I am talking about the really old i86 pin-less, not the newer CPUs like Sun Systems, etc. It's the older ceramic CPUs, made by intel, pin-less. Here are some pictures of what I am talking about:
Note the large I and the numbers 186. Computer CPUs went in series, 8086, 186, 286, 386, 486, 586/pentium 686/P2 etc. The 186 was one of the first series used in computers widely. The chips that have a higher yield are the I 186 or what people usually call i86.
Here is a picture of the top/bottom of an i86
Here are some CPUs/ICs that are NOT the i86, but look very close. The yields are not as good, but they are also close. As a refiner looking at a lot of chips to process, because of the price these fetch, you have to be careful so as not to buy the wrong type of chips, you could slightly pay over what the value is if these chips are slipped in.
This is an i86 series chip, but made in the 1990s. If you look at the bottom of the chip where it has the years, 78, 87, 90 those were the years it was redesigned and the architecture was updated. If you compare the gold plating, to the pictures above, you will see that in the 1990s, the gold plating technology was far superior to the CPUs above, there is no raised gold sitting on top of the chip, but rather metal leads that are barely plated at all in comparison.
Here is another Intel, not an i86 series, but the yields are very close:
Here is another pinless trying very hard to look like an i86 made by AMD:
Hope this helps,
Scott
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