This already looks very complicated and its only 1,2mil transistors. Its insane how they can fit billions of transistors on something the same size nowadays.
@@furnacego2164Minimum metal pitch at the 0.8 μm process node was around 2 μm, and about half that for trace width. The minimum distance between atoms in silicon is 0.2 nm, so a trace was ballpark 5000 atoms wide.
that was my first ever PC, bought just as the Pentium came out but only had a 66 Mhz clock speed, so the DX-4 was faster. it was such an eye opener to use from the Sinclair Spectrum and A1200 I had before it.
wow... I had the I286 in a Schneider Euro PC and my dream after that was to have a computer with that processor, but obviously my father couldn't buy it at that time because yes, was crazy expensive for him
This was the exact same CPU in my first ever computer. That machine was a hand built computer that cost me £1,200 including a 14 inch colour monitor. The PC had the 486 DX-33 CPU, a 252 Megabyte HDD, CD-ROM drive, a humongous 4MB RAM and a 1MB VESA Local Bus Graphics Card - the latter which was the icing on that digital cake. It came with Windows 3.1 pre-installed, and was the machine that catapulted me into my life long IT career. It was not a brand name machine. It was expertly cobbled together by an experienced Computer builder who knew exactly what he was doing; the machine never failed on me once, and kept running faithfully even after I upgraded and gave it away. The 486 DX-33 chip had a maths coprocessor which made it a great CPU back in the day. It handled all the games of the day that I threw at it and was also excellent for desktop publishing apps of the era. That CPU opened a whole new world for me! I remember it most fondly.
Did you play One Must Fall on it? Haha, man.. good memories. I didn't play it on that set up, but on an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 100mhz, 8MB RAM, 1GB HDD.. "Quad Speed" CD-ROM drive and a 3.5" floppy. Windows 95 on this. I remember playing that skiing game on PC's like yours.. Arkanoid.. umm, a newer Oregon Trail, I believe, not the old school one.
After a deadly mid-air collision over Cerritos, CA in 1986, the decision was made to equip commercial aircraft with an airborne collision avoidance system with the best technology available at the time. The TCAS system was activated in 1992 and has been protecting fliers ever since, even though its operations are rather primitive compared to the technology. available today. The first TCAS processor units installed in aircraft were based upon two 486 CPUs.
Do you know which avionics vendor that was? Even back then there were SO many better chips for *embedded real-time* apps such as TCAS, than the klugey x86 family. :(
@@2jpu524 AMD 29k family, Motorola 68k line, MIPS, Hitachi/Zilog 64180, etc., basically standalone microCONTROLLERS vs. motherboard type microPROCESSORS such as the 486, the latter requiring all kinds of support chips, e.g. Northbridge, Southbridge, etc... not to mention the x86 CPUs have always been power-hungry, which means more HEAT to get rid of... things you might not want in a small expensive box, stacked like bricks amongst other avionics, all 8 inches from the pilot's knees.
@@MajorCaliber Convenience in programming is a big factor. Even though the timeframe likely misses the i486SL (first to run on 3.3V core voltage) as well as the i386EX (bundling all the support chips in a SoC package), this is still the era of single digit watt SBCs that you can shove into a box with a heatsink.
My first new-bought PC from my parents when I was a kid was a 486DX2/66. So, so many memories made with that machine. Lots of games, BBSes, learning the nuts and bolts of what make computers tick at the hardware and software level. Back when computers required knowledge to operate and repair.
@@Flashjacks Don't they sell the healthy ones? Or was this a wafer they decided to keep as a memento despite it having chips you could sell? An expensive paperweight.
@@raylopez99 Well, it is a whole wafer, uncut. I bought it many years ago. It is designed to be framed together with the complete CPU, which I also have. I don't know how much this could cost now, honestly.
And to think about what Bill Heard said about the design team at MOS, they could just design the circuitry intuitively without computers or simulations. They just knew how it could be made to work... That was some old fashion craftsmanship, a form of art... Even if the chips MOS designed were quite simple things compared to even 486, not to mention anything beyond that. But so many of their chips are outright legendary. Few understand exactly how massive success the 6502 with all of its variant are. It basically powered an entire generations of computers, not just Commodore, but more like most of the entire 8-bit generation... And didn't die out even long after that. I think there are actually medical devices literally keeping people alive, powered by a variant of the MOS6502.
@@JuhoJohansson-bz3jb Bill heard and all the team at MOS technology are absolute legends. As far as I'm concerned Chuck Peddle should be a household name as famous as Steve Wozniak , absolute genius
A lot of tech is used in places that aren't PCs; there were probably some Point-of-Sale, ATMs, etc running those kinds of processors. I just recently got a new job back in September and the previous place I worked at was still using machines from the early-to-mid 00's for the two PoS units, and also the server in the back was almost as old.
@@Dhalin yeah, it's all the weird industrial stuff that used 'em for that long. I saw it when I was repairing an MRI magnetic field trim controller. Had an '06 date code, and I was absolutely shocked, had to look at the Wikipedia. I guess if you used a 20 year old part on a 20 year old piece of equipment, it'll be 40 years old high technology still in use. Kinda cool to see computing history still chugging along. Still though, I would have thought an FPGA would have been cheaper.
yYou are right but then we have 2,343,567,499 people walking around confused..Most of them do not even know where their local library is located ,much less know about CPU chips...
I'm from South Africa, I remember when this CPU was launched in 1992, I camped out at our computer shop for two days in order to be 1st in line to get my hands on it. What leap of technology it was back then.
