Cryptocurrency mining is coming to classic consoles thanks to a modder who has managed to make this Game Boy capable of mining Bitcoin…
The original Game Boy is now capable of mining Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency mining (simply explained calculation processes that allow those who perform them to obtain cryptocurrencies in exchange) continues to be on everyone’s lips for one reason or another, either by the shortage of graphics due in part by these “miners” or by the different equipment they use to perform these tasks, each one more varied.
In this case, we find a modder called Stacksmashing who has decided to perform an experiment to use an original Game Boy (yes, that same one that went on sale in 1989) to perform Bitcoin mining.
To make this experiment Stacksmashing has not had to modify a single cable of the console itself and the “only” thing he has done was to adapt the cable that connects to the Link port of the console. So that the Game Boy can communicate with a computer through a Raspberry Pi Pico board that serves as a link between the two devices.
Once this cable and the connection were ready, Stacksmashing created a special firmware for the Raspberry and a ROM for the classic Nintendo console that can be run thanks to a special cartridge. After programming everything and inserting the cartridge into the console, the modder turns it on and checks that, indeed, the original Game Boy can mine cryptocurrencies although its speed with its Sharp LR35902 processor at 4.19MHz is… very slow, and would need thousands of years to get a Bitcoin.
Still, it is a fun experiment that shows that, by proxy, we can use the laptop to mine this or other cryptocurrencies.
