Unmarked A0 Merom ES and some early Yonah SOLD OUT

[crazybubba64]

Shipping and payment information can be found here.

Yet again, the goalpost of "earliest Core 2" chip has been pushed back.
These are A0 Merom chips with a date code going back to the 32nd week of 2005. They have the CPUID of 6F0. These are the earliest Core 2 chips that I am aware of, as they pre-date the other unmarked QJUD and the desktop QHEE chips. I don't imagine there are any earlier functioning chips out there.

In addition, I have some very early (probably A0, theoretical CPUID of 6E0) Yonah chips. These have date codes going all the way back to week 35 of 2004! I was not able to get them to boot in my XPS M1710, so I can't promise functionality.

I also have a few more of those "INTEL SECRET" QINY chips.

The Merom A0 and QINY chips were all tested and verified working into Windows XP. The early Yonah chips did not POST in my test machine.


3x Unmarked Core 2 Duo Merom A0 SOLD OUT
- 1x $30 coldwove
- 1x $30 brutuscat2
- 1x $30 xsecret
2x Unmarked Core Duo early Yonah (probably A0?) SOLD OUT
- 1x $20 coldwove
- 1x $20 xsecret
2x Intel Core Duo T2500 QINY (INTEL SECRET) SOLD OUT
- 1x $20 brutuscat2
- 1x $20 coldwove

[brutuscat2]

1 x Unmarked Core 2 Duo Merom A0 $30 each
1 x Intel Core Duo T2500 QINY (INTEL SECRET) $20 each

[coldwove]

Confirming the merom A0 and then

1x Unmarked Core Duo early Yonah (probably A0?) $20 each
1x Intel Core Duo T2500 QINY (INTEL SECRET) $20 each

Cheers.

[xsecret]

I’ll take one of these Merom A0...

[xsecret]

Well and also one these Yonah for further investigation... 😅

[xsecret]

PS: according to Intel’s internal records, Merom initially tapped in on week 23’05 and tapped out around week 29’05. So they’re maybe not the earliest ones (ww30 or ww31 could exist) but they’re clearly from the first wafer batch. Very nice.

[xsecret]

Some investigations about these nice Merom A0:

- Intel produced 2 distinct batchs of Merom A0 before switching to A1.
- First batch TI WW23'05 - TO WW29'05 - Second batch undocumented but probably TO WW36-38'05
- Differences between both batch are only fuses. Which ones ? Mystery. Maybe PNS.
- Q-Specs are different between the two A0 batches.
- These 1.66G A0 probably came from the first batch (date match), so they're QIYJ.
- Intel produced the 1.66 GHz flavor in 2MB and 4MB L2 on both batchs.
- The initial target freq for Merom A0 was 1.83 GHz.
- The very first CPUs assembled from the first wafers are 1.83 GHz (WW30'05)
- The remaining dies where then validated at 2.00 & 2.16 GHz (WW31-32'05) and then downqualified at 1.66 GHz (WW31-32'05).
- They also tried to qualify at 2.33 GHz (WW31'05) without much success.
- A much earlier Mech sample for Merom A0 exists.

[Katmai500]

Super cool stuff!