Greetings @sponge-bob a pleasure to continue reading about your history in the mining, I admit that it took a little while to follow the thread, but I was somewhat busy with some business😅.
Starting with the genius of the boxes you show, literally that could be the origin of the mini pc you see today, wow who would think 6 years ago would be there 😱.
I suppose that for those then they were affectionate of price (making reference to that sure they were expensive), sees the good side maybe in the future they have great historical value (and more than as you comment that they were not even used).
The magazine of 10 points, looks like new, another jewel, I was unaware of such magazines (of course also may be that the kiosks I visited in my childhood more than anything had automotive magazines and not technology :v ).
And I resolved a doubt, the difficulty of mining ("The bitcoin blockchain is amazing in that the difficulty level adjusts itself higher as more miners come on line"), was not so wrong at all, thank you for that.
Just add thanks for reading my comment and I don't say goodbye without wishing you a good day, evening or night.
Thanks for returning. I was busy too.
The ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is just a chip on a board that is programmed to do only one thing. It is plugged in by USB and hashes on the bitcoin blockchain. There is no functionality for running windows or linux.
GPU's are made to hash pixels and graphic rendering - using them to mine does not take advantage of what they were designed to do. It was a first step in mining though.
Thank you for clarifying the Asic, I suppose if as you say were the forerunners of many of the technologies in mining that we know today.👍