Original Intel Pentium Processor (old!)

[DTR]

My first unit was an original Macintosh.

Black and white all in one unit with a 3.5 slot. Later I pimped it out with the upgraded 20mb external harddrive. Man that was the shit.:crackup:
It was about the size of one of these M140 projectors and it was not cheap.

Here it is.

 

[Bionic-Badger]

Yeah, it was amazing how much megabytes improved the computing experience back then. I went from 1MB of RAM (in 4x 256kb sticks) to a whopping 4MB of RAM. That shit cost $300 or so back in the day. It allowed me to play that awesome game Comanche, with those awesome voxel graphics. Too bad it ran at like 0.3 frames per second on that 386. DOOM was terrible too, but almost playable when the screen size was reduced to like 32x16 pixels. Another important upgrade of that era was the Soundblaster 16, which I continued to use in every upgrade I had until my motherboards didn't come with ISA slots.

 

[Lase]

The first computer I remember having was a Commodore 64

It had a 3.5" floppy and cassette player

I remember playing labrynth on it for hours.

Lase

 

[lasersbee]

I think the C64 had a 5-1/4 inch Floppy drive...

My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 16KB Ram
Model I that had cassette only program Load/Save..

Jerry

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

If you don't plan on selling it, take a dremel to that gold plate's borders. Maybe even a high wattage soldering iron. It looked like it was soldered onto the ceramic. The actual processor die is unpotted and very cool to look at. And then you can show it to your nerdy friends and they'll all nerd out over it too. But don't show it to normal people, they'll start looking at you strangely. Forever.

 

[lasersbee]

You mean like this AMD 486-DX2-66Mhz CPU....

Jerry

 

[Solonar]

I used to build the ceramic package that the die is installed in.

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

LasersBee: Nice! :wave: I lost my 386, but if I still had it, I'd make it a more permanent display piece. I'd probably sand the pins down and epoxy a clear glass microscope slide on it or something. And then I'd probably lose that one too...

Solonar: that's really cool! those are some nice chunks of ceramic! So, do you know if those back plates are just soldered on?

 

[ped]

I remember making music with Dance eJay back in '96 , I upgraded from a Pentium 2 166 to a Pentium 2 200 MMX , it was like climbing out of a ford escort into a Porsche .

How times move on haha

 

[ElektroFreak]

If you don't plan on selling it, take a dremel to that gold plate's borders. Maybe even a high wattage soldering iron. It looked like it was soldered onto the ceramic. The actual processor die is unpotted and very cool to look at. And then you can show it to your nerdy friends and they'll all nerd out over it too. But don't show it to normal people, they'll start looking at you strangely. Forever.

Lol... very true. Got lots of raw processor dies here.. one could call it a collection. Not a lot of interest outside of geekdom though..

 

[Tech_Junkie]

 

[Benm]

Probably like $5? Really, they're not that rare. Hell, I have an old 486 processor right here, and a 386 in one of the unused machines behind me.

Hehe.. the price you can get depends entirely on who needs one and for what.

Obviously there are stockpiles of these processors around, probably even brand new boxed ones gather dust, but to actually obtain one of those could be quite difficult.

For the fun of it you could list it on ebay for a month and see if you get any bids on it. Someone with a hard to replace system that blew the processor might pay a few tenners for it

 

[Atomicrox]

OK, I do have one of these (still working) but that open die is cool enough for me to kill it, but only if I'm positive I can remove the "cover" without scratching the die. Can I use a hot air gun to do it? Do all Pentium chips have the visible "circuit" on the die? I've managed to remove the cover off an old AMD and the die looked plain, as if there was some protective layer on it..

 

[ElektroFreak]

All of the old ceramic cased Pentiums with gold-plated die covers have very nice chip specimens in them. Not sure about the ceramic chips with ceramic die covers though, as I could never get one open successfully without seriously damaging the IC inside. I always used a dremel to cut the outer edge of the metal covers away.

 

[TheReddish]

speaking of has anyone ever took the cap off an old chip or and hit it with a laser? I was messing around, and projected a the chip on my wall somehow.

I remember selling a computer to a guy in Alaska, back in 96? with a Pentium 90 for 1200$, it had a rendition 3D card in it, and I threw in a pair of shutter glasses.

 

[Atomicrox]

All of the old ceramic cased Pentiums with gold-plated die covers have very nice chip specimens in them. Not sure about the ceramic chips with ceramic die covers though, as I could never get one open successfully without seriously damaging the IC inside. I always used a dremel to cut the outer edge of the metal covers away.

You mean glod plated as in the gold plate below the black cover (like the first post)? Or is that the ceramic version?

speaking of has anyone ever took the cap off an old chip or and hit it with a laser? I was messing around, and projected a the chip on my wall somehow.

I remember selling a computer to a guy in Alaska, back in 96? with a Pentium 90 for 1200$, it had a rendition 3D card in it, and I threw in a pair of shutter glasses.

Did it with a camera CCD the other day. Not as cool as I expected :/