Cairnsmore1 - Quad XC6SLX150 Board

[regular]

Couple more questions - will these come with a power adapater?  Secondly, since there's that up/down problem at the moment, I don't feel comfortable paying until it's been resolved.  Any ETA on that?  Thank you.

[seriouscoin]

A lot of this depends on the contract we have with individual couriers and they price based on your profile. Taking FEDEX as a case we can actually send more cheaply on International Priority than International Economy and that is peculiar to us. DHL is getting a lot of our business currently but they are being competitive and wanted our business. We are talking to the courier companies to see if we can do better based on a raised volume.

For those of you within the first 50 orders you should have got an email today asking if you wanted your first board on an early shipping slot i.e. this week or next week depending on how things here work. We are now taking payments for people that want the early shipment. After this first week of shipping and a bit of the next we will revert to shipping purely in order we received orders. It is then all down to how fast we ramp up output and when those large amounts of heatsinks arrive.

Yohan

It doesnt matter if your deal with them is cheaper. The total cost coming out of the customer's pocket dictates your sale.

DHL express is probably the best for international shipping. In Asia, they're the most preferred one.

[Keninishna]

yohan, will all shipping boards have a new design (fixing the early RX/TX problem making the second FPGA incompatible with existing bitstreams on your prototype). If not, do you plan to ship boards with a new design in the future ? If yes when ?

I am wondering about this question as well. if the one board I bought is like this I just happen to be handy with a soldering iron and could cut the traces and re wire the lines.

[rjk]

It doesnt matter if your deal with them is cheaper. The total cost coming out of the customer's pocket dictates your sale.

DHL express is probably the best for international shipping. In Asia, they're the most preferred one.

Why not? I doubt they are padding their shipping prices, so if they get a discount, you do too.

[seriouscoin]

It doesnt matter if your deal with them is cheaper. The total cost coming out of the customer's pocket dictates your sale.

DHL express is probably the best for international shipping. In Asia, they're the most preferred one.

Why not? I doubt they are padding their shipping prices, so if they get a discount, you do too.

Did you miss "total cost" ?

or you completely dont understand?

[Turbor]

The total cost coming out of the customer's pocket dictates your sale.

You wish...

[yohan]

Let's clarify the position.

First there is no up/down problem. No one outside of Enterpoint really knows the whole picture of what we are doing with this interface and all I will say at this point is that I think you will like what we are doing here.

On carriage you have the choice to go and buy elsewhere if you don't like our prices. We are not making profit in this area. It's easy to compare what big shipping operations like say Amazon can do but they get a hugh discount over what we can get. They also have specialist packing and shipping operations that are very cost effective. That's not the same for a smaller business running on a tiny fraction of the shipping volume.

On the TX/RX between the 2 FPGAs we won't change the PCB. The Icarus bitstream compatibility was only ever a "get going" solution to give us time to work on our way of tackling this. To respin PCBs would be expensive in money and shipping schedule and it is better to move directly to our planned second stage of having our own build of bitstream which costs us a few days of work but not necessarily in the shipping schedule. We don't need the TX/RX link at all for this and it was our plan not to use these ourselves. Outside of this minor issue the board design is holding up well in our testing and we are very pleased with the results.

We are working on the in-field reprogramability features as well as a back up to having a working bitstream and for any bug fixes needed. If those features work we don't have to load a working bitstream at shipping at all and it can be done in a simple fashion when a customer receives the product. It won't need a programming cable just the normal USB data cable.

At software level we are still looking ok for Icarus type interface compatibility. We understand a lot of this interface already and learning more every day we work on it.

We are not supplying power adaptors. These are add 60-100% more weight to a shipment and the shipping costs more than the adaptors. I am sure someone will complain if we jack up shipping more than the power brick cost. However we are going to try and obtain samples and recommend a few e.g. we can see one we think suitable at Walmart for our US customers. There are also others in Ebay that come from China but ship worldwide. You also can use ATX (needs switch on mod) or anything with the PCIe or HD Drive power connectors and these can be easy options. We are looking at doing a ATX adaptor that will give the ability to use ATX power supplies standalone and give the switch on feature that is the biggest barrier.

Yohan

[wildemagic]

Thanks for the update Yohan.

kind regards

[testconpastas2]

To calm people down. I'm proud (not really) of showing you my seedy "no motherboards PSU plug"

Yohan if you are going to make a professional one please add a switch to it.



http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/1903/img20120527142014.jpg

[Cablez]

I already make an ATX power switch for FPGA applications.  I will put up a pic soon so you can see what it entails.

