Competition: Who has the worlds oldest known Intel 386?

Enigma · Joined: 10 Nov 2010 Posts: 2

Well the CPU in my IBM PS/2:

So it is Week 33 / 1988
I can not give information about the lower side since the cpu is in a running system.

And this one might be interesting:

For me this looks like the following. The CPU has been lasered twice. On the second pass they cleaned off the previous lasered label as a square area and added the 16 Bit S/W Only. There are still some ripples of the previous marking visible and the -16 and 86 can barely be distinguished.
Then a new label was printed on top.

The printed label says Week 12 / 1987.
On the bottom the print is 8703.

My interpretation is that the CPU was already labeled when Intel got notice of the Bug. So they send all CPUs in stock to check and some had to be relabeled. So it might be that this date is close to the date Intel reacted.

I rubbed off the ripples with a thin paper and a soft pen. It seems that the original label is 'i7112639'.

Enigma · Joined: 10 Nov 2010 Posts: 2

I know the last update to this thread was April 15th, so is it already dead?

Anyone has seen other twice labeled 386s so far?

JAC · Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Posts: 3469

Nice first post. No thread is ever dead here.. Wink

(p.s. edit your post to insert images inline in IMG tags)

I have always thought the visible engraving to remove markings was not Intel's style, and it is not seen much.. here is an example,

That is a remarked up from SX-16(SX431) to SX-25. Remarks UP in speed are always worth looking at twice for fake/remark.