Cool Texas Instruments IC Chip or CPU

I thought Id share this find. Found this in a pile of old things helping my dad clean up his machine shop. His best guess is that it came out of the CNC controller of an early CNC mill or lathe he no longer has. It has the Texas Instruments logo and reads TMS 9900JL EP7845. See the pictures below. The shame is intact ones are for sale online for quite a bit but this one is trashed. I can't decide if I want to scrap it with my next ewaste load I am slowly building up or save it for the coolness.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e3...ps3nxzelyl.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e3...ps9qfjfco0.jpg

it is a 16 bit microprocessor running at 3.3 MHZ and is in fact a CPU...an old one certainly.

here are the specs:

Texas Instruments TMS9900JL

I would check ebay 1st to see if you can sell as a collectors item..pins are rough, but might be able to be bent back without breaking.

If you sell for scrap, DO NOT SELL for basic old cpu pricing...ebay generally has premium pricing for stuff like that.

What are these chips worth to collectors?

I have a 'Piggy back' chip. And a chance to buy a different version of the base chip.
https://eda360insider.files.wordpres...p701.jpg?w=640
Its in immaculate condition...

And some white chips. The OP's chip looks huge....

I love these, for resale on great ones but what I love to do like a lot of other items is use a hard drive magnet and glue one on the back and use them as fridge magnets, one of these days I will try and remember to take a pic of the fridge for all of you to get a kick out of. the others go into my collection, which really anything that looks awesome to me does lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eesakiwi

What are these chips worth to collectors?

I have a 'Piggy back' chip. And a chance to buy a different version of the base chip.
https://eda360insider.files.wordpres...p701.jpg?w=640
Its in immaculate condition...


And some white chips. The OP's chip looks huge....

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Value is always hard to say...EBAY is your friend though to get a barometer. There are some vintage computer sites as well that have a forum to buy and sell. Start with EBAY to get an idea.

IMOP (for what it's worth), white ceramic IC's with gold plated pins and lids are desirable for collectors. The OP's TI chip is a nice find, these are getting harder to find. I think this one is not in collector's quality (very rough shape), it is defiantly worth batching these with other ceramic IC's, selling them for gold bearing scrap. The date code (EP7845), translates to made, the 45th week of 1978 and chips made today have far less gold (if any), then chips made in 70's and 80's. This is the same CPU chip used in the TI99/4A home computer that I posted about a couple of weeks ago in another thread. That chip was a TMS9900NL (black plastic chip body), these chips were also made with a purple ceramic body. Your chip could have very well came out of a CNC machine, as they were used in a lot of industrial computer applications.

Thanks for all the info you guys. Its great to learn the backstory behind cool things like this. I will probably keep it as a curio instead of trying to sell it as a collectible or scrapping it. If I do end up selling it I will post here what happens. I will also post back if I find anything else on what it came out of.