It's simple economics.
They were maybe 10% of all motherboard sales for the roughly 1 year period they existed as the only AMD option.
~August 1999 slot A
~June 2000 socket A
Only 10% of those people are the kind who are inclined to tinker/upgrade.

1% of 1 year's sales might want to buy one.

myne wrote on Today, 07:52:

It's simple economics. They were maybe 10% of all motherboard sales for the roughly 1 year period they existed as the only AMD o […]
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It's simple economics.
They were maybe 10% of all motherboard sales for the roughly 1 year period they existed as the only AMD option.
~August 1999 slot A
~June 2000 socket A
Only 10% of those people are the kind who are inclined to tinker/upgrade.

1% of 1 year's sales might want to buy one.

My uncle bought a Slot-A system, K7-500, because it was cheaper than Intel. His idea was to upgrade when prices for cpus would have come down.
But he ended up going for P-4 for his wife and he got a socket A 1.4GHz + SDR.

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 07:19:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 05:46:

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors. […]
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myne wrote on Today, 04:09:

Isn't goldfinger essentially just a jumper block? I don't recall anything particularly special about it […]
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Isn't goldfinger essentially just a jumper block?
I don't recall anything particularly special about it

Ghetto version = 2xN jumper, squish together onto fingers, and jump wires.
No?

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors.

Honestly, I don't think AMD locked down overclocking of the Slot-A Athlon - on the contrary, there was an option, as opposed to Intel's cpus.

The lack of a kind of slotket for Slot-A is probably more due to the short-livedness of the platform compared to Slot-1 and thus no BIOS or VRM support etc. After all, Intel had like 4 or 5 chipsets released with Slor-1 boards?

Edit: https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php … ight=goldfinger it seems that indeed it is a very simple device ..

Locked down in the sense that you needed the extra stuff to make it happen on Slot A which really did stop casual overclocking from people who had no clue unlike say the Socket 370 and Socket 7 boards where you could do it right out of the box with nothing gatekeeping it.

I agree that Slot A was rather short lived and that was likely the biggest reason for no slotkets.

Wouldn't FSB overclocking be just as easy as it was on Slot-1 and BX chipset, if the board supported it?

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 10:11:

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 07:19:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 05:46:

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors. […]
Show full quote

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors.

Honestly, I don't think AMD locked down overclocking of the Slot-A Athlon - on the contrary, there was an option, as opposed to Intel's cpus.

The lack of a kind of slotket for Slot-A is probably more due to the short-livedness of the platform compared to Slot-1 and thus no BIOS or VRM support etc. After all, Intel had like 4 or 5 chipsets released with Slor-1 boards?

Edit: https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php … ight=goldfinger it seems that indeed it is a very simple device ..

Locked down in the sense that you needed the extra stuff to make it happen on Slot A which really did stop casual overclocking from people who had no clue unlike say the Socket 370 and Socket 7 boards where you could do it right out of the box with nothing gatekeeping it.

I agree that Slot A was rather short lived and that was likely the biggest reason for no slotkets.

Wouldn't FSB overclocking be just as easy as it was on Slot-1 and BX chipset, if the board supported it?

If the board and bios supported changing FSB then I doubt it would be any more difficult than Intel, I seem to remember that not all Slot A boards allowed changing FSB but I'm likely wrong about that.

I do know that changing FSB on Slot A impacted the Cache which was either half or full FSB so changing the FSB could lead to instability due to the cache even if the CPU could handle the change.

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 10:11:

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 07:19:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 05:46:

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors. […]
Show full quote

As I recall (and understand), more or less, yes. Maybe some pull-up or pull-down resistors.

Honestly, I don't think AMD locked down overclocking of the Slot-A Athlon - on the contrary, there was an option, as opposed to Intel's cpus.

The lack of a kind of slotket for Slot-A is probably more due to the short-livedness of the platform compared to Slot-1 and thus no BIOS or VRM support etc. After all, Intel had like 4 or 5 chipsets released with Slor-1 boards?

Edit: https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php … ight=goldfinger it seems that indeed it is a very simple device ..

Locked down in the sense that you needed the extra stuff to make it happen on Slot A which really did stop casual overclocking from people who had no clue unlike say the Socket 370 and Socket 7 boards where you could do it right out of the box with nothing gatekeeping it.

I agree that Slot A was rather short lived and that was likely the biggest reason for no slotkets.

Wouldn't FSB overclocking be just as easy as it was on Slot-1 and BX chipset, if the board supported it?

Someone here recreated a better version of the goldfinger, sporting all fancy stuff that wasn't present on the 1st ver of that tool.

AMD K7 "goldfinger" cloning thread

Nexxen wrote on Today, 10:45:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 10:11:

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 07:19:

Locked down in the sense that you needed the extra stuff to make it happen on Slot A which really did stop casual overclocking from people who had no clue unlike say the Socket 370 and Socket 7 boards where you could do it right out of the box with nothing gatekeeping it.

I agree that Slot A was rather short lived and that was likely the biggest reason for no slotkets.

Wouldn't FSB overclocking be just as easy as it was on Slot-1 and BX chipset, if the board supported it?

Someone here recreated a better version of the goldfinger, sporting all fancy stuff that wasn't present on the 1st ver of that tool.

AMD K7 "goldfinger" cloning thread

Not seen that thread before, looks like all the design files are there ..might look into making a couple if I can get the parts locally at a reasonable cost.

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 10:57:

Nexxen wrote on Today, 10:45:

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 10:11:

Wouldn't FSB overclocking be just as easy as it was on Slot-1 and BX chipset, if the board supported it?

Someone here recreated a better version of the goldfinger, sporting all fancy stuff that wasn't present on the 1st ver of that tool.

AMD K7 "goldfinger" cloning thread

Not seen that thread before, looks like all the design files are there ..might look into making a couple if I can get the parts locally at a reasonable cost.

Beware, opening the cartridges isn't an easy task. If you use metal tools you'll damage the plastic case.
There are YT videos for how-to, watch those beforehand. It involves some serious cursing 😀
Been there, "wept" that. 🤣

I wanna think that a quarter century ago, you'd think it the most devious and difficult plastic case ever. But in 2026 if you've used the intervening years to crack open tablets, phones, laptop battery packs, recent laptops, etc etc it would seem like cake. Though the plastic ain't getting any younger, so make sure you're not doing it very cold.