[testconpastas2]

ok.
 what i want, is a switch without soldering ( maybe a pre-soldered one with 2 wires)  but i dont know even if it exists. i have splices, ferrules and heatshrink covers (dont like soldering)any idea? what can i do?

[Cablez]

Here are the two types of switches that I make:


Unfortunately you do have to solder the pins to the switch leads to get it like this.

[DiabloD3]

ok.
 what i want, is a switch without soldering ( maybe a pre-soldered one with 2 wires)  but i dont know even if it exists. i have splices, ferrules and heatshrink covers (dont like soldering)any idea? what can i do?

To start an ATX power supply are you do is short the green wire to ground. There are readily available solutions to do that.

[testconpastas2]

ok.
 what i want, is a switch without soldering ( maybe a pre-soldered one with 2 wires)  but i dont know even if it exists. i have splices, ferrules and heatshrink covers (dont like soldering)any idea? what can i do?

To start an ATX power supply are you do is short the green wire to ground. There are readily available solutions to do that.

Thanks to you both . That is what I did ( shorted green-ground) but I would like to add a switch like CAblez did but without soldering. ( maybe a presoldered switch or one with some kind of ferrules to crimp). do these kind of switches exist?

But dont worry too much my PSU has a big switch which i can use to turn off/on, and besides I`m thinking about buying any kind of atom, via nano or amd low power motherboard to install linux and cgminer on it.

[wildemagic]

But dont worry too much my PSU has a big switch which i can use to turn off/on, and besides I`m thinking about buying any kind of atom, via nano or amd low power motherboard to instal linux and cgminer on it.

None of those are really low powered, at least any kind of mini-itx or desktop style mobo.

I have a amd e350 mini-itx setup on a 60w brick, and the lowest I can get it down to is about 30w, still huge for something that is essentially doing nothing.  Quite a few atom systems with the GMA vid will get you below 20w.

Ideally you want to get a <10w system.  I have an eeepc701 that I can scrape down to just a bit over 10w, and I have an OLDE toshiba tablet PC that has a 600mhz p3 that I can trim to about 8w.  Lastly, if your up to it, you can get a raspberry pi and do <3w (NFI how to get a nix miner operating on a pi tho).

kind regards

[luffy]

well, i am not fond of FPGA needing PC to get to work!
i will wait for a stand alone solution with FPGA.
something like an FPGA router with preinstall linux and cgminer 

[Lethos]

well, i am not fond of FPGA needing PC to get to work!
i will wait for a stand alone solution with FPGA.
something like an FPGA router with preinstall linux and cgminer 

You'll still be paying for the PC attached it regardless, even if it comes with it.
There are some very low cost "PC" that have made there way to working with FPGA's.

One that comes to mind is the Raspberry PI, it comes in at about $35. Certainly cheaper than most PC's use attached to them.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

There is also a few routers who can be re-flashed to be suitable for the job as well.

[testconpastas2]

well, i am not fond of FPGA needing PC to get to work!
i will wait for a stand alone solution with FPGA.
something like an FPGA router with preinstall linux and cgminer  

You'll still be paying for the PC attached it regardless, even if it comes with it.
There are some very low cost "PC" that have made there way to working with FPGA's.

One that comes to mind is the Raspberry PI, it comes in at about $35. Certainly cheaper than most PC's use attached to them.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

There is also a few routers who can be re-flashed to be suitable for the job as well.

I preordered one in RS components. Maybe i should wait for it.  i have one aspire one with c70 c60 proccesor and it is really low powered  i though i could get some low powered mobo too.

You are right 70-80 w (where did I read 70-80w ?¿)   is too much for a dedicated miner mobo, but  I'm afraid that raspberrypi couldn't handle  10-20 cairnsmore1 boards.  

[steamboat]

would it be possible to skip the host pc altogether and run it straight from a router once it's supported by cgminer, like P_Shep has done?

[Lethos]

would it be possible to skip the host pc altogether and run it straight from a router once it's supported by cgminer, like P_Shep has done?

If you have the right kind of router yes it's possible. It won't work on just any apparently.
I don't have any experience with this, so P_Shep sounds like the guy to query.
Currently I use Atom D525 mobo/cpu's so far, and for the next purchase I am considering the raspberry Pi, just to see how well it handles it.
The Atom uses between 8-12 Watts most the time, so it's a real energy sipper right out of the box.