I sold my first gaming computer to a guy I knew in highschool and we lost touch shortly after. A couple months ago I got back in touch with him because my best friend died (who he also knew) AND HE STILL HAD THE COMPUTER YEARS LATER! And it all still works! I bought it back from him just for the sentimental value. Thing is though the motherboard and the GPU were both parts I bought from my best friend that had died so they really mean a lot to me now that he's gone. I spent countless hours with him playing videogames on that computer so it's really nice to have it back again. I'm thinking about turning it into some sort of art piece for my wall (non-destructively of course since I might want to use it again later). Might put it in a big shadow box or something but I'm not sure yet. If anyone has any ideas lmk!
@@NotMe-ej9yzI am sorta against the idea of letting any functional hardware being kept powered off for years and years in a row. I am unaware how much electricity that particular machine of yours consumes, but whatever you do I think it would be more interesting if you let it running at least for some amount of time with some frequency, especially if it can be used by trustworthy people who never touched a computer from that period, or who wants to relive their experience. In a nutshell, let the machine happily live throughout the coming years for as long as it can.
@@NotMe-ej9yzyou can construct a picture frame with an LCD on it so your artwork can be played. If you have a photo of you two playing a game, that would be a nice addition to the frame. I would lay out all necessary pieces flat on a board. Everything doesn't need to be original. For example you can find a much smaller modern power supply and hard drive if you can get into work. Compatibility will be a problem. I would focus on keeping the motherboard and video card. If none of that will work, then I would power the motherboard and fan but hide an entirely new (and very small) computer that can run the project with modern hardware. You can run your old games in a virtual machine. When you construct this exhibit, be careful it doesn't turn into idolatry. Your friend is very important, but don't let your mind get caught in a trap because the people you still have are also important. That sounds religious because it is, but I mean it as a warning for your own mental health. Sorry you lost your best friend. :(
I have a 1985 Mac 512Ke, the e was because it could read 800K floppies, not just 400K. It has 512K memory and no hard drive, no modem and a 9" B&W screen.
We had 286, 386 and 486's in our computer lab at school. Everyone rushed in to get to the 486's first. Long time ago but we learned so much on those machines
Damn, there is so much going on inside these small chips. Also this microscope shows some sick details. I'm just amazed how people came to this point and come up with all these amazing things. Texting from a phone while watching youtube. Astonishing if you ask me
I agree! It's amazing how far we've come, and just how much is abstracted away that you don't need to think about when using a modern electronic device.
@@saito125 It seems that being smart doesn't mean people will make good choices. Intelligence is simply a tool. How you use it is up to you (up to a certain point of course, given your ability to escape certain consequences).
cpu chips are some of the most beautiful things man has ever made, the way they sparkle like a rainbow or a hologram simply because of the size of the features always amazes me
IN mid-1992 I purchased a genuine IBM PS/2 with the 486DX/25, 4MB RAM, 3.5" FDD and a 129MB HDD at a cost of $2k (new). With QEMM-386 I was able to run Win3.1 with 631K of (free) conventional memory. Then OS/2 was released... on 14 3.5" floppies.
My first CPU! Got it with my first PC, a Dell 486 DX 33mhz with 8 mb of ram a 512k cirrus logic video card and a 14 inch monitor that is at 640x480 but if I lowered the color to 16 bit I could go up to 800x600! I miss those days.
Cirrus logic! There a name I haven't heard in forever. Best I can do is mention I have a Righteous Orchid 3D (3dfx) in original box somewhere in the attic.
That was my first PC, pure nostalgia with 4 MB RAM later retrofitted with a sound card and CD (with a proud 4X:) drive. Operating system with DOS 6.22 and Norton Commander. HDD 160MB and a hundred 3.5" flopies (drilled through to double capacity). My first and last game was Wolfenstein (wolf3d) and can even be played today with Raspberry PI 5 and DOSbox.
@@TwistyTrav if you actually look into the technology and how we've evolved the practices that we use to create chips like these then no, its definitely not easier to believe in alien technology. Photo lithography is not THAT complicated, literally just watched a video from Breaking Taps called "DIY Semiconductor Patterning" where he basically makes a machine capable of creating chips by himself in his garage. He also explains the process pretty well, Id suggest taking a look so you can understand why these things are not as inexplicable as you think they are.
My first really stable computer was running Windows NT on a Dell i486-DX2 66Mhz with whatever maxed out memory was back in the day. I was astounded at having such a stable platform for engineering work.
I used to own one of those, it was actually my very first PC. A DX 486/33 running Win95. Couldn't tell you anything about the rest of the PC though as I don't remember what else it had in it. I eventually got that upgraded to a 66 and then eventually a 100Mhz, and I remember the day I had the 100Mhz put in it, the difference while running Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, how suddenly the whole game ran at nearly twice the speed. Night and day difference!
@@Brave2standalone It was definitely Win95. I was on a budget at the time as I didn't have a lot of money and wanted a PC, and at the time, Pentiums were out, but I was buying a used 486 because it was like half the price of a new Pentium-based system.
I still own a 486DX4 100 computer, simply because it is a bit different (not a normal MB but has CPU on a card), MB is just a backplane with ISA slots. Has GUS audio, internal UPS card, HD controller card, ethernet and, I vaguely recall, Trident video. Runs Win95, had some games on it (XCom, HMM, Doom...) I also have 286 laptop somewhere, 10MB HDD. Don't recall make and model ATM. Not much on it, just DOS and some serial terminal emulator.
How far we came! My first CPU was the first of the 8 series - 8008 in the Altair. Then the 8080, 8085, 8086, and so on. I did not use the 4004 or the 4040 before them.
To my mind the main revolutions of these years was the i386 (from 16 to 32bits), and also the first Pentium few years later. The 486 was just an improved 386 to my mind. Also a great improvement was the VGA 256 colors mode
You can't patent or trademark a number so Pentium was the name intel chose for the 586 series of chips to prevent anyone from copying or using the chip's name and architecture.
Even though I understand the logic of how it works, stuff like this will always sound like magic to me. It's basically teaching a piece of rock how to think.
