VOGONS


Rarest CPUs?

Topic actions

Reply 120 of 442, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I believe that all Transmeta CPUs were BGA. Certainly never come across one that wasn't.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 121 of 442, by Horizons

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
feipoa wrote:

Oh wow, I totally forgot about Transmeta. Didn't their CPUs rely on some kind of software decoding compared to the conventional CPU? I sorta remember something like that. I don't own any Transmeta chips. Not sure if they had a PGA package. There's something about a PGA which makes me want to collect the chip.

Yep. Transmeta's cores ran Code Morphing Software, which dynamically translated code streams to an internal VLIW instruction set. If you're interested in the technical details, there's some great articles on RealWorldTech about them.

In reality, it didn't work all that well.

Reply 122 of 442, by dionb

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Horizons wrote:

[...]

In reality, it didn't work all that well.

Actually it did. Even with all the delays and unexpected ramping up of speeds by Intel &co, when it hit the market the Crusoe did what it was supposed to, which was deliver the best x86 performance per Watt. The only problem was that at the time no one was interested - and that Transmeta couldn't ramp up performance/speed (due to being stuck on outdated process technology compared to AMD and Intel) to be competitive in the high end. But that had nothing to do with the concepts or even the engineering implementation, which were sound.

Intel clearly took notice, as they copied the design philosophy of maximizing performance per Watt for the Pentium M, even if they chose a very different route to get there. That Pentium M was specifically designed as a Transmeta-killer (and its release was the final nail in their coffin) and is the granddaddy of all subsequent Intel Core CPUs, so you could even argue that the success of the Transmeta design (even if it was a commercial flop) was responsible for pushing Intel towards the most succesful designs in recent history 😉

Reply 123 of 442, by Horizons

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
dionb wrote:
Horizons wrote:

[...]

In reality, it didn't work all that well.

Actually it did. Even with all the delays and unexpected ramping up of speeds by Intel &co, when it hit the market the Crusoe did what it was supposed to, which was deliver the best x86 performance per Watt. The only problem was that at the time no one was interested - and that Transmeta couldn't ramp up performance/speed (due to being stuck on outdated process technology compared to AMD and Intel) to be competitive in the high end. But that had nothing to do with the concepts or even the engineering implementation, which were sound.

Intel clearly took notice, as they copied the design philosophy of maximizing performance per Watt for the Pentium M, even if they chose a very different route to get there. That Pentium M was specifically designed as a Transmeta-killer (and its release was the final nail in their coffin) and is the granddaddy of all subsequent Intel Core CPUs, so you could even argue that the success of the Transmeta design (even if it was a commercial flop) was responsible for pushing Intel towards the most succesful designs in recent history 😉

Dynamic translation-oriented CPUs have consistently produced results that are, at best, inconsistent. Branchy code streams on both Crusoe and Efficeon were not especially fast, although they could do pretty well on streams that were "run this innermost loop a billion times." Sure, they were low power, but that's what happens when you have a core microarchitecture that's basically a DSP.

Reply 124 of 442, by thehinac

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
olivil wrote:

I'm having the hardest of times finding a P2 400MHz in MMC-1, most of those are MMC-2!

https://www.impactcomputers.com/pmf40002001aa.html

There you go. I just searched the part number. PMF40002001AA it's forsale $59.95

😀

Reply 126 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the 80386-12 is pretty rare. I can't remember the exact story about these, but apparently the 386 was planned for 16MHz and many of them fell short and were sold as 12MHz parts. I think most of them might have ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386, but I think some may have been recalled due to the 32-bit bugs (non sigma CPUs).

