Topic: BM1384 Pod Miner plus trade-in/recycling - an interest and feasibility poll - page 12. (Read 27780 times)

It's stuff like this that is really neat to see.  A maker who cares about his customers.  And customers who care about the makers.

Wish all miners had this cooperation between miners and makers.  Seems like a team atmosphere in these threads which is a nice breath of fresh air compared to some miner threads.

I have a lot of blades of all of the ones you need, how bout I send in enough blades (mixed variety) for say 10 pods - I will then donate 5 Pods to be auctioned off to raise barbecue money for SideHack and Novak and only take delivery of 5 Pods.  Essentially I am offering to pay twice as much for the Pods.  Not because I am loaded but because I have a bunch of blades that are doing absolutely nothing for me.   

I think the big thing is he will not know what parts he needs unless he pre-orders or something.  If he sells 50 it sounds like he has a lot of parts.  If he sells 150 then likely he will need a lot more boards.

I think board trading in on older boards will be based on if needed.  I could see him making S5 open ended since chips.  But other I think it just will very on production.

How about a combination thereof?
You need parts, but you also need money.

PCB's don't make for very good snacks, that much is understandable.

For instance i could offer a combination of one dead S5 board + some Working S1 boards + some money, if i was to get several miners back, i could get a significant upgrade over the S1's i'm running now and you'd be making miners out of the parts i gave you(in equivalence) + some from you + you'd also have money to cover your time.

Actually, the S7 is not critical at all since it has probably none of the parts I want - or at best, very few - for this project.

The parts that come off an S1 or S2 I might prioritize higher when I've exhausted my own stock. I don't have any S2 boards to part out (all mine are museum) but I have enough S1 boards to provide caps for 50 pods. I'll burn through those, but 30x S2 boards would run power for over 100 pods. However, an S5 board provides about 5 times the value in parts I'm short on compared to an S2 board (when component cost is considered). The design has changed a bit such that the S1 and S2 now have more valuable parts than I had originally assumed so they will be prioritized a bit higher.

However. Only trading pods for the hardware required to make more pods is not sustainable.

Only about half the cost of the pod is recycle parts, so for every pod that goes out in trade for hardware I have spent a decent number of dollars which did not come back. Additionally I spent a lot of time pulling, cleaning and readying parts for assembly on something new. I know a lot of people will be paying money for pods, but a lot of other people will not. If I don't keep a practical ratio on things, I'll end up with a whole lot of parts I can't use and a lot of PCBs I'll get ten cents a pound for and will have basically paid a lot of people to take my miners. Unfortunately, I can't trade old PCBs for sandwiches at a very favorable rate, nor can I pay the rent with them.

You can't just send me parts and assume I'll send a miner back. I will not send a pod to anyone, no matter how many boards he ships to my door, without having agreed upon the terms of the transaction first. The agreement will be based on the availability of parts I already have and how much I value the parts being provided at that moment, which means that at different times different boards will have different values because I'll need them more or less than at other times. If I find that I have enough boards already on hand to build every pod I feel like putting together ever again, I'll stop taking trades entirely and only sell for money (or other things which I find interesting or worthwhile, surprise me).

Somewhere around here, sidehack expressed there was value in S2 boards.
If I find it, i'll plug the quote in here.

I'm not suggesting they're worth a lot, only that they are or can be useful to him.

I was going to point out the same, board for pod, S5 has the required components, S1/2/3 all have the older chips, no good for the project, the only thing worth it is the component for power (buck ICs, caps, etc). The 4 odd New-R-Box boards would cover 1 pod, instead I would be more inclined to find the BM1384 chips off the S5.

If they were S5 I don't think trading would be a problem.  Unless a bunch of parts on it seems like S2's are a lot of old chips.

So I don't think they will hold a even trade on S2's.   But I could always be wrong.

Kind of an aside because I already voted for the 2 boards +25 deal.
But in the spirit of voting often, and because I have 3 fully functional S2's (a whopping 30 boards, sorry no BKWhoppers),  
I want to suggest an evensteven trade deal. Boards for Pods. No cash or coin.
You'd have to come up with numbers and mix e.g 2 S2 boards plus 1 S1 board missing no more than 2 capacitors, would get get you one pod.
Or six S2 boards, and 4 S1 to S3 upgrade boards would get you 4 pods. You get the point.
I don't have or expect to have any S5's or S7's and I wouldn't be put off if those who did got a little better deal as these appear to be more critical to the project.

