June 2013
June 2013Testing the control unit and flashing the FPGA firmware, sourcing all the components for the first sold batch and mounting everything in the prototype case were the things that keep us busy this week. While we were expecting to get the Avalon samples earlier, due to aВ ChineseВ holiday that lasted three days we just received them this morning. Not really too bad, as we’re going to bring all the 30 samples to the factory tomorrow along with 3 hashing modules’ PCB for assembly. It took a lot to source all the components of the boards from the various suppliers and manufacturers because Avalon’s specifications were in some cases obscure and had to be engineered again. So, as we did, we took the change to oversize a bit the power supply of the modules to about 50% more than the minimum requirements; overclocking and watercooling users will be very happy of that! I’m glad to say that by thursday of this week, all the needed components to assemble batch #1 units will hit the factory and will stay there in the warehouse, ready for assembly Some issues were also posed by the fact that Avalon didn’t release the sources of its FPGA controller, that required us to reverse engineer it a bit to understand why a part of the onboard USB hub wasn’t working, and it came out that it was due to the type of quartz oscillator used for the clock. Don’t worry, it’s now fixed, we’re going well and perfectly on time! Here are some pictures of the current prototype and the Avalon chips that came in this morning, we’re just waiting for the factory to pre-produce 10 samples of the hashing units (of which only 3 will have the Avalon ICs on them) so that we can “glue” everything together and post pictures and a video of the working prototype! CheersВ
