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

Afaik 黄金戦士 "Golden Warrior" were made in Taiwan https://akiba--pc-watch-impress-co-jp.transla … en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Btw, to the best of my knowledge, intel sold tillamooks in 166mhz, 233mhz, 266 mhz, 300mhz

Who knows what actually lies inside the golden tigers. (Without destroying them) and tbh as I have said. It doesn’t really matter I think. I have little doubt that they could run at claimed speed stably.

Wow, sorry to hear these ended up being such a mess.

This reminds me of one of those times that I get all hyped up about getting some "thing" only to have it turn into a hopelessly complex time sink nightmare of a project. Can't imagine anything (that can be shipped) that would fit that description better than a few dozen super rare CPUs that easily fall apart and expose hundreds of impossible to repair hair-like wires that were cobbled by some sketchy third party.

Again... very sorry to hear that it turned out this way. What a mess they made of those things.

What a fascinating thread and story, thanks so much for taking us along for the journey.

This was certainly a good read. Whatever way this story ends, these Tillamook chips couldn't have ended up in better hands.
I am sure that if anyone will take the initiative to bring these back to life, it will be Sphere478.

Also, Intel absolutely intentionally artifically limited the Tillamook cores. They knew that many users would rather stay on the Socket 7 platform, and not buy into the Pentium II upgrade route.
They also knew that some users who were willing to stay on the Socket 7 platform, would ONLY do so if they could continue to use an Intel CPU.
In other words they chose to limit this product line so that people would not only buy their next shiny CPU, but also so that people would abandon the old platform that supported competitors products.

Sound business decision, if somewhat crappy in practice.
I've no doubt that the average Tillamook would scale very nicely to 400Mhz+, given the correct motherboard. Probably nearly all of them would.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-01-11, 16:38:

Sound business decision, if somewhat crappy in practice.
I've no doubt that the average Tillamook would scale very nicely to 400Mhz+, given the correct motherboard. Probably nearly all of them would.

At least they offered up the 300Mhz Celeron A that would OC to 450Mhz as a consolation prize.

It was enough to persuade me to finally abandon the venerable AT case that I'd been using since my first 486 VLB build, because while you could still manage a Pentium II build in an AT case if you dug around in the back of computer shopper enough, the boards were rarely the best quality and the AT power supplies were never quite enough.

douglar wrote on 2023-01-11, 16:57:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-01-11, 16:38:

Sound business decision, if somewhat crappy in practice.
I've no doubt that the average Tillamook would scale very nicely to 400Mhz+, given the correct motherboard. Probably nearly all of them would.

At least they offered up the 300Mhz Celeron A that would OC to 450Mhz as a consolation prize.

It was enough to persuade me to finally abandon the venerable AT case that I'd been using since my first 486 VLB build, because while you could still manage a Pentium II build in an AT case if you dug around in the back of computer shopper enough, the boards were rarely the best quality and the AT power supplies were never quite enough.

Yeah the 300A was and remains legendary. It punched well above it's weight.
The Pentium II/Slot 1 revolution was inevitable anyway, the Socket 7 platform was very long in the tooth by that time and there were plenty of reasons, CPU aside, to move onto a more modern option.

But clearly with all of the upgrade options from AMD/Cyrix/Rise/IDT etc, there was still a lot of life left to be had.
It's just a shame that Intel chose not to (realistically) contribute past 233mhz.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-01-11, 02:45:

Afaik 黄金戦士 "Golden Warrior" were made in Taiwan https://akiba--pc-watch-impress-co-jp.transla … en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Correct. These CPUs are Golden Warriors, not Golden Tigers. The Golden tiger is similar, but the PCB is exposed and the heat spreader is smaller. As far as I know they also normally had the die package exposed on the underside so that you could actually see what you were getting.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2023-01-13, 07:22:

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-01-11, 02:45:

Afaik 黄金戦士 "Golden Warrior" were made in Taiwan https://akiba--pc-watch-impress-co-jp.transla … en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Correct. These CPUs are Golden Warriors, not Golden Tigers. The Golden tiger is similar, but the PCB is exposed and the heat spreader is smaller. As far as I know they also normally had the die package exposed on the underside so that you could actually see what you were getting.

Interesting… I have two of these units

But was under the impression that intel or oems made them.

Perhaps some were intel and others were knockoffs?

In any case these are the ones I am talking about that have a similar problem.

They completely expose the film chip legs in a way that damage is almost guaranteed if they spend time outside of the motherboard or protective box. These legs are extremely thin and small. Not a whole lot bigger than gold wires in fact. Maybe 4 times larger? Or something like that?

I have not been able to get any of these to function reliably due to damage on the ones I got btw. (Got them like that)

So my earlier warning extends to these also.

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-13, 14:46:

But was under the impression that intel or oems made them.

