...Sir Steve Steamboat is by far a man of extraordinary, rare honor.
lets first see him doing it ...
Topic: Liquid Synergy Designs Inc. -ASIC mining hardware - page 20. (Read 423220 times)
lets first see him doing it ...
Wow! This is truly epic and completely unexpected.
...Sir Steve Steamboat is by far a man of extraordinary, rare honor.
Quote from: steamboat
The refund will include 25% of the assembly costs, and 100% of the shipping and hosting fees, as well as 100% of the assembly fees for those customers that purchased the Fully Assembled unit finish option.
Okay, I'm trying to figure out the numbers on this. Hopefully, SB can chime in with clarification. Let's take a Fully Assembled Unit with Hosting as an example:$ 95.00 Assembly ($35 PCB + $60 PCB Assembly)
$123.50 DIY Kit (so Fan, Heatsink, etc. is $28.50 ($123.50 - $95))
$133.50 Full Unit (assembly of all parts and testing is therefore another $10)
$ 15.00 Hosting Setup
I'm a bit confused as to what are "assembly costs" (refunded at 25%) and "assembly fees" (refunded at 100%). A couple of possibilities:
Scenario 1:
25% of $95.00 (where assembly is defined as the $35 PCB + $60 PCB assembly cost)
25% of $28.50 (fan/heatsink/etc.)
100% of $10.00 (full unit assembly)
100% of $15.00 (hosting setup)
Total $55.875
Scenario 2 (PCB and fan/heatsink costs not included as part of assembly costs, since they are purchased parts):
25% of $60.00 ($60 PCB assembly cost only)
100% of $10.00 (full unit assembly)
100% of $15.00 (hosting setup)
Total $40.00
Scenario 3
Other permutations? Am I making this more complicated than it really is or something?
Quote from: steamboat
While we are not responsible for fluctuations in the exchange rate, we have chosen to lock the rate to that of Sept. 11th, the day we announced we would be accepting assembly refund requests, in order to attempt to help ease the BTC losses of our customers. The exchange rate will be $126.61 per BTC, based on the price history of Coinbase.
If I understand this correctly, this is indeed epic. Using numbers above:
Scenario 1: $55.875 / $126.61 = 0.441315852 BTC refunded per hosted miner
Scenario 2: $40.00 / $126.61 = 0.315930811 BTC refunded per hosted miner
-dmc
While we are not responsible for fluctuations in the exchange rate, we have chosen to lock the rate to that of Sept. 11th, the day we announced we would be accepting assembly refund requests, in order to attempt to help ease the BTC losses of our customers. The exchange rate will be $126.61 per BTC, based on the price history of Coinbase.
This is epic. I don't want to see one more negative post about the BTC price fluctuation or about Steamboat being a scammer/thief/whatever. Steamboat has no obligation to do this, and to be honest this type of thing is unheard of in this business.
This is unbelievable and unexpected. Kudos to SB, but I wonder how he can afford to do such a thing?
While we are not responsible for fluctuations in the exchange rate, we have chosen to lock the rate to that of Sept. 11th, the day we announced we would be accepting assembly refund requests, in order to attempt to help ease the BTC losses of our customers. The exchange rate will be $126.61 per BTC, based on the price history of Coinbase.
This is epic. I don't want to see one more negative post about the BTC price fluctuation or about Steamboat being a scammer/thief/whatever. Steamboat has no obligation to do this, and to be honest this type of thing is unheard of in this business.
...
I would like to personally thank Cray-1, Droid, Fasmax, Imagex, Jasinlee, Jimrome, Kano, Kostagr33k, Laserhorse, Pcb355, Ryepdx, Sensei, Stbgefltc, Unacceptable, Vigil, Zipiju, our team, and everyone else who assisted with this project. Their expertise, dedication, and countless hours of work were invaluable throughout this project.
Ditto here. These wonderful people still beat Butterfly Labs by a month, and that is amazing.
As for the rest of the fiasco, well, there was no multi-million dollar startup funds for this, no venture capital, so this was pretty amazing.
It certainly was not perfect, not helped by Avalon and Bitsyncomm, those fucking morons. And not helped by the fact that Bkkcoins got into an accident either.
I too would like to thank these people, as without them, me and my buddy would probably not have 9 miners between us, and still hanging on by a thread in the bitcoin game.
If Steve ever release a new miner I'll order in a heart beat
...
