Quote from: Schrankwand on April 19, 2013, 09:44:27 AM

Hi everyone,

let me make it quick. I am thinking about building an FPGA rig. I am not completely stupid, able to build my own computer and so on.

I am thinking about building an FPGA rig, for fun. Just with one or two units at first. Maybe more later. This is more for me getting into this than being super profitable at first.

So, does anyone have an answer to:

What you need to start? The packages and variations confuse me.

How does a really good demo look like? Do you have a system set up that is paraded on the net where one can learn about every part necessary, from ground up? Maybe a video where someone assembles a rig from the start?

This is nerd heaven for me, so I would be totally grateful for someone pointing to one of these. I have taken my stabs at vendor sites (Enterpoint to Ztex), some blogs and youtube videos. But I don't yet get it. While I ordered an ASICs miner from BFL and am praying that they ship one day, the whole "Build your own electronics supercomputing rig" is kind of more fun to me... Nothing against lazy hashing, but, the whole "mining" feeling comes better with building rigs, I think Wink

Hi,

What do you intend to do? Buy a ready-to-go FPGA miner? Or try using a development kit?

A just started using the second option, since I already have two boards from other hobbies, so I can learn a bit and understand how it works.

If you check https://github.com/fpgaminer you will see there is an opensource fpga miner.
The easier way to go is buy one of the supported boards by this fpga miner (such as DE2-11) and load the compiled project. Easy.

Other way to go is buy a cheaper board that you know will works with the fpga miner, and make the required changes in the code.
I started using by DE1. It is showing something like 3.10 MH/s.

Hope this helps a bit.
Cheers.