Alpha Technology Litecoin (Scrypt) ASIC Miner Order Batch 1 Now!

[VJLoops]

Hey Fiaz -- At what point are the balances for miners going to be due? Will we see a working product before they are? July is coming up fast...

just received my email notice to pay the remainder.  £3,849.99 due by 05/06/2014

[1714806520]

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[1714806520]

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[frankenmint]

Hey Fiaz -- At what point are the balances for miners going to be due? Will we see a working product before they are? July is coming up fast...

just received my email notice to pay the remainder.  £3,849.99 due by 05/06/2014

If they are running non US dating then it means 6-5 whch would be two weeks from now.

[WayToGo]

Is Alpha Technology the first one to ship?
Waiting to hear how it pans out.

[Searing]

Hey Fiaz -- At what point are the balances for miners going to be due? Will we see a working product before they are? July is coming up fast...

just received my email notice to pay the remainder.  £3,849.99 due by 05/06/2014

l


got mine too...but don't know kinda hard to shell the rest of the cash out without a 'tapeout' yet nor of course a prototype which is what they said
before they would ask for payment..

we could get BFL'd in all this ..even if it is with their best efforts

Searing

[VJLoops]

Email announcement just received.

Greetings Miners!

We're happy to inform you that development is finalizing and we are on track for shipment in July. We will soon receive our chips at which time we will have finished up on development and can begin assembling the devices.

Therefore, it is now time to collect the remainder of the funds for your order(s).

The invoice for your order(s) have been sent via email to your registered email address. You will be able to pay the invoice by logging in to "My Account" on our website where you will find a "pending" order for the amount due.  A new order number has been created for the final payment. However, this number does not relate to your place in the queue; shipping is still based on your earliest order number.

Please note: All 25 Mh/s devices are now 90 Mh/s and 5 Mh/s are now 18 Mh/s, your invoice may show an older hash rate so do not worry just ignore this.

As stated earlier there is still some limited availability from unfulfilled orders so orders will now be open for anybody who would like to join batch 1. If existing customers would like to add to/upgrade their order they can do so by emailing payments@alpha-t.net.

We are once again pleased to be accepting credit card/debit card payments. Temporarily through Payza which, indeed, is not available in a couple of countries (including the US). We apologize for that. We are working with our bank to accept credit card payments *directly* through our bank (Lloyds Bank, Cardnet.) from all customers. That means you will not be sending a payment through a third party gateway (such as PayPal, Payza, MoneyBookers, etc.) anymore but directly through a highly trusted and accredited bank.

It will take us a few days to implement it as a new, and naturally mandatory, PCI-DSS compliance test will have to be performed by the bank, and the gateway needs to be programmed against their API.

Customers who in the meanwhile cannot, or do not wish to, pay with Payza can simply wait. This will not affect your client status, nor your place in the order queue/shipment priority.   

Should you have any questions, concerns or problems please feel free to contact us at any time. If it’s related to your order email payments@alpha-t.net and if it's a general enquiry please email info@alpha-t.net.

A reminder of the benefits of being a batch 1 customer: Being able to order first as well as free shipping for batch 2, 10% off any future batch of your choice and free cloud hashing from our cloud mining service (we are not ready to release details yet but know that the reason behind this is to match potential competition).

We would also like to use this opportunity to sincerely thank you for your continued patience and support during the development of our miners.

Alpha Technology Team

[verloren]

Is Alpha Technology the first one to ship?
Waiting to hear how it pans out.

According to their webpages, Zeus and Lightning are already shipping.

[allcoinminer]

Hey Fiaz -- At what point are the balances for miners going to be due? Will we see a working product before they are? July is coming up fast...

just received my email notice to pay the remainder.  £3,849.99 due by 05/06/2014

l


got mine too...but don't know kinda hard to shell the rest of the cash out without a 'tapeout' yet nor of course a prototype which is what they said
before they would ask for payment..

we could get BFL'd in all this ..even if it is with their best efforts

Searing

Hi there,

I did say we would try and we definitely wanted to do this as it seemed like the obvious approach at the time however after thoroughly analyzing our options to ship as efficiently as possible with our VP of ASIC development Eric Gunn we decided it was not the best approach if we want to ship ASAP. We did try to hold it off as much as possible (despite cries on this forum for final payment) but taking it now will allow us to order crucial components earlier so we can start large scale all at once. We will not be shipping slowly as we intend to have all units our within a time frame of 2 weeks. Traditionally sample chips are sent after tape-out then 1-2 months after that is when you get your wafer orders sent to you. What we have done is order the majority of our chips all at once with the tape-out, we paid extra for these (20% more) for speed. And getting these  chips with tape-out will take a little bit longer than normal but we will get a huge bulk of chips to assemble into devices so in the long-run we are shipping quicker. So we cannot demonstrate the product yet, if we had the chips to demonstrate a product we would have shipped units by now, this is the fastest way to get the product to you.

Where the final product is manufactured?

[maardein]

I got my email requesting the rest of the payment as well. I am really doubting whether I will make the payment or not. I think Alpha should first give us some more information:

- I have only seen some FPGA samples up to now. No proof of a working asic chip whatsoever. Come with some prototype videos of a HASHING device. A video/pictures of your manufacturing location would be nice as well.
- I want more details on the cloud hashing. As it stands now ~2340usd for 18mh/s (130usd/mh) is a decent deal when shipped NOW, in july it is probably about 10x to expensive. How much cloud hashing will we receive, what are your guarantees etc. You say that the reason of cloud hashing is to match competitors. Does this mean you will match ANY competitor shipping at the moment you do as well by adding free cloud hashing? And, if so, will we get the free hashing for 1 week, 1 month, a year? You really need to be more detailed.

