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19 Nov 2001

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From: ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net (Allison)
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
Date: 19 Nov 01 13:38:45 GMT
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From: John Galt &lt;gmphillips(a)earthlink.net&gt;

...
 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

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