Dust Off The Old Commodore 64 – You Can Now Mine Bitcoin With It

Following last week’s experiment that allowed tech YouTuber Stacksmashing to mine Bitcoin off of a Game Boy, yet another fun project that repurposes old recreational computing device for contemporary purposes has surfaced.

Maciej Witkowiak – a data scientist and old-school retro gaming enthusiast – has repurposed a Commodore 64 to mine Bitcoin.

Pushing the Boundaries of Old Systems

The Commodore 64 was a home computer and not a portable console like the Game Boy, its main purpose was also recreational. Named after its 64 KB of RAM, the PC holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling desktop PC of all time.

Although the mining speed is likely too slow to actually net any profit, it’s still a very interesting project that will surely catch the eye of many nostalgic fans of the system. Its code is readily available on Github, in case you want to try it out – at 0.2 hashes per second, you may very well find your first block within… 337 years and 10 months.

According to Witkowiak, hash functions are hampered by the inefficiency with which the ancient PC handles 32-bit computations, which are crucial for hash functions.

The 6502 CPU in C64 runs at about 1MHz and it doesn’t handle 32-bit computations very efficiently.
Just enjoy the experience.

C64 Bitcoin miner [GitHub]