So my understanding is that Intel made the silicon chip and packaged it in TCP320 for mobile.
Then a third party disassembled the TCP320 packaging, removed the chip, and then repackaged & relabeled the chips in the fancy PGA321 gold packaging.

The chips were probably packaged like this at one point in time-- The chip is the tiny square in the middle

Here are videos about them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-GbiiuiCBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=736iXRdXuTE

douglar wrote on 2023-01-13, 18:34:

So my understanding is that Intel made the silicon chip and packaged it in TCP320 for mobile. Then a third party disassembled th […]
Show full quote

Sphere478 wrote on 2023-01-13, 14:46:

But was under the impression that intel or oems made them.

So my understanding is that Intel made the silicon chip and packaged it in TCP320 for mobile.
Then a third party disassembled the TCP320 packaging, removed the chip, and then repackaged & relabeled the chips in the fancy PGA321 gold packaging.

The chips were probably packaged like this at one point in time-- The chip is the tiny square in the middle

s-l1600 (5).jpg

Here's a video about them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=736iXRdXuTE

Indeed. I have one of those ^pictured^

Mine is a 266. There are many on ebay still. Of many speeds including 300s last I checked.

The question is who made the interposers. Maybe everyone made them.🤷‍♂️ Who knows.

Literally just found a free Compaq Presario 2400 and had a 266 in it... posted it in Retro Activity thread - I didn't know that Intel did official packaging that looked like standard Socket 7 MMX for 266 and just assumed it was all like the exposed die CPU picture a few posts up or all the golden top CPUs like you posted.

Antieon wrote on 2023-01-13, 20:05:

Literally just found a free Compaq Presario 2400 and had a 266 in it... posted it in Retro Activity thread - I didn't know that Intel did official packaging that looked like standard Socket 7 MMX for 266 and just assumed it was all like the exposed die CPU picture a few posts up or all the golden top CPUs like you posted.

Tillamook 266MHz and working L2 cache?

Those are the ones you want 😀

I’m still on the look out for the 166 tillamook ppga I need it for my collection.

But 233s and 266s are easy to find

How did you collect these tiger processors? I was unable to find any on ebay.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-01-13, 23:45:

How did you collect these tiger processors? I was unable to find any on ebay.

Cheers,

🤫 secrets.

They’re relatively easy to find in China, but often times broken. The sellers like to play ignorance, but they definitely know they’re selling defective crap. I have terrible luck with the second marketplace here. I just bought a second hand bike….came with a bent wheel and a bent fork.

Well, the time has come.

A repair attempt is going to be made on one of the golden units.

Let’s all cross our fingers and hope this piece of history can be restored. 🤞

Hopefully the amazing person who is going to attempt this will be along shortly to comment. 😀

———————————-

An update on my collection, I have now found ppga variants of tillamook in 166, 233, and 266 flavors. I believe…. That is all of them in ppga. As I don’t think a 200 or 300 ppga part was ever made.

Pics from internet

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-07-26, 00:37:

A repair attempt is going to be made on one of the golden units.
Hopefully the amazing person who is going to attempt this will be along shortly to comment. 😀

The amazing person feels that we need a more amazing person than I might possibly be 😀

I really have no idea how to salvage this. My smallest tweezers as a comparison.

Well you can try paint/ink then you can mask it off with tape and just clumsy away at it.

tony359 wrote on 2024-08-05, 09:06:

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-07-26, 00:37:

A repair attempt is going to be made on one of the golden units.
Hopefully the amazing person who is going to attempt this will be along shortly to comment. 😀

The amazing person feels that we need a more amazing person than I might possibly be 😀

I really have no idea how to salvage this. My smallest tweezers as a comparison.

You're going to need some kind of wire bonding (or wire bonder) equipment ideally a manual one, I think that's how that one was made originally. From recollection of my own tillamook laptops, those traces are 0.1mm thick and even the finest wire with a microscope would struggle to get them all connected and working without shorts. But a wire bonder would make relatively short work of the job by comparison. I wonder if there are services available perhaps in china or locally that would repair those bond wires?

Here's an example of the equipment I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/ESCaeMXU4aQ?t=34 (I have so many questions about this video???)
edit: here's another better video from Sam Zeloof, he's got connections to get old chip making equipment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvZ1dJuvenw

Maybe it could be doable though, get the process and angle of attack right and it could potentially be achieved with a soldering iron. Here's what I'm referring to in regards to the 0.1mm trace size: Re: Interposer for mobile Pentium MMX Tillamook
For this scale of work you'd need to use bare copper strands from a copper power cable, the enamel would be a big hassle to deal with. For fine tip tweezers I can recommend the Ideal-Tek 7A.SA.0 (what I have) and the finer 7.SA.0. I got these ideal tek tweezers for relatively cheap on ebay a while ago and they're still my best ones despite trying to find alternative ones on aliexpress a few times.