I was a Marine on an airline flight back at about 1991 sitting beside a Intel engineer on a cross country flight to LA. He gave me a keychain with a 486DX chip incased in acrylic. It was pretty cool. Carried it for years.
The 800 nm (!) technology with 1.2 mio transistors and 33 MHz - and now 30+ years later we have 3 - 4 nm, around 25 bio (!) transistors and typically 3 - 4 - 5 Ghz. Truly amazing 😳
its crazy that our phones have way more transistors in the CPU now days and the CPU is also the GPU modem and a few other things on it like the io controller we came a long way
It definitely wasn't my first processor (MOS 6502, Commodore 128 y'all!), but I have fond memories of building PC's with the 486DX 33/66 and 368 w/math coprocessor. I miss when computing was simple, games were made for fun not flash, and the world was simpler.
In 1990, 1991, i still was playing on the streets with kids in the neighborhood, exploring cheeks, fighting when it was necessary, playing with old tires in a race against more kids, and playing arcade games when we got some money after selling some soda cans we collected, 90's was an amazing decade, im sure ppl who was lucky to get a beautiful processor like this can miss such first days with computers when they were young and use some computers with a green screen. What a wonderful memories brings this short video 😮
I totally had my first self-built tower PC running a 486dx50 processor! That thing was a screamer at the time! I still have that box in my old systems closet!!
You're only seeing the interconnects that tie the devices together. The devices are buried below several layers of insulators, dielectrics, and other interconnects. The devices (mainly transistors and diodes) are not visible to the naked eye.
nowadays. those 1.2million transistors would easily fit into that "secret" pyramide sizewise. with some room to spare. you would have a hard time seeing the cpu with the naked eye. its just astonishing.
Technology changes along with the development that humans need in the appropriate era according to the technological needs that humans desire at that time. Let's look back and imagine how the tools humans first used to make the world's first transistors compare to the tools used to manufacture 4 nanometer microprocessors today. I think if someone who used to work in electronics who died 30 years ago suddenly came back to life he would be amazed to see the latest developments in microprocessor manufacturing.
I can still remember when the industry crossed the one-million transistor monolithic chip boundary. It was an amazing time. "One million transistors! Wow, do you think we'll ever get to one billion?" "Nah, you can't make transistors work at that scale...." Well, engineering problems usually have a solution if you work hard enough....
One of my older computers that I no longer have was a 486-DX2-66 at the time I thought it was so fast!. After a couple of heathkit IBM style computers, ALL of my computers , I have built from scratch, that is, case , motherboard and supporting boards bought and then assembled by me, and I bought Windows and other programs to use with them. It cost a little more, but I got the hardware I wanted. Ready built PCs usually have a few cards that are substandard to lower their selling price.
Ahhh what a flashback, this was my first chip I ever had, that with a companion Math-coprocessor what a power house it was back in the day love it. I think I still have the chip somewhere.
Great memories. My dad got a 486DX2/66 CPU with 8MB of memory and a hard drive controller that actually had a tiny bit of solid state memory that gave him down to 0.9ms access time in certain scenarios. Combined with a Tseng Labs ET6000 graphics card, it was an incredible computer that could do anything. I inherited his Northgate 386DX/20 at the time. I had a Tseng Labs ET4000 card and I believe 5MB of memory. I could play Doom but only at the smallest graphics window. :)
As a boomer I experienced the rise of the microcomputer to become, for better or worse, the most profound agent of change EVER in a vulnerable society. This video of that Intel chip would have been derided as science fiction back in the day. That little chip could outperform mainframes from the1970s. A few weeks ago when ordering my iPad Air - yes, the one with the 13” display - I experienced a fleeting sense of unreality when I specified this TABLET be equipped with 256 GIGABYTES of secondary storage. Unbelievable to my generation, and it is doubly amusing how today’s young people take this computing power for granted. Revel in your time! (Blade Runner)
I worked for a Sears store way back, 1990 - 1992. 1990 - '91 was in Paint/Hdwr, but '91-'92 was in "Home Office Electronics." Sold computers as well as typewriters, word processors, etc. The 486 DX was our top of the line system!
I remember being so excited when my father was coming home with a new quantex 486 desktop. Its amazing how far pc technology has advanced in a little over 30 years
@dash4786 They use some kind of complex lithography process that defines places on a silicon wafer were transistors (electronic device that can either switch or amplify an electronic signal )are to be created , the silicon has a layer of silicon dioxide on top (insulator so it doesn't conduct electricity), pieces of the silicon dioxide are cut away or removed by exposing the silicon to some kind of UV light that deposits boron or phosphors(sometimes other materials too) into the silicon creating transistors inside the silicon. different wavelengths of light allow for smaller transistors to be created , making for more complex computers since MORE or should I say MOORE(google moore's law) transistors can be fit into one silicon integrated circuit (the silicon wafers are cut into individual integrated circuits) . A Silicon has atom has 4 electrons in it's outer shell and normally can't conduct electricity but through the process explained above by being mixed with a Boron or Phosphorus atom (which has 3 or 5 electrons in the outer shell) it causes the silicon to either give or receive an extra electron (free electron) which is what allows it to conduct electricity and be used as the basis for making transistors. The silicon dixoide layer stops the free electrons from escaping from the silicon layer and the transistors are linked up in certain ways to form something called logic gates which preform particular functions based on their input , logic gates are further linked together to create parts of a computer that function as memory or as a calculator. I've missed out a few things but that's the most basic way I can explain it , yes it boggles the mind and I'm no expert (I'm currently studying how computers perform subtraction and make use of negative numbers and it's pretty confusing :P) Hope that helps you understand
My parents got our first computer with a 486 dx2 50mhz. A few years later I used the processor upgrade slot on the motherboard to upgrade to an Evergreen 586 at 100mhz. I fell in love with computers with that thing and learned so much.
