...It's a PCB board and some chips...
Then if everything is on track, when can we realistically expect to see a prototype board and chips hashing? Unless KnC is running significantly behind, or even ahead of schedule, this is not an unreasonable request...
About the same time they start mass producing. They'll receive all their chips from the fab at once, so there's no way to produce a prototype unit
before they are ready to begin mass production.
Other then that, there is their prototype FPGA system which they were planning to sell, but no longer are. That unit, presumably, can be used write software and test against.
As far as CGMiner is concerned, it's open source so they can come up with their own version internally if they want. The demo with their FPGA unit seemed to be running CGMiner.
Also, apparently they will
pre-configure it as well:
The idea behind these boxes is to make them as simple as possible to run, he says. Closer to the shipment date, he plans to contact customers in the queue, and ask them for details including a bitcoin address. KnCMiner will then configure each device to sent bits automatically to that address when mining. It would also test each device against that wallet with those details. Then you ship the device to them, and they plug it in, and turn it on, and walk away, he says.