Bitcoin Forum

I'm wondering if I can build a miner using available components found on most hobby electronics sites like https://www.sparkfun.com/

I know it won't be profitable, but I just am wondering if it is possible and more for fun than anything else.

Anyone have any ideas on how build one?

You can mine on an Arduino if you really want to.

Someone on IRC was doing it a while ago. I think he was getting less than 1kh/s.

I have one of those as well. I was thinking more along the lines of putting together components on a breadboard. To build my own "ASIC"

You know how many "components" are in the Spartan 6 FPGAs that are popular? 150k logic cells with 6-input LUTs, so you could estimate around half a million XORs/ANDs/ORs/etc. Most of those get consumed when you're hashing.

You really want to wire up something of that magnitude on a breadboard? ;) We're not even talking about how much slower running something over long wires is going to be versus the relatively tiny traces in an FPGA/ASIC.

Point taken. It was long shot.

Sparkfun does PIC microcontrollers. The SHA256 algorithm isn't all that complex, so it might well fit on one of those. It won't be fast, but probably more than a few kHash/sec.

Alternatively, looking beyond Sparkfun, the TQFP FPGA's are just about within a hobbyist's scope, tricky to solder but not impossible, So you could get up to a few MHash/sec.  Just don't think of using the BGA packages. Nightmare, though it has been done, I recall seeing a post on this very forum, he used a skillet to solder Spartan6 LX150's  :o

Anyway, joking aside, if you're going for that, why not homebrew something with one of Biftury's new chips (yes, I am considering it, but seeing as I've only got 0.,5BTC to play with, I'll have to wait for a single chip group buy  :'( )

I would need some detailed instructions in order to feel comfortable buying single chips and doing it myself.

It would be a pretty advanced hobbyist project (almost certainly not cost effective). Most people would buy the pre-built boards instead, which is much more sensible. Take a look a this thread for what's likely to be involved https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.0

Yeah I've seen those posts all over. I did buy Steamboats/K16 chips/boards. :)

I think BKKCoins will be selling K1 kits that you can DIY just grab a couple of Avalon chips and get soldering  ;) you'll need a some form of rework set up but there are cheap diy options...

I saw this posted today on Facebook, it reminded me of this thread. Guy builds a single FPGA logic cell on a breadboard. :)

http://hackaday.com/2012/09/20/homebrew-fpgas/

Do you know who this was? I would really like like get the code from this person. Would be cool to checkout.