# Gorgeous Processors



## skyline27

Check these out 

Item number: 160217378240

Does anyone have any experience with these? 

What's your guess on the winning bid?


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## Buzz

The CPU legs don't appear to be gold plated, anyone know why?

I thought they all were.

Buzz


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## banjags

I going to guess they go for $2000 given that there is 28 lbs worth.


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## skyline27

$3136


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## Platdigger

$1451


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## banjags

102 US 5 days remaining. Whos the next contestant on the price is right?


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## Anonymous

879


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## macfixer01

Buzz said:


> The CPU legs don't appear to be gold plated, anyone know why?
> 
> I thought they all were.
> 
> Buzz





They appear to have been un-soldered from circuit boards. Is it the solder residue that you're referring to? Or were you maybe having a temporary color problem with your screen?

macfixer01


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## donald236

hey guys those do have the legs on them . they also look mangled up . they still look to be gold plated but they also look to be burnt also . i'll bet it will go for $500


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## banjags

still 5 days 1 hour $513US... ouch


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## agpodt77339

1618.32


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## Exibar

I say about 2,000 USD... at least

ok, the question of the day, what expected yield would we get from lets say one pound of those chips?

Mike B


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## donald236

im new at this but i'll take a stab and guess at no more than 1-1 1/2 grams. its got to many legs missing and also its mangaled up .


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## macfixer01

donald236 said:


> im new at this but i'll take a stab and guess at no more than 1-1 1/2 grams. its got to many legs missing and also its mangaled up .





I think maybe you're confused by the photos? The chip in the top pair of photos is missing a few pins and has some mangled. The middle photos and bottom photos are two variations of a different type of chip. It looks to me like the top side of those chips has several rows of bumps which probably act as supports for the heatsink so it doesn't teeter-totter by pivoting at the gold plate in the center. You might be thinking those supports look like rows of cut-off pins? The only difference between the chip in the middle photos and the chip in the bottom photos seems to be the orientation of those support structures. They run side-to-side on one and lengthwise on the other one.

All in all, there don't seem to be as many pins there as one might expect compared to say a Pentium Pro? Also the chips appear to have been de-soldered from a board so the pins are also partially coated with solder.

macfixer01


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## donald236

yea you are probley right i think i might have mis judged it . but over all 
i think who ever is paying that much for them is a little bit looney .i mean right now as it stands there paying out $25.50 per pound or real close to it. thats to rich for my blood . what about you guys :?: :?: :?:


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## macfixer01

donald236 said:


> yea you are probley right i think i might have mis judged it . but over all
> i think who ever is paying that much for them is a little bit looney .i mean right now as it stands there paying out $25.50 per pound or real close to it. thats to rich for my blood . what about you guys :?: :?: :?:





Well those NEC processors ended up selling for $1149.00, pretty ridiculous huh? I'd be really curious what the buyer gets out of them. Maybe he knows something the rest of us don't? The date codes seem to indicate the late 1990's so I wouldn't think they contain that much gold. Still though, in that many pounds there has to be at least 1-1/4 ounces of gold wouldn't you think? I would hope he didn't just get carried away and pay too much to realize a profit after paying for the processors, the shipping, the chemicals, and his time to process them.

macfixer01


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## donald236

man you hit the nail on the head when you say profit . because yes you are probably right in thinking there is maybe 1-1/4 ounces witch in turn would not turn a profit . as for me i try to figure all that in when I'm buying circuit boards but people don't seem to get it . they don't get the fact that you have your time in it . you have your chemicals that are needed . your shipping cost . you buying the said product . so all those factors have to be taken in to account even before you even buy the product to make even a slight profit . as for me i at least try to make a larger profit margin but sometimes it don't work out that way . and when it don't i tend to back off . it sounds very stupid if you buy something and you cant even make a profit then and there i mean that person is going to have to wait a while before they will even think about a profit .now not only is he not making a profit at that price witch i think is really stupid . hes going to have a heck of a lot more money invested in them . i think when he finally wakes up and finally realizes what he has done i think he will kick his self in the rear
donald


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## Scott2357

Wow... $1149 for 28 lbs. The first one is an adapter for next generation CPU validation. It would be used to verify new chip design functionality by plugging into a known good motherboard design that used the previous generation. Probably running at a much slower clock speed to be compatible. The second and third are also adapters for the same purpose but used in place of an MCM (Multi-Chip Module). MCMs usually had much larger cache, ALU or geometry acceleration that simply wouldn't fit into a single die using the current die technology at the time. From the looks of it, this was probably 1992-96 technology. The difference between 2 and 3 could be different MCM types or a test of 2 design/layout possibilites. These might go into temporary prototype production for software development until the motherboard design could catch up. A few might even go to select customers to build future business confidence. If anyone is interested, I'll post a photo of an MCM I have with dies exposed. It has gold everywhere. It actually has pure gold trace layers in the white ceramic between the dies and from the bond out wires to motherboard pins instead of package wires. It's kind of like a miniature multi-layer PCB but in ceramic. Hey, maybe we need a section like the current "Show Us Your Nuggets" Gallery but for unusual gold bearing pieces we find?


