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Title: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: rocks on September 30, 2013, 07:40:56 PM Title says it all.
Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Zammo on September 30, 2013, 07:55:07 PM Sacrifice it in a ritual of burning to appease the hashing gods!
Or you could mine an alt coin ::) Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Xian01 on September 30, 2013, 09:33:31 PM Title says it all. Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. Still have mine humming along after I retired my GPU rigs. I'll probably set fire to it this winter by throwing it into a friends chiminea and recording the sights and sounds of its destruction... Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: millsdmb on September 30, 2013, 09:35:43 PM Title says it all. try to sell it on ebayNow that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Zeek_W on September 30, 2013, 10:43:06 PM Sell it to me cheap!
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Littleshop on September 30, 2013, 11:22:17 PM I will buy some at $35 each with power supply right now.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: whitefeather on October 01, 2013, 05:08:14 AM Still have mine humming along after I retired my GPU rigs. I'll probably set fire to it this winter by throwing it into a friends chiminea and recording the sights and sounds of its destruction... I have one left, which I recently turned off. Maybe I will take it to the backyard and have an Office Space Bat Printer moment with it. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Zeek_W on October 01, 2013, 05:32:54 AM It's an FPGA - it'll have other uses.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Littleshop on October 02, 2013, 12:39:25 PM I'd hang on to it. Someone will eventually port my Litecoin miner (https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Litecoin-Miner) to it, the tricky bit will be dealing with the MCU (perhaps Luke-Jr could help out?). Thank you for your work for the community but please don't give people false hope. With the scrypt speeds you are getting out of that we are talking so slow that you should still mine BTC with it. The point is we are talking about less then $5 a month after power (after the difficulty change this week). Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: nwoolls on October 02, 2013, 12:46:57 PM Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? I'd be more than happy to take an FPGA or two off someone's hands. I'm always looking for more types of hardware to test with the software bits I write for crypto-coins. See my sig for links. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Littleshop on October 02, 2013, 08:33:44 PM I'd hang on to it. Someone will eventually port my Litecoin miner (https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Litecoin-Miner) to it, the tricky bit will be dealing with the MCU (perhaps Luke-Jr could help out?). Thank you for your work for the community but please don't give people false hope. With the scrypt speeds you are getting out of that we are talking so slow that you should still mine BTC with it. The point is we are talking about less then $5 a month after power (after the difficulty change this week). I agree totally. Its still a factor of three more profitable to mine bitcoin than litecoin using the current Icarus/Lancelot bitstream, as discussed just yesterday on the litecoin forum (https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,5162.msg47841.html#msg47841). And at just a few cents per day, its really just for novelty value rather than a serious economic proposal. I just didn't like the thought of all those fpga boards going for scrap once bitcoin mining became uneconomic (and the project gave me a chance to brush up on my verilog coding skills ;) ) Let me say, I do not think they are scrap. They do have a value, it is just pretty low. They can be used as an FPGA dev platform. That is why I say I would buy a few for $30 each. But I will never get that $30 back mining BTC. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: 1l1l11ll1l on October 07, 2013, 04:51:40 AM I'd give $50 for one, just to have as a collectable of mining history.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: hulk on October 07, 2013, 11:39:19 AM Title says it all. Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. Sell it right now as the price is dropping as we speak :) Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Eternity on October 07, 2013, 01:25:01 PM Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: GeorgeH on October 07, 2013, 03:43:46 PM May be useful for a password cracking setup.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: ModusPwnd on October 12, 2013, 01:40:34 AM I'm keeping mine as a memento of a past hobby. I use electric heating so I let it hum away.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: cowandtea on October 12, 2013, 09:01:03 AM Mine it while selling it online at high price, who know you might be lucky. :)
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Zeek_W on October 12, 2013, 09:33:42 AM May be useful for a password cracking setup. I've been looking into that casually. Anything specific you have found that could be interesting? Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: kuusj98 on October 12, 2013, 06:27:02 PM Hmm, what about throw it away?
