Let me say, I do not think they are scrap. They do have a value, it is just pretty low. They can be used as an FPGA dev platform. That is why I say I would buy a few for $30 each. But I will never get that $30 back mining BTC.
Last I checked they were cryptographically locked to BFL's FPGA images and BFL won't provide the info needed to reprogram them. IIRC they also can't be reprogramed over the USB bus.That's useful info. I was wondering if it might be worth porting my litecoin miner onto them, but I'll stick with the Lancelot and Ztex for now. Its just a hobby project anyway as the return on mining LTC would be minimal at the sort of hash rates I'm achieving (It was a challenge ... lots of people said FPGA couldn't do scrypt, well it can, just not very well
).That can easily be fixed. The crypto keys can be removed with a JTAG.
yep ok ..... the BFL bit-files will no longer work, but it's not as if you need them.