[achtung]

Yours for the cost of S&H!

I've tried to sell the thing three times on eBay and nobody wants it, and I can't use it. I know some of you like to throw together older builds, so I thought somebody might be able to use it here. I don't know why I can't bring myself to just trash it.

[Bobboau]

because you remember how valuable it was ten years ago.

[Klaustrophobia]

i remember when i had one of those.  i thought it was hot **** because it could play web flash games without lagging.  couldn't handle fs2 though without major stutterage.

[Nuke]

i always liked slotted processors. made swapping cpus a snap. all the contacts were happily out of the way, plenty of space on the casing to hold on to. cant recall why they phased them out. i owned a 500mhz p2 or 3 in such a config. intels latest methodology for mounting a cpu leaves a lot to be desired. i hated the heatsinks on all my core 2 duo/quad systems. you could never tell if it was on right. seemed to require an excessive amount of force to get the clips to lock in place, or so little force you couldnt tell if it was in all the way. i mean i dont mind handling the chip if the heatsink clamps down easily (p4s), but god damn i hate those stock c2d/q heatsinks. did they come up with a new socket for the i5/7s?

[headdie]

The issue i always had with slot was you had to be careful with the weight of heat sinks stressing the connection

[Kosh]

Slot 1? Haven't seen that in a while.

i always liked slotted processors. made swapping cpus a snap. all the contacts were happily out of the way, plenty of space on the casing to hold on to. cant recall why they phased them out.

Here's the story about slotted processors: Before the Pentium Pro the L2 cache was located on the motherboard and ran at the system bus speed. The Pentium Pro had it built into the chip packaging running at full speed like modern processors, but because of the limitations of the state of the art fabrication technology of the day it was huge and really really expensive. The Pentium 2 and early model Pentium 3's resolved this via the slot which allowed the cache to run at half speed, but eventually fabrication technology got good enough so that it wasn't needed anymore, and slots were more expensive to make so they went extinct with the end of the Pentium 3. There's your computer history lesson.

[sigtau]

Slot 1? Haven't seen that in a while.

My legacy gaming rig has a Socket 7 Pentium MMX.  In a world where technology changes so fast, older hardware still works just fine. 

On topic, if I had any SLOT1 motherboards laying around, I'd definitely take you up on that offer.  Suffice to say, however, I do not.

[Nuke]

Slot 1? Haven't seen that in a while.

i always liked slotted processors. made swapping cpus a snap. all the contacts were happily out of the way, plenty of space on the casing to hold on to. cant recall why they phased them out.

Here's the story about slotted processors: Before the Pentium Pro the L2 cache was located on the motherboard and ran at the system bus speed. The Pentium Pro had it built into the chip packaging running at full speed like modern processors, but because of the limitations of the state of the art fabrication technology of the day it was huge and really really expensive. The Pentium 2 and early model Pentium 3's resolved this via the slot which allowed the cache to run at half speed, but eventually fabrication technology got good enough so that it wasn't needed anymore, and slots were more expensive to make so they went extinct with the end of the Pentium 3. There's your computer history lesson.

i had always assumed the issue was pin count, cpus started needing more and more pins, more than could be made available on a slot. but yea the wiki article clearly shows the sram packages next to the cpu. theres really no reason to have to manufacture another part (the pcb) in order to make connection with the mobo. sockets eliminate the middleman. but i still kinda miss the slotted cpu.

from a system builder perspective slot 1s were pretty cool. i didnt start system building on a regular basis till the p4 era, though i have built a few p2/3 machines before then. any screw monkey could get a majority of the system completed without error, while ive seen a few of them completely destroy socketed cpus on a regular basis.

[Admiral LSD]

To elaborate on what Kosh said, the Pentium Pro was expensive to build not only because it was hard to make/get SRAM dies that ran at 200MHz in 1996, but also because it was impossible to test a PPro die until it was fused with the L2 cache meaning if either one was faulty it was money down the drain. Moving the L2 cache away from the CPU die not only made the CPU easier to build, but running the L2 cache at half the clock speed made it easier to source SRAM for since a 233, 266 or 300MHz CPU only needed 116, 133 or 150MHz SRAM which were cheaper and easier to make than 200MHz.

