Topic: Re: Black Arrow 28nm 100Ghash Bitcoin ASIC from $0.49/GH/s - page 136. (Read 96796 times)

yep and they're still not answering questions on status.  simple enough to answer whether or not they've gone to tapeout.  similar questions posted to their social media pages are being pulled down.

this is not looking promising in terms of an on-time delivery, or a minor delay, for that matter.  They've got nothing to show with one month until delivery but a heatsink and some CAD drawings of the cases - and won't answer questions.   If there is more, snap a few pictures, for crying out loud, instead of giving BS answers like this one from their forum, posted by staff today in a thread asking for an update:


"Updates will be posted when they are available, i can understand your points however, but i prefer well working product instead of couple of shiny pictures myself. I can make you a picture of thousands different parts in 3d, will it make you more happy?"


Simply put, that's crap.  customers are asking for updates, and rightfully so at this point, as this is looking very bad at this point in the timeline. 

an honest update for those people that have in good faith sent thousands of dollars is not too much to ask.  if you're going to be late, fine, but it's time to level with your customers, BA.

It's back now.

+1 to that. 


An update on status of components and expected delivery would be great. 

Someone offered 7 btc for a half paid pre order?  Whoever that was please message me, I have a x-3 and 8 x-1's on order for feb shipping fully paid for, we could definitely work out a deal.  Take that deal and run, I am afraid I would not go any higher than what you have paid so far for the unit, take the 7 btc and make out like a bandit.

He ends up paying more than 6k since he only paid 50% up front, and its an early pre-order for a device that as of now, no one knows where in the production process they are.  Many other companies said time and time again they were on track for delivery, and yet, look where most of them are.  I am taking a discount of less than 400 dollars for this purpose.

I would think that if it was such a bad deal, others would be jumping in front of me to bid higher, but we do not seem to have anyone doing that either.

Looking at the website, it seems that I would need to take control of your BA account and change shipping details.  I offer 2750 in Btc at MTgox price when we decide on deal, for control of your BA account.  I will need control before I pay, so that I can be satisfied that I am able to change login details and email and shipping details.  After that I will pay you the agreed upon amount.  If you accept please let me know.

I was going to say, I am not sure how transfer of orders works, but I would probably offer like 2500 to 2750 to buy your order out, and then if BA cannot do a transfer to my account, it will have to sit in escrow until delivery of unit, and if units are not deliverd in Feb, then I get the money back.  Some kind of deal like that for this.

There have been discounts so I am not sure exactly at what price point he got his at, and the 50% payment required a larger sum paid than if all was paid at once I believe.  So it was a very fair question and per his response it did not even sound like he knew how much was left to be paid.

I made a post here:
http://ecointalk.net/topic/368-who-is-producing-the-minion/?p=1639
Let's see if we get some info.

How do you know they are using Globalfoundries? I'd think they'd use a more local foundry, not one in the USA/Germany.

They've mentioned that they can use multiple foundries in parallel, if need be.

How much has been paid and how much is there left to be paid?

Most of these questions can be found on Black Arrow's website.  Please go there and do some research before clouding threads, by posting this I am wondering how you have even heard of BA, since you obviously haven't been to their website?

The only question that cannot be found there is how much will an X-3 make every day.
For this I would say do your own research, no one knows what difficulty will be, so take what your estimate of difficulty will be and plug it into one of the hundreds of calculators and do some math.

Please do more research in the future before wasting other peoples time.

Yea I was expecting 5 Billion by the end of Feb

You may have gotten off easy with a cancelled order.  I am still on the bandwagon and feeling good about my order, but there is a feeling in the pit of my stomach that the timeline is in trouble.  All I continue to see as updates are, "we are on track" or "we have not changed from our deadline" and then teasers such as renderings of final products.

Now I am no electrical engineer (no matter how many of their taxes I do ) but based on what I have been able to gather tape out should be underway currently, which should be a fairly large milestone, and one that should be easily relayed to customers.  I would think that as soon as tape out begins, even the PR person should get a memo or something saying at the very least, "hey, tapeout has started"?  Unless I am sorely mistaken?  Any "updates" conveniently leave out any description of what has actually been accomplished.  Also, I have yet to see any actual dimensions put into place.  Renderings are useful, but I have seen quite a few different sizes being thrown about for both X-1 and X-3 units.  I can understand though if the design of the box isn't finalized yet, but knowing how the 2 boxes making up an X-3 are going to work together (1 or 2 power supplies, 1 or 2 ethernet cables, etc...) seems like something that needs to be known in order to finalize and order PCB's which as I understand take a few weeks to fabricate once an order has been placed.  I suppose that leaves a small window to finish PCB design, but these seem like fundamental questions that should have an answer or at least a design they are working towards?

These are just the thoughts and feelings that have been in the pit of my stomach for a week or so.  Again, I am no engineer and/or ASIC/PCB expert.  My knowledge extends as far as what I have read in the various discussions of ASIC companies on these forums, and is this post in no way supposed to be defamatory towards BlackArrow who I still believe in and have given me no reason to doubt that they will hit their deadline.  Perhaps, they want to keep fabrication specifics a secret, I do not know, but given the level of PR support that they have been giving, I would think that they would have reported some of the above concerns.  Please take any of the above remarks with a grain of salt, and do not dwell on them, as I have previously said, I may just be spouting nonsense since I have no real idea of the complexity or work involved in the ASIC process, but I also feel that some of these fundamental questions should have a better description at this point.

I agree with this.  I had noticed this on my orders as well, orders that were in early December.  They all have the same description of the current item in the store.  I didnt think much of it since that is what I thought was happening.

+1

It means that they can give you more hashing power to compensate for the price difference.

I understand your worry and hope it get resolves, bob did good getting mine taken care.  But wires are irreversible, once a bank wire is sent you need the other side to initiate it back to go through, it wouldn't hurt to ask if they can provide any information, but as for reversing it, they won't be able to help with that.

If you have BOA, then you can just directly transfer the money without having to do a wire and pay wire fees.