I hope you consider this and I hope you recognize that once you release any 'close to final' payment schedule the UPS man is going to be all over you and you'd be smart to find some extra carts and dolly's.

I've got decent wick, but sometimes it needs a bit of fluxing. I also have a 75W iron though. I tend to wick the solder as soon as the chip is lifted so there's still a lot of residual heat, otherwise it still takes five minutes.

I think I found a workable socket, but I need more information on it (what pins go to what contacts) before I could design a board around it. If I can get that information in time I can mod the Compac layout and send off for a prototype board with the two other boards we're hoping to get proto PCBs of ordered tomorrow. It's not an immediate need, but if I can get it done on time it'd save shipping.

Thats probably my problem, bad wick, I have to flux it and hold an iron to it for about 5 minutes to warm it up... and its only basic 5mm wick too..

i might have to go back and remember what Ben Krasnow did when he was playing with QFN devices, i think he just pulled the spring pins out of a socket and soldered them to a footprint..

I'm doing some looking now on what's available. Apparently 8x8mm 56QFN is a less-than-common package because I'm finding lots of stuff for everything to either side of that.

Maybe I can find something and throw together a modified Compac with a test socket. That'd be awful handy. Also awful tedious to test a thousand chips one at a time, but still pretty darn handy.

When I resolder a replacement, I clean off the existing solder with a good wick, repaste and then hot-air the chip. If it doesn't align quite right, poking it with the big tweezers will usually bounce it into place.

I must ask, how does one align these QFN packages? every time I attempt to solder a replacement cp1202, the leads shift between the PCB pads, which requires me to reattempt it. In attempting to re-solder the package, cleaning the solder away (for the 2nd time), a pad or 2 just comes away, ruining he PCB.

As for BGA, you really need to X-ray it to see if it is properly attached. 2nd hand airport baggage x-ray machine may help?

Depending on who made the socket, some are a little round nail that touches the belly, others are pads, some even have simply a hole.

If belly pad contacts don't get into the VDD corners, I guess a 56QFN socket could work.

I never messed with the BM1382 but that package looks like it sucked quite a bit. BM1384 is fairly straightforward and BM1385 appears to be a stock footprint. Anything with perimeter pins like QFN is going to be a lot easier to work with than BGA or a bump die package because you can more easily verify alignment by looking at the solder rather than just hoping it was right. Belly pad floatation also helps a bit. I haven't worked directly with much BGA so I don't know how well those self-align, but they tend to be larger packages as well so the weight could prevent some of that movement.

just to clarify, with the power, and passives, I was thinking the other components on the pod, fare enough for the rest, (sinks, power supply and mining controller) being up to the buyer to supply.

Yeah, forgot about that customization of the QFN (Y U DO DIS BITMAIN?!),  I've never really had a good hard look at the layout, I thought maybe the Vcc pads would extend to the edge of the package? I would think that would be just as painful as BGA and the unknown of it being properly soldered.

Heatsink isn't part of the base cost. Someone wants 50 boards with 50 heatsinks, that someone will also be paying for 50 heatsinks. One S5 board only gets you the 8-chip PCB and nothing else. You provide your own cooler, power, computer running cgminer et cetera.

I do not have a socket to test the chips standalone. Since it's, as far as I know, a custom footprint (I don't know any other QFN with corner pads like this one) I'm not sure where to even look for a socket.

My assumption is at least 24 viable chips per 30-chip board. More than that is a bonus.

Well theres got to be a cap somewhere, you do need the other parts to make the pod: Power, sinks, other passives..
if someone comes in with 50 boards and say "50 pods plz" and you only had 20 heatsinks to go with them, who's paying for the other 30?

Also, how many of these boards are going to have viable ASICs on them? how have they been treated after death? manhandled like some 500lb gorilla? and for them, are you willing to say to them "no sorry, chips are no good"?

do you have a rig to test these chips off-board? (got one if them $100+ QFN sockets?)

I am in if your still in need of S1 blades? Have 4 of these working blades laying around and it would be nice having a Pod!

Well, just checked and I have 8 working S1 blades (and 2 S1 controllers with all cables if needed..)

I think you know the direction, you just needed some feedback.  Push on!

A company that cares about its customers investments.... this is part of why I really like your products.  Some companies do not share this mentality to say the least.

I am excited about these Pods though.  I think it will be another fun toy and if you do the same as compac's it was amazing the efficiency you got.  So cant wait to see that.