Look what I found

[claptonman]

I was going through boxes in my parent's basement and I found this Pentium II processor:

CPUs looked like this?! I had no idea. I thought it was RAM before I saw the name. Just something crazy I found.

Oh, and its 300mhz.

 

[voyagerfan99]

I've got boxes and boxes of PII and PIII CPU's like that. They're called "Slot Processors". The PIII "Coppermine" were the first desktop pentiums to have actual pins that went into the socket.

 

[jonnyp11]

Yeah, i opened up an old comp at my house a month or so ago and was just bewildered by it. When i first saw it after taking it out, it looked to me like they run off of a slightly smaller variation of the pci-e x16 slot, or whatever was in that computer at least, other than agp and pci/pci-e, are there any other slots?

 

[TrainTrackHack]

Oh yea, slot models were badass. I had one of those (at 266MHz, though) long time ago... that and a 32MB RAM which later got upgraded to a whooping 128MB.

I wonder, with processor speeds increasing orders of magnitude faster than memory speeds and modern processors already rocking 3 cache levels... would slot-esque packaging where the highest cache level (L4?) is optional and external to the CPU die make a comeback?

Probably not, but one can dream.

EDIT:

I've got boxes and boxes of PII and PIII CPU's like that. They're called "Slot Processors". The PIII "Coppermine" were the first desktop pentiums to have actual pins that went into the socket.

They did actually have socket versions of Pentiums and Pentium Pros, dunno why they took a break from sockets for PII and early PIIIs.

 

[paulcheung]

I've got boxes and boxes of PII and PIII CPU's like that. They're called "Slot Processors". The PIII "Coppermine" were the first desktop pentiums to have actual pins that went into the socket.

Not true, all the 486DX and pentium processors are going to the sockets prior to the pentium II. I have built over dozens those computers. it is when Intel introduce the Pentium II, they use Slot processors.
Cheers.

 

[spirit]

I used to have one of these Pentium II CPUs in one of my old systems with 384MB RAM (originally 128MB but it got upgraded) and a 4GB HDD!

 

[Mishkin]

I still have an old 733Mhz Pentium 3 system laying around, that was slot-based like that. In fact, 5-6 years ago I would still turn it on to fart around with, and it began having issues starting up. I investigated the cpu and discovered that the connection was completely corroded and dry where the fan met the cpu part, with both ends being coppery-green. I also discovered that the system would run just fine if I squeezed the two halves together really hard and got them to kind of stay in place. Obviously there was zero thermal paste or heat-reduction of any kind other than the fan itself, but apparently the cpu never got hot enough to do itself damage or kill the system. Once it would boot up, it could stay on and running well for weeks and months at a time. Every few months I would have to go back in and manually (with my hands), mash the slot cpu halves together until it would reboot once more.

Try doing that with a modern processor.

 

[strollin]

Those slot processors were commonly referred to as "Hershey Bars" because that's what they resembled.

 

[G80FTW]

I've got boxes and boxes of PII and PIII CPU's like that. They're called "Slot Processors". The PIII "Coppermine" were the first desktop pentiums to have actual pins that went into the socket.

Not true. The first Pentiums were in fact PGA socket processors, but for some reason when the P2 and P3 processors came out they started doing them like that.

I have Pentium 75MHz and 133MHz processors laying around, they are socket 300 something.

Looks like someone already posted that. But anyway, I liked the idea of slot processors. Makes it easier to swap without dealing with a massive heatsink and worrying about breaking pins. But of course, with how hot processors run today it would never work. Unless they were all liquid cooled.

Strangely enough I also have an AMD 480DX2 laying around here somewhere in my room that I tried to make a keychain out of. You try drilling a hole into those old processors. Its like trying to drill through cast iron!