-has-been-canceled.html

2. We have bought the email base from Black arrow. If you do not want to receive information from us, just click on the unsubscribe button in the bottom of the email and we will not disturb you.

Sorry for inconvenience."

(I've added the emphasis)

Lol.. Might have slipped by me. But did I sign up for BA to sell my email address to others?

[eXOBeX]

Bought it? Nice try, but I don't believe them. I'm going on the basis that they ARE Black Arrow. I guess that means they'll be getting the same treatment with their Web of Trust scorecard.

[eXOBeX]

Dogie, I would ask that you re review BA in your manufacturer trustworthiness guide and add this new piece of information into their score.  Violating own ToS as well as privacy acts of almost any and all countries out the ass.

Didn't one of BA's photos show them pre-mining on a live pool? That's another two point hit (only beneficial to AMT & Hashfast as they'd go from joint third-worst to joint fourth-worst).

http://ecointalk.net/topic/392-black-arrow-weekly-production-update/page-227#entry9849
Appropriate that they're signing in as "nobel", seeing as they've been taking the "peace" for ages.

Also, does consistent bullshitting really count as "Okay" communication? I'd say no, which is another three off and puts them into the BFL tier where they belong.

[n00dles0up]

I got my X1 miner today. Can anyone point me in the right direction of a setup guide with linking it to a pool etc?

I have managed to access the miner by finding the IP address from my routers attached devices but thats as far as I have got.

I have found the guide on Minersource not very helpful as the IP address on there didnt work and it doesnt say anything about adding pool details as the images on their guide are different to what I am seeing on the webpage.

Thanks