[ANN] Sfards:SF100, the first 28nm Dual-Mode Miner is accepting pre-order now

[Meech]

By L1, do you mean the product that Bitmain declined to actually produce? I wouldn't expect them to Sartre their engineering for that project anytime soon. That's even more unlikely than the folks waiting for S2 upgrade, that hasn't arrived.

Doggie made it sound like L1 was produced just never sold to public consumers, there may be a warehouse out there with a ton of of them hashing!

Exactly my stance and problem with Bitmain -- "The for profit company".

Who do they think they are? Trying to make money. As a money making company.

The point was there was a time when these companies built specialized equipment for the hobbyist/miner/investor releasing the full potential of that equipment.  Much is dumbed down or reworked hardware now just to squeeze another cent from us.  If sidehack can tweak existing equipment within weeks don't you believe a large company with a staffed r&d produce better more efficient miners than the small jumps we've been getting.  "Built by Miners for Miners" is a term that has faded. 

[Philipma1957onvacation]

Looks like the one to five kilowatt miner will be bypassed and ignored for the time being.

Oh well.

[loshia]

The big handickup with "build from miners for miners" is not that people who build them do not have the skils to do it. Or that there is no R&d department or whatever .. There are plenty of examples of chip,vendors and asic manifacturers who do not know how to solder a wire and to use duct tape properly There were many successful projects in the past (from miners to miners) and I hope in the feature also. The issue is the price of chips alone. Whatever you do you are dependent of the chip price. Let us hope the someday big players will sell chips with reasonable margins. In the past if you calculate chip price alone you got ready to ship miner build from particular manifacturer. Why? Because you pay 300% at least margin for the chip alone. Do not get me wrong but it is not a medicine from which  life depends on. Asic price must fall down in order such projects to succeed. The guys are investing their time they are not making money because of uncompetitive prices no donations from comunity nothing..

[thefix]

Someone posted this on bitcointalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1134060.0), I have never heard of them before and it looks like they haven't been around that long from the twitter account.

I also do not see any good company info

They claim to be selling sfards miners http://www.itop-corp.com/

Looks fishy to me

[notlist3d]

Someone posted this on bitcointalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1134060.0), I have never heard of them before and it looks like they haven't been around that long from the twitter account.

I also do not see any good company info

They claim to be selling sfards miners http://www.itop-corp.com/

Looks fishy to me

I suspect not to be real they show stock: Units in Stock:100

If they had some I don't see that site having backing for 100 units.   Were talking around 100k usd or more... i don't see it.   Also  the site is weird as far as variety of items.   

[J4bberwock]

The big handickup with "build from miners for miners" is not that people who build them do not have the skils to do it. Or that there is no R&d department or whatever .. There are plenty of examples of chip,vendors and asic manifacturers who do not know how to solder a wire and to use duct tape properly There were many successful projects in the past (from miners to miners) and I hope in the feature also. The issue is the price of chips alone. Whatever you do you are dependent of the chip price. Let us hope the someday big players will sell chips with reasonable margins. In the past if you calculate chip price alone you got ready to ship miner build from particular manifacturer. Why? Because you pay 300% at least margin for the chip alone. Do not get me wrong but it is not a medicine from which  life depends on. Asic price must fall down in order such projects to succeed. The guys are investing their time they are not making money because of uncompetitive prices no donations from comunity nothing..

You are right on this point.

Even with SFARDS chips pricing that I consider quite fair (the rough 30$ we can see from dualmining), it's hard to have a competitive price on the final miner.
Building the SF100 would cost over 600$ in chips alone.
Add the high amps buck converters, a controller, 4 layers PCB, assembly cost, and your unit is probably more expensive than the SF100 or really close in price.

Last year, Zeus were selling the chips alone for more than a full miner ready to use. For Alcheminer, prices were even worse.
Some other manufacturers were having so high MOQ that it's almost impossible for a small independent project.

[Ermak]

I requested to sell one of the first batch Asik  He took charge and promised that he will come in 3-5 days  .. and forgot to  me.......   I reminded myself,,, I was told to wait until August......

I want to thank the owner of Skype   sfardsservice !!! thank you so much for what I got in the first batch !!!thank you for what you have given a lot of empty promises about delivery to my warehouse in 3-5 days.......



Huge please !!!!! coin return as soon as possible ....I got tired of waiting, getting empty promises.....

[loshia]

Nothing unusual dude unfortunately. The common way of doing business with Chinese is:
100% payment in advance
Then wait at least two or three mounts and am dragon, snake or whatever holiday pops up in between
And it is everywhere not only in asic business.,and it is not cheap at the end.They  got our asses and they do whatever they want because every one wants to do business but no one wants to work and produce anything....
And if when your miner comes be prepared for a brutal fight with Chinese web interface as a small bonus for your patience

[marto74]

From our experience till now as an independent 3-rd parity design and manufacturing of mining gear:
The top companies that delivered chips on time and as promised are Spondo and Avalon (except Gen1 that was a notorious mess)
Bitfury were great until Niko(BFSB) was selling chips, then in Jan 2014 they cut the sales of chips and floor the gas to build own mining farms and serve only 1m + SUD customers.
The best chip documentation for independent design was made by Avalon and Spondo again. Bitfury Gen1 and 2 had almost no documetation just random Bitfury's posts in the form of Q and A
AM was ok with Be200 , but 50% of the chips were garbage.
Bitmine were ok until Zefir was involved. I will do business with him any time again. He even managed to save our project in face of Avalon 1 failure

[TheRealSteve]

Back to the miner itself, can anyone tell me if they see a pcie plug-in anywere on those three boards (pictured on the Sfards site)?

