AMT users thread.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Joshua Zipkin just sent me another PM, of which I kindly replied:

[captin crunch]

No your the Piece bruno. Ruined my companies names on google. I guess well have to change to change it like these guys.

Happy hunting.

https://minertechnologies.com/

Josh Zipkin also sent me the above via PM, but for the life of me I'm unable to decipher it.

We are never given enough info on anything which leaves me to read between the lines.

Is it just me or does the minertechnologies web site seem eerily similar to AMT's. I think I finally found the forum they talked about putting on their site. Also 1100+ likes for a company no one has ever heard of, including the chip maker.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=633178.0

I read through the thread and had a dejavu moment. They are working on posting a video. right out of the AMT playbook.

[IMET]

On Friday, I was at at the office and I spoke with jim about the solutions they planned to offer their clients. I overheard some talk about being silenced and how if the offered those solutions via their website as planned, they would be acting illegally and therefore could not do it.

<snip>

And that is the problem I have with class-actions. Those customers who are still willing to work with the defendant to resolve their complaints become shut out from the process.

Well, the class action is the process.  

Maybe you don't realize this,  but AMT has only responded to complaints when legal force was levered on them.

There are a lot of customers here that asking about their shipment.  They haven't even realized that there was a class action lawsuit that was created a month ago.  

Not everyone is willing to be as patient with the likes of AMT, as you are.

Why you'd be willing to continue to take AMT's word and do business with them, seems bizarre to me. Let's get refunds and move on.

Not sure why their legal council hasn't given AMT that advice (REFUND EVERYONE).

Like I mentioned in the other thread I spoke to a friend of mine who handles corporate law...sometimes class actions. He speculated based on what I showed him alot of the same stuff. They would be forced into silence to further avoid incriminating themselves. That much is pretty standard apparently. But the settlement and resolution is another matter entirely. We still don't know anything about that. I agree with what you are saying tho. Not taking them at their word. But at this point does not seem like there is going to be any more word to take them at for a while. I think tho the refund or compensation route is the way they going. Only logical conclusion on this.

That's right. Companies can be silenced and it does effect/get in the way of helping to resolve the issue at hand while there is still is time to resolve the issue, rather waiting weeks and weeks for lawyers to figure out how to get nothing from a company which seems to be pretty much under water.

I also overheard that there were major manufacturer problems. That the company in Southampton Pa, IMET technologies was the one to blame. That the company was given the design from bitmine and agreed to produce the miner based on bitmine's design specifications. That IMET ordered all the boards/components and boards for this production and seemed to overcharge AMT out the ass and didn't act correctly. AMT being more of middle men/salesmen trusted IMET to get the job done. Later AMT found out IMET used components from unreliable vendors, and that IMET tried to collect a larger margin on quick turn board pricing by ordering over 900 boards when their production capacity was less than 30 boards per day, completely eliminating the need for 900 boards to be ordered quick turn in the beginning. Also there seems to be a problem with the board itself that IMET ordered the wrong board specifications and that's why there are several problems to this day.

Also there were other problems there from manufacturers side, and AMT seemed to be up in arms about all of it. Again this was all from a conversation I overheard while sitting in their waiting room. The conversation went on to issues about how the manufacturer is currently holding the remainder of their components that were purchased for the production, that the boards themselves have an issue with them, and that they felt there was nothing they could do because IMET kept on increasing the bill over and over trying charge them ridiculous amounts for production, and then again to fix broken boards as well. That the bill was over 270K or higher, of which the majority had been paid, but IMET kept increasing the bill despite the bad production. and the amount of broken/non working boards has passed the 250 range and they are currently being held by AMT until they can figure out another solution for them.

But overall it seems AMT hired a manufacturer located in Southampton, who ordered the wrong components and overcharged the crap out of them, it seems they are holding the remainder of their components hostage for final payment.

Again - this is hearsay - and I am client of AMT. My name is Mr. Swim, my order # is 333.

Me thinks you overhead too much in an office that is too small to not over hear much.

Give me a break dude!

Suing IMET or even Bitmine.ch is not an issue customers care about.   We only care about a refund.

Besides,  why am I hearing the manufacturing problems from you and not from the source AMT?  

Posting this here because it was suspiciously deleted by a supposed customer of AMT.

Why would an AMT customer delete this?  Why would an AMT customer have so much detail.

Anyway,  looks like AMT is squeezed not only by the customers but also the manufacturer.

