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Chip Collection

He must be a poor chip collector if he has Celerons! I wonder how much static there is one that sheet he lays them on.
 
Unknown_K said:
He must be a poor chip collector if he has Celerons!
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why do you say that :p

I happily collect Celerons just as much their non budget equivalent. They were the poor man's CPU but were often the CPU of choice by early overclockers.
Seeing how budget or slowest speed processors in each CPU family have disappeared over time quicker than any other in each family.. I think he has done the right thing by not disregarding them.

Not collecting Celerons is like collecting only 486DX and not 486SX

My collection stretches from pre 4004 (ALUs or chipsets) thru to engineering samples of the 9000 series Dual-core Itanium and I don't shy away from any CPU family as they have all played a piece in microprocessor history.
 
Actually I was joking about the Celerons. Oddly enough I have started collecting 486SX chips once I found out they made them in speeds I didn't know about (sx2/50 etc), I just don't run them in the boards I have. Mostly I just collect 286-Ppro chips (ceramic ones), if I found anything older I would snag them too but they are hard to find without looking for them on ebay. There was just a larger variety of makers and types (Intel, IBM, Cyrix, Winchip, Nexgen, FPU makers, Weitek etc) during the 286-Ppro era. These days you have Intel and AMD and thats pretty much it, reminds me of the early 3D Video card era before the major consolidation to ATI (AMD) and Nvidia.
 
Neon_WA said:
They were the poor man's CPU
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I remember my first impressions with a Celeron: the combination of an intel mainboard, a Celeron CPU and windows 98 was so horrible that while booting you could see the system painting the icons on the desktop, one after another. The impression lasted a long time... but now I'm using one :).

As Celerons were always half a CPU (with half of something cut out) and my CPU is based on dual core CPU I've got one full CPU ;). It even does 64bits :cool:...
 
Celerons started out life with either no cache or much smaller cache then the Pentium Equivalent (CPU speed), they also were on a slower FSB then the Pentium model. Not sure what the difference is on later models.

So 128K cache instead of 512K, 66 FSB instead of 100 etc. Most likely they just wanted to sell CPUs with cache issues or ones that didn't work well at the correct FSB. 486SX chips were models with a bad FPU.
 
Unknown_K said:
Oddly enough I have started collecting 486SX chips once I found out they made them in speeds I didn't know about (sx2/50 etc),
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I presume you are aware AMD made a SX2-66 (Intel did also but only engineering samples)

I personally like finding parts that few people were aware that they were made
like intel 386 SX40, Pro 133 or 800MHz & 1.2GHz P4

FDiv chips also interest me (currently at 15 out of 27 known production sSpecs, but can only probably find another 6 - 7 as some sSpecs have never been seen)

My current project isnt really chip collecting, but finally have all the parts now to put a quad socket 5 together (actually 2 lol)
I know certain intels will run, but want to see if other brands had the capability also
 
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Once I found a recycler that let me dig around was when I found the 486 SX chips and other oddballs. It seems most of those chips were sold to large OEMs for their value line of machines, so they end up at the scrappers when companies clear out the tech closets. Most of the people I knew who built or purchased machines tended to get the common CPU types, and gamers tend to not use the low end stuff.

I should be adding a AMD K6-2+ 550 to my collection when I get it from ebay (happens to be wrapped in a HP Pavilian laptop). The K6-2+/K6-III was a CPU I always wanted to try but never ran into one.
 
Neon_WA said:
...I happily collect Celerons just as much their non budget equivalent. They were the poor man's CPU but were often the CPU of choice by early overclockers...
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The limitation on the FSB can sometimes be a benefit too. A couple Intel AL440LX Slot 1 motherboards I have are a 66MHz FSB. If you use a PII, that tops out at 333MHz. But there are 433MHz Slot 1 Celerons that work, and you can go a little higher with a PPGA Celeron (533MHz) on a cheap "Slocket" without having to regulate voltage.

Sure, you have a quarter of the L2 cache (128Kb vs 512Kb), but a higher multiplier starts to make up for it...
 
Unknown_K said:
Celerons started out life with either no cache or much smaller cache then the Pentium Equivalent (CPU speed), they also were on a slower FSB then the Pentium model. Not sure what the difference is on later models.
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The difference in the dual-core based series is one CPU core disabled (giving in effect a single-core CPU) and crippled power management.

Unknown_K said:
486SX chips were models with a bad FPU.
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I used one too. And to be honest I never missed the FPU :) Actually I think it was a different CPU than 486DX (smaller die)...
 
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IBMMuseum said:
The limitation on the FSB can sometimes be a benefit too. A couple Intel AL440LX Slot 1 motherboards I have are a 66MHz FSB. If you use a PII, that tops out at 333MHz. But there are 433MHz Slot 1 Celerons that work, and you can go a little higher with a PPGA Celeron (533MHz) on a cheap "Slocket" without having to regulate voltage.

Sure, you have a quarter of the L2 cache (128Kb vs 512Kb), but a higher multiplier starts to make up for it...
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Another benefit is that often the older chipsets lend themselves better to -under-clocking ;)
And if you're nuts (like me :p ), you 'could' run a P2 at 366Mhz and claim it was some very rare Intel chip noone ever heard of :p
http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/inteltetrium/DSC00272.jpg

I remember clearly how my interest in collecting cpu's was sparked.
I was dumpster diving for old computers to take apart so I could teach myself how to build computers.
Then one night I opened up some old 486 and it had this weird but very cool looking cpu in it. It had a heatsink and had "OVErDrive" on it and thought that was pretty cool!

I'm not sure how many cpu's I have but surely not as many as some of the really serious collectors out there!

Edit: Just a note: This is -not- a Celeron which is ill-recognized as a P2. Some Deschutes were, in contrary to popular believe, able to change multi's from 5x or 5.5x downwards.
the chip in my pic is actually a P2-400 Deschutes set at the lower fsb and with upped multi. Unfortunately it wouldn't run at 66Mhz x 6 (cpu doesn't support this multi even though it's designed to be able to run at 400Mhz)
 
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I seen that just the other day while l was looking up some info on some processors I Have. I wouldn't Mind having a collection like that. I only have 27 extra CPUs mostly from the PII PIII slot era ( a company one of my friends works for dumpstered 50 PII/PIII machines) and some Power PC ones. I only have about 5 Pre Pentium 1 extras.
 
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