Or give it to a friend... Do the right thing! Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: GeorgeH on October 14, 2013, 07:19:33 PM May be useful for a password cracking setup. I've been looking into that casually. Anything specific you have found that could be interesting? Sorry, nothing here. I'd definitely look into it if I had one though. I'm sure there is a decent amount of FPGA password cracking information available. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: SgtSpike on October 14, 2013, 07:21:44 PM They're not completely worthless yet...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/768-896MH-s-BFL-FPGA-Single-Bitcoin-Miner-In-Hand-Ships-Now-/141079903811?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20d9047e43 Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: zerocode20 on October 14, 2013, 07:36:09 PM They're not completely worthless yet... http://www.ebay.com/itm/768-896MH-s-BFL-FPGA-Single-Bitcoin-Miner-In-Hand-Ships-Now-/141079903811?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20d9047e43 Probably the people buying have no idea the difference between FPGA/ASIC ....... Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: gmaxwell on October 15, 2013, 05:37:07 AM Let me say, I do not think they are scrap. They do have a value, it is just pretty low. They can be used as an FPGA dev platform. That is why I say I would buy a few for $30 each. But I will never get that $30 back mining BTC. Last I checked they were cryptographically locked to BFL's FPGA images and BFL won't provide the info needed to reprogram them. IIRC they also can't be reprogramed over the USB bus.Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Unacceptable on October 15, 2013, 08:16:11 AM I sold one of mine last month on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/300968030370?ssPageName=STRK:MESOX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1561.l2649 Private auction for 2 more on another forum,$150 each ;D Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: kramble on October 15, 2013, 08:17:00 AM Let me say, I do not think they are scrap. They do have a value, it is just pretty low. They can be used as an FPGA dev platform. That is why I say I would buy a few for $30 each. But I will never get that $30 back mining BTC. Last I checked they were cryptographically locked to BFL's FPGA images and BFL won't provide the info needed to reprogram them. IIRC they also can't be reprogramed over the USB bus.That's useful info. I was wondering if it might be worth porting my litecoin miner onto them, but I'll stick with the Lancelot and Ztex for now. Its just a hobby project anyway as the return on mining LTC would be minimal at the sort of hash rates I'm achieving (It was a challenge ... lots of people said FPGA couldn't do scrypt, well it can, just not very well :P ). Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Leehoya on October 15, 2013, 08:22:44 AM Plenty of sha256 alt coins right now. Mine them all!
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: OleOle on October 15, 2013, 08:43:43 AM Mine it while selling it online at high price, who know you might be lucky. :) Or maybe even mine with it while selling it online as 'pre-order', then arrange for delivery in two weeks, two months or two years. Seems to have worked before... :D Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Leehoya on October 15, 2013, 09:00:05 AM Mine it while selling it online at high price, who know you might be lucky. :) Or maybe even mine with it while selling it online as 'pre-order', then arrange for delivery in two weeks, two months or two years. Seems to have worked before... :D Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: lightfoot on October 22, 2013, 06:56:47 PM Interesting side thought: How low could the sale prices on things like this go?
