Cracking Open an IBM Cadence Palladium II MCM

[Chriscosmo12]

Just got this beauty in today from eBay, and my goodness is it a lot thicker than I imagined. My question is would this chip require a blowtorch to remove the heatsink like other IBM MCM models? Hopefully someone who has opened one before sees this post, I'd rather not increase my likelihood of damaging it. I'm also tempted to just leave it as it is for now, it is a very hefty piece of technology.

[Williac]

If you’re curious about the inside:

https://www.cpushack.com/2016/10/20/processors-to-emulate-processors-the-palladium-ii/

[Chriscosmo12]

Oh yeah, John's article is very well done. Part of the reason why I got this chip haha

[bccwchan]

I guess use the heat gun or blowtorch will be fine. Not difficult to remove the heatsink.

[Glory_Cloud]

I have found that using some kaowool insulation will
help when trying to keep the temperature up. Heat sinks
do a good job of dissipating heat away from the CPU.

[Chriscosmo12]

May give it a try today, we'll see. Just hopeful that none of the capacitors fall off in the process

[Chriscosmo12]

Well, it has been done. Just like last time it took absolutely forever even with such extreme heat. After losing patience and tapping it against the ground, the heatsink popped right off, and it took a few memory modules with it. I think this is a better scenario, since the capacitors/resistors are all intact, and the memory packages should be fairly easy to resolder. I have ZERO idea how some people can do this so easily and perfectly, with the smoke I was seeing I was afraid the dies were being seared by the heat similar to the PPC 603e I desoldered and ruined.

[Chriscosmo12]

Here it is all cleaned up and "fixed". I purchased some new equipment to try and reflow the chips that came off, but it didn't work at all. I cleaned all the solder off and ended up gluing the five memory chips (which is probably a disgrace to some people). It looks better than it did, and I got another one that was even cheaper that I'll keep in one piece.