I loved the Alpha CPU's. The company I worked for back in the 1990's was running on an 88000 RISC CPU platform and it wasn't all that fast. We were considering moving to an IBM PowerPC platform until we did some testing on an DEC Alpha. Holy moly, our application benchmarks ran thirty and sometimes even sixty times faster than the old 88K platform. Our clients were absolutely amazed.
That Alpha cpu a nice piece indeed. I to own that 667Mhz I got from an eBay seller more than 10 years ago, i just never got the Heatsink(or MB) for it. Funny is I can remember seeing an advertisement for that CPU in a Computer Shopper Magazine it was a full page Ad of a person holding the CPU up and on the ad it said now it's alpha inside. The ad also had Alpha CPU and the Pentium pro in performance comparison for sever computers with Windows NT 3.5 or 4 I do believe but can't remember for sure. Great video!!
This is my technique to remove soldered chips for my collection as well, but let's not forget about the toxic fumes it may generate. It is better to do this in the open, or at least in a well ventilated area.
I remember my Video rental store had one of these obscure Alpha PC's, they only used it to play Solitaire, it was rather slow, but the Case bragged with a ridiculous high clockrate for it's time. 1GHz if i remember correctly.
Another excellent video. I wonder could you sometimes tell us what some of the more obscure CPUs were used for? Thanks again :) My first PC in the 90's was a 286. But some of my fondest memories were from my 486 dx266 :)
I use a crudely-regulated heat gun, not a big step above the one you use. I affixed it vertically to a universal stand and I use a multimeter and thermocouple to monitor the temperature while playing with the temp potentiometer (which just goes from Off to 10) and raising it or lowering the gun above the PCB to get a big enough and uniform heated spot on the area I'm working on. Everything else gets sealed off with Kapton tape and aluminium foil, unless I don't care much for it. When the part gets stubborn on me, I remember Louis Rossman's advice about applying solder flux: "The bigger the gob, the better the job" LOL Cheers, mate. Always fascinating to watch your stuff!
using a heat gun and a multimeter to unsolder a CPU is pretty impressive. It shows that you are resourceful and able to think outside the box. Keep up the good work! Just be careful not to burn yourself or damage the CPU in the process.
Many years ago I gave my brother a LED moving message display PCB, basically a board with several hundred LED's on it, to be recycled into Christmas lights, Later he showed me his efforts, the lead end of the LED's had obviously been overheated as they were bloated and had many small bubbles in them - however they all, bar one, worked. So I asked him of his method. He put the board, LED's up, onto his BBQ, when it 'looked hot' he flipped it over and banged it on the edge of something, whereupon lots of LED's fell out. He just kept doing this until they were all out. Truth be known the one dead LED was probably dead in the first place.
If your into electronics salvaging those PLD/GAL chips might also be worth a shot - since they're being discontinued but still popular with hobbyists chinese fales habe become quite an issue.
Hi, I love your vids, but this one made me stop and ask - do you still have, by any chance, that 386 board from the video? I would kill for those double 30-pin SIMM sockets, I have an AWE32 sound card with the socket broken and I am desperately looking for replacement :-)
While I appreciate you are a CPU collector, and I must say I really enjoy your channel, if those boards were good working systems it is a shame to take them completely out of action when some simple precautions would avoid unnecessary damage. For example if you had used a little kapton tape (high temperature masking tape) on the SMD components around that 386 CPU it would have stopped them blowing off. Even if the boards are faulty I personally would still take these precaution just as good practise but that's just me. That's not to take away from the great stuff you do here on your channel, keep up the good work.
Plenty of Unix and Linux fans would pay some good money for DEC Alpha boards and CPUs. A shame people rip it off the boards like this just to hang it on the wall or drawer, ... :.-/
About how long do you need to apply the heat for to remove the chip? I have a stack of old network switches that have a soldered ceramic Intel i960 on the board and I want to harvest the chips to scrap separate from the board.
it takes quite a while, depending also on the thickness of the board. but if you don’t care of damaging the pcb just blow 450 degree C for some minutes. you will experience that the layers of the pcb will start separating as well. by knocking with a screwdriver on the hot board the chip will fall out.
So would i be able to unsaughter my laptop cpu from my laptop so i can upgrade it? Its the only thing holding my laptop from being a gaming one. Everything else is maxed out
@@CPUGalaxy I actually wondered about doing it with the same method you used; heating up the PCB from the bottom and allowing the QFP chip to fall when the solder melts. Would that work or is there a better way?
Desoldering a CPU can damage the pins or the solder balls that connect the CPU to the motherboard. If not done correctly, the CPU can be permanently damaged, and it may not function properly even if it is successfully desoldered. So, while desoldering a CPU does not necessarily destroy the board, it can cause damage to the CPU and render it unusable if not done with proper care and expertise.