Could the price of 500 erupters drop below that of a 1,500 watt space heater? That might be the minimum price. C Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: SgtSpike on October 22, 2013, 08:04:13 PM Interesting side thought: How low could the sale prices on things like this go? It definitely could. Who wants to maintain 500 erupters and all the USB tangle that goes along with it to save $15?Could the price of 500 erupters drop below that of a 1,500 watt space heater? That might be the minimum price. C Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: razorfishsl on October 22, 2013, 10:24:23 PM Let me say, I do not think they are scrap. They do have a value, it is just pretty low. They can be used as an FPGA dev platform. That is why I say I would buy a few for $30 each. But I will never get that $30 back mining BTC. Last I checked they were cryptographically locked to BFL's FPGA images and BFL won't provide the info needed to reprogram them. IIRC they also can't be reprogramed over the USB bus.That's useful info. I was wondering if it might be worth porting my litecoin miner onto them, but I'll stick with the Lancelot and Ztex for now. Its just a hobby project anyway as the return on mining LTC would be minimal at the sort of hash rates I'm achieving (It was a challenge ... lots of people said FPGA couldn't do scrypt, well it can, just not very well :P ). That can easily be fixed. The crypto keys can be removed with a JTAG. yep ok ..... the BFL bit-files will no longer work, but it's not as if you need them. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Carlton Banks on October 22, 2013, 10:35:27 PM I have the same problem with my FPGAminer x6500's, they're just scraping by still now that the exchange rate has jumped, lol
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: OleOle on October 23, 2013, 12:08:47 AM Mine it while selling it online at high price, who know you might be lucky. :) Yeah, there's a great tradition of over-priced miners online, no point in fighting history ;) Worth out what you think it is worth, add 25%, double your anticipated shipping charges then add that to the unit total cost then advertise it as 'free shipping'. Throw in a 'free' usb with drivers and miners plus an 'instruction guide' and away you go :D I can just hear the buyers now thinking, "Hmm... bitcoin? ...crypto? Sounds interesting... make money in rising and falling markets... I might buy that." ----- Disclaimer: I have bought overpriced asic miner units on ebay so I know it works :D Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: Quix on October 23, 2013, 03:27:17 AM Figure out what the real board underneath it is, remove the BFL casing and sell it as whatever FPGA it is. Worth way more that way.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: evansearle42 on October 25, 2013, 10:45:14 AM Keep it as a collection and show it to your kids next time :)
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: OleOle on October 25, 2013, 12:40:52 PM The forum member Vesperwillow has this in their signature, maybe worth contacting them?
"ASIC/Scrypt Buyback Program: I will BUY your mining equipment if you're considering selling." No harm in asking. :) Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: P_Shep on October 25, 2013, 12:41:49 PM They have two, quite expensive, FPGA chips inside. They could be recovered and used elsewhere.
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: high110 on October 25, 2013, 01:34:22 PM Oh man - bitcoin just touched 180...at this rate, I'll have to turn off my miners. Sell it while you can.
Ironly Cloud mining at CEX has gone up?? was 0.85 per GHs yesterday and now it's .9 per GHS. Check out the signature. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: kramble on October 25, 2013, 01:47:50 PM They have two, quite expensive, FPGA chips inside. They could be recovered and used elsewhere. According to Ngzhang they are EP3SL150F780 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79825.0 Some additional info https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123155.0 However the bitstream is protected (see http://www.altera.co.uk/literature/wp/wp-01010.pdf) and if BFL used the poly-fuse option rather than battery-backup, the devices may be unusable (I defer to rasorfishsl upthread, but AFAIK poly-fuses are one-time programmable and if the tamper flag is set the devices are junk without the master key). Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: rocks on October 25, 2013, 04:27:52 PM Keep it as a collection and show it to your kids next time :) I think this is what I decided to do. Sell it on ebay what probably the best suggestion, but today they go for less than $100 and at that price it would be nice to just hold onto the brick for sentimental purposes. If I had more than 1 though I'd sell the extra's on ebay. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: high110 on October 25, 2013, 08:24:39 PM I kept my brick =)