...and more interestingly, there was also a 12MHz version of the 386SX. I think these all ended up being soldered into Japanese laptops. They may have been low power versions. Not sure how rare they are, but I've never seen one in the flesh (because I don't crack open ancient laptops). I'm sure most of what existed has already been recycled.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 127 of 442, by Living

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

i understand that "rare" definition also applies to some markets

for example: Here in Argentina i have never seen an athlon XP 1500+ and only one time a 1900+ Palomino. Same goes for Overdrives, despite working on IT for the last 21 years, i found only ONE dx4 100 Overdrive that was sold in september 1995.

in retrospective it makes sense, high end / expensive parts are rare in 3rd country's. Its a shame because the chances that i can pull something high end o rare pre-2005 from a computer are getting slim. The last "rare" thing was a Diamond Riva 128 4MB PCI from a sempron 754 clone (weird place to be) last year

Reply 128 of 442, by mkarcher

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-12-26, 04:46:

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the 80386-12 is pretty rare. I can't remember the exact story about these, but apparently the 386 was planned for 16MHz and many of them fell short and were sold as 12MHz parts. I think most of them might have ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386

As far as I know, the original Compaq Deskpro clocked the 386 processor at 16MHz, and I also failed to find references on google that support the claim that the Deskpro 386 used 12MHz 80386 chips. Do you have a source for the claim that 12MHz parts ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386?

Reply 129 of 442, by H3nrik V!

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

On my list is the RapidCAD set (at least for a price that's affordable) found one, though.
And Intel 486DX2-40 in PGA seems pretty unobtainable ..

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 130 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
mkarcher wrote on 2020-12-26, 08:46:
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-12-26, 04:46:

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the 80386-12 is pretty rare. I can't remember the exact story about these, but apparently the 386 was planned for 16MHz and many of them fell short and were sold as 12MHz parts. I think most of them might have ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386

As far as I know, the original Compaq Deskpro clocked the 386 processor at 16MHz, and I also failed to find references on google that support the claim that the Deskpro 386 used 12MHz 80386 chips. Do you have a source for the claim that 12MHz parts ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386?

I think I did find references to this in very old issues of Byte or PC Magazine, but CPU-World would be the best place to ask, because they know where at least some of their 80386-12s came from.

*edit* Maybe my memory isn't what it used to be. I might be getting things confused. There was definitely a 12MHz 386, but I will have to dig back through some magazines to find out where they went...

Last edited by Anonymous Coward on 2020-12-27, 18:22. Edited 1 time in total.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 131 of 442, by 386SX

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I think there're nowdays even more shades of "rare" definitions considering even most common ones are "rare" too. For example cpu like the Athlon 1000 on Slot is not that easy to find or the K62+@570 and the K63+@550 actually I've never seen these and I doubt I'll ever see them. Only found a K63-400@2,4v and a K62+@550 that already are not that common in the middle of most K6-2@400 or 450Mhz.
I found a 486 Overdrive DX4 100Mhz with write-through cache in a computer fair years ago. It's still nice to have with the heatsink and the voltage regulator already on the top of the cpu even if using it without a fan on it is almost scary.. heatsink temperatures goes up incredibly high.

Reply 134 of 442, by 386SX

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
quicknick wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:45:

Well, there's a seller on a popular auction site that has over 14k pieces of K6-2+/570 so I wouldn't think it qualifies as 'rare' anymore 😀

Impressive, how these things could happens who knows.. might be a lucky find? Some archived factory oem cpu in some forgotten company room? 😁

Reply 135 of 442, by rmay635703

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:06:
mkarcher wrote on 2020-12-26, 08:46:
Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-12-26, 04:46:

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the 80386-12 is pretty rare. I can't remember the exact story about these, but apparently the 386 was planned for 16MHz and many of them fell short and were sold as 12MHz parts. I think most of them might have ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386

As far as I know, the original Compaq Deskpro clocked the 386 processor at 16MHz, and I also failed to find references on google that support the claim that the Deskpro 386 used 12MHz 80386 chips. Do you have a source for the claim that 12MHz parts ended up in the original Compaq Deskpro 386?

I think I did find references to this in very old issues of Byte or PC Magazine, but CPU-World would be the best place to ask, because they know where at least some of their 80386-12s came from.

