New here. Interesting Forum. Got some questions.

[ckl]

Hi. My name's Chris. I'm a full time programmer that has tinkered with computer hardware as a hobby over the years.

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right forum.

When I was cleaning out my garage, I found some old cpu's I had collected throughout the years. I did some googling on them and ended up on this site. Then I ended up looking at the beautiful photo shots of people exposing the die's of 486 era CPU's. Nice job! So I decided that this is what I want to do with my old CPU's. When I come to think of it, I'm kicking myself for not doing this in my younger years because I had access to a variety of cpu's from the 80286/386/486/Pentium and MC68010/20 and even DEC alpha chip. But at the time I was just too young to realize what existed in them. Had I seen these photos at that time, I would have collected a ton of them.

Anyway, it was very hard searching on the Internet on how to take apart the CPU to expose the actual die to take photography. Most of the sites I found were about removing the IHS to get better cooling (not going any further than that) and some talk about using some harsh acid chemicals to eat away at the packaging to expose the die. I don't think the members who took those die shots on this forum used that method.

From what I understand, most modern CPU's use some sort of "flipchip" design that makes in near impossible for weekend hobbyists like me to take apart and expose the die for photography. Probably because they don't want people looking at and reverse engineer them. Which is why I can't find any die pics of the Core i7. The problem is, how does one tell just by looking at the CPU whether it can be successfully taken apart and photographed?

I've taken a picture of the CPU's both front and back and was wondering if anyone can chime in on what I can do to get some great photos of the die... if it is even possible.

http://i864.photobucket.com/albums/ab202/ckl_photos/CPU/20160113_203416_zpsbnunnncb.jpg
http://i864.photobucket.com/albums/ab202/ckl_photos/CPU/20160113_203320_zpsaeynmvwh.jpg

Thanks.

[rjluna2]

Welcome to CPU-World forum, ckl

The best way I scan these microprocessor to use the flatbed scanner. I always scan both observe and reverse and posted in the same group showing the difference between other CPU here and elsewhere.

Good luck

[debs3759]

You may get more info in the forum section that is dedicated to taking die shots. http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22

It is possible that some members who are keen on die shots will see your question sooner in there. Also browsing some of the larger threads in there may give you some good tips for exposing the die and taking pics.

[ckl]

Okay. Thanks.

I'll post there and see what kind of answers I get.