I don't think anyone will buy it at this point. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: lightfoot on October 25, 2013, 09:35:08 PM I kept my brick =) I'd buy it for $25 as a curiosity and maybe to run it on a solar panel.I don't think anyone will buy it at this point. C Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: frankenmint on October 25, 2013, 09:39:10 PM I kept my brick =) I'd buy it for $25 as a curiosity and maybe to run it on a solar panel.I don't think anyone will buy it at this point. C I'll buy it for 50 each for the same points mentioned above. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: high110 on October 25, 2013, 11:09:45 PM Lol - I'm honestly too lazy to send it. You guys can always try ebay =)
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: lightfoot on October 26, 2013, 03:51:26 AM Lol - I'm honestly too lazy to send it. You guys can always try ebay =) Naah. Just lost a $400 bid on a beautiful 8k watch on Ebay, it's the place of sad dreams.Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: DobZombie on October 26, 2013, 05:20:03 AM I could use one of these for these for the museum
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: mogrith on October 26, 2013, 05:35:52 AM You can try mining blakecoin. it's not scrypt or sha-256 there is FPGA miner for it.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306894.msg3290239#msg3290239 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306894.msg3290239#msg3290239) Block reward is 25 coin + inflation (square root of (difficulty + block height)) No halfing of reward after x blocks Cap in place to reduce the difficulty jumps upwards Block target time is 3 minutes and retargets every hour 7 Billion coins Block maturity 120 Thanks to the efforts of kramble, Blakecoin has been successfully ported to the FPGA (early development) FPGA-Blakecoin-Miner by kramble https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Blakecoin-Miner (https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Blakecoin-Miner) Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: kramble on October 26, 2013, 11:00:11 AM You can try mining blakecoin. it's not scrypt or sha-256 there is FPGA miner for it. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306894.msg3290239#msg3290239 github.com/kramble/FPGA-Blakecoin-Miner Sorry to disappoint, but even if the devices can be unlocked (which I doubt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=305242.msg3409364#msg3409364)), there is no current port for the EP3SL150F780, and there is also the problem of the onboard MCU and a software driver. You'll be better (if you have the kit) trying the Lancelot port (which does work, though with a quirky python mining driver), or maybe a Ztex which should be a fairly trivial hack, though as I don't have a board to test on somebody else will have to trailblaze this. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: high110 on October 26, 2013, 01:28:06 PM I don't know the technical details - but I'm guessing that's a no? It can't be used to mine alt coins?
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: atavacron on October 26, 2013, 03:48:25 PM You can try mining blakecoin. it's not scrypt or sha-256 there is FPGA miner for it. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=306894.msg3290239#msg3290239 github.com/kramble/FPGA-Blakecoin-Miner Sorry to disappoint, but even if the devices can be unlocked (which I doubt (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=305242.msg3409364#msg3409364)), there is no current port for the EP3SL150F780, and there is also the problem of the onboard MCU and a software driver. You'll be better (if you have the kit) trying the Lancelot port (which does work, though with a quirky python mining driver), or maybe a Ztex which should be a fairly trivial hack, though as I don't have a board to test on somebody else will have to trailblaze this. Kramble, I've got two Ztex x6500s. I'm an FPGA newb but learn quickly. Could you give me a starting point or direction on how to get Blakecoin ported? I downloaded one of your bitstreams and modified the User ID in a hex editor so that BFGMiner would load it onto the FPGA. Then I tried to use Reaper-Blakecoin to detect the FPGAs and mine but no joy. Am I close? Thanks in advance, atavacron Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: kramble on October 26, 2013, 04:11:59 PM Kramble, I've got two Ztex x6500s. I'm an FPGA newb but learn quickly. Could you give me a starting point or direction on how to get Blakecoin ported? I downloaded one of your bitstreams and modified the User ID in a hex editor so that BFGMiner would load it onto the FPGA. Then I tried to use Reaper-Blakecoin to detect the FPGAs and mine but no joy. Am I close? Nice thinking, but the I/O for the Ztex boards is different from the Lancelot so the bitstream won't work as-is. I'll do a quick port for you to try out (I'll base it on the published code in http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/ZtexBTCMiner-121126.tar.bz2). I did something similar for Litecoin (see https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Litecoin-Miner/tree/master/experimental/ZTEX) which Vpereira was going to test, though I've not had much feedback recently. Blake should be simpler though as it uses the same midstream/data interface as bitcoin (unlike litecoin which required the full block header). There may be an issue with the