I’ve grown up in the microprocessor age from the 286X. It still astounds me how billions of transistors are packaged into even the simplest of chips. It’s truly astonishing.
This already looks very complicated and its only 1,2mil transistors. Its insane how they can fit billions of transistors on something the same size nowadays.
In a other decade or two, we will be matching or passing the number of neurons in our brains
How big does that make the traces? 100 atoms wide maybe? I'm really curious, if you can answer that
@@furnacego2164Minimum metal pitch at the 0.8 μm process node was around 2 μm, and about half that for trace width. The minimum distance between atoms in silicon is 0.2 nm, so a trace was ballpark 5000 atoms wide.
But nowadays traces are 20-30 nm wide at narrowest. So 100-150 atoms.
@@taktoa1 amazing
Always good to see inside chips its a city so small you cant see the atom people working 24/7
don't forget about all the little electron peoples too, zoomin around on all their little electromagnetic wave riders. 😁
That CPU ran my childhood. Photoshop 2.0, 3D studio 2.0, WingCommader , Doom, DukeNukem 3D , Dark Forces etc etc
So many memories. This was around the time my dad bought a PC that replaced the Apple IIe
We had a DX2-66... And all the same games still needed serious config.sys and autoexec.bat fiddling to get enough memory 😂
Gaming stopped there too. We topped with doom and duke 3d 😢
@@knivesron I spent so much time making custom Doom WADs. I still have them on 3.5 discs. I have to dig them out one day
@@BubblegumCrash332 that would be awsome. I have a doom map myself its in the ramp 2023 pack check it out
I still have my i486 DX-4 100 MHz CPU. still works
😮😮
that was my first ever PC, bought just as the Pentium came out but only had a 66 Mhz clock speed, so the DX-4 was faster.
it was such an eye opener to use from the Sinclair Spectrum and A1200 I had before it.
I still have my Z80 processors from 1976 :)
The hyperthreaded version? I loved it. Had a workstation laptop with it and it screamed.
@@jamescrane4967 No hyperthreaded 486. That came over a decade later.
That was my first CPU; 486DX-33 back in 1990 I believe! The machine cost $2,200 with 120mb HD and 4mb memory.
wow... I had the I286 in a Schneider Euro PC and my dream after that was to have a computer with that processor, but obviously my father couldn't buy it at that time because yes, was crazy expensive for him
Same
same, i486DX, 129mb hd, 4 mb ram but mine cost $1200 in 1991, that's what you got with Dell "quality"
My first was a 486 DX2-50 which ran at a blazing 50mHz .
Was my 2nd. I needed to wait several years for the prices to go down.
This was the exact same CPU in my first ever computer. That machine was a hand built computer that cost me £1,200 including a 14 inch colour monitor. The PC had the 486 DX-33 CPU, a 252 Megabyte HDD, CD-ROM drive, a humongous 4MB RAM and a 1MB VESA Local Bus Graphics Card - the latter which was the icing on that digital cake. It came with Windows 3.1 pre-installed, and was the machine that catapulted me into my life long IT career. It was not a brand name machine. It was expertly cobbled together by an experienced Computer builder who knew exactly what he was doing; the machine never failed on me once, and kept running faithfully even after I upgraded and gave it away.
The 486 DX-33 chip had a maths coprocessor which made it a great CPU back in the day.
It handled all the games of the day that I threw at it and was also excellent for desktop publishing apps of the era. That CPU opened a whole new world for me!
I remember it most fondly.
I remember MSFS had a huge fps gain on that cpu. I didnt want to touch any other computer without a "math coprocessor"
Did you play One Must Fall on it? Haha, man.. good memories. I didn't play it on that set up, but on an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 100mhz, 8MB RAM, 1GB HDD.. "Quad Speed" CD-ROM drive and a 3.5" floppy. Windows 95 on this.
I remember playing that skiing game on PC's like yours.. Arkanoid.. umm, a newer Oregon Trail, I believe, not the old school one.
After a deadly mid-air collision over Cerritos, CA in 1986, the decision was made to equip commercial aircraft with an airborne collision avoidance system with the best technology available at the time. The TCAS system was activated in 1992 and has been protecting fliers ever since, even though its operations are rather primitive compared to the technology. available today. The first TCAS processor units installed in aircraft were based upon two 486 CPUs.
I'm a pretty big plane enthusiast, and not even I knew that!
Do you know which avionics vendor that was? Even back then there were SO many better chips for *embedded real-time* apps such as TCAS, than the klugey x86 family. :(
@@MajorCaliber which processors did you have in mind?
@@2jpu524 AMD 29k family, Motorola 68k line, MIPS, Hitachi/Zilog 64180, etc., basically standalone microCONTROLLERS vs. motherboard type microPROCESSORS such as the 486, the latter requiring all kinds of support chips, e.g. Northbridge, Southbridge, etc... not to mention the x86 CPUs have always been power-hungry, which means more HEAT to get rid of... things you might not want in a small expensive box, stacked like bricks amongst other avionics, all 8 inches from the pilot's knees.
@@MajorCaliber Convenience in programming is a big factor. Even though the timeframe likely misses the i486SL (first to run on 3.3V core voltage) as well as the i386EX (bundling all the support chips in a SoC package), this is still the era of single digit watt SBCs that you can shove into a box with a heatsink.
My first new-bought PC from my parents when I was a kid was a 486DX2/66. So, so many memories made with that machine. Lots of games, BBSes, learning the nuts and bolts of what make computers tick at the hardware and software level. Back when computers required knowledge to operate and repair.
I am privileged to have precisely one entire silicon wafer of this processor.
The entire wafer was defective? Unusual.