IMET is a reputable contract manufacturing and product development company that has been in business for 14 years.  Our reputation is utmost important, so we wanted to address the negative allegations presented by AMT and Josh Zipkin. 

IMET was contracted to build Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) for AMT miners in February of 2014.  The Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) were built to print from various design revisions that were supplied by AMT through Bitmine.  IMET did supply the parts and any part substitutions/placement changes were approved in advance by Bitmine and/or AMT.  IMET does not buy parts from the gray market.  Per our ISO-9000 requirements, we only purchase parts from approved vendors.

After thorough inspection including AOI (Automatic Optical Inspection), the PCBs were delivered to AMT.  Prior to delivery, IMET did verify that the individual PCBs would hash at approximately 200gh/s.  The only discrepancy seen was when there were bad cores in an A1 chip.  In this case, the hash rate was lower depending on the number of working cores.   

AMT was responsible for the mechanical designs, thermal designs (heatsinks), assembly, final test and QC.  The IMET engineering team can confirm that the boards (hash, main, and backplane) worked fine as delivered prior to processing by AMT.

IMET is very competitive in our industry and the prices we charged AMT were fair and reasonable for the work that we did.  Some engineering time was gratis to help keep things moving.  During our last meeting, Josh/AMT wrote a check for services rendered but the bank account had inadequate funds. 

The material that was still left in the shop is being held as collateral until final payment is made.  In the meantime, the IMET engineering team used new boards that were never in AMT’s possession to build up working miners.  The problem is not in the electronics hardware; however, there are opportunities for the PCBs to be optimized.  IMET will give the manufacturing plans to AMT after payment in full for previous and current services rendered.       

[NotFuzzyWarm]

From a technical standpoint I'm very curious to know during testing how the chips were cooled and how long the boards were tested. Specifically, if AMT was responsible for the thermal and heatsink design/assembly after IMET's end, were the boards tested bare? Top & bottom cold plates used in lieu of heatsinks?

[IMET]

From a technical standpoint I'm very curious to know during testing how the chips were cooled and how long the boards were tested. Specifically, if AMT was responsible for the thermal and heatsink design/assembly after IMET's end, were the boards tested bare? Top & bottom cold plates used in lieu of heatsinks?

During the initial hash board bring up (one at a time), we would run them without Ethernet connected and without heat sinks to verify that all 8 chips in a chain were detected.  Without Ethernet connected, the board will not hash and thus not heat up.  We would then record the amount of cores detected.  As long as the chips were detected and the amount of cores were acceptable, we would put them on heat sinks and let them hash for a few minutes in front of a hefty desktop fan. 
We found that when chips were detected and the core number was acceptable, hashing was never a problem; therefore, this testing task was ultimately transferred to AMT as they were responsible for the heat sinks.  I did have a few boards running for days, but again in front of a hefty desktop fan.  We just brought up 10 boards that were left at the shop with 100% yield.  These have been running for over a week.  I also have multiple variations of the hash boards running as AMT made us change some caps and in a few spots did a no install.  All are working.  I am confident that the electronics design is solid.   

[FrictionlessCoin]

From a technical standpoint I'm very curious to know during testing how the chips were cooled and how long the boards were tested. Specifically, if AMT was responsible for the thermal and heatsink design/assembly after IMET's end, were the boards tested bare? Top & bottom cold plates used in lieu of heatsinks?

During the initial hash board bring up (one at a time), we would run them without Ethernet connected and without heat sinks to verify that all 8 chips in a chain were detected.  Without Ethernet connected, the board will not hash and thus not heat up.  We would then record the amount of cores detected.  As long as the chips were detected and the amount of cores were acceptable, we would put them on heat sinks and let them hash for a few minutes in front of a hefty desktop fan.  
We found that when chips were detected and the core number was acceptable, hashing was never a problem; therefore, this testing task was ultimately transferred to AMT as they were responsible for the heat sinks.  I did have a few boards running for days, but again in front of a hefty desktop fan.  We just brought up 10 boards that were left at the shop with 100% yield.  These have been running for over a week.  I also have multiple variations of the hash boards running as AMT made us change some caps and in a few spots did a no install.  All are working.  I am confident that the electronics design is solid.  

This is indeed crazy.  Many AMT customers (myself included) are stuck with non-working hardware and a completely unresponsive AMT.   Now as their manufacturer, you are claiming that you have a solid working system?!

