I got my FPGA Mining Controller....how about you ?

[bitlane]

I bought this little baby a couple years back to play around with.
Since then, it has served as a HTPC, a network appliance, a regular kid's PC and now to end it's life in fashion.......

It's my new FPGA Controller  .....as soon as I can get a few BFL Singles that is....LOL







Did someone say, 6 USB Ports, Gigabit LAN and sub-60W power consumption ? ?

Here's what I hope things will look like soon (4-6 we....er.....months ?):

[Wandering Albatross]

If I recall the numbers you won't have enough time to recoup the $3600 for the BFLs with only 4-6 months of mining.

12-(2+4) = 6
or
12-(2+6) = 4

You have free power? That would help.

[bitlane]

If I recall the numbers you won't have enough time to recoup the $3600 for the BFLs with only 4-6 months of mining.

12-(2+4) = 6
or
12-(2+6) = 4

You have free power? That would help.

LOL...no, the 4-6 months is when the BFL units would ship out to the regular public after pre-orders are all filled

[BFL-Engineer]

The BFLs look nice but the high power consumption, the large lead time before delivery and the import duties to anywhere in Europe makes them pretty much a non-starter for EU and UK based miners, IMO.

With FPGA mining solutions largely being USB controlled, having a separate machine to control them seems a waste of energy and capital unless there's no machine already being used 24/7 - and going with my knowledge of most miners, this is a very rare situation We've all got some server of sorts somewhere that's constantly on... no need to invest in new hardware.

That said, unless you've got a fully UPS'd setup at home, one *very* useful method I've found in the UK is to use a netbook with an extended battery as a failover server... we get lots of little power cuts, cuts that zap out high-power-pulling machines like my main Mac Pro, and sometimes long enough to take down my Mac Mini Server (my UPSes have all died and I can't replace them right now). In the case of these power cuts, I've got a Dell Mini 10v running Snow Leopard that can run 10 hours on its extended battery... perfectly adequate for keeping a controller ticking over and sending out messages that the power has failed.

Importantly, if there's a power cut then the FPGAs will stop running too... but with the Spartan-6 units more suited to high-power-cost areas like Europe, sticking a couple of new batteries in my APC SmartUPS 1500, running the FPGAs off that and using the Dell to control them would be pretty much power-cut-proof...

Equally, many netbook 'extended' batteries have a hefty capacity and deliver DC at a voltage within the wide tolerance acceptance range of my ZTEX FPGA board... something completely non-stop could easily be rigged up

As far as we're informed, commercial samples are not taxed when shipped...



Regards,

[jake262144]

Maybe not on the way out of the US, but the only way to get round import duties when coming *in* to the UK is by a fraudulent declaration on your part, which I wouldn't dream of asking you to do.

For European sales you're going to need a reseller - individuals / small companies here buying directly from you will end up paying hefty taxes (there's import duty, then 20% VAT on top of that) which reduces your competitiveness.

Right you are, Catfish.
I got stung when I bought my Zosma Phenom II 970T (Zosma is a codename for Thuban-based quad core Phenom AMD decided to sell OEM-only).
Not because I asked the seller to misdeclare the package, mind you, but rather because all the documents were in Chinese ^^
The customs office held the poor sodding CPU hostage for a week and I needed to prove how much I'd paid for it so that tax and import duties could be calculated.

[BFL-Engineer]

The BFLs look nice but the high power consumption, the large lead time before delivery and the import duties to anywhere in Europe makes them pretty much a non-starter for EU and UK based miners, IMO.

As far as we're informed, commercial samples are not taxed when shipped...


Regards,

Maybe not on the way out of the US, but the only way to get round import duties when coming *in* to the UK is by a fraudulent declaration on your part, which I wouldn't dream of asking you to do.

For European sales you're going to need a reseller - individuals / small companies here buying directly from you will end up paying hefty taxes (there's import duty, then 20% VAT on top of that) which reduces your competitiveness. There's plenty of demand because not all European countries have sky-high electricity prices, sadly my two places are in the UK and Switzerland which both have pricey power.

And remember that the UK in particular is virtually bankrupt so HMRC (taxation agency, now integrated so that Customs and the Revenue can share data, they used to be separate in the UK) is being asked to squeeze as much as possible. The 'commercial sample' / 'returned for repair' trick won't last long - for cheap stuff from China, it has always worked, but the value of your goods are high enough for the tax on them to be attractive to the government. The only way round that is to declare the value of the goods as much lower than they actually cost, which is, again, fraudulent.