@@raylopez99 some chips are marked with a dot as defective but not all. There are a few healthy ones.
@@Flashjacks Don't they sell the healthy ones? Or was this a wafer they decided to keep as a memento despite it having chips you could sell? An expensive paperweight.
@@raylopez99 Well, it is a whole wafer, uncut. I bought it many years ago. It is designed to be framed together with the complete CPU, which I also have. I don't know how much this could cost now, honestly.
@@Flashjacks it's priceless ;)
Many, Many of these early CPUs have amazing details that can only be seen under a microscope..
And to think about what Bill Heard said about the design team at MOS, they could just design the circuitry intuitively without computers or simulations. They just knew how it could be made to work... That was some old fashion craftsmanship, a form of art... Even if the chips MOS designed were quite simple things compared to even 486, not to mention anything beyond that. But so many of their chips are outright legendary. Few understand exactly how massive success the 6502 with all of its variant are. It basically powered an entire generations of computers, not just Commodore, but more like most of the entire 8-bit generation... And didn't die out even long after that. I think there are actually medical devices literally keeping people alive, powered by a variant of the MOS6502.
@@JuhoJohansson-bz3jb Bill heard and all the team at MOS technology are absolute legends. As far as I'm concerned Chuck Peddle should be a household name as famous as Steve Wozniak , absolute genius
Fun fact, they stopped making the i386, the predecessor, in September 2007.
The chip came out in 1985.
A lot of tech is used in places that aren't PCs; there were probably some Point-of-Sale, ATMs, etc running those kinds of processors. I just recently got a new job back in September and the previous place I worked at was still using machines from the early-to-mid 00's for the two PoS units, and also the server in the back was almost as old.
@@Dhalin yeah, it's all the weird industrial stuff that used 'em for that long. I saw it when I was repairing an MRI magnetic field trim controller. Had an '06 date code, and I was absolutely shocked, had to look at the Wikipedia.
I guess if you used a 20 year old part on a 20 year old piece of equipment, it'll be 40 years old high technology still in use. Kinda cool to see computing history still chugging along.
Still though, I would have thought an FPGA would have been cheaper.
I had a pc with that as the processor
How much were they costing in the 2000s? What was their availability like in comparison to microcontrollers and other microprocessors of the time?
Fun fact: the MOS 6502 processor was created in the mid 70’s and is still produced commercially to this day
I remember when CPU first out with 1 million transistors , I thought then that it was truly amazing piece of engineering ..
It was. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
This needs more recognition than those foolish podcasts.
I dont think its the same audience
??
Which foolish podcasts?
yYou are right but then we have 2,343,567,499 people walking around confused..Most of them do not even know where their local library is located ,much less know about CPU chips...
@@Floris_VII can affirm that it is. Though I don't think their content is mutually exclusive, I have been looking for this content for years.
I'm from South Africa, I remember when this CPU was launched in 1992, I camped out at our computer shop for two days in order to be 1st in line to get my hands on it. What leap of technology it was back then.
@DuchalvanWyngaard Where black ppl allowed to buy computers from the shop back then :(
@@cryptocsguy9282...What a stupid question!
@@DuchalvanWyngaard Not a stupid question at all since the time period you referenced seems to fall into the apartheid era
@@cryptocsguy9282could be a white I guess. So he called your question, stupid.
my first pc runs on that CPU.. still keping the CPU for old days memory.
I sold my first gaming computer to a guy I knew in highschool and we lost touch shortly after. A couple months ago I got back in touch with him because my best friend died (who he also knew) AND HE STILL HAD THE COMPUTER YEARS LATER! And it all still works! I bought it back from him just for the sentimental value. Thing is though the motherboard and the GPU were both parts I bought from my best friend that had died so they really mean a lot to me now that he's gone. I spent countless hours with him playing videogames on that computer so it's really nice to have it back again. I'm thinking about turning it into some sort of art piece for my wall (non-destructively of course since I might want to use it again later). Might put it in a big shadow box or something but I'm not sure yet. If anyone has any ideas lmk!
@@NotMe-ej9yzI am sorta against the idea of letting any functional hardware being kept powered off for years and years in a row.
I am unaware how much electricity that particular machine of yours consumes, but whatever you do I think it would be more interesting if you let it running at least for some amount of time with some frequency, especially if it can be used by trustworthy people who never touched a computer from that period, or who wants to relive their experience.
In a nutshell, let the machine happily live throughout the coming years for as long as it can.
@@NotMe-ej9yzyou can construct a picture frame with an LCD on it so your artwork can be played. If you have a photo of you two playing a game, that would be a nice addition to the frame. I would lay out all necessary pieces flat on a board. Everything doesn't need to be original. For example you can find a much smaller modern power supply and hard drive if you can get into work. Compatibility will be a problem. I would focus on keeping the motherboard and video card. If none of that will work, then I would power the motherboard and fan but hide an entirely new (and very small) computer that can run the project with modern hardware. You can run your old games in a virtual machine.
When you construct this exhibit, be careful it doesn't turn into idolatry. Your friend is very important, but don't let your mind get caught in a trap because the people you still have are also important. That sounds religious because it is, but I mean it as a warning for your own mental health. Sorry you lost your best friend. :(
I have a 1985 Mac 512Ke, the e was because it could read 800K floppies, not just 400K. It has 512K memory and no hard drive, no modem and a 9" B&W screen.
Congratulate for engineer and architect all around this world your works has been one place completely, amazing…
We had 286, 386 and 486's in our computer lab at school. Everyone rushed in to get to the 486's first. Long time ago but we learned so much on those machines
are you 55 now
Damn, there is so much going on inside these small chips. Also this microscope shows some sick details. I'm just amazed how people came to this point and come up with all these amazing things. Texting from a phone while watching youtube. Astonishing if you ask me
I agree! It's amazing how far we've come, and just how much is abstracted away that you don't need to think about when using a modern electronic device.