Can you send/post a video (use youtube) of the working AMT miners?

[IMET]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.     

https://i.imgur.com/CKqJU1u.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yBtWiaI.jpg

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I like how they are stacked in a cube, what is supporting the boards? I've used Legos for test setups....
Default software & settings? Got a chip Vdd voltage & clock settings for us?

[FrictionlessCoin]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.     

Date shows 2/23/2014  That is February.  Is this an old photo.   So the system was working back in February?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Good catch on the date though the diff is showing current... Hmm.
Just one or even a few working back then does not mean much. We are still talking only a couple weeks from when the chips first got into Zef's & others hands (early Jan.) to see if they even work at all and figure out how to talk to them.. I'd barely call that time frame Eng. prototype phase much ready to go out the door.

Nonetheless, good start there.

[IMET]

Good catch on the date though the diff is showing current... Hmm.
Just one or even a few working back then does not mean much. We are still talking only a couple weeks from when the chips first got into Zef's & others hands (early Jan.) to see if they even work at all and figure out how to talk to them.. I'd barely call that time frame Eng. prototype phase much ready to go out the door.

Nonetheless, good start there.

These pictures were taken live today and the system is currently running in my shop.  I'm not sure why the date shows February.  I would be interested to know why.  We did not start building PCBs until mid February.  The only thing I did back then was verify that the design worked after various changes kept coming from AMT and Bitmine. 

[eightcylinders]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.      

IMET, that is really very interesting (and troubling).  Can you give some evidence that the boards work for an extended period of time?  I think others have seen the boards work for a few days and then die so showing it working at one moment in time is interesting but not dispositive...

[IMET]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.      

IMET, that is really very interesting (and troubling).  Can you give some evidence that the boards work for an extended period of time?  I think others have seen the boards work for a few days and then die so showing it working at one moment in time is interesting but not dispositive...

I'm working on it.  We have been bringing boards and systems up and down from the pile that AMT left to see if there is anything that can be done to recoup our loss from the bounced check.  I'm committed to keeping this one up for the long term and I'm confident that it will run based on the time I have spent with this hardware.  I am not an expert on these types of systems, but I am an experienced EE.  Hardware is what I do.  Software/firmware is another story hence I don't understand the date discrepancy.  I also hope that AMT comes around and pays their bill so they can learn of the work that I have done on my own time/dime to try to make something good happen.

[opieum2]

Its possible for the boards to run...and from what I understand they got cherry picked....is it possible this is just a small batch of good boards? What was done to resolve the obvious engineering flaws? The problem here is that this really proves nothing. I had a working miner for like a week before cards started to die (now I am down to a single working card from 10).

Is there anything we can do to bring the cards back to life? That would be a HUGE win if that information could be published if it is indeed possible. To me it seems the cards have working chips. But something else caused them to die out.

[eightcylinders]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.      

IMET, that is really very interesting (and troubling).  Can you give some evidence that the boards work for an extended period of time?  I think others have seen the boards work for a few days and then die so showing it working at one moment in time is interesting but not dispositive...

I'm working on it.  We have been bringing boards and systems up and down from the pile that AMT left to see if there is anything that can be done to recoup our loss from the bounced check.  I'm committed to keeping this one up for the long term and I'm confident that it will run based on the time I have spent with this hardware.  I am not an expert on these types of systems, but I am an experienced EE.  Hardware is what I do.  Software/firmware is another story hence I don't understand the date discrepancy.  I also hope that AMT comes around and pays their bill so they can learn of the work that I have done on my own time/dime to try to make something good happen.

Here is what I suggest you do for proof:

- Mine into a BTC address using a pool that allows you to mine directly to a BTC address (like Eligius, but there are others)
- Shoot a video of your working miner using that address (show a newspaper in the video to prove the current date)

We (including AMT) can all then monitor the miner live and confirm its history.

FYI, my guess is that your rPi controller has an incorrect date.  You can easily fix that with the "date" command as follows:

Code:

sudo date -s "3 Jun 2014 20:03:00 CST" 

OR, run raspi-config and setup all options:

Code:

sudo raspi-config
Internationalization options
Change Time Zone
Select geographical area
Select city or region.
Reboot

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Might as well put a copy of this here as well so folks can refresh themselves on the A1's timeline..

Quote from: FrictionlessCoin on Today at 02:36:12 PM
Well then, should buyers also sue Bitmine?  Should we demand from Bitmine working units because their 'authorized reseller' has not delivered working units?

