I started a mindcrack world and gave myself the challenge to use only the IC2 miner for my automated mining.
I started pretty normal first couple hours -- farmed, dug down, caved, nether. Finally got materials for railcraft blast furnace and made my first drill.
With the first drill i stopped all manual mining and left my starter area. Made the first miner and I have not been below the surface in weeks.
To move I found a fortress in the nether i liked and made a portal to the overworld, which thankfully was a landmass. Setup a new base there. Transferred the 3-4 chests of basic materials i accumulated in start-up and I had my new base. I started mining and eventually mined out about a 64x64 upgrading and adding miners as I went along. That was plenty to explore several mods and now going to try the deeper end of gregtech, so been off in creative prototyping mobile miner platforms using redpower frames/motors to take this show on the road