Well I started checking them out, cleaning them and straightening the pins, and I have bad news people. :,(

I’ve made a discovery about these cpus that is going to permanently put testing of them on hold.

When these were made they were made in a quite crappy way with a interposer, a shim and a IHS

The IHS is glued to the shim and the shim is glued to the interposer.

That is sketchy for sure but we all knew that.

What I didn’t know is that it seems like these IHS like to pop off very easily.

Again, not the end of the world.

What honestly shocked me was discovering that under that IHS are goldwires.

Yes, that is how they attached the film chip package to the interposer.

Meaning all these chips that were in computers all over the world owned by all these unqualified people had a high chance of the user at some point having to reapply glue and TIM around those gold wires

I tested several chips, including the 366 and all the 300s I was able to get some life (codes) out of some of the 300/366 chips. But no post screen. Some were just - -

I have a 233 that works. But was unable to find life in the 366 or the 300 chips.

At this point the gold wires need to be inspected under a microscope before I plug any of these in again.

It’s even worse than the fiasco with the super delicate film chip packages from intel/oems

So yeah, I think it is safe to say that these are nothing more than a very fascinating paper weight. I’m not going to be doing any further testing at this time 🙁

I’m sure probably half of them or more are working but it’s not worth the risk to the motherboard to find out at this point IMHO.

Not when genuine intel ppga chips are available. (Sl2z4 sl2z3)

One day I think I may take the time to find someone skilled in micro electronics repair and take all these chips apart and inspect all the wires and repair those with damage and perhaps epoxy fill them or something so that they are proper and reliable. But for today I will just be sad that I don’t get to play with the world’s fastest pentium 1 :,(

On the photo I think I already saw several wires loose from pad.
Gee that solder job is a mess..

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-09, 02:50:

One day I think I may take the time to find someone skilled in micro electronics repair and take all these chips apart and inspect all the wires and repair those with damage and perhaps epoxy fill them or something so that they are proper and reliable. But for today I will just be sad that I don’t get to play with the world’s fastest pentium 1 :,(

I would dispute the idea that they are the world's fastest P1, they are merely regular P1 that have been adapted and are very much overclocked. I'm sure many enthusiasts have done the same over the years, just not with a new package and gold heatsink 😀

@Sphere478: That is very disappointing, sorry to hear this 😒
It's a shame really. These would have been interesting items even if these were remarks.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-01-09, 20:20:

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-09, 02:50:

One day I think I may take the time to find someone skilled in micro electronics repair and take all these chips apart and inspect all the wires and repair those with damage and perhaps epoxy fill them or something so that they are proper and reliable. But for today I will just be sad that I don’t get to play with the world’s fastest pentium 1 :,(

I would dispute the idea that they are the world's fastest P1, they are merely regular P1 that have been adapted and are very much overclocked. I'm sure many enthusiasts have done the same over the years, just not with a new package and gold heatsink 😀

For sure. But intel makes up the clock speed also

They were made by Chinese vendors, the only part Intel made was the die, and it was not rated at 366. The die would have been rated at 266 or 300 by Intel

debs3759 wrote on 2023-01-09, 23:51:

They were made by Chinese vendors, the only part Intel made was the die, and it was not rated at 366. The die would have been rated at 266 or 300 by Intel

400mhz on a tillamook is just another day at the office, just like 600mhz is another day at the office for a k6-3+570 😀

Tillamooks were held back it seems as a marketing strategy.

The dies themselves are regularly capable of much more.

So this idea of “what they are rated at” doesn’t always have to do with what they are capable of.

The mental disconnect here is that it wasn’t intel that slapped on that label.

The chip can do 366. It isn’t even a issue for them.

I would hazard a guess that Intel simply didn't have enough of these dies working stable beyond 300 to justify releasing them at higher ratings, just because a small sample of existing ones can do it doesn't mean they all could or that there were enough viable yields to do so.

IIRC the Pentium II had been released or was close at the time, I doubt Intel would have wanted a super fast P1 cutting their profits from users who they wanted to force into upgrades.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-01-10, 02:29:

I would hazard a guess that Intel simply didn't have enough of these dies working stable beyond 300 to justify releasing them at higher ratings, just because a small sample of existing ones can do it doesn't mean they all could or that there were enough viable yields to do so.