I still get fascinated by how humans even made these beautiful objects, such tiny details and how far we have came from this.
And yet we still can't stop killing each other for the most mundane reasons.
It is from extra-terrestrial being, taught us to make a silicon chip.
Microscopic
@@saito125 It seems that being smart doesn't mean people will make good choices. Intelligence is simply a tool. How you use it is up to you (up to a certain point of course, given your ability to escape certain consequences).
@@saito125 That's why we're able to make these amazing things. If we were peaceful, then we'd become decadent, poor, and miserable.
Damn I had one of those back in the day, cool video bro and RIP Packard Bell.
Over 30 years later I still have to support x86 architecture in all my apps 😅
Ahh that backward compatibility...
are you 45yo now
cpu chips are some of the most beautiful things man has ever made, the way they sparkle like a rainbow or a hologram simply because of the size of the features always amazes me
Had this in 25Mhz with 4MB of RAM, loved the machine.
Same here! Did have a few people say that they did not realise that they existed.
Daily driver back in the 90’s then went dx2 and dx4 after
Yeah, I had the SX variant @ 25mhz and 4mb of RAM. Getting the latest version of dos was important back then. lol. Until ‘95 came out.
@@hunkydory419 Yess SX25+4MB gang!
IN mid-1992 I purchased a genuine IBM PS/2 with the 486DX/25, 4MB RAM, 3.5" FDD and a 129MB HDD at a cost of $2k (new). With QEMM-386 I was able to run Win3.1 with 631K of (free) conventional memory. Then OS/2 was released... on 14 3.5" floppies.
My first CPU! Got it with my first PC, a Dell 486 DX 33mhz with 8 mb of ram a 512k cirrus logic video card and a 14 inch monitor that is at 640x480 but if I lowered the color to 16 bit I could go up to 800x600!
I miss those days.
Cirrus logic! There a name I haven't heard in forever. Best I can do is mention I have a Righteous Orchid 3D (3dfx) in original box somewhere in the attic.
This CPU was a monster and a game changer at the time.
For the consumer market, yes.
Pro users gave it a weary smile. All the RISC stuff at the time was magnitudes faster.
Seeing the traces under such magnification is truly amazing. Like millions of tiny copper pipes
Beautiful chip layout
Naah, too orthogonal for my tastes. I like spirals :J
I swear these micro art pieces and Easter eggs are them flexing on how cool their printing machine is
That was my first PC, pure nostalgia with 4 MB RAM later retrofitted with a sound card and CD (with a proud 4X:) drive. Operating system with DOS 6.22 and Norton Commander. HDD 160MB and a hundred 3.5" flopies (drilled through to double capacity). My first and last game was Wolfenstein (wolf3d) and can even be played today with Raspberry PI 5 and DOSbox.
Cpu's are just so damn beautiful under a microscope, heck even when just holding the sealed deal in your hand.
who else finds it absolutely beautiful we, humans, can build things on such a small yet technical scale??
I'm not convinced humans are capable. Its easier to believe in alien technology.
Although we think we reach some level of "development", the only we reach is more destruction of planets nature... it is a kind of curse
@@TwistyTrav if you actually look into the technology and how we've evolved the practices that we use to create chips like these then no, its definitely not easier to believe in alien technology. Photo lithography is not THAT complicated, literally just watched a video from Breaking Taps called "DIY Semiconductor Patterning" where he basically makes a machine capable of creating chips by himself in his garage. He also explains the process pretty well, Id suggest taking a look so you can understand why these things are not as inexplicable as you think they are.
@@TwistyTrav that's because you're stupid. if you study you can learn exactly who all of it works
@@SpydersByte one day I'll etch my own 486 silicon, its my dream since I was a kid and had one
I’d love a documentary on the invention of the micro chip, how they work how they’re made. Etc.
Right?!!!
Search "American Experience Films: Silicon Valley"
Best doc I've seen on Noyce, Intel and the invention of the IC.
@reecep4016 Same , ppl like Gordon Moore , Jack Kilby , Mohamed Atalla, Jean Hoerni and Carl Frosch are names you should research
Had a Compaq with a 486 DX2/66. Great computer for tweaking and adding components for performance.
I love all the little icons that mask designers included on the old chips. One of them has a cactus too :)
My first really stable computer was running Windows NT on a Dell i486-DX2 66Mhz with whatever maxed out memory was back in the day. I was astounded at having such a stable platform for engineering work.
Every time you show a picture like this, it’s all I can think of it. Look at the gold look at the gold.
I find it crazy how much detail of things there are in something that small, as in all the x y and z planes
My first real CPU... 8088 before that one. So sweet. Soundblaster with MKEP optical drive. Doom. Good times.
I used to own one of those, it was actually my very first PC. A DX 486/33 running Win95. Couldn't tell you anything about the rest of the PC though as I don't remember what else it had in it. I eventually got that upgraded to a 66 and then eventually a 100Mhz, and I remember the day I had the 100Mhz put in it, the difference while running Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, how suddenly the whole game ran at nearly twice the speed. Night and day difference!
⁰⁰
Maybe Windows 3.0 or 3.1 and DOS 6.0? Win 95 came 5 yrs after CPU 486dx-33 was released.
@@Brave2standalone It was definitely Win95. I was on a budget at the time as I didn't have a lot of money and wanted a PC, and at the time, Pentiums were out, but I was buying a used 486 because it was like half the price of a new Pentium-based system.
Omg. I loved that game!! Thanks for reminding me of that!
I still own a 486DX4 100 computer, simply because it is a bit different (not a normal MB but has CPU on a card), MB is just a backplane with ISA slots. Has GUS audio, internal UPS card, HD controller card, ethernet and, I vaguely recall, Trident video. Runs Win95, had some games on it (XCom, HMM, Doom...)
