Favorite Old School Miners

Man, Bitcoin mining has changed so fast recently... Remember those early miners? Which ones were your favorites back then and why? And which ones were just awful? Like, Asicminer, Butterfly Labs, Avalon, KNC, Terracoin, Coincraft, Bitfury, you get the idea.

Bitmain S3, Spondoolies SP10, Avalon A4... what a time!

I deleted my last comment, didn't want to mess with my thoughts... But honestly, the SP10 was fantastic! We had a bunch of them and felt like we were on top of the world.

Not a fan of Spondoolies, honestly. The SP10 was super noisy with those tiny 1U fans. Plus, their 2U models were so long that by the time air got to the heatsinks, it was already hot. Hard to cool when the heatsinks are weak.

Antminer S9 was such a solid machine. I always dreamed of getting the hydro version but those prices are just insane.

I really miss the quiet S3 and R4 models from Bitmain. Gotta admit, I made a killing with some second-hand Butterfly Labs gear. People were paying way too much and getting frustrated, which meant I could scoop them up cheap later. Crazy how it worked out.

I was pulling in 0.5BTC a week with the Antminer S1. Started from nothing, fixed stuff to make extra cash, and ended up building a 2TH farm. Switched from making big bucks to just collecting fun miners. The Dragon was a beast, and even used it to heat my office.

Antminer S1... there was a time I thought 360W was heavy-duty! Now look at us. Would love a quiet version of the S19 Pro but I guess Bitmain isn't gonna do that.

Canaan’s Avalon 841 was built like a tank. Super easy to tweak settings, I still have 10 of them. Some are retired, but I use a couple as silent space heaters in winter, still doing about 9TH each.

Remember those Spartan 6 FPGA dev boards? Best little miners. We were just trying to get enough BTC for pizza until the pool got hacked.

I like using old USB miners to solo mine. One guy here even hit a block with one, crazy luck! Or you can repurpose an old S9 just to heat your home office.

Old USB stick miners were cool, especially before block erupter. Spoondoolies SP10 and S9 were alright too, but if we’re talking about including CPUs, PC mining was the real deal back then.

Still running my Antminer R4s, love them! They’re quiet since the PSU is louder. Got some old S9s too, and I use whatever I can find cheap for hashing power. My favorites are GekkoScience's Newpac series, perfect for solo mining!

Picking favorites from all the miners I've used is tough! Right now, I'd say Antminer S2 and Avalon 841. The S2 had that great 19" case and cooled so well. Made me feel legit in the mining scene back then.

A841s were nice, could downclock them for some quiet mining. Spondoolies SP10 too, kept things quieter with downclocking.

Had a rough time with Avalon 841s. Never stable and kept failing. But hey, I bought used gear, might've been abused. Got a bunch of Antminer S9s too and they outperformed the Avalons.