[benjamin07]

Alpha-t: email back at you.

BFL received their bullet run, could not communicate with them.
BFL then waited 5 weeks for a new wafer run only to find out that their PCB does not work with them
BFL then reworked the PCB only to find out that the firmware needs tweaking

that's BFL who has done this time and again.

You say you ordered all your chips in one go and are just going to assemble 10,000 units and hope all is ok? can I laugh?

[vesperwillow]

I did say we would try and we definitely wanted to do this as it seemed like the obvious approach at the time however after thoroughly analyzing our options to ship as efficiently as possible with our VP of ASIC development Eric Gunn we decided it was not the best approach if we want to ship ASAP. We did try to hold it off as much as possible (despite cries on this forum for final payment) but taking it now will allow us to order crucial components earlier so we can start large scale all at once. We will not be shipping slowly as we intend to have all units our within a time frame of 2 weeks. Traditionally sample chips are sent after tape-out then 1-2 months after that is when you get your wafer orders sent to you. What we have done is order the majority of our chips all at once with the tape-out, we paid extra for these (20% more) for speed. And getting these  chips with tape-out will take a little bit longer than normal but we will get a huge bulk of chips to assemble into devices so in the long-run we are shipping quicker. So we cannot demonstrate the product yet, if we had the chips to demonstrate a product we would have shipped units by now, this is the fastest way to get the product to you.

So what you're saying is, you haven't even taped-out yet? And you seriously expect to ship within a month and a half, which is normal time for tapeout?

Dear community, I urge you to stand by this: No tapeout, No payments.

UNLESS they can provide sufficient proof of tapeout completion.

[Hannah faeos]

This is very helpful to me.

[vesperwillow]

Well how about you update everyone and only ask for payment after you have chips, and after they've been worked up to show that the hardware is working right. Then as payments come in, let's say a time window, you have time to build the systems.

I've watched other ASIC companies do what you're doing, only to end up with dead chips or wafers which far underproduce spec, and people were out of money.

[maardein]

Yeah, the whole reason why I liked the 30/70 payment split was so that we, as customers, would bear less of the risk. This way we are still bearing the full 100% of the risk, since you still have no proof of a working device.

[aggster]

When does the 2nd instalment need to be paid by? what happens if the deadline is missed?

[Searing]

When does the 2nd instalment need to be paid by? what happens if the deadline is missed?

from what I understand you apply for your refund before that point on you initial down payment

they give 1/2 back and a 70 pound (British $$) fine...on top of that

in USA dollars it came out to an even 20% loss on the total purchase price of an alpha vyper fyi

not sure what I"m gonna do yet..they say they will have a credit card option in USA to pay but i don't see it
the paypal type option they have payxila or whatever is not "legal' in the usa as a wire xfer service
ie banned....

what a clus*t*f*c*

we were supposed to see a working prototype with a chip by now...have paypal to pay as an option both have now gone away

maybe a person should just bail...starting to smell like BFL now we take all the risk...they have zip in the way of risk

if they took credit card you may have 'some' options within 45 to 60 days ..bitcoin or wire xfer you have none

Searing

[anderl]

Looks like alpha tech decided to go with a mediocre product. They tried to compete with the big boys and provide huge hashes but couldn't keep up in scale so they decided to try to get units or sooner but at 28nm they couldn't develop as fast as Zeus miner so Zeus ended up beating alpha by 6 weeks.

By the time all the Zeus rigs get shipped difficulty will be too high to get any ROI back from vipers even with this free cloud hashing they are offering temporarily. What a waste.  And they had such a lead over everyone else.

And good luck with tape out. You stated end of April. Usually 28nm tape it takes 90 days.  But you decided on taking the risk that those sample batches will have quality chips. At 28nm odd are good sample batches will have a lot of defects but you still plan to install and ship them to customers.  Wow the balls.

Customers... Keep an eye out on alpha terms and conditions.  They may cut you down to 90 days if they feel that the chips may have caused high failure rate.

[riskyfire]

I'm pretty dissapointed, I was hoping to see a working unit before the final payment was requested. I'm in two minds on whether to make the payment or not.

[markyminer]

Is Alpha Technology the first one to ship?
Waiting to hear how it pans out.

According to their webpages, Zeus and Lightning are already shipping.

Yeah but the revised zuesminer specs seem appalling if you are in a power conscious area. read here ;

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=16301.2835

5.5mh @ 200 watts!  I think because of 55nm tech.  our small machines are estimated @ 18mh for 180 watts If I read the updates correctly (was 16mh @ 160watts).  In the UK where the cheapest power is $0.20 kwh I would rather have delivery in July at the lower power consumption. I have no idea how they compare on price. I make this 650+watts for the same 18MH.

Mind you wouldn't mind it explained how the power consumption is known without a working machine that can be measured at the wall socket?  Still happy to pay up but only via the direct Lloyds credit card payment promised in the uk.

M

[markyminer]

I'm pretty dissapointed, I was hoping to see a working unit before the final payment was requested. I'm in two minds on whether to make the payment or not.

FYI my attached PDF invoice was blank apart from the AT header details. Was this the same for everyone else ?

M

[ayayay]

when will the hosted hashing begin?