I would like to personally thank Cray-1, Droid, Fasmax, Imagex, Jasinlee, Jimrome, Kano, Kostagr33k, Laserhorse, Pcb355, Ryepdx, Sensei, Stbgefltc, Unacceptable, Vigil, Zipiju, our team, and everyone else who assisted with this project. Their expertise, dedication, and countless hours of work were invaluable throughout this project.
Ditto here. These wonderful people still beat Butterfly Labs by a month, and that is amazing.
As for the rest of the fiasco, well, there was no multi-million dollar startup funds for this, no venture capital, so this was pretty amazing.
It certainly was not perfect, not helped by Avalon and Bitsyncomm, those fucking morons. And not helped by the fact that Bkkcoins got into an accident either.
As I read it, we will be receiving 25% of our assembly funds, in BTC at an exchange rate of $126.61 per Bitcoin. In addition, you are trying to recoup 40% for parts. This is assuming we opt for an assembly refund? As for this:
At this time I'd still like to put my assembly costs towards a miner of your design, and don't mind sticking it out. If we do choose to stick it out, and your new design is unsuccessful, can we still receive a partial refund at that point?
How will refunds be organized? Will an e-mail be sent out?
Edit: Also, no luck with the 55nm Avalons? Any discussions with Yifu about compensation or discounts for the next gen chips for group buys that got fucked over?
We do not know if this redesign will be successful, or it’s timeline for release.
At this time I'd still like to put my assembly costs towards a miner of your design, and don't mind sticking it out. If we do choose to stick it out, and your new design is unsuccessful, can we still receive a partial refund at that point?
How will refunds be organized? Will an e-mail be sent out?
Edit: Also, no luck with the 55nm Avalons? Any discussions with Yifu about compensation or discounts for the next gen chips for group buys that got fucked over?
So what do we need to do to get the assembly hosting/refund - just "wait" and it will be sent to our original BTC address?
i have emailed u requesting my miners as they are ... no reply, why ?
Update:
Hosting:
The hosting setup is now complete, with all units stable and hashing. We have had to overcome several obstacles during the setup phase. Mainly, the lack of chaining ability, lack of serialization, much greater power usage, and increased thermal dissipation requirements have delayed the process and necessitated a redesign of the hosting configuration.
We had hoped to be able to daisy-chain the units as per the original design in order to reduce the amount of cables and hubs required. Unfortunately, the firmware is still missing this functionality. This does not affect the cluster performance, but did result in slight delays bringing the cluster online due to difficulty finding compatible hubs which were stable, with enough ports to connect the units.
Our original intent was to assign each unit to its corresponding customer in order to track payouts. As this is no longer a possibility due to the lack of individual serial numbers, we have chosen to configure the cluster and payouts as a pool, with each account receiving a percentage of the payouts based on the number of units owned. This setup does however cause a situation in the event one of the units becomes non-functional. To address this, we will be physically labeling each device with a unique customer number. In the event a unit breaks and cannot be fixed, the owner of that unit will be notified. In order to mitigate losses due to a unit failure, we will be replacing the first 5% of the total hosted units with our own, at no additional charge. Once 5% of the total hosted units have been replaced, any future failures will be the responsibility of the owner.
The estimated power requirements for each unit were 30-35 watts. The units are currently consuming more than 50 watts at 282mhz, or 4.5gh/s. This increase is largely due to the 1.2v regulators chosen in the design. The increased power usage also greatly increases the temperature for the regulators, which causes the units to shut down if they overheat. The regulators require low ambient temperatures and direct airflow in order to overclock the units. We are currently testing different cooling designs, and are increasing the amount of active cooling available in order to overclock the units, but are having difficulties due to the amount of units, and subsequently the amount of cooling required. In addition to the on-board fans, we have several fans blowing A/C directly across the units and funneling the heat away, and have greatly increased the spacing to reduce the amount of heat from adjacent units. This is keeping the temperatures low enough that the regulators do not shut down, which requires a power disconnect and cooldown period before power up, but is currently limiting the units to 4.5 gh/s. We hope to increase this to a minimum of 5gh/s shortly.
