An emulator of a 1982-era Commodore 64 was used to mine cryptocurrency.
You can now mine Bitcoin using your vintage Commodore 64: https://t.co/UJ2VbtapCv pic.twitter.com/3mH2EGeyMJ
— Hackster.io (@Hacksterio) April 11, 2021
The Commodore 64 was sold from August 1982 until April 1994, though by the time production ended it was already obsolete. It featured an 8-bit MOS Technology 6510 processor running at just over 1 MHz, 64 KB of RAM and the VIC-II graphics chip.
Developer Maciej Witkowiak created C64 Bitcoin Miner software specifically for the vintage PC. On the VICE emulator he demonstrated a hash rate of 0.2 H/s.
“The C64 would require 337 years and 10 months to mine a block,” the developer noted.
A real retro computer does not have built-in network adapters, so it would need a serial port or an external modem to connect to a network.
Witkowiak’s experiment was inspired by the stacksmashing enthusiast, who previously ran a Bitcoin miner on Nintendo’s portable Game Boy handheld console.
Back in autumn 2017, a team of developers restored a Xerox Alto 1973 computer to full functionality and managed to make the system mine bitcoins.
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