Topic: X6500 Custom FPGA Miner - page 52. (Read 220057 times)

I listed the asset on GLBSE! Read more about it in the GLBSE thread. There are 5000 shares for sale at 0.25 BTC. This should buy 8 X6500s, which I estimate to reach 2 GH/s.

I'm curious to see how this goes! Let me know if you have any questions about it.

Do you mean to release a lot of shares initially, but only buy boards for the shares that have sold? Won't dividends be screwed up then? I mean, won't those unsold shares be earning dividends, diluting the earnings of the real shareholders? I guess those "false" dividends could just be turned around because they didn't actually go anywhere. Still, I think that makes things a little unnecessarily complicated, or I didn't understand you exactly.

Why not just add boards as people buy enough shares from you?

I'm thinking about running a little experiment with GLBSE, mostly for fun. I made a post on the GLBSE forum thinking out loud about it. https://glbse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=225

Basically, I would like to offer shares in an FPGA mining company, so that people can get involved in FPGA mining without having to buy an entire board. 100% of mining revenue would be distributed to the share holders. To cover electricity costs, I would transfer at most 10% of shares to a personal account. Unless the difficulty rises a lot or the value drops further, that should cover it.

Any interest in something like this? I'd like to come up with an estimate for how many boards to buy for such an operation. I'm thinking right now that 5 sounds about right.

We got our software working! li_gangyi posted a screenshot on his blog:

http://fillwithcoolblogname.blogspot.com/2011/10/success-finally-after-smacking-my-head.html

Unfortunately, that test was on a board with only a single FPGA loaded and no real heatsink. The fully assembled board is making it's way through the mail to me, so I'll be running it through a bunch of tests as soon as it gets here.

Thanks! Actually, those pin headers won't normally be there. They're only on the prototype for testing. On the mass produced boards, developers can still load them if they want to play with the JTAG interface directly.

Wow! The board looks so great! Just pitty there are pin headers in between the FPGAs, which may prevent installing single wide heatsink. Eagerly waiting for someone who will stack them up and post a pic!

Yeah, the USB port and the power connectors are on opposite sides. I know that seems strange, but it makes the board layout much cleaner.

If you're serious about building an enclosure, it might make sense to do a slight revision of the board in the future that might be better suited to it. I know how difficult it can be to design something to fit around something else, instead of being able to design both at the same time. It's really not that much work to just modify the board a little bit, depending on what you want to change, of course! Don't rule that out completely.


I'm not sure on exact numbers but I know it's very small compared to VCCINT, of course. li_gangyi is shipping a board to me right now, so I'll measure everything when I get it. I'll let you know what I find.

So is the USB interface on the front after all?

Just wondering if you guys have measured power consumption on VCCAUX/VCCO & can share the numbers?

-rph

Thanks! li_gangyi took a pic with the second FPGA loaded:



And, yes, bigger heatsinks most definitely! They were back-ordered but I have two in my hands right now. I'll post a final pic with the barrel power connector and the heatsinks when it's all put together.

That's a sexy PCB.. well done guys..

You're probably going to need a bigger heatsink  

-rph

Thank you, Karmicads! We would be nowhere without your and the rest of community's fervent support!

We'll be making some important announcements very soon. Right now our focus is testing every aspect of this board to make sure it doesn't have any problems. So far, so good, but our software has some kinks that need ironing out.

  Sorry Li, but I have to report the above post with the picture of our new boards to the moderators. It should be considered offensive to post something that makes one wet themselves. 

Nice!!  Yep, I can't wait for my shipment, but I s'pose I have to. It's worth the extra time to see a little more attention is paid to details like quality of parts, power protection, and reliable shipping logistics. Well done to all of you. I would submit the Dominator as the model of a good (no - make that ideal) bitcoin project and a template for how great things can be done with careful incremental planning and fostering of goodwill in the community. You've dealt with minor quibbles about intellectual property rights and held open arms to those who may have formerly snubbed you. You've shone trough the tough, direct questions and challenges to the technical specifications. You've dealt with contingencies (such as fluctuating bitcoin value and order volumes) and offered reasonable parameters. You've kept your customers informed and involved. You've balanced a whole slew of trade offs in the final detail to hardware and code and simply pulled it all together. I hope you are all very proud of yourselves. And might I add, that board looks just beautiful.

PS: Might I suggest you print up an official pre-order voucher for the next lot (using the existing design). If it works as a normal voucher, it could be out in time for Christmas. Just honor refunds in USD at face value if recipients wish to bow out. This answers the question: What to buy the obsessive bitcoin geek in your life, who has everything? I bet s/he doesn't have a FPGA  mining board. Being given a gift voucher for a 10-15% deposit on the Dominator, may be all it takes to nudge them in the right direction. Make the vouchers redeemable right up till and even past the final shipment date. Even if it generated a dozen or two extra orders I bet it would be worth it.

Thanks again to all of you, for the wonderful job you have done.

PS My money has been sitting there on MtGox (in USD) since I first got worried about the fluctuating price. Today BTC dipped down from about 4.9 to about $4.5 USD. I managed to get back in at 4.65 - 4.7 and were still trending up. So I hope you can call for final payments soon. Just before a market 'correction' but just towards the end of a frenzied, bullish bubble would be nice. 

Well, 90MH/s is definitely a conservative estimate. We wanted to make sure that we didn't over-promise and not be able to deliver in the end.

Our boards will be loaded with the -3 speed grade FPGA, so the hash rate should be limited only by the code. I think 130 MH/s seems reasonable, but we'll have to see!

Isn't 90MH/s about half of what can be expected from a Spartan 6 LX150?

We're still concurrently working on the logistics of shipping the orders. Look forward to the news soon. I believe that sorting it out properly will result in better pricing and availability.

Received the parts, populated the board and now onto testing. Looks good so far hardware-wise, software side of things it looks like we need to iron out some small issues and we should be set.

Do you know when you will allow pre-orders again?  Timeline for 2nd wave?

Just so it's clear, these are the first 5 PCBs, which need to be stress tested to prove that our design has no problems. After that's done and all looks good (knock on wood), we will be placing large orders. We'll keep you updated!