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## Rag and Bone

By all means post photos. I love strange cpus.


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## Scott2357

Ok, I'm a little slow but here they are. I didn't have a microscope or I would have shown the gold traces, etc. in the white ceramic too.


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## Rag and Bone

Very Nice!


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## JustinNH

wow, those make my 'cool' looking one that i have saved look like crap haha


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## Tredsaw12

I realize that many of you know this but I'm sure many don't - If you come across some nice, unique, pretty CPU's they're worth more to collectors than as scrap gold. If that guy on ebay didn't mangle those nice NEC CPU's, he could have gotten a lot more than $1,100. That may be why some of these ebay auctions seem outrageous. 

If you come across any nice looking CPU's or any IC, ask the guys at the "CPU World forum" what they think. Here's the link:

http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/


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## Scott2357

Hmmm... I do have several of these, maybe I should put them up for auction??


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## Tredsaw12

Absolutely. I'll give you $20 for one, but I'll bet you get more on Ebay. Let me know if you do list it and I'll put a link on the CPU-World forum.


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## viacin

Here is one of the worlds rarest CPU's. A Zilog.

[img:588:324]http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Z80/L_Zilog-Z80%20CPU%20(wgg).jpg[/img]


Here is a rare intel purple. Are those legs silver?

[img:554:333]http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/8086/L_Intel-C8086-pbs.jpg[/img]

Here is another that costs $1,200 (in 2005 dollars)

[img:890:425]http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/68000/L_Motorola-XC68000L%20(SN807).jpg[/img]

So if you happen to see any like this, think twice before processing.


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## butcher

OOPS


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## wetwillie

Have an old atari 400 bought in 79, man the floppy drive cost $500 back then. 5mb hard drive 5k. Guess its time to take the atari and old game machines apart.


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## butcher

watchout some of these fellers get upset when you talk about tearing up them games, and they say ebay them.


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## wetwillie

here is another one I found looks like the third one exactly. no pic yet see pic 3 above only diff is company.
Part No.

MFR/DC/DE

Price

Quantity

Amount

L/T

IMSG171S-35

INMOS

USD168.00

1PCS

USD168.00

STOCK


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## wetwillie

have looked on ebay, they go for nothing. Thing is mine still works.
300bd modem floppy drive, b keyboard and upgraded to 48k ram.
Think The chips are worth more.


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## 61 silverman

viacin,, The bottom picture that u put up on page 2 of this topic it has 40 legs on either side,, I have one that has 20 legs on each side however I ran it through my de-plating cell last year.. it still has traces of gold on some legs top plate removed and most of the gold came off on the inside also,, oonly half the size of the one you showed..


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## Harvester3

Hey you all.
I picked up a load of telecom scrap last week which included some boards with similar chips; take a look (sorry, my photography skills are lacking)
Any ideas?
Thanks


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## Anonymous

Damn, I use to have a bunch of the Zilog and MC 68000, 68002 &03 cpu's back when i worked for a custom computer co. tubes of them!!! If i'd known then... :?

PIC of some bds i'm processing now. Sent pic's to a "big" "trusty" refiner, reply 'pretty good bds, mostly light plating'


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## Exibar

viacin said:


> Here is one of the worlds rarest CPU's. A Zilog.
> 
> 
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> Here is a rare intel purple. Are those legs silver?
> 
> 
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> 
> Here is another that costs $1,200 (in 2005 dollars)
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> So if you happen to see any like this, think twice before processing.



sorry to resurect an old thread.... but do we knwo what equipment those motorola chips were used in? Were they used in Atari's and apples? or ZX-80/ZX-81/Timex Sinclair types?


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## macfixer01

Exibar said:


> viacin said:
> 
> 
> 
> Here is one of the worlds rarest CPU's. A Zilog.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here is a rare intel purple. Are those legs silver?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here is another that costs $1,200 (in 2005 dollars)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So if you happen to see any like this, think twice before processing.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sorry to resurect an old thread.... but do we knwo what equipment those motorola chips were used in? Were they used in Atari's and apples? or ZX-80/ZX-81/Timex Sinclair types?
Click to expand...