I wouldn't call it "very toxic". Especially, he doesn't use any kind of flux. This is mainly a flux, not the solder itself, what produces the fumes. Great for removing these stickers is WD-40 (or diesel fuel).
Nein nicht die schöne Alpha, Mensch Zerstör doch irgend eine Müll x86 CPU das kannst du doch nicht tuen... Dann schick se besser mir stell ich se zu der schönen Funktionierenden Kiste dazu.
![286 Board Restoration & Testing [Leaking Battery and Exploding Caps]](/img/1.gif)
I loved the Alpha CPU's. The company I worked for back in the 1990's was running on an 88000 RISC CPU platform and it wasn't all that fast. We were considering moving to an IBM PowerPC platform until we did some testing on an DEC Alpha. Holy moly, our application benchmarks ran thirty and sometimes even sixty times faster than the old 88K platform. Our clients were absolutely amazed.
That Alpha cpu a nice piece indeed. I to own that 667Mhz I got from an eBay seller more than 10 years ago, i just never got the Heatsink(or MB) for it. Funny is I can remember seeing an advertisement for that CPU in a Computer Shopper Magazine it was a full page Ad of a person holding the CPU up and on the ad it said now it's alpha inside. The ad also had Alpha CPU and the Pentium pro in performance comparison for sever computers with Windows NT 3.5 or 4 I do believe but can't remember for sure. Great video!!
Pentium Pro: "I'm so shiny!"
DEC ALPHA: "My gold content brings all the boys to the yard. Damn right, I'm better than you!"
😅
This is my technique to remove soldered chips for my collection as well, but let's not forget about the toxic fumes it may generate. It is better to do this in the open, or at least in a well ventilated area.
and wear a respirator if needed, the fumes could be carcinogenic or cause other issues.
I remember my Video rental store had one of these obscure Alpha PC's, they only used it to play Solitaire, it was rather slow, but the Case bragged with a ridiculous high clockrate for it's time. 1GHz if i remember correctly.
Another excellent video. I wonder could you sometimes tell us what some of the more obscure CPUs were used for? Thanks again :) My first PC in the 90's was a 286. But some of my fondest memories were from my 486 dx266 :)
Thanks for your feedback. I will consider that for my next videos to tell a bit more. ☺️
Amazing. Another great video. Thank you.
Nice Alpha nice video
Another great tutorial. Thank you. I will try this weekend to do this with some HP boards I collected.. :-)
Thanks a lot for this. If I had known this before, some of the CPUs I tried to remove from boards would have survived in a better shape!!!
I use a crudely-regulated heat gun, not a big step above the one you use. I affixed it vertically to a universal stand and I use a multimeter and thermocouple to monitor the temperature while playing with the temp potentiometer (which just goes from Off to 10) and raising it or lowering the gun above the PCB to get a big enough and uniform heated spot on the area I'm working on. Everything else gets sealed off with Kapton tape and aluminium foil, unless I don't care much for it. When the part gets stubborn on me, I remember Louis Rossman's advice about applying solder flux: "The bigger the gob, the better the job" LOL Cheers, mate. Always fascinating to watch your stuff!
using a heat gun and a multimeter to unsolder a CPU is pretty impressive. It shows that you are resourceful and able to think outside the box. Keep up the good work! Just be careful not to burn yourself or damage the CPU in the process.
Many years ago I gave my brother a LED moving message display PCB, basically a board with several hundred LED's on it, to be recycled into Christmas lights, Later he showed me his efforts, the lead end of the LED's had obviously been overheated as they were bloated and had many small bubbles in them - however they all, bar one, worked.
So I asked him of his method. He put the board, LED's up, onto his BBQ, when it 'looked hot' he flipped it over and banged it on the edge of something, whereupon lots of LED's fell out. He just kept doing this until they were all out.
Truth be known the one dead LED was probably dead in the first place.
I have a desoldered k6-3+ 450 from a laptop in my desktop working at 570mhz
"Satisfy the addiction",, yes, I'm addicted! This guy is my german buddy, find a tool for the job, or make one.
Austrian
If your into electronics salvaging those PLD/GAL chips might also be worth a shot - since they're being discontinued but still popular with hobbyists chinese fales habe become quite an issue.
Use flux to make desoldering more easier
Great content. Why I did not see this channel until now ?
What are those "horns" for in that Alpha CPU's heatsink?
They are threaded studs. The heatsink was bolted to the top of the CPU with 2 nuts.
@@anomaly95 NUTS!
Our classic main production server 24/7 was based upon 4 DEC Alpha CPU's
Hi, I love your vids, but this one made me stop and ask - do you still have, by any chance, that 386 board from the video? I would kill for those double 30-pin SIMM sockets, I have an AWE32 sound card with the socket broken and I am desperately looking for replacement :-)
i am sorry. unfortunately I threw it away. I would definitely give it to you for free if I would still have it.
