I am building a few Avalon clones based on the Avalon reference design, I am building a few more than I need in order to share the NRE costs. You supply the chips to me and I plan to assemble them in Stockholm/Sweden the day they arrive. If you have ordered chips and want them assembled into Avalon clones you are welcome to contact me!
2013-06-29: I was supposed to have done this yesterday but now I have tested a full board with 10 chips. It seems to work well, running both modules at 390MHz for a few minutes is a good sign.
2013-06-26: We have assembled the case and all hole positions are correct! Now we have 15 sets of those cases!
2013-06-25: Finally hashing
Next I will solder 10 chips and test with full load... Tomorrow we will receive the enclosures. Lots of things happening now, the biggest job at the moment is logistics
2013-06-24: The nuts have finally arrived:
2013-06-21: The hash units have been tested under load, now I'm waiting for tuesday when I can test with a real chip
2013-06-21 Our connectors have finally been manufactured! Those were difficult to get...
2013-06-19 Good progress today, we have tested the control unit. First test: Flash LED - OK!
The photos are not the best quality, I will post better later. The boards are on their way to Sweden, next week I will test the hash unit with an Avalon chip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJW1ToLiAw
A few notes:
* We don't use PCI-E connectors, but 6 pin PCI-E connectors will fit anyway.
* The hash unit connectors had to be specially manufactured for us, the factory has promised they are done this saturday.
* Capacitor C1 has solder mask, the factory will scrape this off.
Not perfect but no showstoppers yet!
2013-06-18 Nuts and bolts ordered. Nuts had to be custom manufactured but will be finished before the weekend.
2013-06-17 The cases were ordered a few days ago and are to be finished this week, I will post a picture when they are done.
2013-06-15: The boards have been manufactured and the components have been delivered to the factory, the board assembly will be done this week.
2013-06-08: First heat sink has been manufactured, now we are asking the factory to complete the full batch of 60. We have also picked up the components for the circuit boards and are making sure all components in the BOM are there, SMT assembly is scheduled around the 15th.
2013-06-01: CAD drawings for the enclosure are done:
2013-06-01: All components for the circuit boards have been ordered from the supplier.
2013-05-30: Pricing on modules set. $730 per 80 chip module if I assemble it in Sweden and $620 if I send it directly to you and you solder the Avalon chip and surrounding capacitors yourself (capacitors will be included in the package). This includes heat sink and back plane but not shipping.
2013-05-29: Heat sink drawing completed and quote received from factory. Next up is making CAD drawings for the casing and finalizing component orders.
2013-05-27: Components are being ordered, will be delivered to factory in a few days.
2013-05-23: PCB production started
Status:
? Avalons reserved, ? still available.
? Hashing modules reserved, ? still available.
Only a few left, I'm not sure how many of those who have shown interest will order, I'm trying to finalize all sales now...
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The units will be shipped with an overclocked firmware that I have been running since the chip specifications came out. The frequency can be set with 5 MHz intervals. I have been running up to 370 MHz, but at that point it freezes often, so I have slowly went down and landed on 345 MHz where it seems stable:
(I have a 3 module unit, but I set it at 4 modules in software, so some parameters might look a bit strange)
