Quote from: mjmvisser on September 09, 2013, 02:04:13 PM

As the days pass without shipped chips, it's becoming clear that projects using Avalon's offering will not see a profit, let alone ROI. Many of us have sunk money into board and assembly costs. At this point, there appear to be three options:

1. carry on development and testing, hope Avalon ships chips, keep fingers crossed that difficulty stays low enough to break even
2. abandon the project, demand mass refunds from Bitsyncom, and all take individual losses
3. sue sue sue sue sue sue sue
4. retarget the Klondikes for a more powerful chip

#1 is the equivalent of investing in CPU mining during the GPU revolution. We're paying for fancy space heaters.

I've invested enough that #2 is not an option for me.

Anyone crying "lawsuit" has no experience with the legal system. We entered into this venture knowing there was substantial risk. Tough titties people, throwing money at lawyers will not extract blood from a stone.

That leaves retargeting for another chip. I think this is possible. Functionally, chips do the same thing -- iterate over a range of nonces, computing a hash. The board design will definitely have to change, but I suspect the BOM will not change drastically. At the very least, the expensive parts (PIC, buck regs) will almost certainly not change. Also, there is now an actual market for chips, with different suppliers competing on price and features. We're in a pretty good position to negotiate bulk purchases.

Thoughts?

I don't think everyone needs to.abandon. For the sake of community development. I'd say we finish the project. If a handful exist that's okay. I understand people are MIA as well as nerve racked. That is why I believe wr need fresh hands and eyes on this project.