I also have 286 laptop somewhere, 10MB HDD. Don't recall make and model ATM. Not much on it, just DOS and some serial terminal emulator.
How far we came! My first CPU was the first of the 8 series - 8008 in the Altair. Then the 8080, 8085, 8086, and so on. I did not use the 4004 or the 4040 before them.
Z80A ? Did you missed?
@@iorant2558
Never used a Z80A.
I remember when the 486 DX2/66 came out they sent me a sample, the HEATSINK WAS AS TALL AS IT WAS WIDE WOW MAN LOOK AT THAT HOLY COW
yeah, I believe I replaced my original 486 33, to a 486 66.
I had one of the gateway 2000 66mhz 486dx2
To my mind the main revolutions of these years was the i386 (from 16 to 32bits), and also the first Pentium few years later. The 486 was just an improved 386 to my mind. Also a great improvement was the VGA 256 colors mode
I worked at the plant that made the PGA that you popped that out of. Alcoa Electronic Packaging. This is pre-Pentium.
Maybe you can tell why the (P5)
Pentium had a bug. I had to change it and send it to the factory.
@@franciscorompana2985 Dick.
You can't patent or trademark a number so Pentium was the name intel chose for the 586 series of chips to prevent anyone from copying or using the chip's name and architecture.
I always wonder how something so complicated yet so small in size works that good! This is not but seems like a magic!
Intel = illuminati confirmed
Illuminintel?
Wait 486 is (6-2)(6+2)(6-0) 😮
666 😈
Why -2 +2 -0?
It's because the 'minatii love chaos 🤔
That's 🎈🤡💩
came here for the illuminati comment
Intelluminati
Even though I understand the logic of how it works, stuff like this will always sound like magic to me. It's basically teaching a piece of rock how to think.
@TreacherousFennec IKR that's insane , teaching an electrically conductive rock how to think is still magic :P
It’s now 30 years since I bought my first PC which had this as the CPU!
I was a Marine on an airline flight back at about 1991 sitting beside a Intel engineer on a cross country flight to LA. He gave me a keychain with a 486DX chip incased in acrylic. It was pretty cool. Carried it for years.
@chrisalexander2478 What happened to the keyring ? :P
My first "IBM Compatible" computer had one of those in it. Before that our family computer was a Commodore 64. I miss both, honestly.
From 1.2 million to our cpus now 10 billions transistors is unbelievable
The CPU in the first PC I built was the slightly newer i486DX2-66. That chip was amazing. Surprisingly, I think I still have it.
The 800 nm (!) technology with 1.2 mio transistors and 33 MHz - and now 30+ years later we have 3 - 4 nm, around 25 bio (!) transistors and typically 3 - 4 - 5 Ghz.
Truly amazing 😳
Man, that was top of the line with the built-in math coprocessor...
ahh yes, the coprocessor. That chip was great.
I had the 486DX2 and it was faster than the first gen pentiums.
its crazy that our phones have way more transistors in the CPU now days and the CPU is also the GPU modem and a few other things on it like the io controller we came a long way
It definitely wasn't my first processor (MOS 6502, Commodore 128 y'all!), but I have fond memories of building PC's with the 486DX 33/66 and 368 w/math coprocessor. I miss when computing was simple, games were made for fun not flash, and the world was simpler.
В 486 процессоре математика была уже встроена внутрь.
@@floks700 486SX был без мат.сопроцессора
Boggles the mind what chips must look like today and the magnification to even try to see them
This is simply amazing.
We have come a long way since the TRS 80. 😊
this is what people spent their time on before Factorio came out
What amazes me more is the machine making all these.
It's actually a series of machines, each specializing in one aspect of chip making.
In 1990, 1991, i still was playing on the streets with kids in the neighborhood, exploring cheeks, fighting when it was necessary, playing with old tires in a race against more kids, and playing arcade games when we got some money after selling some soda cans we collected, 90's was an amazing decade, im sure ppl who was lucky to get a beautiful processor like this can miss such first days with computers when they were young and use some computers with a green screen.
What a wonderful memories brings this short video 😮
When i think about the circuit inside a microprocessor.... My head is in fire🔥
33 and a pyramid now that is not a coincidence.
But it has no meaning or reference to actual pyramids or any conspiracy like the illuminate as the latter is not even a real thing.
@@tbas8741 he says, guessing
@@tbas8741it's very real
The inventor of the 486 is such a awesome dude
I had a 486 DX4.. It had costed me a bomb! It had 32MB RAM. Super costly config. I think it was in 1993 or something
I totally had my first self-built tower PC running a 486dx50 processor! That thing was a screamer at the time! I still have that box in my old systems closet!!
the level of complexity here is beyond what my mind can fathom
You're only seeing the interconnects that tie the devices together. The devices are buried below several layers of insulators, dielectrics, and other interconnects. The devices (mainly transistors and diodes) are not visible to the naked eye.
nowadays. those 1.2million transistors would easily fit into that "secret" pyramide sizewise. with some room to spare. you would have a hard time seeing the cpu with the naked eye. its just astonishing.
Makes me wonder how modern Intel and Ryzen CPUs are made.
Probably looks even more complex and fascinating.
Fun Fact: Not a single human hand is used to make the chips.
What an iconic chip! The maths co-processor built in. DX FTW!!
Holy shit....I knew electronics were small but I had no idea that there was that much going on the cpu.
Such a workhorse cpu, that and the dx2 at 66mhz were phenomenal!
I have the DX2 in my collection. Beautiful to know it can look so amazing.
Dx2 the first cpu which I used win 3.11. So good times. I just understood this piece of tech so many decades after
One of the great things about being a Designer, is can put little Easter Eggs in.
