Chriscosmo12's Collection

[Chriscosmo12]

Hello! I thought to create a thread on here to showcase my collection since my subreddit idea did not work. A moderator told me the News sub-forum was the place to do it, so here I am!

I'm currently 22 years old, and have been fascinated by computers ever since I built my first desktop many years ago. I was tired of my first "gaming" laptop and had decided to teach myself what goes into making a computer, and how those pieces go together to provide a real solid gaming experience. Ever since then I have been fixing computers and selling refurbished ones as a hobby. I had started collecting a few years ago, being intrigued by eBay lots with tons of scrap CPUs. It was very entertaining opening these mystery boxes, taking out and cleaning each chip, then researching each one's specifications and noting them down in a spreadsheet. Even though a majority of what I got was junk, it was still fascinating to have so many pieces of technology. Of course I got the occasional Ryzen 3, golden 486, or an engineering sample mixed in with these lots. The end result of this endeavor is a bunch of stained wood boards with CPUs glued to them as display pieces.

However, I moved on from buying huge lots of scrap chips. In late 2022 I started buying broken graphics cards thinking they were cool display pieces, but have since re-sold them to focus on more interesting collections. Since April 2023 I have been collecting MCM-type processors, golden DIPs, prototypes, and other sorts of eye-candy. This new phase started when I saw an IBM Power5+ for sale showing its very pretty multi-die design. I did some research and learned about multi-chip modules, then came across CPU Galaxy's videos showcasing his beautiful masterpiece of a collection. I then found these forums and have come across many other vintage technologies, and met some really cool people!

Here's a link to a Google Drive folder showcasing what I have:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dQRW6yGnTrelT_bL8lK65YlegVHlnnpL?usp=sharing

This post was re-worded and adjusted on June 25th 2024.

[max1024]

Interesting Story, keep going )) I suspect that on your avatar is part of your collection?

[debs3759]

I look forward to seeing what you have. I'm especially fond of pre 64-bit x86 processors.

[Chriscosmo12]

Yeah! My avatar consists of the wooden boards and some of the MCM chips. For now the MCMs have been moved to another shelf since I'm afraid the weight of the wood boards might cause them to fall down one day.

Also, I'm not entiiiirely sure what would be considered pre-64-bit CPUs, ones like Pentium II? I read that 64-bit became mainstream in 2003

[debs3759]

x86 64-bit started with socket 775 (with 2 socket 478 that are hard to find) and AMD's socket 754 (Athlon 64 and Sempron)

[Chriscosmo12]

Here we go with a showcase of my two IBM Power5+, IBM Power6 and IBM Z10.
The Power5+ (Green) was purchased in April from China listed as a "mirror ceramic cpu", and was the first chip of my MCM / mainframe CPU collection. The Power6 was purchased shortly after. The second Power5+ (Blue) and Z10 were purchased in May. The second Power5+ was from the same seller as the other one, but was supposed to be a Power5 according to the title, which has four bigger dies. Seller said that they did not pay attention to "glass size", so I guess that's what I get. As for the Z10, I did not realize from the eBay pictures that it was missing a large amount of its capacitors. Some experienced individuals may have noticed that ALL of the capacitors are now missing in the pictures provided. This is because many more fell off from my trip to showcase it at work, and I finally decided to take the rest off to make it symmetric and clean (which may or may not have been a good idea). The caps I do have are still kept in a bag in case one day I can put them back on, or find replacements. It seems to be a pretty fragile chip compared to others.

On the other hand... I have created a Google Drive link with some more detailed pictures of each chip! Tried my best to make the pictures line up, but with camera angle, distance, and positioning all having an affect I tried my best lol. If anyone has any feedback or questions feel free to let me know or ask. Now it's time for me to have a late dinner after a very long day. More will be uploaded this weekend.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dQRW6yGnTrelT_bL8lK65YlegVHlnnpL?usp=sharing

[Chriscosmo12]

Here's my three IBM 4381 received in April and May. All three of these had to be blowtorched in order to remove their soldered-on heatsinks, and I think I was pretty successful! It is pretty interesting that one has a golden frame and gold traces on the ceramic. I'll upload heatsink pictures in the Google Drive later.

[Chriscosmo12]

Here's my two IBM PowerPC 603e MCMs. They too had to be torched in order to get their heat spreaders removed. Some capacitors are missing and I tried my best to clean up the basically concrete-like thermal compound. Not pictured is a third 603e (11 die) which was really stubborn to get apart, and is too damaged to showcase due to a few dies falling off, many missing caps, chipped ceramic, etc. Interesting how these two variations can be called the same thing, but have a different layout of dies and capacitors. I'll upload heatsink pictures to the Google Drive folders later.