We will be processing payments for hosting for the first period shortly, and after each subsequent difficulty change thereafter. The first payment will be for the difficulty periods beginning November 5th and November 17th. While the cluster was not at 100% until recently due to setup and testing, payouts for these periods will be based on 100% uptime with a hashrate of 4.5gh/s. We will also be waiving the hosting and electrical fees for these periods. The power consumption per unit is 75 watts, which includes the units themselves and the infrastructure necessary to house and cool them. The electricity cost for each period will be calculated using the Coinbase USD/BTC exchange rate at the end of each period.
Assembly:
It is with a heavy heart we report the resources for full time development of the USB bootloader and I2C daisy-chain functionality have been exhausted. We have been working tirelessly with our partners and a third party engineering firm to complete the design where it was left off, which has proven unsuccessful. In light of this, we will be packaging and shipping all remaining units in the next couple of days. We will continue to work on it as time and resources allow, and our partners have announced they will be doing the same. Bkkcoins has mentioned he has completed the bootloader code, but has not released it to-date.
Assembly refunds:
With assembly, troubleshooting, coding, shipping and hosting setup drawing to a close, we can now begin processing refund requests. We apologize for the extended delay. Our initial role in this project was to design the accessory hardware, source components, assemble, and ship units based on the Klondike design. Due to circumstances outside our control, we were forced to rapidly assume much greater responsibility in the troubleshooting and testing phase of the project, which strained our resources to their limits and forced us to triage certain services. Thankfully, several members of the community and our partners stepped up to assist us in completing the project, without whom it is uncertain if we would have succeeded. I would like to personally thank Cray-1, Droid, Fasmax, Imagex, Jasinlee, Jimrome, Kano, Kostagr33k, Laserhorse, Pcb355, Ryepdx, Sensei, Stbgefltc, Unacceptable, Vigil, Zipiju, our team, and everyone else who assisted with this project. Their expertise, dedication, and countless hours of work were invaluable throughout this project.
During the course of providing this assembly service, we received payments through our website in BTC, which was converted to USD and subsequently used in fulfilling our obligations. An explanation of these expenditures may be found in the assembly refund section of post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3128451. Since that time, we have continued work finalizing and troubleshooting the design, and assembling, testing, and shipping the units; in addition to setting up hosting for those customers who purchased the service. As a result of extended delays due to an incomplete design, troubleshooting, poor chip performance, and canceled orders, our original cost estimations have proven inaccurate. While the circumstances surrounding this project were largely outside our control, and could not have been realistically anticipated, we felt it our responsibility to do everything in our power to see the project through to the end.
Very little of the funds received remain to process refund requests. We understand our announcement of a 25% refund of assembly costs, and 100% of the shipping and hosting fees played a large part in our customer’s decision to request a refund. This announcement was not made lightly, and we knew there was a high probability the funds received would not be sufficient to cover refund requests should anything go wrong. Unfortunately, we have experienced the worst case scenario, as evidenced by the extreme difficulties surrounding the project. We had decided then that we would fund the balance for refunds should the need arise, and we will honor this decision. The refund will include 25% of the assembly costs, and 100% of the shipping and hosting fees, as well as 100% of the assembly fees for those customers that purchased the Fully Assembled unit finish option.
The unit cost and payment were priced in USD. This was necessary as while we would like the vendors we work with to accept BTC, that time has not yet come. As such, the refunds will be processed based on the USD price of the units, and remitted in BTC. While we are not responsible for fluctuations in the exchange rate, we have chosen to lock the rate to that of Sept. 11th, the day we announced we would be accepting assembly refund requests, in order to attempt to help ease the BTC losses of our customers. The exchange rate will be $126.61 per BTC, based on the price history of Coinbase.
We have been working with developers on designs for a new unit using more efficient chips. Of the designs commissioned, only one has met the initial requirements. We had originally chosen to build a unit which gave us the highest overclock potential using the Bitfury chips. Unfortunately, the component and manufacturing costs of the design are too great to be competitive. We are in the process of reworking the design to be more efficient without attempting to push the chips past their nominal operating specs, which should reduce the price of the units to a level more in line with current offerings. We do not know if this redesign will be successful, or it’s timeline for release.
We have been working with the assembly house and their consignment company to determine the best approach to sell the remaining component stock should we be unable to reuse them in a future design. The majority of the components were purchased through various parts brokers, and cannot be returned. Their optimistic return estimate is 40% of the price we paid via consignment, and only a fraction if we were to accept a lump sum payment. We are also preparing to sell those portions of the accessory components with resale value in order to recover as much as possible, but will likely only be able to recoup a small percentage of those costs as well.