I believe XC was Motorola's designation for any experimental or pre-release chip. I wouldn't think you'd ever get that much money for the garden variety MC versions but who knows? I always liked the classy look of the light purple ceramic and gold chips. Besides Motorola, I believe TI and Intel have both used that packaging also for certain masked programmed ROM's and Static RAMs. And of course the nicest looking processor in my opinion the Pentium Pro. TI is generally very stingy with gold. When scrapping an older board I generally crack at least one of each type of DIP packaged chip on the board. Motorolas and a few other brands I recognize often have a bit of gold under the die and on the inner tips of the pins, but rarely will I ever see gold in a TI chip. They seem to put it on the outside to be seen if they're going to use it.

The first generation Macintosh computers (Mac 128K, Mac 512K, Mac Plus) used an 8Mhz Motorola MC68000 processor. There but for the grace of God it could have easily been another failed product like the Lisa or Apple III. It was originally designed by Burrell Smith with an underpowered 6809 processor and the same big crappy 5-1/4 inch TWIGGY floppy drives that the Apple Lisa computer had used. However Steve Jobs stole the project and switched it to a 68000 processor and 3.5 inch Sony floppy drives. Even so, it still had a tough time catching on. I'm thinking the Commodore Amiga may have used a 68000 processor also? I really never worked on any of those though, so I'm unsure.

Anyway, I was a service tech at a retailer back then and occasionally saw Mac motherboards with the ceramic and gold package 68000's but the majority had the plastic DIP packages. Since the Mac was designed with no slots, companies like Hyperdrive designed hardware upgrades that actually attached by clipping over the processor chip. The early desktop Macintosh's such as the Macintosh II and CX used 68020 processors, I believe the Mac IICi was the first of many with a 68030, and the Mac IIFX was the first of many with a 68040 processor. From there they switched to the PowerPC family of RISC processors.

Lets see... Zilog Z80 chips were big a few years earlier after the S100 systems waned. Except for those who had an Apple ][, Commodore PET, or Radio Shack TRS80, everybody else crazy enough to have a personal computer back then was running CPM and it's one major application WordStar. I believe probably all of the dedicated typewriter-based word processors that ran WordStar also used the Z80 chip. Again though the majority you're going to find will probably be in plastic DIP packages, not the fancy ceramic ones the collectors want. I've scrapped several arcade video game boards too and many of those use Z80 chips.

macfixer01


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## macfixer01

On another tangent, how do you like these 1975 vintage Intel Eproms? I suppose I'll get around to putting them on Ebay one of these days. They'll be worth more there than as scrap.

Macfixer01


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## Exibar

macfixer01 said:


> On another tangent, how do you like these 1975 vintage Intel Eproms? I suppose I'll get around to putting them on Ebay one of these days. They'll be worth more there than as scrap.
> 
> Macfixer01



oh those are purrty.... What would you be asking for them, if you wanna sell? 

Mike B


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## Exibar

oh, um... this guy wants $120 each for them up on ebay.... way too much for my blood! 

auction number: 220236497939

Mike B


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## macfixer01

Exibar said:


> oh, um... this guy wants $120 each for them up on ebay.... way too much for my blood!
> 
> auction number: 220236497939
> 
> Mike B




Thanks for the brief thrill Mike. Asking for that kind of money and getting it are two different things though. It's true there is no telling with collectors. I know I've spent thousands of dollars on older fireworks-related books for my collection. But that seller could also be relisting that chip at lower and lower prices for a long time, all the while accruing new listing fees. I see it's also a slightly different part number than my chips though, and may be more rare.

I always have a difficult time figuring what's fair on something that really is only of great value to collectors. I'd probably just list them maybe $5 or $10 apiece starting bid in a Dutch auction then let the market decide the final selling price. If someone wants to bid a crazy price to make sure he gets one, then so be it. A lot of Ebay sellers ask far too much on the starting bid or buy-it-now price for scrap gold lots, as has been talked about here before. Then you also see people selling boards you might be interested in as scrap, but they're only listed with some obscure part number and no usable pictures to judge scrap value from. That's a waste of time in my opinion on the off chance you'll find one or two potential buyers who actually know what that part is for, and then actually need or want one. I say why limit your market? Make it appeal to as many potential buyers as possible, and take good pictures. Sorry I guess I'm rambling again.

Best wishes,
Macfixer01


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## yvonbug

Ewwwwu, those are pretty! I haven't seen any of those. I don't get out much and haven't seen any of the newer chips. I'm missin' out! I've got a collection of chips that I thought was pretty cool, but I better start lookin' around to update it. That looks like the hybrids they used to use in the military apps, only bigger.-Y-

I am refering to Scott2357's pictures of the MCM CPU's.


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## Gold Trail

I am going to have to follow suite with Butcher.......OOOOPPPPSSSS Son of a B**ch..... DAM*T

ohhh welll

Ryan


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## butcher

well you'll forget about it when you melt that button, can't cry too hard bout spilt milk when you see the gold.


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## Gold Trail

LOL definatly going to look closer from now on...... I refined that chip months ago, the button is long gone.......


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