Thought I'd share some of the information I've gathered over the last couple of weeks from Sam at KnCMiner. Some of the following questions from me have been abbreviated to save space and your eyes, however, Sam's responses are untouched. Here are a few choice tidbits;
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Q: Are your Mars FPGA miners still in design development, or are they reaching production to amass stock for shipment in the 2 months?The Mars products are in the prototype phase. We have ordered parts that have a long lead time frame for the mass shipments to start in just over 2 months’ time
Q. Your Mars product looks to be provided with software, may we use other software with these?Yes as soon as we have a spare prototype we will allow developers such as luke Jr etc to have enough time and access to code against the devices
Q. With the $2,000 voucher to apply toward the Jupiter model, are you then requiring customers to trade-in or return the Mars unit back to you?We do not require the Mars product to be returned it’s yours to keep. IF we can issue a firmware update that will make it possible for it to mine anything else, we will do that free of charge to anyone who buys a Mars product.
Q. Are there any assurances that you’re capable of delivering Jupiter within your stated shipment goal to suspend the buyers’ fears of continual delays -or- final hashing specs not reaching original plans?We know this concern is real and very valid, I would like to say
• We don’t make profit on the Mars product, The components are so expensive that we are really only producing it to prove we can make products in short time frames and that we can achieve our set deadlines.
• ORSoC have been building and making products based on ASIC and FPGA chips for over 10 years They have a proven track record, this is why we have teamed up with them as we can’t afford to let the community down by promising things we later change.
• The public figure for Jupiter is 250 GH/s but, as we stated in the release that’s the minimum and already doesn’t account for the 30% extra we expect to gain from the advanced coding ORSoC are famous for. So today we are saying 250 but we are doing everything we can to make sure that figure rises as high as possible not falls.
Q. Had you considered adding memory to more appropriately re-purpose the Mars FPGA to mine a scrypt based cryptocurrency, such as Litecoin?It has been requested by many, we may look at producing Mars2.0 or something similar to accomplish that very task, but as for redeveloping the current Mars product to mine litecoins, That would ofcourse delay the Mars product and the Jupiter range which is unacceptable to us.
Q. How far along are you currently with Jupiter's development? Do you have a working prototype at this time?For Jupiter we currently do not have a working prototype. As soon as that arrives we will show it to the community that’s for sure
Q. Will you be providing pictures and/or videos of the Jupiter unit before you open up the order book for Mars?Drawings possibly but not actual photos. It would look quite similar in setup to Mars as we are reusing the same ideas.
Q. Are your ASIC chips being developed and produced entirely in-house by ORSoC? Are they also responsible for assembly on the boards?All the chips and PCB design is taken care of by ORSoC but final assembly is done in an assembly plant in sweden which we have out sourced to, That factory have all the equipment needed and to be honest are faster than us setting up an assembly line ourselves. (Time to market is critical so we choose to outsource to professionals when they are faster)
Q. Are your intentions to ship the Mars and Jupiter units in consolidated batch shipments, or immediately as they are manufactured and become available?We won’t keep any on the shelf (unless we somehow manage to empty the back log). They will arrive from the assembly plant in the morning go through final testing and then shipped that afternoon
Q. Do you intend on holding consistent communication during development with prospective buyers to sustain confidence?Oh yes, this email is one of them we will have sessions in our offices where people can come and “play” with the prototypes we will have web videos and maybe even our own forum
Q. Are you able to elaborate a little further on the embedded Linux device in the Jupiter unit?http://orsoc.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/dev_board_Ordb2a_web1.pngthink of it as a RaspberryPi device, it will be tiny in size but specifically setup to do one thing,
Q. What type of connectivity will Jupiter have?It will have a web interface that you connect to, on that page you will enter your pool details. Other types of connections are possible but we will limit them so we can deliver the box faster
Q. Will we need to supply our own power supplies for Jupiter, as we will with Mars?Yes
Q. Will there be any sort of warranty coverage on the chips / boards / the water cooling system?As its electronic we will offer a warranty on a send and replace setup. But as Jupiter is a modular device you will not have to return the whole device just the blade that has issues which allows you to continue mining while we get you a replacement.
Q. Might the Jupiter be capable of overclocking by the consumer?If they know how, but it will void the warranty the box will come pretty highly tuned from us,
Q. Are the Jupiter units and Mars FPGAs being developed simultaneously, or is the focus on getting Mars out the door as soon as possible?Getting Mars up and running is our top priority, we need to who the world that we can design and build a rapid prototype and have it run.
Q. You mention the possibility of owning a miner and having it hosted, and also being able to choose your hash speed for a given period and paying for that (alluding to rented hardware). Do you know how those fees will be applied?It will not be on a % base, it will be on a fixed contract length for a supply of Hashes during that period, we are still working out the details. But we see that with hardware getting more and more expensive people with $100 to “invest” will have nowhere to turn to min coins soon and we don’t like that it makes this an elitists activity and we will look at ways of allowing the man/women with a hundred bucks still be a part of the comminuty.
We are very excited as well. The mining hardware market has treated its customers quite badly. We aim to show that not all companies are as bad as others, But what we really want is to show that if the community gather together they can help shape us providers and hold us to standards. So that the new companies which come along will have to meet those standards.
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As you can see above, KnC does not have the intent to revise the current Mars pre-order devices to be capable LTC miners in the interest of developing rapidly and avoiding delays. Any FPGA LTC miner they would offer would be a new product to come down the road. That is to say, if nothing has changed since I received these replies. If I'm wrong, I'd hope & expect Sam will correct me here.
Despite the lack of LTC support for the FPGA, my attitude towards KnC has become increasingly optimistic. Granted they still have much to show, I empathize with their positions in what they're trying to accomplish.
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