When are they opening orders for their products?
I think you missed it already. Pre-orders were a few weeks ago, I think they were sold out a few days after.
Correct. Sorry we recently stopped accepting wait list requests and changed the thread subject back to what it was originally "Metabank pre-oders ", we should probably change it to something more relevant to where we are at now to minimize confusion. We are not taking any more Metabank pre-orders at this time, as Metabank has not announced any more units for sale.
As for the status of our previous Metabank orders, as has already been stated, Metabank has said they have not experienced any delays so far, but a more specific target delivery date has not been provided, they are still touting: Aug-Oct 2013.
To provide a bit more clarity, once asic chips are in hand (and we know they have had them for about a month now at least, certainly before us), it can take several weeks to a couple of months to have a PCB designed from scratch. This depends of course on schematic and layout engineer experience, on complexity of the board, thermals/voltage/performance targets/error rates, amongst many other things. Then after design is finished, ideally access to PCB printing manufacturer is immediately available and depending on how many layers the PCB will have, whether it is double sided or not, what type of alloys are required, size of PCB and especially how many units need to be produced, this impacts PCB manufacturing time, but generally speaking it can be as little as 3-5 days upwards of a couple of weeks. Next comes the assembly process where ASICs and dozens of other components are put on the PCB boards. This is typically a 3-10 day process depending on similar factors - volume of boards needing assembly and inventory availability to all the dozens of components required to be put on the board are critical. If assembly company is missing 1 component it can delay things for a week or two easily. Lastly comes the external metal case design & milling and volume production which itself can also take a few weeks, although in theory it can be done in parallel to other processes, but can only be assembled after a PCB has been fully completed (PCB printing+PCB assembly). All in all, assuming Metabank had test alpha chips in mid June, August would be very ambitious date but not impossible, Sept should be realistic, and October should allow them some extra time in case at least 1 flaw was found and re-design had to take place which means going back to step 1 but only a couple of weeks to fix a design flaw instead of upwards of 2 months of starting from scratch. In short, it is a relatively complex process, involving many many steps, requiring a wide range of skills sets and nearly always involving several 3rd parties who don't always meet their initial stated timelines - as has been evidenced by just about every single company out there trying to develop and sell ASIC mining gear.
While the above is a general idea of how things progress, actual timelines regarding where Metabank is at are entirely speculative at this point as Metabank has not been very forward with where exactly they are.
On the news front, we are working on some really exciting stuff in the background that we will hopefully be able to announce in a few short weeks, but we can't really disclose any specifics right now (don't you just love cliff hangers?).
Cheers!
Luis