Fancy setting up a resale business? I own two companies, one of which is VAT registered - doing basic exim would be easy enough, but due to UK law, warranty and refund go back to the final vendor, so I'd be taking a risk if your products fail to meet expectations or suffer failures...

As IIRC you said a while back, you're probably best off dealing with Frankfurt. Not sure how profitable this would be to any EU partner though, so you may not get many takers unless you deal with an existing miner who is happy to carry the business for little-to-no profit as long as you offer him/her sweetheart deals on a few Rig Boxes...

Under certain circumstances, we can shift a part of our responsibility to our client (upon his/her request), should he/she be willing to take the risk. The terms are negotiable.



Regards,

[rjk]

I bought this little baby a couple years back to play around with.
Since then, it has served as a HTPC, a network appliance, a regular kid's PC and now to end it's life in fashion.......

It's my new FPGA Controller  .....as soon as I can get a few BFL Singles that is....LOL

http://members.shaw.ca/bitlane/r1600.jpg

Did someone say, 6 USB Ports, Gigabit LAN and sub-60W power consumption ? ?

Here's what I hope things will look like soon (4-6 we....er.....months ?):

http://members.shaw.ca/bitlane/r1600bfl.jpg

Bitlane, that's cool. And, if you remove the hard drive and run it off of a USB stick, you can save a few watts.

[P_Shep]

Or:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124419

[Wandering Albatross]

If I recall the numbers you won't have enough time to recoup the $3600 for the BFLs with only 4-6 months of mining.

12-(2+4) = 6
or
12-(2+6) = 4

You have free power? That would help.

LOL...no, the 4-6 months is when the BFL units would ship out to the regular public after pre-orders are all filled

Well maybe you don't know this. The current reward will be halved in Dec. (a.k.a. 12th month). So how do your profit numbers look?
You'll have 3-5 months actually since March is close. Does the math confuse you? There are some online calculators.

[bitlane]

If I recall the numbers you won't have enough time to recoup the $3600 for the BFLs with only 4-6 months of mining.

12-(2+4) = 6
or
12-(2+6) = 4

You have free power? That would help.

LOL...no, the 4-6 months is when the BFL units would ship out to the regular public after pre-orders are all filled

Well maybe you don't know this. The current reward will be halved in Dec. (a.k.a. 12th month). So how do your profit numbers look?
You'll have 3-5 months actually since March is close. Does the math confuse you? There are some online calculators.

JESUS H. CHRIST....

I NEVER MENTIONED ANYTHING IN REGARDS TO PROFIT, PAYBACK OR RECOVERY......GET OVER YOURSELF.

MY TIME-BASED COMMENT WAS THE TIME THAT I WOULD ACTUALLY RECEIVE A UNIT AFTER PRE-ORDERS WERE FILLED AND THE JOKE ABOUT BFL'S DELIVERY TIME.
....now take that online calculator and shove it up your ass.

Quit trying to read between the lines and simple read WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE OP.

If I was worried about ROI, I wouldn't have ever considered purchasing new hardware at this point in the game...so YES, I know about rewards-halving.....

FUCK OFF...

[bitlane]

Bitlane, that's cool. And, if you remove the hard drive and run it off of a USB stick, you can save a few watts.

Unfortunately I am a Windows Man....lol....so it will get an SSD and a quick and dirty install of Win7, along with all of the other stuff that I am using in my regular Windows Mining Farm (CGMiner, VNC software etc). Nice and simple.

[BR0KK]

I'm a windows man to, but reecently i switched all my main machines to mac. On my mac mini Server i'm running a single windows vm (vbox) that cares for my 5 board ztex cluster.  

[spiccioli]

The BFLs look nice but the high power consumption, the large lead time before delivery and the import duties to anywhere in Europe makes them pretty much a non-starter for EU and UK based miners, IMO.

As far as we're informed, commercial samples are not taxed when shipped...


Regards,

Maybe not on the way out of the US, but the only way to get round import duties when coming *in* to the UK is by a fraudulent declaration on your part, which I wouldn't dream of asking you to do.

