Unstable at any speed, or just 1.0 to 1.4 GHz?

feipoa wrote on 2020-05-07, 00:58:

Katmai500 wrote on 2020-05-06, 15:48:

The thermal pad theory is a plausible one. At this time AMD didn't have a reliable thermal protection circuit in their CPUs. See this classic video as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNUK3U73SI. They didn't totally fix the issue until the Athlon 64. The video shows Socket A CPU's, but I can't imagine the Slot A chips have it if the Socket A chips did not. There would be no reason for AMD to remove it.

I'm sorry to hear your 1 GHz Slot A T-Bird is likely dead. It's such a rare CPU. Now I'm worried about all of my Slot A CPUs, but don't want to risk opening them up.

Yeah, good to be worried. I found 2 other dead slot A's in my pile.

So does the dead slot A 1 GHz t-bird have no collection value then?

It's definitely worth something to the right collector. I'm active on CPU-World and do a ton of buying and selling of vintage hardware. IIRC discussing ebay sales and pricing for hardware is frowned upon here on VOGONS. You could post about it on CPU-World or throw it up on eBay with a low starting bid to see what happens. There's nothing wrong with selling it broken if you clearly explain that it doesn't work in the description and note it's for collection purposes only.

I've never seen a retail Slot A to Socket A/462 adapter. I've read that they existed, but were never sold. I'd love to get my hands on one.

I don't plan to do any selling of anything. Not worth the time and effort for my situation. I was just wondering if the CPU had any value left to it for collectors. It will be going in my dead motherboard/processor box with a bag over it just so that it doesn't get dinged up.

feipoa wrote on 2020-05-07, 02:42:

My only iteration is with the cashier at the grocery store.

I ride the short bus so am special and they actually let me work during this craziness. 😁

Katmai500 wrote on 2020-05-06, 15:48:

The thermal pad theory is a plausible one. At this time AMD didn't have a reliable thermal protection circuit in their CPUs.

To be fair, Palomino and onward cores had the thermal diodes necessary to detect and protect from overheating conditions. Motherboard and core logic support was quite variable.