@@CPUGalaxy nothing to apologize for, thank you for responding
DEC computers (any type) are getting rarer every day :(
Great tutorial
Ya know a copper wicking material is fairly good for removing solder. Its more effect than a desolding suction iron.
hey, i am just curios to know what are these pokey things on top of the alpha cpu?
cool video anyway, glad i stumbled upon your channel!
Yes, that would be great to know! 👍
Thank you very much!
this are the mounting screws for the heatsink. So very solid made on that Alpha CPUs 😅
@@CPUGalaxy thank you very much!
@@CPUGalaxy very interesting designe choice on their part, anyway, very cool sir, thanks for sharing your collection with us!
While I appreciate you are a CPU collector, and I must say I really enjoy your channel, if those boards were good working systems it is a shame to take them completely out of action when some simple precautions would avoid unnecessary damage. For example if you had used a little kapton tape (high temperature masking tape) on the SMD components around that 386 CPU it would have stopped them blowing off. Even if the boards are faulty I personally would still take these precaution just as good practise but that's just me.
That's not to take away from the great stuff you do here on your channel, keep up the good work.
what are the things that fell off before the cpu did?
@@legendmaster1989 transistors supplies
@@theriven822 are they neccesary?
@@theriven822 are they necesary?
Plenty of Unix and Linux fans would pay some good money for DEC Alpha boards and CPUs. A shame people rip it off the boards like this just to hang it on the wall or drawer, ... :.-/
Thanks
are you damaging the chips to remove them or do you mean that you just wont be using them
About how long do you need to apply the heat for to remove the chip? I have a stack of old network switches that have a soldered ceramic Intel i960 on the board and I want to harvest the chips to scrap separate from the board.
it takes quite a while, depending also on the thickness of the board. but if you don’t care of damaging the pcb just blow 450 degree C for some minutes. you will experience that the layers of the pcb will start separating as well. by knocking with a screwdriver on the hot board the chip will fall out.
Got A Few NES CPUs PPUs And All The Fixens Yesterday.
I don't see any reason they couldn't be reused, assuming you were careful and the heat didn't do any damage to the chip.
The amount of heat could damage the chip
cool video!
a little typ to remove stickers: xylol
angry louis rossmann noises
The earliest BGA cpu
Can I use this method to upgrade my Ryzen 5 to Ryzen 7 on my Lenovo e495 laptop?
Have you tried removing BGA processors with this method? Do you kill them with this temperature?
What were those cpu's originally from when you found the boards?
very good!!!!!
Oh? So we can replace laptop CPUs?
Is it possible to unsolder the cpu of laptop and solder a better compatible cpu?
So if I have an old Motherboard with an Old CPU in order to upgrade it can I Desolder the CPU and Install a new CPU?
So would i be able to unsaughter my laptop cpu from my laptop so i can upgrade it? Its the only thing holding my laptop from being a gaming one. Everything else is maxed out
In theory it's possible, in practice don't bother trying it, you'll only break it.
Technically you could but 9/10 times it’s not worth it
@@sedrosken831 damn...
@@legoman8960 damn...... Bs
Do you use the same process to recover a Quad Flat Package (QFP) chip?
you could use this but have to take care not to blow away the part with the air flow.
@@CPUGalaxy I actually wondered about doing it with the same method you used; heating up the PCB from the bottom and allowing the QFP chip to fall when the solder melts. Would that work or is there a better way?
Hi the plastic and arn on my pga motherboard is broken can i just stick the cpu in without the plastic apply the heatsink and make it work
Make sure the socket is in the open position
does desoldering a cpu destroys the bold?
Desoldering a CPU can damage the pins or the solder balls that connect the CPU to the motherboard. If not done correctly, the CPU can be permanently damaged, and it may not function properly even if it is successfully desoldered. So, while desoldering a CPU does not necessarily destroy the board, it can cause damage to the CPU and render it unusable if not done with proper care and expertise.
so now i just need a regular cpu socket and put it in?
There is some chance that the heat and the impact together destroys some of the internal connections between the die and the package, too.
i want to computer scrape boards can u help me
Great video but small comment from me. I prefer to do it on "open air" because fumes when desoldering are very toxic.
I wouldn't call it "very toxic". Especially, he doesn't use any kind of flux. This is mainly a flux, not the solder itself, what produces the fumes.
Great for removing these stickers is WD-40 (or diesel fuel).
Nein nicht die schöne Alpha, Mensch Zerstör doch irgend eine Müll x86 CPU das kannst du doch nicht tuen... Dann schick se besser mir stell ich se zu der schönen Funktionierenden Kiste dazu.