2 sad sad 2500s

I unsucessfully modded two barton 2500s in effort to make a dually. I used a rear defroster repair kit from an auto-store, and a sewing needle to paint. I (for reasons are yet to be known) blew an L3 bridge because someone told me it would set the fbs down to 200 from 266. Then i was informed that this was an error, so i painted that bridge. However, neither of these work in single or smp mode. So, my question, how should i go about getting these cpus clean? I mean really really clean... like eating off of them clean. Would a solvent like goo-gone or even acetone errode the cpu? Also, what should i use to paint these, i have some of the paint left over from the original attempt, but i'm sure there's something better to use.

Thanks,
Dave.

What paint did you use? Unless it is silver-based, it probably wasn't conductive enough to make a connection.

Also, which L3 bridge did you blow? The L3 bridges control the CPU multiplier. You can see the effect blowing the L3 bridge had by going here and scrolling through the multipliers until you find one that matches your L3 configuration:

http://www.ocinside.de/go_e.html?/html/workshop/socketa/tbred_painting.html

As for cleaning, acetone and goo-gone (which is xylene and some other stuff) would probably start to dissolve the plastic surface of the CPU packaging, but not the core. Isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) will remove most lacquer-type paint with ease and won't damage your CPU. It's also good at removing thermal pads/paste.

Defogger repair kit is fine for this. Wipe it down with alcohol and qtips, then wash the cpu with dish soap and maybe the edge of a scrub pad. I'm not sure if this is applicable with the newer chips, but in between the dot contacts are small cuts with copper contacts exposed inside. Fill those with a completely non conductive material like arctic alumina. Your first try to connect the bridges might have gone awry like many people's initial efforts. They usually short bridges on eachother, or don't fill the laser cuts well enough, letting the defogger paint seep in.

actually, to mod the new packaged chips (the ones where there is a clearcoat and you see traces) you are suppost to fill the pit with the conductive material, rather than non conductive to paint over it to connect dots. there is a how to in the smp section somewhere.

i use rubbing alcohol and q tips for quick cleaning, or a soft bristle toothbrush for heavy duty cleaning, and it hasnt hurt a cpu yet

right, so i filled the pits with superglue, then painted... so should i have filled the pit with something conductive?

Yeah, the new packaging (where you can see the traces on the surface) all you have to do is fill in the pit of the bridges you want to connect.

If you blew the last L3, that bridge is for hi/lo multiplyer. Blown is for high multiplyers so you can get multiplyers above 13x. That's good for duallies because they don't usually go above 150ish FSB (some can do 166). If you have a barton who's defaults are like 11.5x166 (think that's a 2500+), it will boot at 133FSB in a dually and the speed will be 1533 instead of 1833. But when you blow the L3, then you can set the multi to like 14.5 and FSB to 150 and get your CPU's up to a good 2166 or so mhz.... (assuming your motherboard can set those high multi's)

Connect the last L5 fo make the cpu's SMP-capable. Connect L11 bridges to increase the default vcore (if the motherboard cannot set the vocre of both CPU's from the bios).



If the CPU's don't work after cleaning them off, then I'm afraid you probably killed them by blowing the bridge. I have known and read of several people who have killed their CPU's by blowing bridges with electricity and thus I refuse to attempt any bridge blowing of my own, though I do plenty of bridge painting....

so how do you go about disconnecting bridges? cutting?

Also, how can i determine if these cpus are toast?

I'm with Arkaine23 here. I don't understand why more people don't use the pin mod that is no destructive and so easily reversed.

As for your questions well they are answered I think. Alchohol should clean things up fine and the window defogger kit works great for painting bridges so no need to go buy anything new.

Deathknight said:

I'm with Arkaine23 here. I don't understand why more people don't use the pin mod that is no destructive and so easily reversed.

Click to expand...

In his case he converted XPs into MPs, meaning he had to connect the last L5 bridge. There is not a (known) pin-mod for this procedure; you have to close the bridge on top of the processor.

I personally prefer blowing/painting over pin-mod, because paint is more permanent, more quickly and easily applied (about 30 seconds per bridge for me), and there's not the risk of frying my motherboard. It has also been easy to remove (I use the paint from inside an MG Chemicals silver trace pen and apply it with a needle); a little pressure while scraping at it with a needle causes most of it to crumble off, and the residual powder is easily dissolved with isopropyl alcohol. If I'm careful about it, after removing the paint one can't even tell it was there in the first place.