For European sales you're going to need a reseller - individuals / small companies here buying directly from you will end up paying hefty taxes (there's import duty, then 20% VAT on top of that) which reduces your competitiveness. There's plenty of demand because not all European countries have sky-high electricity prices, sadly my two places are in the UK and Switzerland which both have pricey power.

And remember that the UK in particular is virtually bankrupt so HMRC (taxation agency, now integrated so that Customs and the Revenue can share data, they used to be separate in the UK) is being asked to squeeze as much as possible. The 'commercial sample' / 'returned for repair' trick won't last long - for cheap stuff from China, it has always worked, but the value of your goods are high enough for the tax on them to be attractive to the government. The only way round that is to declare the value of the goods as much lower than they actually cost, which is, again, fraudulent.

Fancy setting up a resale business? I own two companies, one of which is VAT registered - doing basic exim would be easy enough, but due to UK law, warranty and refund go back to the final vendor, so I'd be taking a risk if your products fail to meet expectations or suffer failures...

As IIRC you said a while back, you're probably best off dealing with Frankfurt. Not sure how profitable this would be to any EU partner though, so you may not get many takers unless you deal with an existing miner who is happy to carry the business for little-to-no profit as long as you offer him/her sweetheart deals on a few Rig Boxes...

Under certain circumstances, we can shift a part of our responsibility to our client (upon his/her request), should he/she be willing to take the risk. The terms are negotiable.



Regards,

Hi,

how much does weight a unit? how big is its package?

spiccioli

[Wandering Albatross]

....lunatic scribbles deleted.

Another embarassing BTC citizen. No wonder businesses are so skeptical of BTC.

[DiabloD3]

If I recall the numbers you won't have enough time to recoup the $3600 for the BFLs with only 4-6 months of mining.

12-(2+4) = 6
or
12-(2+6) = 4

You have free power? That would help.

LOL...no, the 4-6 months is when the BFL units would ship out to the regular public after pre-orders are all filled

Well maybe you don't know this. The current reward will be halved in Dec. (a.k.a. 12th month). So how do your profit numbers look?
You'll have 3-5 months actually since March is close. Does the math confuse you? There are some online calculators.

JESUS H. CHRIST....

I NEVER MENTIONED ANYTHING IN REGARDS TO PROFIT, PAYBACK OR RECOVERY......GET OVER YOURSELF.

MY TIME-BASED COMMENT WAS THE TIME THAT I WOULD ACTUALLY RECEIVE A UNIT AFTER PRE-ORDERS WERE FILLED AND THE JOKE ABOUT BFL'S DELIVERY TIME.
....now take that online calculator and shove it up your ass.

Quit trying to read between the lines and simple read WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE OP.

If I was worried about ROI, I wouldn't have ever considered purchasing new hardware at this point in the game...so YES, I know about rewards-halving.....

FUCK OFF...

And you think this was appropriate for this board, how?

[bitlane]

And you think this was appropriate for this board, how?

Sorry Diablo....I got a little carried away.
You know how it is, you can only put up with stupidity for so long at times.....especially when people can't even read what you type, yet still feel the need to comment.

I will control my replies better next time.

[DiabloD3]

And you think this was appropriate for this board, how?

Sorry Diablo....I got a little carried away.
You know how it is, you can only put up with stupidity for so long at times.....especially when people can't even read what you type, yet still feel the need to comment.

I will control my replies better next time.

Dude, you think this is bad? Try #bitcoin on freenode.

[Red Emerald]

And you think this was appropriate for this board, how?

Sorry Diablo....I got a little carried away.
You know how it is, you can only put up with stupidity for so long at times.....especially when people can't even read what you type, yet still feel the need to comment.

I will control my replies better next time.

Dude, you think this is bad? Try #bitcoin-otc on freenode.

FTFY

[eleuthria]

I'm using my AspireRevo with 11 FPGAs at the moment.  I retired it as my HTPC when I upgrade to a giant 4U norco box that managed to fit perfectly into my coffee table .

I think my Kill-A-Watt was only reading 15-20watts on the PC last time I checked.  Really is nice to see 2.2 GH/s running on less 120 watts .

[bitlane]

Really is nice to see 2.2 GH/s running on less 120 watts .

That is awesome. Much better than the usual 120W yielding 220 MH/s from a severely overclocked single 5770...lol

Which FPGAs are you running ?