Topic: Rocky Mountain Miners (Read 2181 times)

So, I thought that this thread merited a bump after laying dormant for so long.

I'm a card-carrying, frustrated BTC miner... the ASIC arms race is crazy and has caused me to completely re-evaluate my digital currency strategy and expectations. Piling through the BTC mining forums looking for any indication of a reasonably powered and affordable rig that can actually be delivered on a date is incredibly frustrating and fraught with guesswork. Who will deliver in time to make any ROI? What happens when this or that ASIC company delivers their load and the network hash rate increases exponentially??? It's a dizzying prospect.

So I took a few days investigating the scrypt ASIC possibilities - gotta be first to the table to get the garlic bread... and I found only three companies with even the rudiments of a website, only one with a decent one that had some computer-generated pictures of what their equipment might look like... essentially, I didn't find a single manufacturer with imminent ASICs for scrypt. The biggest complaint I had about ASIC mining for BTC was the fact that unless you were immediately on top of shipping developments (complete guesswork and conjecture), you were just like everyone else, finger poised over the pre-order button, and the sell my old shit button so as not to lose your ass.

On the third page of my search, I found a link to Rocky Mountain Miners... sniff test? Nice website. Good looking equipment (not a milk crate of wires and power supplies). The Blog had some decent and timely information and the two owners are like-minded guys who are crypto-junkies like me. Litmus test? Let's call them and see if anyone answers... I've called every single ASIC company that may be producing a reasonable ASIC for BTC mining - I'm used to leaving messages that never get answered. Ring... Ring... Automated answer... hit '1' for sales. Expecting voicemail... 'Hello - this is Rocky Mountain Miners...' - a REAL PERSON! Wow!

I spoke to the REAL PERSON who had a REAL PRODUCT he could ship me in a week. He sent a real PayPal invoice that got paid. I received a real acknowledgement and response with a ship date.

Well, I paid for my Drill Bit rig (not the fastest rig I've ever seen, nor the most expensive either) - I've done my profitability projections and they look reasonable given difficulties in alt-coin markets are relatively low compared to BTC (more than a mild understatement) - and I'm likely to still have a place to live when the rig arrives and is running (the GF will not kick me out because I'm running some hot, noisy computer/milkcrate/wiry thing in the office 24/7 with a dozen fans pointed at it).

As to my background... I know my hardware, my OSes and my mining... I've been doing IT work for 30+ years. I could easily go out and roll my own rig for a few hundred under what these guys are offering - but that's not the point. They've taken the scrypt mining rig to a palatable level of design and packaged it in an unobjectionable way to allow the fun to shine through the BS. And for all of that, I think they deserve something more than a trollish, backhanded scam moniker. Hence this post.

If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to update this when my Drill Bit arrives... I'll be following the thread.

Peace,
R00tdude

I'll even bump it again to keep people laughing at what you're selling and your inability to present it!     good times good times

Thanks for keeping our post bumped, CandadianGuy!

annnd I'm pretty sure I'm referring to the original post -- not your website. 
I would say that was a pretty important point to leave out

Canadianguy, our website product listing clearly states that the miner is preconfigured for Litecoin.

. oops I thought i was kevin leary for a second there..

@Worldinacoin, You're right, for geeks like us that is really simple. Our target demographic is people who would be completely lost trying to configure cgminer, which is the majority of the world's population. We want mining to be as easy as pushing a button for those people.

@Evilscoop & @worldinacoin Thanks for the suggestions. We are interested in exploring options that either improve hashrates or help us to lower prices. Our main goal is to market mining to new inexperienced users and any way that we can make it more attractive is certainly of interest to us.

Existing DIYs aren't difficult to use at all, just plug in a USB drive, configure and it can start mining.  How much easier can it get?

http://genophoria.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/shut-up-and-take-my-money.jpg?w=774

@Canadianguy, Our miners are set up by default to mine Litecoin, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin ASICs are not used in Litecoin mining. That said, my test machine is currently mining BTC profitably. We're not selling this product as the fastest on the market, but as one of the easiest to use.

The USB miner is for bitcoin only, this should be able to do any coin out there.

HAHA this guy is insane.  ASICMINER sells a USB miner that does 300MH/S for less than $300.  How does this guy expect to bring 614KH/S for $1500 to us without being laughed at??  Maybe this is a joke?

Maybe you should try getting some older cards 6990s or even 5970s etc which will definitely be more cost effective.

thats perfect for my pi...

you might be better getting klondike 1 boards once they are available and internally mounting them on a usb rather than gpu mining

@Ll_lkasz, I'd love to meet your market demand! Unfortunately, even if I built you a machine with 5x7990's the parts alone would cost well over $5k.

Make something with 7000 KH/S and I'll buy it in this price.

@Nosurrender, Missed your post update. We do have plans to expand functionality of our machines, but for now it's just my partner and I working on the project. He has another small business that takes up most of his time working on VOIP systems.

@Evilscoop, The Display we use is a picoLCD screen running LCD for Linux, a project that my partner has been a contributor to in the past. We realize that as far as mining capacity goes, we're not breaking new ground with a 7950. That said, we see the value in our pursuit as offering easy-to-use miners for a new demographic that currently is not part of the mining space. We do plan to offer more options and my partner Chris (He's the project programmer, I'm the system builder and salesman) is interested in scrypt FPGA development.

I think your a bit late to the game here tbh, but.....

Im very interested in that display and the code behind it

Any suggestions on how we can prove our goodwill to the community? I know that it's a popular pursuit around here to label every new business venture a "scam."

@Nosurrender, You're right, this is a standard PC with off the shelf parts. That said, our Debian-based systems are configured to start mining without any input from the user, no monitor or keyboard required. This automation makes mining easy enough for one's grandmother to do, which was our goal in developing this miner.