An IT safety researcher has been in a position to adapt Nintendo’s first main handheld sport console to mine cryptocurrency.
Based on a current YouTube video, person Stacksmashing used the {hardware} from a Nintendo Recreation Boy first launched in 1989 as a place to begin to mine Bitcoin (BTC). As a result of the gaming console has no built-in wi-fi capabilities — and largely predates the web — the YouTuber stated he used a Raspberry Pi microcontroller board connected to the Recreation Boy’s hyperlink port and a USB flash card to ascertain a connection to a BTC node run from his laptop.
“My purpose was to make use of an unique, unmodified Recreation Boy,” stated Stacksmashing. “I need to plug in a cartridge, and begin mining.”
Stacksmashing wrote his personal mining code for the Recreation Boy’s read-only reminiscence, built-in mining software program — modified for the gaming console — and ran a BTC node on his laptop. The end result was nonces getting incremented on the console’s inexperienced display screen, displaying the rig was trying to mine crypto.
“The hash price is fairly spectacular, roughly 0.Eight hashes per second,” stated Stacksmashing, explaining:
“For those who examine that to a contemporary ASIC miner, which is available in at round 100 Terahashes per second, you may see that we’re virtually as quick, solely off by an element of roughly 125 trillion. At this price, it ought to solely take us a few quadrillion years to mine a Bitcoin.”
Many crypto lovers have been trying to gaming consoles as a technique to mine BTC or different cryptocurrencies for a while, however normally the methods are neither designed nor marketed in the direction of miners. Earlier this month, a Chinese language software program developer appeared to have pranked the crypto area by claiming to have mined Ether (ETH) utilizing a PlayStation 5. Final yr, builders from 1st Playable denied rumors one in every of its video games may very well be used to hijack Nintendo’s Change console to mine BTC.
Stacksmashing’s makes an attempt to make use of an 8-bit gaming console to mine crypto might have been only for the expertise, however he has stated on Twitter he’s not completed but. Already the IT safety researcher claims to have used Nintendo’s Tremendous Recreation Boy — an adapter launched in 1994 that enables unique Recreation Boy video games to be performed on the Tremendous Nintendo Leisure System — to mine BTC in a lot the identical manner.
“Clearly, mining Bitcoin on a Recreation Boy is every little thing however worthwhile, however I realized a whole lot of issues whereas constructing this, and undoubtedly had a ton of enjoyable.”