Altcoin Mining with Block Eruptors

[mbrops]

So I was thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi and a ASIC Block Erupter (or 3) to mine for alternative coins. I was wondering if the ASIC Block Erupter can be used for coins other than bitcoins. I've seen that you can make a raspberry pi mining rig that can get up to and over 4 Gh/s. I've heard that mining with Erupters and a Raspberry Pi isn't really worth it in the long run, but it still sounds like fun.

On a related note, has anyone gotten an integrated GPU to mine for coins? I've tried to use cgminer, however it says the GPU is not usable although I have installed the Intel OpenCL SDK (I have an intel i5 integrated graphics card; it sucks), cgminer is still giving me troubles.

[Ademan]

Most altcoins use a different proof of work algorithm from Bitcoin. Bitcoin, Namecoin, and a few others use SHA256, which is what Block Erupters calculate, very quickly, this is the only thing they can do. Litecoin, and most of the other altcoins use Scrypt, a totally different algorithm, which they chose specifically to keep ASICs out so they could continue GPU mining. Ultimately ASICs will probably find their way to Scrypt, but Scrypt is apparently harder to create an ASIC for, possibly because it requires lots of memory, and that memory can't be on-die with the ASIC, and so you end up with a need for external memory modules, so then you end up being memory bus limited, and you end up not much better off than GPU mining, except possibly more efficient. (Note that is *my* understanding, and it's possibly incorrect)

TL;DR Most altcoins use the Scrypt algorithm for proof-of-work which Block Erupters can't do.