Another reason for moving to the slotted processor design is it created a new interface, one Intel didn't have to licence to anyone else meaning AMD had to go their own way

[Kosh]

To elaborate on what Kosh said, the Pentium Pro was expensive to build not only because it was hard to make/get SRAM dies that ran at 200MHz in 1996, but also because it was impossible to test a PPro die until it was fused with the L2 cache meaning if either one was faulty it was money down the drain.

Yeah, the packaging on these things was monsterous, not because it had a lot of pins (it didn't), but just because of that design feature.



One of those dies is the core and the other one is the L2 cache.

Another reason for moving to the slotted processor design is it created a new interface, one Intel didn't have to licence to anyone else meaning AMD had to go their own way

That's basically what Socket 370 did as well.

[Admiral LSD]

By that point AMD had well and truly moved on. Being able to freeze AMD out of its chipset/motherboard platform was mostly a bonus, the major reason for the off-die cache was to make it easier to use 3rd party SRAM modules running at lower frequencies than the CPU cores. Even AMD had to contend with that problem on the original Athlon, building its own slotted package in the form of Slot A. While easier and cheaper than the PPro's multi chip modules, slotted CPUs were still more costly to build than socketed ones, which is why both Intel and AMD transitioned back as soon as they could.

Apple and/or IBM/Motorola's approach to the problem was somewhat interesting though: They too used a PCB with separate cache chips on the PowerPC 750, but instead of building it into a slotted cartridge, attached pins to the bottom allowing it to be socketed:

[Nuke]

i can attest to how hard it is to obtain sram modules, i tried to acquire some for an electronics project a few months ago. needless to say i was unsuccessful. i figure its the kind of part you need to special order for a production run, which is why they inevitably decided to stick the cpu and cache all on the same die in more modern cpus.

[Admiral LSD]

It wasn't so much that SRAM itself was hard to come by, it was finding/making stuff in 1995-1996 that would run reliably up to the 200MHz the Pentium Pros topped out at.

[Nuke]

i looked up the part number of one of the sram modules form a picture of a slot 1 p3. i managed to pull up the datasheet. seems the ram is made by samsung. intel probably had to call up samsung and request a large number of units of the modules to be manufactured and delivered. the part is likely a custom part made specifically from intel based off the specs of an existing part in their inventory at the time, that were modified to fit intels needs.

nice little module, but way too many pins for my taste. i wish you could still get an sram module in a dip package.

[Admiral LSD]

iirc, Intel sourced SRAM from a few different companies at the time since different modules had different clock speed limits. I have a vague memory of them using NEC SRAMs at some point, maybe that was just the earliest P2s...

[Vertigo 7]

i had a dual pentium pro back in the day. I thought it was hot **** back then... i even had NT4 running on it just so i could use dual cpu's. It's really crazy to see how far things have come since then.

[Nuke]

iirc, Intel sourced SRAM from a few different companies at the time since different modules had different clock speed limits. I have a vague memory of them using NEC SRAMs at some point, maybe that was just the earliest P2s...

lowest bidder. say you order 2 million units of sram chips for a production run. chances are if you some years later want to do another production run, you would need to go through the same process of seeing which manufacturers would be willing to make a chip to match your specs for the least amount of money, and it might be a whole other company. or perhaps no one company can fill the entire order, you might go to another company to have more chips made with the same pinout and specs. comes right down to it most ics are made to order, any "off the shelf" ics are likely surplus from production runs that have been liquidated. 90% of the electronic parts i buy are surplus, its cheap but often difficult to get exactly what you need when you need it.

id love to get ahold of some 32k-64k sram modules in a dip package, to serve as a framebuffer in what amounts to a graphics card for an arduino dev board. did fin a fairly large mcu with 8k sram, but thats probibly not enough for highres graphics (112*72@ 8-bit).