Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-05, 15:43:

Here's an example of the equipment I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/ESCaeMXU4aQ?t=34 (I have so many questions about this video???)

love it, its EE version of How To Draw An Owl

yes, that machine is exactly what is needed for this project 😀

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-05, 15:43:

edit: here's another better video from Sam Zeloof, he's got connections to get old chip making equipment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvZ1dJuvenw

Honestly, if I had a big pile of incredibly rare CPUs that required that kind of work to be done, I would contact this youtuber and see if you could work out some kind of deal to have him fix some. Perhaps partially in trade for some of them if he's interested in that kind of thing.

... though I see now that he hasn't made a video in 2 years, so that may make things a bit tougher to work out. For something as niche as this it would probably be much more affordable to get the help of a decently successful youtuber because they literally get paid to entertain people with videos of them fixing stuff. Unless of course you can find someone on a chip enthusiast site who knows how to do this and has the equipment but can also do it with low overhead.

If there are chip repair companies that can still do stuff like this I'm sure their services are eye-watertingly expensive, which is why I lean toward one of the above options if they exist.

tony359 wrote on 2024-08-05, 09:06:

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-07-26, 00:37:

A repair attempt is going to be made on one of the golden units.
Hopefully the amazing person who is going to attempt this will be along shortly to comment. 😀

The amazing person feels that we need a more amazing person than I might possibly be 😀

I really have no idea how to salvage this. My smallest tweezers as a comparison.

I have an idea..

If one could get the measurements right….. one could make a thin flexible pcb to fill the gap between the cpu and the pad.

Can you confirm all the wires are basically straight? Or are there any that go sideways?

Next on Adrian’s Digital basement 2

The video where I show the Golden Warrior is online - I'm only showing it but I have shared this and the other thread in the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIshY3J_FGw

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-05, 22:17:

Honestly, if I had a big pile of incredibly rare CPUs that required that kind of work to be done....

I think I'm the other way from that, if I had a big pile, I'd make jigs, customise tools, and assume I'd start gaining speed by #3 or 4 and doing them perfect.

Man, I'd probably ruin it if I tried, but I can't help but think about how I'd try to do it. The last time I repaired a bunch of broken traces was around a northbridge chip on an nforce2 board, with much larger traces. The method I found worked best for me was to tin the wires, tin the traces, secure the wire where I wanted it with some tape, and then lightly pass the tip of my soldering iron over them. While working from the inside out so that I didn't accidentally cause my previous work to loosen and stick to the iron. Which may have happened a few times. I question whether I'd have enough room to work with to use tape as helping hands. Probably do extra damage trying to get in there with a knife or side cutters when I trim the excess too.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-09, 15:33:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-05, 22:17:

Honestly, if I had a big pile of incredibly rare CPUs that required that kind of work to be done....

I think I'm the other way from that, if I had a big pile, I'd make jigs, customise tools, and assume I'd start gaining speed by #3 or 4 and doing them perfect.

I think you pretty much need wire bonding equipment to do this properly, and well... https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?kw=wire%20bon … er&toolid=20004

I'm seeing $1,000 to $24,000 for a wire bonder. So, I guess if there's any chance that one of the cheaper ones actually works properly, it could be worth getting one and trying to learn how to use it, but of course, that is a pretty expensive gamble. Actually getting it could be tough too, depending on the location. I can't imagine one surviving shipping, and the big "pickup only" ones are all several states away from me.

You can bet if I saw one of these chilling at yard sale I'd grab it though... 🤣

While a neat curiosity now, and I wouldn't mind having them for the collection. I don't recall any gold topped chips/heat spreaders from Intel except the Pentium Pro line. Also, the very early Pentium I's that were likely to have the floating point error had the gold heat spreader, (P60 / P66) but didn't look like these. As OP mentions they're not original, which is consistent with my memory. All the socket 7 I recall was ceramic and the Pentium 1 era being the start of the fan requirements on them. I also specifically don't recall any of the codenames being a common known thing. (Tillamook) Especially not on chips or shown in the BIOS. Sure we use these terms now quite frequently, but I remember at the time these were new, it was all following the Intel marketing, so it was Either Pentium 1 or 2 with the MHZ rating and sometimes the addition of MMX (did it even do anything except sound neat?) and that was how we talked about Intel chips. They had a premium cost over their competition, but it was pretty simple at that time to compare and keep things straight Intel-wise. They were the benchmark, king of the hill.