[Chriscosmo12]

Up next are some of my favorites! Got an IBM 3080 with 94 dies and a 3081 with all 118 dies present! What is rather unique is the 3080 appears to have larger dies than normal, as all other chips I've seen have the two smaller die sizes present. It is also noteworthy to mention how different a 3081 is compared to a 3080, I had assumed they were the same ceramic chip, just with a gold frame on the 3081. The 3081 is in fact a smaller ceramic piece, and the gold frame makes up for most of the size difference. As far as I know from some other info provided on the forum, the gold-frame chip is a 3081, and the fully ceramic one is a 3080 due to the low die count. The damage to these chips was present before they got in my hands, and I've since restored them a little. The 3080 was received in June while the 3081 arrived a week ago.

[Chriscosmo12]

Next up some more Power5 and Power5+, but now dual-chip / quad-chip modules! These were all received in mid-June. The QCMs were already pristinely cleaned, but two of the DCMs required heat and scraping to get the thermal compound off of the die areas. Still may need a bit more cleaning, and possibly removal of the pins for a more clean look? Pretty odd that the DCMs have varying thicknesses.

[Chriscosmo12]

And here's a few recent ones. The Power5 and Z9 were received a couple days ago, and I spent a couple hours veeeery carefully using toothpicks, cotton swabs and xacto knives to clean off the thermal compound yesterday. They are in excellent condition, but the Z9 has a couple tiny chips on some dies, unsure how this could have happened given they were covered in compound. The one at the far right is a Cray X1 which I had wanted for a long while, and got it a month ago for a decent price. Sadly it has a chip on one die and a crack on the other. More detailed pictures will be uploaded to the drive shortly.

[Chriscosmo12]

Nearly caught up with all of my MCMs, here are a couple Cadence Palladium II chips. It is a pretty unique processor and definitely some good eye-candy for such a relatively small chip. This was another chip where I had to use a blowtorch to remove the heat spreader, and in the process four chips fell off and one was nudged out of place. It was pretty difficult to get apart due to being inset inside of the metal housing, so I had to tap it against the ground a couple times. I tried my best to reflow the memory modules back on, but resorted to just cleaning off the solder and using super-glue. It turned out pretty good! Still have the other unopened one too for safe-keeping. There will be additional pictures in the drive of the one I took apart. One was bought in July, the other in August.

[Chriscosmo12]

And uh, now for some misc MCMs. These are the last of the MCMs I have currently to show, may post a few other neat misc chips at some point or at least upload them to the drive. Here we have two ROSS unpopulated MCM chips from a month ago, an NEC MR-4401B bought in June, a DEC DCJ11-AE JAWS from July, a MDC281 chip bought a week or so ago, and lastly a Power9 MCM also from July. The ROSS chips and MDC281 are from CPUShack, and some pretty detailed information was provided about the MDC281 chip being made for F-15E fighter jets and other aircraft. It has to be one of my favorite collection pieces! The DCJ11 and MR-4401B were new old stock from China. The J11 actually fell out of its original packaging when first unboxing, denting one of the corner pins which is disappointing. Best not to rely on the OEM plastic tray! Some additional pictures are in the drive showing OEM packing of the J11, and a comparison of a regular Power9 to the MCM version.

[Chriscosmo12]

Aaaand this will be my last upload for at least a week or more. Now getting into the REAL big and unique mainframe MCMs. Just got these in yesterday and spent many hours cleaning and un-bending pins. As far as I know... what I have is an IBM 9121 with brown / purple ceramic instead of gold / white, a Hitachi M-200H but without capacitors occupying the four corner squares, and of course a Power5 MCM. If they're anything different please let me know! The Hitachi came out amazing after cleaning, the 9121 came out alright but still needs some work on the pins. The Power5 is a Power5, a pretty durable chip so there's no damage. The Hitachi is definitely my favorite chip so far, absolutely huge and hefty. Was very surprised when I unpacked it and just had to show my family. Really look forward to seeing if I can get more huge chips like it, but for now have to save up my money. Close-ups are of course in the Google Drive.

[Chriscosmo12]

Heya all, been a while. Adding some chips I bought and got in this last week to celebrate my birthday. Got another Power5 QCM and a pretty unique looking (albeit smaller than I thought) Xicor XM28C020-25, along with some Hitachi MCMs. Spent a ton of time this weekend trying to clean the big MCMs, the two silver ones are still pretty rough and I may work on them more another time. The gold one came out great, especially the pin side when compared to the pre-cleaning photos. All pictures are in the google drive link for anyone curious. Wish I could find more information as to what exactly the Hitachi MCMs are, can't find anything when looking up the numbers on the bottom and side. I just assume they are M-200H chips when they probably aren't.

I don't think I'll make too many updates to this forum unless I get a decent amount of really cool stuff to show. Don't want to have people checking the news section expecting something important just to see that I added pictures, doesn't seem to be a very common thing. I may upload some other semi-unique chips I have to the drive without posting here, or let them accumulate and do a big post.