In the event we are unsuccessful in developing a new product which utilizes the components on hand, we will sell the remaining stock, which will then be remitted in BTC based on the USD/BTC exchange rate at that time. The timeline for this process is still unknown.
All those that purchased chips and assembly and have had their chip purchase refunded are eligible for and will receive the assembly refund. We will be processing the refunds over the course of the next few weeks. Please continue to be patient with us during this process, as it will take time.
Hosting:
The hosting setup is now complete, with all units stable and hashing. We have had to overcome several obstacles during the setup phase. Mainly, the lack of chaining ability, lack of serialization, much greater power usage, and increased thermal dissipation requirements have delayed the process and necessitated a redesign of the hosting configuration.
We had hoped to be able to daisy-chain the units as per the original design in order to reduce the amount of cables and hubs required. Unfortunately, the firmware is still missing this functionality. This does not affect the cluster performance, but did result in slight delays bringing the cluster online due to difficulty finding compatible hubs which were stable, with enough ports to connect the units.
Our original intent was to assign each unit to its corresponding customer in order to track payouts. As this is no longer a possibility due to the lack of individual serial numbers, we have chosen to configure the cluster and payouts as a pool, with each account receiving a percentage of the payouts based on the number of units owned. This setup does however cause a situation in the event one of the units becomes non-functional. To address this, we will be physically labeling each device with a unique customer number. In the event a unit breaks and cannot be fixed, the owner of that unit will be notified. In order to mitigate losses due to a unit failure, we will be replacing the first 5% of the total hosted units with our own, at no additional charge. Once 5% of the total hosted units have been replaced, any future failures will be the responsibility of the owner.
The estimated power requirements for each unit were 30-35 watts. The units are currently consuming more than 50 watts at 282mhz, or 4.5gh/s. This increase is largely due to the 1.2v regulators chosen in the design. The increased power usage also greatly increases the temperature for the regulators, which causes the units to shut down if they overheat. The regulators require low ambient temperatures and direct airflow in order to overclock the units. We are currently testing different cooling designs, and are increasing the amount of active cooling available in order to overclock the units, but are having difficulties due to the amount of units, and subsequently the amount of cooling required. In addition to the on-board fans, we have several fans blowing A/C directly across the units and funneling the heat away, and have greatly increased the spacing to reduce the amount of heat from adjacent units. This is keeping the temperatures low enough that the regulators do not shut down, which requires a power disconnect and cooldown period before power up, but is currently limiting the units to 4.5 gh/s. We hope to increase this to a minimum of 5gh/s shortly.
We will be processing payments for hosting for the first period shortly, and after each subsequent difficulty change thereafter. The first payment will be for the difficulty periods beginning November 5th and November 17th. While the cluster was not at 100% until recently due to setup and testing, payouts for these periods will be based on 100% uptime with a hashrate of 4.5gh/s. We will also be waiving the hosting and electrical fees for these periods. The power consumption per unit is 75 watts, which includes the units themselves and the infrastructure necessary to house and cool them. The electricity cost for each period will be calculated using the Coinbase USD/BTC exchange rate at the end of each period.
Assembly:
It is with a heavy heart we report the resources for full time development of the USB bootloader and I2C daisy-chain functionality have been exhausted. We have been working tirelessly with our partners and a third party engineering firm to complete the design where it was left off, which has proven unsuccessful. In light of this, we will be packaging and shipping all remaining units in the next couple of days. We will continue to work on it as time and resources allow, and our partners have announced they will be doing the same. Bkkcoins has mentioned he has completed the bootloader code, but has not released it to-date.
Assembly refunds:
With assembly, troubleshooting, coding, shipping and hosting setup drawing to a close, we can now begin processing refund requests. We apologize for the extended delay. Our initial role in this project was to design the accessory hardware, source components, assemble, and ship units based on the Klondike design. Due to circumstances outside our control, we were forced to rapidly assume much greater responsibility in the troubleshooting and testing phase of the project, which strained our resources to their limits and forced us to triage certain services. Thankfully, several members of the community and our partners stepped up to assist us in completing the project, without whom it is uncertain if we would have succeeded. I would like to personally thank Cray-1, Droid, Fasmax, Imagex, Jasinlee, Jimrome, Kano, Kostagr33k, Laserhorse, Pcb355, Ryepdx, Sensei, Stbgefltc, Unacceptable, Vigil, Zipiju, our team, and everyone else who assisted with this project. Their expertise, dedication, and countless hours of work were invaluable throughout this project.