Worth a try.  Send them an email demanding that working boards be sent.
I've said all along that if legal action is taken Bitmine.ch should be a part of it. All the rights & wrongs of the pre-order model aside it was the delays in Bitmine's A1 chip production itself not to mention Bitmine's wildly over optomistic production/delivery projections that upset the apple cart so badly. They set the stage for was was to follow for all players involved. AMT included.

From what little I've seen of the timeline from announcement/taking pre-orders for A1 systems from Bitmine much less AMT even if everything went 100% right with the A1's conception and birth process there is no way anyone could move a new design through GF fast enough to hit those targets. Get 1st spin chips made - yes. Characterize what was given birth to much less come up with an at least workable 8-chip board as well? Much less an entire system done right to deal with the unexpected power/thermal issues? Then source all the parts (that you just now determined the values of)? Say oh, high kw PSU's - that's gonna put a huge dent in the world's supply chain for a bit... So in short, anintagonna happen.

Bitmine *may* have had a very basic board designed to run it but it could have hardly been ready to take what the A1 would really put it through.

C'mon folks, how many times we gotta say read the A1 dev thread to know the timelines! https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294235.0

It does not excuse what has happened but at least it gives a picture of just how screwed up the promised sales/delivery dates were. Dates were primarily set by Bitmine.ch. Not like AMT or other Authorized Distributors are gonna have miners before them.[/quote]

[IMET]

Here is what was brought up today and has been running for a few hours.  I'll keep posting on a daily basis to hopefully convince AMT to pay their bill to IMET so I can show them what to do to make things right or at least point everyone in the right direction.  Again, there is nothing wrong with the PCBs or PCB assembly.  We did not make any mods to the boards.      

IMET, that is really very interesting (and troubling).  Can you give some evidence that the boards work for an extended period of time?  I think others have seen the boards work for a few days and then die so showing it working at one moment in time is interesting but not dispositive...

I'm working on it.  We have been bringing boards and systems up and down from the pile that AMT left to see if there is anything that can be done to recoup our loss from the bounced check.  I'm committed to keeping this one up for the long term and I'm confident that it will run based on the time I have spent with this hardware.  I am not an expert on these types of systems, but I am an experienced EE.  Hardware is what I do.  Software/firmware is another story hence I don't understand the date discrepancy.  I also hope that AMT comes around and pays their bill so they can learn of the work that I have done on my own time/dime to try to make something good happen.

Here is what I suggest you do for proof:

- Mine into a BTC address using a pool that allows you to mine directly to a BTC address (like Eligius, but there are others)
- Shoot a video of your working miner using that address (show a newspaper in the video to prove the current date)

We (including AMT) can all then monitor the miner live and confirm its history.

FYI, my guess is that your rPi controller has an incorrect date.  You can easily fix that with the "date" command as follows:

Code:

sudo date -s "3 Jun 2014 20:03:00 CST" 

OR, run raspi-config and setup all options:

Code:

sudo raspi-config
Internationalization options
Change Time Zone
Select geographical area
Select city or region.
Reboot

Thanks for this info.  I'll do what you suggest.

[eightcylinders]

Hey fellow AMT victims, just for fun I am betting my two cents (.02 BTC) that AMT will actually outlast Black Arrow in my dead pool.  Any takers? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=637990.msg7118991#msg7118991

[opieum2]

Expect more of this with other companies. http://www.coindesk.com/missouri-secretary-state-halts-mining-business-deceptive-tactics/

[Flying Hellfish]

Expect more of this with other companies. http://www.coindesk.com/missouri-secretary-state-halts-mining-business-deceptive-tactics/

It's always amused me how incredibly bad most of the miner manufacture's are at the business side of things.  It's like they all assumed that the incredibly lopsided supply and demand scenario would last forever.   These guys wouldn't last 5 seconds in the real world, they have no concept of customer acquisition cost and the value of a good loyal repeat client (hint, repeat clients drive CAC way down!). 

All these companies appear to have a single fatal flaw from a business PoV, they were all under capitalized.  Because of this they had to resort to tactics that were down right illegal and moronic just to try and stay afloat.  Not surprisingly it isn't working to well and it isn't likely to start working better any time soon, that's probably why the real world doesn't use that particular business model.

The piper is coming and he wants paying from them all, it's really just a matter of when and how much, oh and how many lawyers are getting new swimming pools and BMW's