6 ms·
Mining Bitcoin on an Apple II
- dang 7y agohttps://github.com/option8/8BITCOIN https://github.com/option8/8BITCOIN Also https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157302995169796096 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157302995169796096, via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20595014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20595014
- option8 7y agohttps://www.twitch.tv/8btc https://www.twitch.tv/8btc
- grenoire 7y agoLooking at the code I am reminded of how grateful I am for high level languages and the absolutely insane number of libraries I can use to do perform so many complex yet fundamental tasks at ease without writing code for them.
- sehugg 7y agoIf there's a successful hash, does it ATDT to the Bitcoin BBS to upload the block via Zmodem?
- zaroth 7y agoJust make sure to ATM0 first, or you might wake the parents when it dials in the middle of the night. It’s much more effective than trying to cover the modem with a pillow when you’re sneaking upstairs for more late night Tele-Arena on Argus.
- jcmeyrignac 7y agoWell, the code is not perfectly optimized: https://github.com/option8/8BITCOIN/blob/master/HASH.s https://github.com/option8/8BITCOIN/blob/master/HASH.s For example: CLC ROL A can be replaced by ASL A
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoCan someone crunch some numbers about how long it may be until it finds a correct hash? Is the heat death of the universe first?
- onions 7y agoAt current difficulty, 2 hashes/second gives about 614 trillion years to find one block. Not quite the heat death of the universe, but wikipedia says all stars in the universe will have exhausted their fuel.
- kpU8efre7r 7y agoAt my current electric rate that would cost me $912,997,246,800,000 in electricity to find a hash.
- kpU8efre7r 7y agoAnd $47,261,000,000,000,000 in electricity to watch the stream that long.
- quickthrower2 7y agoA bitcoin would easily be worth that by then
- option8 7y agohuh. I have 1.61 hashes/second, and I only came to 535 trillion years. Maybe the difficulty changed since I did my math.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agopls stop
- forinti 7y agoIt's not just that it's slow, it also uses a lot of energy compared to the amount of calculation that it does. Apple II: 0.43 Mips @ 17W RPi3B: 1822 Mips @ 1.2W So I wonder if there is a solution as energy efficient as modern hardware, but as slow as 8 bit machines.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoUltra-low-power 8-bit microcontrollers? 1 MIPS @ 1 W is possible on a AVR I believe, but still much less efficient than a modern CPU. Economic-of-scale at work, you can't compete with greater integration.
- sehugg 7y agoUltra-low-power MCUs are ~80 μA/MHz, so yes, you can get there. Bitcoin doesn't require a lot of RAM, which helps power consumption significantly.
- Veedrac 7y agoWorth noting that even the lowest power microcontroller will presumably run circles around an old 8-bit architecture.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoFPGA with limited clock speed?
- unimployed 7y agoNot sure an FPGA will output enough work to be economical. Probably still stuck with ASIC.
- arcticbull 7y agoFPGAs aren't particularly energy efficient compared to ASIC implementations of the same hardware.
- 7y ago
- krick 7y agoI guess I have some mood issues this morning, but the first (and about the only) thought that came to my mind is basically frustration about how pointlessly we spend energy that comes from burning something as precious as oil and how it increases the entropy and ultimately leads to heat death of the universe...
- ta1234567890 7y agoSo sorry for your mood, I feel you. Hope it improves. About entropy and heat death. Let me offer an alternative story. Imagine heat death as a universe-wide network of "points", all oscillating the tiniest bit possible. Imagine also that this is the maximum size the universe could expand to. Now, at this point, if there was any, even a tiny small contraction of the universe, it would start a full on contraction/heating up process. Maybe you can call that the anti-BigBang. And if that happens, there would be an infinite loop between the BigBang and the BigCrunch. Life would probably come back at some point and heat death wouldn't be such a bad thing after all ;) Hope you enjoyed that story. Would love to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you.