midstate as blake uses a different algorithm, so unless reaper sends the modified midstate it won't work. Perhaps modifying the Ztex Java miner would work, or a cgminer port? Could you let me know the User ID that I need to embed in the bitstream? I'll get onto this tomorrow. Probably best to follow-up on the Blakecoin thread as its a bit OT here. Regards Mark Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: atavacron on October 26, 2013, 04:22:34 PM Kramble, I've got two Ztex x6500s. I'm an FPGA newb but learn quickly. Could you give me a starting point or direction on how to get Blakecoin ported? I downloaded one of your bitstreams and modified the User ID in a hex editor so that BFGMiner would load it onto the FPGA. Then I tried to use Reaper-Blakecoin to detect the FPGAs and mine but no joy. Am I close? Nice thinking, but the I/O for the Ztex boards is different from the Lancelot so the bitstream won't work as-is. I'll do a quick port for you to try out (I'll base it on the published code in http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/ZtexBTCMiner-121126.tar.bz2). I did something similar for Litecoin (see https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Litecoin-Miner/tree/master/experimental/ZTEX) which Vpereira was going to test, though I've not had much feedback recently. Blake should be simpler though as it uses the same midstream/data interface as bitcoin (unlike litecoin which required the full block header). There may be an issue with the midstate as blake uses a different algorithm, so unless reaper sends the modified midstate it won't work. Perhaps modifying the Ztex Java miner would work, or a cgminer port? Could you let me know the User ID that I need to embed in the bitstream? I'll get onto this tomorrow. Probably best to follow-up on the Blakecoin thread as its a bit OT here. Regards Mark I notice that the BFGMiner was looking for "UserID=0x42240402" for the Ztex x6500 so I used the Bless Hex Editor in Ubuntu and modified yours to that. BFGMiner loaded the entire bitstream without a problem. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: atavacron on October 26, 2013, 04:24:26 PM Kramble, I've got two Ztex x6500s. I'm an FPGA newb but learn quickly. Could you give me a starting point or direction on how to get Blakecoin ported? I downloaded one of your bitstreams and modified the User ID in a hex editor so that BFGMiner would load it onto the FPGA. Then I tried to use Reaper-Blakecoin to detect the FPGAs and mine but no joy. Am I close? Nice thinking, but the I/O for the Ztex boards is different from the Lancelot so the bitstream won't work as-is. I'll do a quick port for you to try out (I'll base it on the published code in http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/ZtexBTCMiner-121126.tar.bz2). I did something similar for Litecoin (see https://github.com/kramble/FPGA-Litecoin-Miner/tree/master/experimental/ZTEX) which Vpereira was going to test, though I've not had much feedback recently. Blake should be simpler though as it uses the same midstream/data interface as bitcoin (unlike litecoin which required the full block header). There may be an issue with the midstate as blake uses a different algorithm, so unless reaper sends the modified midstate it won't work. Perhaps modifying the Ztex Java miner would work, or a cgminer port? Could you let me know the User ID that I need to embed in the bitstream? I'll get onto this tomorrow. Probably best to follow-up on the Blakecoin thread as its a bit OT here. Regards Mark I notice that the BFGMiner was looking for "UserID=0x42240402" for the Ztex x6500 so I used the Bless Hex Editor in Ubuntu and modified yours to that. BFGMiner loaded the entire bitstream without a problem. I'll resume this topic on the Blakecoin thread. Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: ekiro on October 26, 2013, 09:23:04 PM Title says it all. Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. It's amazing how obsolete this stuff becomes. So fast! I had 3 of these a month ago. Now they are pretty useless. But I managed to make a descent ROI on it. L Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: lightfoot on October 28, 2013, 01:44:27 PM Cloud mining is the latest scam. From a math point there is no other way; it's like promising 120% return on PPS or something.
I just took a look at one of these "cloud miners". Ah look, they have "referral bonuses". I wonder if it's another multi-level-marketing scheme/scam.... Good luck :-) C Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: waltermot321 on October 28, 2013, 03:41:58 PM Title says it all. Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles? Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on. It's amazing how obsolete this stuff becomes. So fast! I had 3 of these a month ago. Now they are pretty useless. But I managed to make a descent ROI on it. L Lucky for you, at least you ROI .... Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: cxboyminer on October 31, 2013, 07:48:22 AM How many Gigs can the FPGA produce today?
Title: Re: What to do with BFL FPGA singles now? Post by: zerocode20 on October 31, 2013, 12:30:16 PM How many Gigs can the FPGA produce today? A gigawatt |
