Bitcoin Forum

Ken Shirriff, an electronics engineer and tech blogger, tried to mine a BTC block using a bit antediluvian IBM computer originating from the 1960s. Was it successful?

- Read more HERE (http://bitcoincasino.info/bitcoin-casino-news/possible-mine-bitcoins-bulky-1960s-ibm-computer/)

about 500.000.000.000.000 years, or about 40.000 times of the current age of our universe to solve just 1 Bitcoin block

yeah if the diff remain the same, not to mention that those old computers are everything but efficient in electricity terms

Well at least it could solve it, but who would bother mining with a machine that came out several decades ago? I wonder how many bitcoins could it produce if the difficulty is set to 0. ???

If diff was 0 then every hash would be a block ... afaik

Thank you for the laugh! I'm at work having a crap day and you just made it a little better.  :D

I prefer the graphics on the 1960s IBM machines, because they didn't use blurry anti-aliasing like modern video games.  They also didn't use monitors, so there was 0% image distortion.

Why not attach some ASICs in the computer and outrun most of the recent computers that have no ASICs attached to them?

The slots on that computer couldn't even fit to some of the wires on ASICS :v Also, the experiment was focused on mining with that computer alone without any mining hardware attached.

one of the most interesting reads i have ever read, they could try to mine bitcoins with nasa computers too and check how fast would hey be

They could've done it, only if they have access to it. ;)

My guess before reading the article was 'yes'.  Someone did the exercise of doing a hash by hand so I figured that it could be done on an old mainframe.  I figured that some of the intermediates might need to go to tape and it would be awfully slow, but I did not anticipate it being this slow.

Of course it would be intuitively obvious that mining on an old mainframe would very nearly as pointless as mining with a pencil and paper.

An interesting (and not very useful) artifact of some of the old mainframe designs (using core memory) is that they can be unplugged mid-computation then put in a basement for 20 years, then powered back up and continue where they left off.  I think the PDP-8 was one of these, though it was, arguably, not a 'mainframe'.

Possible? Yes. Practical? No. Amusing? Most definitely.

I think you can mine bitcoin with every computer system,the point is the time you are going to spend to solve just one block

Exactly!  You can mine, it just doesn't make any sense.

Sort of like that 21.co organization that wants to put ASICs in everyone's cellphones to mine bitcoin.

This was a pretty cool experiment
According to Shirriff, the historical computer is fully capable of mining the cryptocurrency, ‘but so slowly it would take more than the lifetime of the universe to successfully mine a block’.
If it ever did strike a block solo mining it still would time out if it had the lifetime of the universe to mine it ha-ha thanks for sharing needed a laugh.

This is the coolest thing I have seen all day.  It might not be efficient but man that computer looks awesome.  I want one!  I just have to figure out where to put it.

interesting idea  ::) , I wonder if anyone has done this experiment

You know, (only) from the photo it doesn't look much different than a high-end mining facility!

which won't change too much, because cellphone can already mine, with their quadcore, and there isn't the problem of electricity

Sorry bud, you ain't getting me to click on your clickbait bullshit link

Just be happy a man of my intelligence decided to reply to this bullshit thread.

Technically anything (including you and I by hand) that is capable of hashing in a given amount of time would be able to solve a block and earn a reward. It's just that statistically it's so unlikely to occur that you wouldn't even bother with such a thing.

That being said, it is amusing to see a relative relic of technology used to demonstrate how far computing power has actually come in the short space of 50 years.

I see you posting in nearly every thread.

Your english sucks

Your opinions are always the same bullshit

Your bullshit signature campaign is the only reason you spam this forum day and night for your extra dollar in BTC

Why don't you get the fuck out of here, your posts are worthless.

Well, he could create his own Bitcoin clone and try and mine that  :P
Then he might be able to mine for "Bitcoin" or whatever it will be.

Thinking of it.. What else can be done with a museum ancient computer? You're not gonna use it to write a letter..! You'd use it for these kinds of experiments.

You having a bad day bro? Btw the link was not bullshit - it was the full article.

I would be highly impressed by (the uselessness of) a mechanical sha256 hashing engine along the lines of Babbage's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcedn6fxgS0) work.  Perhaps if Bitcoin reaches $10,000,000.00 per I'll commission such a thing.  2015 dollars of course.

Somebody posted a tutorial on how to use a raspberry pi to run a full Bitcoin node. I would wager the raspberry would be capable of mining a block before that antique. Probably only half the lifetime of the universe. I wonder how many of those antique computers you would need to match the processing power of a raspberry.