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Topic: Price Check - X6500 FPGA (Read 1048 times)

sr. member
Activity: 384
Merit: 250
January 14, 2014, 09:58:17 AM
#5
OK, you've shamed me into taking another look at it Tongue

I did the original port back at the end of October, and other than the rather low FMAX (100Mhz), it looks to be OK. It should be fairly easy (for ISE values of easy, which means much actual frustration) to push this up towards the 150Mhz or so that the other ports run at (corresponding to overclocks of around 200MHz+). There are some issues with queuing of the golden nonces (I took out the FIFO in trying to get it to actually work, hence the "robust" in the name of the port), but that shouldn't make too much difference.

The main problem is the lack of a driver in cgminer. I do have hacked up versions of the original bitcoin X6500 miner and MPBM forked on my github, but these are only going to work for solo mining, or perhaps on BlueDragon's pool if getwork is available. I suggest you give it a try with these, and if its looking OK, then I'll see what I can do for a faster build. I'd really like to know the pool-reported hashrate so as to gauge what sort of improvement to aim for.

Its going to be nigh-on impossible to write a driver for cgminer without a device to experiment with, so perhaps someone else can take a look at this instead. BFGminer appears to have a driver, so perhaps this would be a good starting point.
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1001
Use Coinbase Account almosanywhere with Shift card
January 13, 2014, 10:11:02 PM
#4
I have it on a CM1 Kramble has a x6500 partially working but not finished. He is not sure if there is enough demand for it. So go to the blakecoin thread and ask him for it.
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 1018
HoneybadgerOfMoney.com Weed4bitcoin.com
January 13, 2014, 06:01:35 PM
#3
I just bought one for $45 on ebay, another went for $60.  $50 is my max bix.

Like you more for fun & experiment not profit. Hope to get it running blakecoin someday.

Ouch I paid  350 each for mine back in June 2013 - do you really believe these can pull blakecoin?  I've been letting mine collect dust because its just too tedious to get them setup among the masses of my current hardware - I was having issues with some block erupters when I had it plugged in utilized.

If I hear more about blc - I'm willing to put them back online - but I thought they weren't fpga targeted (I havent really done my full research)
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1001
Use Coinbase Account almosanywhere with Shift card
January 13, 2014, 05:49:50 PM
#2
I just bought one for $45 on ebay, another went for $60.  $50 is my max bix.

Like you more for fun & experiment not profit. Hope to get it running blakecoin someday.
hero member
Activity: 840
Merit: 1002
December 16, 2013, 01:45:52 AM
#1
Hi there - I am interested in purchasing an FPGA. This is not for profit, just for playing. I understand about the hardware ROI. I missed out on FPGAs, I think they are interesting, and I would like to toy with one.

I have the opportunity to buy an X6500 from a colleague - what would you say is a fair price in BTC? I know that there is some reusability so they resell for more. I believe this is the board:

http://fpgamining.com/products/x6500-rev3

It's 400 Mh/s at 17W but, again, I'm not really trying to do this to generate Bitcoins as much as for shits and giggles.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!  Grin
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