I had a 12mhz 386 Turbosport laptop years after it was obsolete. So yes they exist.

One of my friends had a very old “budget” 386-12mhz tower built from shady computer shopper sources, I don’t remember if he was able to run Windows when that came around making it a very expensive albeit fast XT/MSDOS machine.

I would argue these Chips are rare
8086-6
8088-6
8087-6

My 64k 5150 came with an 8088-6 making it an easy overclocker but why did Intel make these when no one made a 6mhz XT?

They were all made before 1982 but no idea what they were for

Last edited by rmay635703 on 2020-12-26, 16:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 136 of 442, by Ozzuneoj

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
quicknick wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:45:

Well, there's a seller on a popular auction site that has over 14k pieces of K6-2+/570 so I wouldn't think it qualifies as 'rare' anymore 😀

That's just amazing. It looks like many people are buying 10+ at a time.

I think this goes down as the largest influx of a specific rare old PC component I've seen since I started getting into this stuff. If they really have 14,000 of them, there's simply no way they'll sell out of them before they've met demand and saturated the market. If they were cheaper there would be no reason not to buy one for every compatible ss7 system. But I don't believe there are 14,000 ss7 boards out there anymore.

Unless some crazy person spends a few hundred thousand dollars and buys them all, I doubt these will ever be out of stock under normal circumstances. Until the seller retires.😀

That said: everyone should send low offers if interested in them, to keep the perceived value low. If hundreds sell at the asking price, they'll jack it up and stop taking offers.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 137 of 442, by Repo Man11

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
386SX wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:32:

I think there're nowdays even more shades of "rare" definitions considering even most common ones are "rare" too. For example cpu like the Athlon 1000 on Slot is not that easy to find or the K62+@570 and the K63+@550 actually I've never seen these and I doubt I'll ever see them. Only found a K63-400@2,4v and a K62+@550 that already are not that common in the middle of most K6-2@400 or 450Mhz.
I found a 486 Overdrive DX4 100Mhz with write-through cache in a computer fair years ago. It's still nice to have with the heatsink and the voltage regulator already on the top of the cpu even if using it without a fan on it is almost scary.. heatsink temperatures goes up incredibly high.

I just saw a K6-III+ 550 on Ebay sell for $460.00! I wonder if the buyer will actually put it in a motherboard and fire it up?

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 138 of 442, by mkarcher

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2020-12-26, 16:22:
quicknick wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:45:

Well, there's a seller on a popular auction site that has over 14k pieces of K6-2+/570 so I wouldn't think it qualifies as 'rare' anymore 😀

That said: everyone should send low offers if interested in them, to keep the perceived value low. If hundreds sell at the asking price, they'll jack it up and stop taking offers.

Wow, the seller upped the price x2! Some months ago, they were selling lots of two at that price. Now they are selling single parts.

Reply 139 of 442, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Repo Man11 wrote on 2020-12-26, 16:31:
386SX wrote on 2020-12-26, 13:32:

I think there're nowdays even more shades of "rare" definitions considering even most common ones are "rare" too. For example cpu like the Athlon 1000 on Slot is not that easy to find or the K62+@570 and the K63+@550 actually I've never seen these and I doubt I'll ever see them. Only found a K63-400@2,4v and a K62+@550 that already are not that common in the middle of most K6-2@400 or 450Mhz.
I found a 486 Overdrive DX4 100Mhz with write-through cache in a computer fair years ago. It's still nice to have with the heatsink and the voltage regulator already on the top of the cpu even if using it without a fan on it is almost scary.. heatsink temperatures goes up incredibly high.

I just saw a K6-III+ 550 on Ebay sell for $460.00! I wonder if the buyer will actually put it in a motherboard and fire it up?

We tried a group buy for 50 of them on CPU-World. A member saw it and outbid us, then set up a new eBay account to sell them. I advise against buying off that seller until lack of interest pushes the price down.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.