Topic: Klondike - 16 chip ASIC Open Source Board - Preliminary - page 137. (Read 435369 times)

FYI, the support given to cgminer is even more trivial (relatively close to zero) compared to the amount people earn using it.
The effort and support put into cgminer over the last 2 years makes most bitcoin projects pale in comparison.
Interesting that when ckolivas added a 1% optional fee into cgminer to mine for him, all hell broke loose ... so he removed it.

I wonder if this again means (as with Avalon) if we get people asking for support we tell them we can't since we wont have the hardware
and Bicknellski seems to think that us supporting Klondike through another channel is also a bad idea ...
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/sydney-klondike-assembly-eoi-210768

Although, quite clearly, the license on cgminer says you can do with it as per the GPLv3, I am, however, curious to know where you stand on the subject and leave that open to you to make that clear rather than attempting to guess

Thanks very much, just seems like one less hassle when setting up the boards. I expect you'll be well rewarded with all the people who'll be making klondikes.

Bkk, Perhaps if you could put an address up we could all chip in for that scope/test boards

+1 on the firmware idea

I'm sure it can be arranged. The other idea is something I'm toying with, figuring out.

OK. Keep me posted.

Just a thought; DRM can always go wrong, and often does, generally punishing the paying customers whereas pirates and leeches quickly find a way around it. May not be the best idea.

I've given the serial# idea more thought and refined it a little.

I'll make a web page where vendors can retrieve unique firmware images. These will have a serial# and a unique unlock key embedded.

When vendors run their burn test they'll use my proxy as pool and serial# as user id. This can be automated easily.

Initially the firmware will throw away 10% of shares until the unlock key is passed to it by the proxy. At that point it will rewrite and remove the code that throws away 10%. The unlock key will be provided by the proxy automatically when the amount mined passes the fee value, which currently would be about 2 hours.

Vendors or customers are always welcome to send more using the proxy/serial# (I won't complain) but after the initial burn time it will never be required. End users would never even know this occurred, unless they register their own new Klondike they built to receive the firmware directly.

After I've reached my reward target I'll release the firmware source and anyone can update to the totally open version as they like.

This method has the advantage that it forces vendors to run at least a minimal burn in time or else the customer would be receive a unit that runs slow.

I think this is more robust than my initial idea, and almost transparent to vendors/customers.


This sounds great to me - I would use some of zefir's kind donation towards this as well. I didn't want to spend too much on it but if it's shared amongst a few then it's quite workable. I think a good 100MHz Dual trace (1 or 2 GSs) model would be ideal. My reading so far seems to indicate the Rigol 50 or 100MHz models are much favoured due to their deeper storage memory. I view having one as a hedge against problems arising later. It's probably possible to just use my Logic Analyser but a scope would allow much more thorough diagnostics, particularly on the power supply.

The Hong Kong / China sellers who use EMS are well situated to get one here fast enough and without terribly ridiculous shipping fees. I'm going to do some more reading now and try to narrow it down. There is some local sellers as well and I'll have a look but typically they sell stuff like this for 50% higher than the online price.

Can chip in up to 0.5 BTC for this if you find something BKKcoins... great idea KS. Anything that will make this project sail along more smoothly be willing to chip in.

+1 on the "mined" fee


@BKKCoins: what's your "minimum" requirement for the oscilloscope? I found a few but I'm afraid of lead times for delivery to BKK and thereabouts.

I'd be willing to finance all or part of one you could source locally/fast.

It's great idea .
Totally in for this.
This is going to save me some time when the chips start to arrive.

+1 Sound good

+1 love that plan, do you take altcoins? I am a FREICOIN FREAK.

Freicoin: Bitcoin with demurrage

I had an idea.

What if for each PIC programmed I embed a unique address as serial#. I can write a small script to automate that using a deterministic MPK.

Then adding a burntest (sendlove) option in cgminer would use that address for the burn period (and the address is also available at any time for user donation later).

It's easy to mine to an address directly. eg. 50btc.com allows using an address as username and all share pmt goes to that address. This makes it easy to automate. If you run cgminer in burntest mode any mining is donated to the encoded test serial# address.

I calculate that a K16 @ 282 MHz would need to mine for about 2 hours to cover my fee (today, no doubt more later). So if you ran burn tests for a couple hours even I'd be getting more than my license fee.

The nice thing about this is that if I use a different MPK for each "authorized" vendor then I can always know how much has been donated by that vendor's sold units.

I could have a web page (w/vendor login) that would generate unique PIC program images on demand such that any vendor could program their own boards as they please. As long as the donation amount is more than the (units sold * fee) - I'd consider myself paid in full. And they would never have to think about sending me payment as long as they burn each unit they ship.

Thoughts?  (just figuring this out myself)

(One thing's clear from this - my design fee is trivial in comparison to how much people will earn from their rigs: 2 hours...)

Hi all
If I make the klondike project in Barcelona I also donate BTC to BKKCoins.
Probably we only do the 16 board. If there's demand maybe 64 format.

I send mp to BKKCoins days ago saying this
If you need help with drivers or firmware maybe we can help, I'm in a group with 4 programers.

Regards and encouragement

+1 You know it DUDE!

I don't want to handover something that can't show a 24 hour cycle minimally. I was thinking to do a rebate for that hash against the cost of the unit as well... but then again all going to a designer .... seems fair to me.

Am sure no reasonable person will mind there shipping delayed 24hs whilst its put through its paces and if they can see it hashing away even better..  Lets face it when you`ve been waiting for months for BFL who cares about 24 hrs..

Easiest way to do that is having a mining pool set up so 100% goes directly BKKCoins. I would definitely do 24H on the pool for testing the units before I allow them to be purchased. It could be a CLOSED invite only pool for those who are contributing directly to BKKCoins Klondike board development. If many board makers agreed to this maybe BKKcoins might be interested in keeping development going into Klondike II with the second gen chips? Bonaza!

I think everyone should give at least there first 24 hrs of mining direct to BkkCoins address as recognition for his efforts (on top of fee on board).

BKKcoins - would you please post a list of approved distributors when things are final so we know your receiving you share of credit for the g8 work your doing.
  
Keep up the good work.

Thank you gentlemen for showing your support.