None on those 3 boards, but probably on the backplane (not particularly pictured)?  Look at the bottom two 'connectors' - they're just solid, wide traces to the power management board.

here we go: http://www.bitstellar.com/steps
( some broken images at this time - probably fixed soon - top one shows power connection end anyway )

[alienesb]

Nothing unusual dude unfortunately. The common way of doing business with Chinese is:
100% payment in advance
Then wait at least two or three mounts and am dragon, snake or whatever holiday pops up in between
And it is everywhere not only in asic business.,and it is not cheap at the end.They  got our asses and they do whatever they want because every one wants to do business but no one wants to work and produce anything....
And if when your miner comes be prepared for a brutal fight with Chinese web interface as a small bonus for your patience

Lol on the holidays, so true.

[wolverine5pl]

leave bitcoin and make full scrypt miner PLEASEEEEE
Would love to get 100mhs or more version

[GrumpyBear2]

Back to the miner itself, can anyone tell me if they see a pcie plug-in anywere on those three boards (pictured on the Sfards site)?

None on those 3 boards, but probably on the backplane (not particularly pictured)?  Look at the bottom two 'connectors' - they're just solid, wide traces to the power management board.

here we go: http://www.bitstellar.com/steps
( some broken images at this time - probably fixed soon - top one shows power connection end anyway )

Thanks!  :-)

[tutorialevideo]

any sfards buyers to post a video or soomething like this?

[Philipma1957onvacation]

leave bitcoin and make full scrypt miner PLEASEEEEE
Would love to get 100mhs or more version

If they would cut the price in half for a scrypt only version it sure would be nice, I don't see many interested in the dual mining as much as the scrypt in this thread.

The reason is it is terrible price for sha 256. 1299 plus shipping for 1700 gh that pulls 700. Watts

Two s-5 do 2300 pull 1200 watts cost is  900. So I get 600 gh. More for about 500 usd less

Watts is higher. About 360 kilowatts a month that comes to 36 dollars so it takes 14 months to pay 500 off.

Basically this gear at 1400 shipped is worth less then two s-5 at 900 shipped

[toptek]

leave bitcoin and make full scrypt miner PLEASEEEEE
Would love to get 100mhs or more version

If they would cut the price in half for a scrypt only version it sure would be nice, I don't see many interested in the dual mining as much as the scrypt in this thread.

can you link that thread i  like scrypt mining as well, its all the same to me. I won't dual mine . I don't think it can work as well as they claim , i did try it on my past grindseeds, but don't see why .


If they base it off the A2 version that does about the same MH they may not sigh .

[wolverine5pl]

leave bitcoin and make full scrypt miner PLEASEEEEE
Would love to get 100mhs or more version

If they would cut the price in half for a scrypt only version it sure would be nice, I don't see many interested in the dual mining as much as the scrypt in this thread.

The reason is it is terrible price for sha 256. 1299 plus shipping for 1700 gh that pulls 700. Watts

Two s-5 do 2300 pull 1200 watts cost is  900. So I get 600 gh. More for about 500 usd less

Watts is higher. About 360 kilowatts a month that comes to 36 dollars so it takes 14 months to pay 500 off.

Basically this gear at 1400 shipped is worth less then two s-5 at 900 shipped

hmm long term is all about Watts per Ghz and this miner is best. shame no one is selling it on ebay

[RealMalatesta]

leave bitcoin and make full scrypt miner PLEASEEEEE
Would love to get 100mhs or more version

If they would cut the price in half for a scrypt only version it sure would be nice, I don't see many interested in the dual mining as much as the scrypt in this thread.

The reason is it is terrible price for sha 256. 1299 plus shipping for 1700 gh that pulls 700. Watts

Two s-5 do 2300 pull 1200 watts cost is  900. So I get 600 gh. More for about 500 usd less

Watts is higher. About 360 kilowatts a month that comes to 36 dollars so it takes 14 months to pay 500 off.

Basically this gear at 1400 shipped is worth less then two s-5 at 900 shipped

hmm long term is all about Watts per Ghz and this miner is best. shame no one is selling it on ebay

Well, it is being sold on Aliexpress. But the prices there are sick....

[wolverine5pl]

With duty tax and my current electricity 400 days for ROI just using scyrpt. So not very good. Problem with bitcoin is rising difficult and limited window to make any money hence i don't look at it.
Nice miner but too expensive.
If we're sold on eBay for 800-900 quid then yeah would get one but not 1300 after paying duty tax and courier and miner.

[Zoomhash_michael]

It was this Spring, Phillip (March 2015)

I was trying to arrange a big shipment to split up between a group of us Canadians, since they were offering reasonable prices but unreasonable shipping.  I just wish they would have been upfront instead of going back and forth only to basically tell me to fuck myself, after having committed to 3 different prices.

Anyways lesson learned, always go to the source and skip the middle men. I'm sure they are great to deal with for their intended customers, buying single or small amounts of miners at a time.

When was this? PM me your email address. Also, I believe those were used S4 selling for around $450.

Good luck finding that price point from the manufacturer.