That BIOS screenshot is interesting as it (to me) indicates that there was someone or something doing some re-programming on these. I for sure remember it was always (Proudly) stating Pentium in the BIOS and as much as they could in general. They were pushing Pentium branding hard after the years of all the clones able to utilize the 386/486 branding. Pentium was the differentiator, and more specifically a Trademark they could protect.

The other comments about the possible speeds is likely. Although, I might be a bit hesitant to accept that the chips were overly restricted. Remember, on-die cache still wasn't a mainstream thing until the P-pro and PII era. That would always be a limiting factor of speed for the chips. Also, I think Intel really stressed reliability at this time. They're fresh off the Pentium FPU error recall, and it's the era that the ubiquitous 440BX chipset came out. I think you could overclock these chips at the cost of stability. We also have way better coolers now, as back then there were just case fans near the CPU that would have a fanless heat sink attached to them. For their time, I think Intel had them clocked where they needed to be and the lack of onboard cache was always going to be a limiting factor.

Thanks for listening to my rose-colored glasses rant of bygone eras.

There are people who might be able to solder this, Apple long screw damage veterans 😀
[No Long Screw Damage is too deep for Mark Shaffer] iPad Rehab Microsoldering & Data Recovery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3zAMuhVWxs

P-Tech wrote on 2024-08-09, 17:17:

While a neat curiosity now, and I wouldn't mind having them for the collection. I don't recall any gold topped chips/heat sprea […]
Show full quote

While a neat curiosity now, and I wouldn't mind having them for the collection. I don't recall any gold topped chips/heat spreaders from Intel except the Pentium Pro line. Also, the very early Pentium I's that were likely to have the floating point error had the gold heat spreader, (P60 / P66) but didn't look like these. As OP mentions they're not original, which is consistent with my memory. All the socket 7 I recall was ceramic and the Pentium 1 era being the start of the fan requirements on them. I also specifically don't recall any of the codenames being a common known thing. (Tillamook) Especially not on chips or shown in the BIOS. Sure we use these terms now quite frequently, but I remember at the time these were new, it was all following the Intel marketing, so it was Either Pentium 1 or 2 with the MHZ rating and sometimes the addition of MMX (did it even do anything except sound neat?) and that was how we talked about Intel chips. They had a premium cost over their competition, but it was pretty simple at that time to compare and keep things straight Intel-wise. They were the benchmark, king of the hill.

That BIOS screenshot is interesting as it (to me) indicates that there was someone or something doing some re-programming on these. I for sure remember it was always (Proudly) stating Pentium in the BIOS and as much as they could in general. They were pushing Pentium branding hard after the years of all the clones able to utilize the 386/486 branding. Pentium was the differentiator, and more specifically a Trademark they could protect.

The other comments about the possible speeds is likely. Although, I might be a bit hesitant to accept that the chips were overly restricted. Remember, on-die cache still wasn't a mainstream thing until the P-pro and PII era. That would always be a limiting factor of speed for the chips. Also, I think Intel really stressed reliability at this time. They're fresh off the Pentium FPU error recall, and it's the era that the ubiquitous 440BX chipset came out. I think you could overclock these chips at the cost of stability. We also have way better coolers now, as back then there were just case fans near the CPU that would have a fanless heat sink attached to them. For their time, I think Intel had them clocked where they needed to be and the lack of onboard cache was always going to be a limiting factor.

Thanks for listening to my rose-colored glasses rant of bygone eras.

Tillamook is shown in the bios actually on many motherboards. That CPUID code made its way into a tonne of boards across many mfgs.

tony359 wrote on 2024-08-09, 15:07:

The video where I show the Golden Warrior is online - I'm only showing it but I have shared this and the other thread in the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIshY3J_FGw

Ooo sweet, let me check it out!

Nice video! Lots of new treasure!!!