NES as a hardware platform for mining bitcoins

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Game Console

You can get some profit when mining Bitcoins only if you have powerful and expensive equipment operating around the clock. It costs a lot, from hundreds to thousands of US dollars, so not everyone can afford to buy a system for mining.

In principle, you can try to assemble such equipment yourself in order to receive Bitcoins without any problems and worries. A Twitter user with a nickname gbg decided to try to build a mining gadget with his own hands. He successfully created the device for this task, only the modern NSS server was used as the basis. True, several modernized, it was necessary to add a couple of new elements to the old platform and update the software.

This project was not created for earnings. Many of the bitcoins owner of this device can not nainit, because the configuration of the eight-bit console could not be called productive even 32 years ago when the console was released by Nintendo. NES, where you can run Tetris and “Duck Stories”, cannot be counted as a powerful iron.
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So why was all this done? As it turned out, in order to test their own strength. It was “an inexpensive weekend project,” according to the developer himself. This project, created for fun, as well as the study of certain principles of mining.

According to the information provided in his blog, a system based on NES was created to analyze the SHA256 hash algorithm. Work here requires the ability to perform 32-bit operations. But we remember that NES is an 8-bit prefix. In order to add the necessary features to the console, the author of the project used Raspberri Pi. “Malinka” is taken in order to receive data from the Bitcoin infrastructure, and reformat this information into a ROM file using the SHA256 algorithm. In fact, the prefix receives the data required for mining in the form of a game file.

After this, the console needs to connect to the network, where the next block is calculated. To obtain information about the successful completion of the calculation, the creator of this system programmed the NES to paint the display green when successful. If nothing happens, the display turns red. In front of the screen, the user installed a PlayStation Eye camera. Open source software is used for recognition, which can distinguish green from red. If green appears, a confirmation of successful block calculation is sent to the network to complete the operation.


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Surprisingly, it really works . True, the whole process is completely unprofitable. The creator of the bitcoin mining system based on NES did not count on profit, knowing that it could not be. He says that successful calculations were, but the speed of the NES is extremely low, so the probability of getting a block is also low. The speed of calculating hashes, unfortunately, is not given. According to the author of the project, the amount earned is vanishingly small and tends to zero.

NES / Famicom Specifications

• CPU type: Motorola 6502 8-bit (MOS)
• CPU speed: 1.79 MHz
• RAM: 16 Kbit (2 Kbyte)
• Video RAM: 16 Kbit (2 Kbyte)
• Picture resolution: 256 x 240 pixels
• Colors Available: 52 colors
• Max colors at once: 24 colors
• Max sprite size: 8 x 8 pixels or 8 x 16 pixels
• Max sprites: 64 sprites (max per line: 8)
• Min / Max Cart Size: 192 Kbit - 4 Mbit
• Sound: PSG sound
• Picture Scroll: 2 hv

Gbg is a mining specialist, he has his own blog where he, along with readers, understands the device wallets and various software related to cryptocurrency. He has already conducted a successful reverse engineering of the popular Bitcoin wallet Trezor, creating his own open version of this software. Its development was called " Dinosaur Hiphop ".

Mining cryptocurrency is to create new blocks with the possibility of receiving remuneration in the form of the cryptocurrency itself as commission fees. Calculations are required in order to provide protection against the re-use of the same units of such currency. Mining and emission of new currency units stimulate users to expend the computing power of their devices, supporting the operation of networks. In the Bitcoin system, the user who generated the next block receives new bitcoins as a reward. You can spend the received reward through 120 confirmation operations (this is about 20 hours).

The probability of obtaining a reward by a miner per unit of time is equal to the ratio of the computing power of the mining device to the computing power of the network. The higher the power of the equipment, the more blocks can be generated and the greater the amount of reward to receive.