During the course of providing this assembly service, we received payments through our website in BTC, which was converted to USD and subsequently used in fulfilling our obligations. An explanation of these expenditures may be found in the assembly refund section of post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3128451. Since that time, we have continued work finalizing and troubleshooting the design, and assembling, testing, and shipping the units; in addition to setting up hosting for those customers who purchased the service. As a result of extended delays due to an incomplete design, troubleshooting, poor chip performance, and canceled orders, our original cost estimations have proven inaccurate. While the circumstances surrounding this project were largely outside our control, and could not have been realistically anticipated, we felt it our responsibility to do everything in our power to see the project through to the end.
Very little of the funds received remain to process refund requests. We understand our announcement of a 25% refund of assembly costs, and 100% of the shipping and hosting fees played a large part in our customer’s decision to request a refund. This announcement was not made lightly, and we knew there was a high probability the funds received would not be sufficient to cover refund requests should anything go wrong. Unfortunately, we have experienced the worst case scenario, as evidenced by the extreme difficulties surrounding the project. We had decided then that we would fund the balance for refunds should the need arise, and we will honor this decision. The refund will include 25% of the assembly costs, and 100% of the shipping and hosting fees, as well as 100% of the assembly fees for those customers that purchased the Fully Assembled unit finish option.
The unit cost and payment were priced in USD. This was necessary as while we would like the vendors we work with to accept BTC, that time has not yet come. As such, the refunds will be processed based on the USD price of the units, and remitted in BTC. While we are not responsible for fluctuations in the exchange rate, we have chosen to lock the rate to that of Sept. 11th, the day we announced we would be accepting assembly refund requests, in order to attempt to help ease the BTC losses of our customers. The exchange rate will be $126.61 per BTC, based on the price history of Coinbase.
We have been working with developers on designs for a new unit using more efficient chips. Of the designs commissioned, only one has met the initial requirements. We had originally chosen to build a unit which gave us the highest overclock potential using the Bitfury chips. Unfortunately, the component and manufacturing costs of the design are too great to be competitive. We are in the process of reworking the design to be more efficient without attempting to push the chips past their nominal operating specs, which should reduce the price of the units to a level more in line with current offerings. We do not know if this redesign will be successful, or it’s timeline for release.
We have been working with the assembly house and their consignment company to determine the best approach to sell the remaining component stock should we be unable to reuse them in a future design. The majority of the components were purchased through various parts brokers, and cannot be returned. Their optimistic return estimate is 40% of the price we paid via consignment, and only a fraction if we were to accept a lump sum payment. We are also preparing to sell those portions of the accessory components with resale value in order to recover as much as possible, but will likely only be able to recoup a small percentage of those costs as well.
In the event we are unsuccessful in developing a new product which utilizes the components on hand, we will sell the remaining stock, which will then be remitted in BTC based on the USD/BTC exchange rate at that time. The timeline for this process is still unknown.
All those that purchased chips and assembly and have had their chip purchase refunded are eligible for and will receive the assembly refund. We will be processing the refunds over the course of the next few weeks. Please continue to be patient with us during this process, as it will take time.
hopefully trying to win the 5000 avalon chips to pay us back with
So what's the fucking deal with assembly costs? This is ridiculous; miners have been delivered, refunds given, what's the hold up now? What are we waiting for?
PM me,please
I sent you a PM last week. Did you not receive it?
Yes,I just PM'ed you
PM me,please
I sent you a PM last week. Did you not receive it?
emailed him .. no answer ...
"Unacceptable", u said u can reach him anytime ... can u ask him to check his email ? remind him we sent him money ....
"Unacceptable", u said u can reach him anytime ... can u ask him to check his email ? remind him we sent him money ....
PM me,please
emailed him .. no answer ...
"Unacceptable", u said u can reach him anytime ... can u ask him to check his email ? remind him we sent him money ....
"Unacceptable", u said u can reach him anytime ... can u ask him to check his email ? remind him we sent him money ....
This feels like so long ago
What do these guys need again, a bunch of 12V power splitters, USB hub/connections, and a host PC?
What do these guys need again, a bunch of 12V power splitters, USB hub/connections, and a host PC?
i requested my miners, no reply... what email did u guys used ?
asicbuy at gmail dot com
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