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Topic: Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s - page 232. (Read 787053 times)

full member
Activity: 201
Merit: 100
Thanks for the update BlackArrow.  Word to the wise, focus on getting the Bitcoin miner out the door on time, and less mentions of the Scrypt Miner.

Once you've shipped out the X-1's and X-3's, you can make your announcement of the new Scrypt miner, but please don't set it up as a pre-order.  Accept orders for it only when you have the new miners ready to ship.

The pre-order model is dead.

+1 to this! Don't go the pre-order route.
hero member
Activity: 767
Merit: 500
What is the extra cost of slapping another chip into each x-1 or doubling the hash of each miner since technically none are actually made? I guess that adds extra costs to power but the ant miners are really crapping all over the x-1, at .893 btc for 180ghs stock @ 570 a btc that puts us at 510 a machine, or 255 bucks for 90 ghs. Why on earth would anyone order 100 ghs machine so far off from now for the current price? I ordered 7, when they were a good deal. I recall some type of promise.. "Black Arrow promises to do its best to offer lower retail price than its competitors and guarantees that in the eventuality of a price decrease before shipment, all preorders will benefit of a proportional increase in hashing power. For this reason the customers who have been with us from the beginning will always receive the best deals."

Double the hash of the machines you are building please, that seems the fairest of all compensation plans.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.

Sadly, in an age where people think it is exceptional and newsworthy for someone to have turned in a lost backpack with cash in it, I guess you are right.

Agree but with the overwhelming number of manufacturers running with backpack and cash in hand it's great to see something that half ass meets reasonable expectations.
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.

Sadly, in an age where people think it is exceptional and newsworthy for someone to have turned in a lost backpack with cash in it, I guess you are right.
full member
Activity: 224
Merit: 100
Considering all the company's that go silent forever when things are in production, I want to thank Black Arrow for posting these updates.  Maybe the miner won't cash out and PG will come in here and post some stuff about Matt being a slave trader from Mongolia, but regardless... I appreciate the news about what is happening.



Excellent observation. They should at the very least be commended for putting their flame suit on and advising people, good or bad of what's happening on the development side.
hero member
Activity: 729
Merit: 500
Considering all the company's that go silent forever when things are in production, I want to thank Black Arrow for posting these updates.  Maybe the miner won't cash out and PG will come in here and post some stuff about Matt being a slave trader from Mongolia, but regardless... I appreciate the news about what is happening.

hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why "probe cart wafer" wasn't giving me any results on google.

It's an important step in the fab process. But looks like this is the first physical testing of the die... They could find something wrong here I guess!
hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
Can someone differentiate between "probe cart wafer" and "working wafer"?

I think he meant probe card wafer. Looks like it's an initial wafer produced for testing with a 'wafer prober'

Quote from: Wikipedia
A wafer prober is a machine used to test integrated circuits. For electrical testing a set of microscopic contacts or probes called a probe card are held in place whilst the wafer, vacuum-mounted on a wafer chuck, is moved into electrical contact. When a die (or array of dice) have been electrically tested the prober moves the wafer to the next die (or array) and the next test can start. The wafer prober is usually responsible for loading and unloading the wafers from their carrier (or cassette) and is equipped with automatic pattern recognition optics capable of aligning the wafer with sufficient accuracy to ensure accurate registration between the contact pads on the wafer and the tips of the probes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_testing
legendary
Activity: 910
Merit: 1000
Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Instead of a bit of BTC from some cloud hashing deal I'd rather just have the equivalent back in BTC immediately.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
Owner, Minersource.net
Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.




Seeing as it was BA that made this promise, I'm sure they'll have no problem figuring that particular question out.

Zurg raises a good point, but one that may be a little premature.  I am more interested in whether or not we will see an updated plan for the compensation packages.  It seems like there is enough money to acquire a new facility to house extra prospero's for the rent a minion program from the first run of chips, why are these units being used to make BA money instead of compensating us?

Let me correct this before it gets out of hand- They are building the additional rent-a-minion facility FOR the compensation plan, not in addition.
hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 500
Crypto Investor ;) @ Farmed Account Hunter
Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.

Lets phrase that as a question and see if we get an answer...

BA, since you originally promised customers that if they did not hit a positive ROI within 6 months, and now you are telling us you will have extra miners and a brand new facility to house them in for the expansion of the Rent a Minion program, is there a plan to revisit the compensation package to make your customers happy?

