Monday, March 29th 2021
Nintendo Game Boy Modded to Mine Bitcoin
Nintendo's Game Boy handheld console was launched in 1989, making it 32 years old. Being widely regarded as the icon of handheld gaming, it was sold in millions and has been copied countless times. However, with some spare time and a crazy mind, the console has been modified to mine Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Yes, you are reading that right. An 8-bit console is mining the biggest and the most valuable cryptocurrency. An electronics enthusiast named "stacksmashing" has set himself a difficult task - to prove that the console can mine some Bitcoin, at any possible rate. And he has managed to prove it is possible, although with some modifications.
Given that the console lacks any connectivity options to the outside world due to its age, the modder had to use SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) to connect the Game Boy with the Raspberry Pi, which had the task of connecting the Game Boy to the internet to mine some Bitcoin. Using the custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902 processor running at 4.19 MHz, the console is naturally not very powerful. Thus, it can not do any meaningful mining and to compare it to modern mining ASICs is just silly. However, it is interesting to see proof of concept and get to see some engineering fun. For more information, please check out the YouTube video here.
Source:
via TweakTown
Given that the console lacks any connectivity options to the outside world due to its age, the modder had to use SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) to connect the Game Boy with the Raspberry Pi, which had the task of connecting the Game Boy to the internet to mine some Bitcoin. Using the custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902 processor running at 4.19 MHz, the console is naturally not very powerful. Thus, it can not do any meaningful mining and to compare it to modern mining ASICs is just silly. However, it is interesting to see proof of concept and get to see some engineering fun. For more information, please check out the YouTube video here.
47 Comments on Nintendo Game Boy Modded to Mine Bitcoin
makes me visualize a world where every kid had a Gameboy with cellular net circuit, and everyone multiplayer's classic Gameboy games.
ofc in our world this would require going back and reprogram all the GB games and add the hardware. so not worth doing. and im not looking for Nintendo switch running emulator either. There's just a charm to retro colored plastique chassis, simple controls and games that express creativity all the while "make do" with the hardware it runs on.
You're nuts
This is more like a PoC that this device can calculate SHA256 hashes, that's it.
I thought it would at least have to be motorised. ;)
I watched the video, and it's performing 1/125.000.000.000.000 of an asic miner. So this might actually be correct.
To put it differently, if every single person on earth, man woman and child, had 21.000 gameboys mining, each, the sum total would perform equally to one asic miner. Eh, if it scaled linearly, that is (no idea). Perhaps it would be even worse.
The earth will probably be engulfed by the expanding sun and burned to a crisp with everything on it, before a gameboy has mined a day's worth of an RX580 radeon gpu.
PS : Though to be honest, the gameboy may still keep ticking after the earth is engulfed by the expanding sun. Have you seen how indestructible these things are? It's crazy.