Thanks for the links. Porting Verilog to c++ is a pain! and the Butterfly labs code seemed to be 99% hashing chip management. I found this: https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=UvSVxC7dy9c . The author seemed determined not to share any code, though.

This is more of a fun excersise than a plan to make a lot of money.

On a seperate thought, i hear the Icarus protocol is serial-based, but i can't find any documentation on it.

I am designing a USB bitcoin miner, and i need some help.

First of all, how would i implement an existing protocol over serial? i want to use an existing protocol so i can intergrate it easily with BFGminer, CGminer, etc... I only have serial available on the microcontroller i plan to use. some pseudo-code and/or c code about interfacing would be helpful.

Second of all, what exactly does the chip its self do? does it simply do an SHA256 hash and send it back, or is more going on? again, example code would be helpful.