Possible meaning:

Green - eco-friendly CPUs, low power consuption, 100% recyclable

Blue - water cooling necessary

Red - CPUs for sale in communist countries

Branco wrote:

Hello,

I've seen in some pre-pentium intel machines a sticker saying "Intel Inside", and so far I've seen blue ones, red ones and today a green one. Could this be any indication to the CPU indide such machines, like green for 386, red for 486 or other kind of code?

Thank you.

That was always my theory, except that I thought the colour codes were like this:
Red: 386
Green: 486
Blue: Pentium (I believe the "Intel Inside" stickers were introduced in the Pentium age (possibly as a reaction to the Mac PowerPC machines), and these were the 'default' blue Intel colour)

Thing is, a friend of mine worked at a computer shop, where they assembled computers for clients. He just got big sets of all colours (he also gave a few to me at the time). So I wonder if, even if the colour code theory is true, if the people who assembled the machines would actually implement these correctly in practice.
I put one of these stickers on my Philips CM8833 monitor (which I mainly used for my C64 and Amiga, but could also work as a CGA monitor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2-eY3OkSo

It might be best to look up scans of old ads for prebuilt computers, to see if they have any sort of visible badge branding. The only computers I have with "Intel Inside" stickers are two outwardly-identical tower systems I picked up at a garage sale years ago. One is a Pentium 60, and the other seems to be a 33MHz 486. The stickers are transparent plastic, with solid blue for the Intel Inside logo. Most likely applied by the system builder, not some licensed mass-manufacturer.

From my experience blue stickers seem to be applied in later 486 and early pentium, before the "Pentium Inside" stickers.
Red seem to show a lot later 386 and early 486, and green on 386 (never seen one on a 286). Maybe that was only the order in wich the batches of sticker were realead, but no code is intended.
I'll be picking up a PC with one of these green Intel Inside stickers next thursday and will find out, only then, what is it, if a 386 486 or even pentium.
Maybe we're looking for padrons where they aren't, but maybe the code exists but some people just didn't bother to stick to it. (pun intented).

My 1993 IBM 486-33mhz PS/1 computers have a Blue “Intel Inside” logo stickers on case.
The CPU is soldered to the motherboard.

But in some Newer IBM Aptiva’s the motherboards support both AMD and Intel CPU’s.
It’s just a matter of resetting the jumpers for the specific CPU.

Seen different colors on DX4's. Seems to be all up to the PC builder/brand.

Here it is. I will open it today once I get home.

Scali wrote:

Blue: Pentium (I believe the "Intel Inside" stickers were introduced in the Pentium age (possibly as a reaction to the Mac PowerPC machines), and these were the 'default' blue Intel colour)

I always thought that the "Intel Inside" campaign was more of a response to the growing use of IBM/Cyrix and AMD processors to create more affordable systems. If my memory is correct, even Compaq had decided to advertise their systems differently, so that it was less obvious which brand of processor was fitted. As a result, "Intel Inside" was introduced to ensure buyers that they were getting a genuine Intel processor, rather that one of those cheap, inferior things ("inferior" in that they didn't put any money in Intel's coffers).

I doubt the campaign was to combat the PowerPC threat. Apple was just about the only major manufacturer producing desktops using those processors, and it didn't seem likely that they'd still exist in 1996.

EDIT: I'm not so sure it was Compaq that changed the way they advertised the processors in their systems, but it was one of the major PC brands that was commonly sold in major chain stores. I'll post a link if I manage to find the old article.

640K!enough wrote:

I always thought that the "Intel Inside" campaign was more of a response to the growing use of IBM/Cyrix and AMD processors to create more affordable systems. If my memory is correct, even Compaq had decided to advertise their systems differently, so that it was less obvious which brand of processor was fitted. As a result, "Intel Inside" was introduced to ensure buyers that they were getting a genuine Intel processor, rather that one of those cheap, inferior things ("inferior" in that they didn't put any money in Intel's coffers).

Yes, that could also be a reason, more specifically for the 386/486-market I suppose.
Pentium was a brand-name in itself, but the clones used the same 386/486 model numbers, and then moved on to using 586 and 686 (on CPUs that were basically just 486-class, but at clockspeeds high enough to touch some of the lower-end Pentiums).
An Intel Inside sticker would mean that you were getting a genuine Intel 386 or 486. With the Pentium it was pretty much implied that it was an Intel, but it would make sense to also put the stickers on those machines, for more brand-awareness/halo-effect.

Branco wrote:

20190613_110535.jpg

Here it is. I will open it today once I get home.

give it a shine, give it a clean!