IIRC the Pentium II had been released or was close at the time, I doubt Intel would have wanted a super fast P1 cutting their profits from users who they wanted to force into upgrades.

all of my ppga tillamooks will do 400mhz. Probably more, but with only 4x to work with it’s kinda hard to test. Most of my ss7 mobos don’t like higher fsb for one reason or another.

I have two 233 tillamooks and I believe 3 266 tillamooks.

I have many other tillamooks as you can see but the ppga ones are the ones that don’t give problems it seems. (With mods installed)

That second paragraph I believe is the reason that they stopped at 300 with official offerings.

Wonder what multiplier the 366 was supposed to run with, if it was an unreleased 5.5 or it just overclocked with some obscure FSB ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-01-10, 04:41:

Wonder what multiplier the 366 was supposed to run with, if it was an unreleased 5.5 or it just overclocked with some obscure FSB ...

95x4 380mhz

91.5 fsb 4x 366 mhz not exactly standard.

If the mythical 4.5x multiplier was at play then 83.3 would get you 375mhz

But the closest of all settings and a standard overclocked ss7 frequency btw, is 105x3.5x 367.5mhz

105 is probably the one to use 😀

What was actually inside the 366? Is the package flipped upside down so that you have to destroy it to read the part number?

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-10, 04:59:

95x4 380mhz […]
Show full quote

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-01-10, 04:41:

Wonder what multiplier the 366 was supposed to run with, if it was an unreleased 5.5 or it just overclocked with some obscure FSB ...

95x4 380mhz

91.5 fsb 4x 366 mhz not exactly standard.

If the mythical 4.5x multiplier was at play then 83.3 would get you 375mhz

But the closest of all settings and a standard overclocked ss7 frequency btw, is 105x3.5x 367.5mhz

105 is probably the one to use 😀

Sounds plausible, but interesting that the "vendor" doesn't specify how to get 366

Tetrium wrote on 2023-01-09, 20:36:

@Sphere478: That is very disappointing, sorry to hear this 😒
It's a shame really. These would have been interesting items even if these were remarks.

I think at this point, these are almost certainly grey market remarks, yes?

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2023-01-10, 07:50:

the package flipped upside down so that you have to destroy it to read the part number?

Yes

douglar wrote on 2023-01-10, 13:38:

Tetrium wrote on 2023-01-09, 20:36:

@Sphere478: That is very disappointing, sorry to hear this 😒
It's a shame really. These would have been interesting items even if these were remarks.

I think at this point, these are almost certainly grey market remarks, yes?

What’s a grey market remark?

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-10, 13:54:

What’s a grey market remark?

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4285/gray-market
The gray market refers to the sale of products via distribution channels that are unintended, unofficial and unauthorized by the real vendor of the products. The gray market does not involve illegal channels like the black market, but is considered a parallel market where goods such as electronics, computer games and cellphones are often sold for lower prices.

So back in the day, there were the official wholesale channels where major OEM's would buy CPUs in lots of 1000, there was the official retail channels where you could buy CPUs one at a time in a fancy box from the shelf of a store, and then there was the gray market, where unbundled CPU sales occurred that didn't directly come from Intel or AMD. These CPU's often came with minimal packaging from tiny advertisements, sold by no-brand companies that advertised with tiny black and white adds in the back of magazines. Sometimes these CPUs originated from an OEM that had extra inventory that they needed to liquidate. Sometimes a manufacturer would dump a large quantity of unsold chips in developing countries at a lower price and these would show up later in unexpected locations. Other times it wasn't so clear at all where the stuff came from. Usually it was just what a hobbyist wanted. But on rare occasions, you'd find an enterprising entrepreneur who would take existing CPUs, paint new markings on the chip, do any necessary hardware mods, and try to sell chips at a higher price.

In this case, it looked like someone was trying to make some money selling "pre-overclocked" chips with fancy gold packaging.

My confusion was about the remark part I guess you mean re-brand or something of that sort I thought of remark as a comment about sometime

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-10, 21:54:

My confusion was about the remark part I guess you mean re-brand or something of that sort I thought of remark as a comment about sometime

No I meant remarked CPU aka a fake or counterfeit CPU. Of course how one could designate these particular chips is perhaps more of a semantical debate.

Gotcha 😀