Positive ROI on what terms, USD or BTC, whatever currency they paid in?
I am thinking this could turn into big mess quickly.
newbie
Activity: 48
Merit: 0
Thank you for the update Black Arrow. This is nice specificity and transparency.

Unfortunately difficulty increases are killing the positive ROI on these. I hope you revisit your compensation program when you get closer to delivery.
hero member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 783
better everyday ♥
Thanks for the update BlackArrow.  Word to the wise, focus on getting the Bitcoin miner out the door on time, and less mentions of the Scrypt Miner.

Once you've shipped out the X-1's and X-3's, you can make your announcement of the new Scrypt miner, but please don't set it up as a pre-order.  Accept orders for it only when you have the new miners ready to ship.

The pre-order model is dead.
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
Bitcoin Miners progress update – 26 March 2014

1.We progressed to The Minion’s 3rd substrate which has been approved and sent to manufacturing
2.The package house has received the minion probe cart wafer.
3.Global Foundries has confirmed the wafer out date. The date is currently 5 days later than their prediction however they are seeking to catch up by optimising the rest of the process.
4.The final version of the X3 hashboard and X1 backplane has been sent to the PCB factory for prototyping
5.The final version of X1 hashboard will arrive this week on Friday.
6.The development team are still optimising the control board. The initial testing is positive: (booting sequence for Linux, network protocols and WiFi connections are ok). The team will focus now debugging the LCD. Testing for the touchscreen should start soon.
7.The modifications to the current setup is dictated by the testing and the quality controls reporting by our teams and suppliers. We concluded the last update to X3 backplane and the case design due to moving the X3 PSU on the left hand side for better heat dissipation.
8.We have received 2 types of PSUs for X3 from 2 vendors, we are testing them.
9.We have started mass production of the heatsinks and X1 power supplies
10.We have received the mounting screw with springs for the heatsinks. After a thorough review the spring technical specifications are not satisfactory. We continue to upgrade the design accordingly and we expect the samples to be ready in 10 days.
11.We approved the design for X3 case and we are in process of negotiating the time frame with our short-listed suppliers.
12.We should complete the final specifications for the fans by the end of this week.
13.We had a demanding schedule in visiting all our suppliers for quality checks and for tracking the agreed aggressive deadlines
14.We are in the final negotiations with our manufacturing partner for power chips. We are seeking a reliable supply of the power chips.
15.We finalised the search for the new facility which will help increasing the power for Rent-A-Minion service. We’re planning to start setting it up as early as next week.
16.The team working on the Scrypt chip continue their busy schedule. They had some new addition to the team to help with the increasing workload.
17.We received a lot of enquiries regarding the LTC chip. The Management decided to focus on delivering the Bitcoin miners currently scheduled and postpone the LTC pre-orders until they have time available to deal with customer support issues that usually arise upon launch of a new complex product.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
ooh shiny stuff  Grin
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
Look what we've got!


http://ecointalk.net/uploads/gallery/album_15/med_gallery_5_15_1312702.jpg
 
It's the probe cart wafer, not the working wafer.

Weekly update is coming soon...
hero member
Activity: 1036
Merit: 500
Im guessing May/June, which is optimistic, yet still bleak and completely unacceptable.

Id say its better than 50-50 they ever ship anything, but there is definitely a solid, constantly increasing chance it all just goes POOF.
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Sooooooo Have these shipped yet? People still patiently waiting for the obsolete mining hardware as the network has grown from 10ph to 50ph in a few short months?
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 509
P.S.: SUGGESTION TO BA I imagine there would be a lot less complaining and refunds request if BA just stepped up the plate and gave us our cloud hashing compensation Now @ GH rate we ordered till we actually have product shipped.

Impossible to do without the hardware. They said they had something like 8TH worth of bitfuries and a few hundred TH worth of prospero orders.
full member
Activity: 158
Merit: 100
OK stupid question time ...  (*Zips up flame suit*)

When and how do those that are commited to keeping their perorder get their "compensation" package of Could hashing? I ordered and X-1 from BA direct and Minersource I imagine that's going to make thing complicated.

P.S.: SUGGESTION TO BA I imagine there would be a lot less complaining and refunds request if BA just stepped up the plate and gave us our cloud hashing compensation Now @ GH rate we ordered till we actually have product shipped.

Let the flaming fireballs rain! *put on fireman's Oxygen mask*
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