Roman - CPU collector by night, office plankton by day

Hi, My name is Roman i collect CPUs.

I came to forum in hope to find people who will help me save nice cpus.
If you get ceramic cpus from time to time your my man =)
I will buy them from you.
Shipping to USA or EUROPE.
Please contact me by email: informalflare@gmail.com

Than you
Here is MY COLLECTION so far:

You have a master list of what you have or what you want? If prices were close to what buyers are paying it would be cool to send one to be saved! (for now)...

Originally Posted by hobo finds

You have a master list of what you have or what you want? If prices were close to what buyers are paying it would be cool to send one to be saved! (for now)...

Some cpu pictures are impossible to find on the web.
I have a list of what i found but dont yet have: WISH LIST
It's okay if it's not in the list... If it matches my creteria let me know =)
Im interested in Sqare-ceramic-gold-top cpus mostly.
The prices for cpus vary but im sure i can pay more than average.

Originally Posted by miked

The best collection I've seen. Way cool. Thank you for sharing. 73, Mike

thank you for good words Mike =)

Hi Roman and Welcome to the forum.
Curious, do you know when they started using this type of CPU? I've seen some really old equipment that doesn't seem to have a standard CPU per se.

Originally Posted by HipoGear

Hi Roman and Welcome to the forum.
Curious, do you know when they started using this type of CPU? I've seen some really old equipment that doesn't seem to have a standard CPU per se.

Hi, they started making Ceramic CPUs around late 60-x and stopped in 1994 (but some IBM mainframe models still have ceramic CPUs up to this day)
If your machine is from "before ceramic era" it probably has brown computer boards and a lot of strange wiring.
Some old CPUs are really big and look more like a computer board.
I hope this information was helpful. Can you send me a photo? Im curious what you have found =)
informalflare@gmail.com

Originally Posted by apa4

Hi, they started making Ceramic CPUs around late 60-x and stopped in 1994 (but some IBM mainframe models still have ceramic CPUs up to this day)
If your machine is from "before ceramic era" it probably has brown computer boards and a lot of strange wiring.
Some old CPUs are really big and look more like a computer board.
I hope this information was helpful. Can you send me a photo? Im curious what you have found =)
informalflare@gmail.com

Thanks for the reply. Nothing in particular comes to mind except the early PCs. But I know those relied heavily on outside media to function so CPUs just weren't part of the mix. I had no idea that go back that far in time though. Good stuff.

I just scrapped a Sun autotune machine that was supposedly powered by a 286 IBM. it was from early to mid-80's and has lots and lots of computer boards, some gold.

are you interested in any of that? mostly Texas Instrument chips, so no idea what the actual processor is in it, but pretty sure it isn't really an old IBM...actually I just looked it up, TI990 series 16bit computer processor (TI99/4a), gold ceramic package. you can see a pic on Wikipedia since I can't upload (new camera phone has too many mpixels so the pics are all way to large to upload). also pulled a gold ADC 1210 series 686 chip off a board but it isn't ceramic...

I had a load of about 15 older business computers come in last week. Was going through them and found three with a VIA C3 800 mhz Samuel 2 core. Nothing particularly special, no gold caps or anything, but the TDP was only something like 5 or 10 watts. Kinda kool ! The heat sinks and fans were choked with dust but the processors didn't burn up because the processors produced so little heat.

A bit of a curiosity ..... it was a processor i hadn't run across before.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

I had a load of about 15 older business computers come in last week. Was going through them and found three with a VIA C3 800 mhz Samuel 2 core. Nothing particularly special, no gold caps or anything, but the TDP was only something like 5 or 10 watts. Kinda kool ! The heat sinks and fans were choked with dust but the processors didn't burn up because the processors produced so little heat.

A bit of a curiosity ..... it was a processor i hadn't run across before.

Via c3 are quite common.
Funny thing is there should be a sign on this CPU: "heat sink required" or something like that)) This was one of the first CPUs that started applying that message.

Originally Posted by jimicrk

Your pictures are awesome! I found This processor in an IBM server recently and decided to keep it. I'm sure there's nothing special about it but it's my first and think it's cool looking.

I'm not 100% sure but it looks like "IBM Power5+"
Nice find should worth around 50$ maybe more if your lucky)

Are these old CPUs? These are in a couple boxes of similar era stuff I came across a long time ago. I remember some cards having wooden brackets instead of aluminum or steel. What forums would be good to ask about this type of stuff? Kinda feel like digging these out.

Originally Posted by ryanw

Are these old CPUs?

I believe those are magnetic ferrite memory core boards. Very old and all hand made. Those are keepers. Good find

So I pulled the boxes out. These two are completely different from the ferrite core memory modules I have. I have some hand wound modules from Spectra 70, Fabri-Tek, Core Memories LTD, and Data-RAM. In these pictures, the top one has no ferrite. This are just woven wires. The bottom one might be woven, but it is completely solid on top of a copper sheet. It would break if I gave enough force to bend it. The bottom one I haven't seen anything like it.

Were there more pics or are you teasing us Ryan?



Sirscrapalot - Ryan five is alive! ALIVE! - Ryan will understand even if the rest of you don't.

LOL! Yes, I can get some more pics tomorrow of some things. Not so wonderful in the realm of scrap value, but still interesting.

Originally Posted by ryanw

Are these old CPUs? These are in a couple boxes of similar era stuff I came across a long time ago. I remember some cards having wooden brackets instead of aluminum or steel. What forums would be good to ask about this type of stuff? Kinda feel like digging these out.

I have no idea what this might be ))) but it sure looks old )