Got one of these in an estate/yard sale in 1993. Paid $100. Feel zero guilt lol. Thank God for people who don’t know what they have.
Technology changes along with the development that humans need in the appropriate era according to the technological needs that humans desire at that time. Let's look back and imagine how the tools humans first used to make the world's first transistors compare to the tools used to manufacture 4 nanometer microprocessors today. I think if someone who used to work in electronics who died 30 years ago suddenly came back to life he would be amazed to see the latest developments in microprocessor manufacturing.
0.8 micron process and now we're at 3 or 4 nanometer processes😅 crazy how we're so many orders of magnitude more advanced now in just a few decades
I can still remember when the industry crossed the one-million transistor monolithic chip boundary. It was an amazing time. "One million transistors! Wow, do you think we'll ever get to one billion?" "Nah, you can't make transistors work at that scale...." Well, engineering problems usually have a solution if you work hard enough....
That chip is still significantly faster than the 8086 chips installed in the A320 Airbus.
One of my older computers that I no longer have was a 486-DX2-66 at the time I thought it was so fast!.
After a couple of heathkit IBM style computers, ALL of my computers , I have built from scratch, that is, case , motherboard and supporting boards bought and then assembled by me, and I bought Windows and other programs to use with them. It cost a little more, but I got the hardware I wanted. Ready built PCs usually have a few cards that are substandard to lower their selling price.
Ahhh what a flashback, this was my first chip I ever had, that with a companion Math-coprocessor what a power house it was back in the day love it. I think I still have the chip somewhere.
I needed one of these for such a long time. Those laggy graphics in MK2/3.
Great memories.
My dad got a 486DX2/66 CPU with 8MB of memory and a hard drive controller that actually had a tiny bit of solid state memory that gave him down to 0.9ms access time in certain scenarios. Combined with a Tseng Labs ET6000 graphics card, it was an incredible computer that could do anything.
I inherited his Northgate 386DX/20 at the time. I had a Tseng Labs ET4000 card and I believe 5MB of memory. I could play Doom but only at the smallest graphics window. :)
its so beautiful looking, my first computer was a 486DX2 66Mhz
As a boomer I experienced the rise of the microcomputer to become, for better or worse, the most profound agent of change EVER in a vulnerable society. This video of that Intel chip would have been derided as science fiction back in the day. That little chip could outperform mainframes from the1970s. A few weeks ago when ordering my iPad Air - yes, the one with the 13” display - I experienced a fleeting sense of unreality when I specified this TABLET be equipped with 256 GIGABYTES of secondary storage. Unbelievable to my generation, and it is doubly amusing how today’s young people take this computing power for granted. Revel in your time! (Blade Runner)
Wow I have a bin full of ancient CPUs and a nice Nikon E200 Led microscope, and I never thought to explore!! Thanks for the idea!
That focus tracking on the varying layers of metal contacts is awesome.
I worked for a Sears store way back, 1990 - 1992. 1990 - '91 was in Paint/Hdwr, but '91-'92 was in "Home Office Electronics." Sold computers as well as typewriters, word processors, etc. The 486 DX was our top of the line system!
Those would make some cool posters. Ever consider taking pictures and selling them as art?
Worked on all 8088 then 286up then 386up and the 486up then the pentium 586. to present.. man I'm old
It's just beautiful and a testament to civilisation. Amazing for 1992
I remember being so excited when my father was coming home with a new quantex 486 desktop. Its amazing how far pc technology has advanced in a little over 30 years
I do not understand how they make these chips with all that intricate detail inside in mind boggles me.
@dash4786 They use some kind of complex lithography process that defines places on a silicon wafer were transistors (electronic device that can either switch or amplify an electronic signal )are to be created , the silicon has a layer of silicon dioxide on top (insulator so it doesn't conduct electricity), pieces of the silicon dioxide are cut away or removed by exposing the silicon to some kind of UV light that deposits boron or phosphors(sometimes other materials too) into the silicon creating transistors inside the silicon.
different wavelengths of light allow for smaller transistors to be created , making for more complex computers since MORE or should I say MOORE(google moore's law) transistors can be fit into one silicon integrated circuit (the silicon wafers are cut into individual integrated circuits) .
A Silicon has atom has 4 electrons in it's outer shell and normally can't conduct electricity but through the process explained above by being mixed with a Boron or Phosphorus atom (which has 3 or 5 electrons in the outer shell) it causes the silicon to either give or receive an extra electron (free electron) which is what allows it to conduct electricity and be used as the basis for making transistors.
The silicon dixoide layer stops the free electrons from escaping from the silicon layer and the transistors are linked up in certain ways to form something called logic gates which preform particular functions based on their input , logic gates are further linked together to create parts of a computer that function as memory or as a calculator.
I've missed out a few things but that's the most basic way I can explain it , yes it boggles the mind and I'm no expert (I'm currently studying how computers perform subtraction and make use of negative numbers and it's pretty confusing :P) Hope that helps you understand
meticulous job, thanks for your effort for this video presentation 😊
looks always awesome to see things and creatures(and the texture) under a microscope
@arneberhold7436 I saw once in a video once that had a tiny image of sonic the hedgehog on it , must have come from a sega console or arcade machine
My parents got our first computer with a 486 dx2 50mhz. A few years later I used the processor upgrade slot on the motherboard to upgrade to an Evergreen 586 at 100mhz. I fell in love with computers with that thing and learned so much.
We have come such a long way. Packaging and transistor scale are crazy now and just getting crazier.
I’ve grown up in the microprocessor age from the 286X. It still astounds me how billions of transistors are packaged into even the simplest of chips. It’s truly astonishing.
This was my 1st cpu in 1992. Everyone was amazed by its performance. It had 4 Mb of ram with 260Mb of hard drive. With dos 6 and windows 3.1.