Here’s How Developers Are Recycling Old Electronics into Bitcoin Mining Rigs

Necessity is the mother of invention. Likewise Cost effectiveness is the mother of Recycling. Developers are now involving themselves into how old electronics can be creatively repurposed for bitcoin mining.

Ken Shirriff, an old school Bitcoin miner, is digging deep into how the otherwise un-minable old electronics can be exploited to mine at a rate comparable with modern GPU, CPU, and ASIC mining equipment.

• Ken Shirriff has successfully converted innumerous old-school computers and gaming systems into mining rigs. He is also a mathematical genius who can even write SHA-256 algorithms using only pencil and paper. In 2017, Shirriff turned a Xerox Alto, a computer released in 1973 into a mining rig.
• Not just this, Shirriff actually coded the hash algorithm using an “outdated” programming language, BCPL, for particularly turning to Bitcoin mining using the Xerox Alto.
• Shirriff has also converted older computers like the IBM 1401 mainframe (introduced in 1959) and even old gaming systems like the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to cryptocurrency mining rigs.

Old Rigs vs. New Rigs

This can be a cool hobby to start for a tech-savvy person who loves to explore more about Electronics. If you’re only focused to mine cryptocurrency as a business, you should consider newer rigs first.

What’s the difference in computing power between these old rigs and new mining gear?

Shirriff openly acknowledges the fact that it might be possible to improve on the mining capabilities of his own retrofitted mining rigs and that there is a tremendously large gap in performance compared to newer rigs.

For instance, Xerox Alto only reaches 1.5 hashes per second. On the other hand modern mining rigs like, ASIC can reach trillions of hashes per second, clearly winning the race. Even with the rise of anti-ASIC Proof-of-Work consensus algorithms, the highest performing GPU graphics cards like the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X 11G Graphics Card can help miners reach over 31 million hashes per second.

This is not a precise instruction-wise guide for the Cryptocurrency tech-savvy enthusiasts. However, this article does unveils several opportunities that one must explore mining by employing the old electronic gadgets.

Also Read: List Of Best Bitcoin Mining Pool

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