Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY

From: Ian Koller <vze2mnvr_at_verizon.net>
Date: Tue Nov 20 03:55:20 2001

Allison,

  You collect Single Board Computers?

               Ian


Allison wrote:
>
> From: John Galt <gmphillips_at_earthlink.net>
>
> >There's a rather small community of chip collectors.
> >
> >However, there are a few collectors who have been
> >collecting for over 10 years now who have put togather
> >pretty vast collections of literally thousands of chips.
>
> My only concern is they may be collecting junk, IE: chips that
> look good, may be rare but are DEAD/useless electronically.
>
> >It would be the same as if suddenly someone found
> >two Intelec bit slice 3002 computers dated 1975 in a closet or something.
> >Sure, there might could be more, but if they were common, you guys would
> >have already seen one.
>
> These were quite common and the basic chipset on an experimentors board
> was around $495 in 1977. Most were used then relagated to the engineering
> junk box. So I'd presume when you say rare, your referring to actively
> traded
> survivors as SBC colltors like me may already have one (not yet!).
>
> >As far as the color, chip collectors refer to that color
> >chip as "purple". If you look at it next to a normal
> >"gray" CerDIP, you can see the difference. Besides,
> >it would not have mattered had it been black. The fact
> >is, it's not the white/gold color of a normal Intel
> >C8080A. The printing on the chip is also somewhat different. My guess is
> >it's a late run C8080A that was
>
> It's very late run ceramic. Ceramic for chip substrates only comes from a
> few
> vendors one being a beer maker in the rockies a few in the far east and
> Europe.
> It was part of the reason why ceramic parts were more expensive and also
> a near must if the part was required to pass tests for hermetic sealing
> (military,
> space or other high stress apps).
>
> Ceramic aging/dating:
>
> Starting with the 1960s ceramic was white.
>
> early White
>
> examples were
> early military Flatpacks(RTL/DTL/TTL)
> 1101, 1103 ram
> 1702 eprom
>
> first brown parts I'd seen were 2708s
>
> brown (light)
> later dark brown
> Gray
> Gray with brownish cast
> Gray with purplish cast
>
> Those were the most common. Eproms were generaltionally in the common
> ceramic of the time.
>
> Allison
Received on Tue Nov 20 2001 - 03:55:20 GMT

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