How did people figure out how to unlock AMD's?

[Emericana]

Just out of plain curiosity, I remember a few years back when the pencil trick was just introduced and i read and article about it on firingsquad and i thought how cool it was... i always wondered how people figured out that by putting conductive stuff between the l1's got the chips unlocked? anybdoy here know the history about how it was thought of?

also i would be interested of knowing how people thought up goldfingers for the classic amd athlons... anybdoy know?

 

[Thermal]

The engineers always knew that...about a cpu architecture...they design them! I figured some engineer got laid off...& let the cat outta the bag. (I'm only guessing)

 

[DaddyB]

I'm sure that happens or the info is somehow leaked from within AMD but I do remeber reading an article, i think it was on tom's hardware, in which they told how to change the multiplyer through opening and closing various L1 bridges on either an athalon or XP(i forget which). so if u wanted to use the 10X multiplier one day and the 10.5X the next you would have to operate on your cpu... that was b4 it was known that you just have to close all the L1s, so there is some simple trial and error too and prolly a lot of dead cpus.

* edit * I went and looked at tom's hardware and i dont think this is the article i was refering to but it is from b4 ppl knew about the L1 bridges and it shows how to change the multi and voltage via the L bridges

http://www4.tomshardware.com/blurb/00q3/000710/blurb-04.html

 

[Gilgamesh]

I guess AMD leak it to increase the chips sale. Same happened with the sony ps1 and the modchip, the story about loses on piracy was bulls*** because sony did make tons of money on the console itself. The important thing for sony was to sell as many machines as possible.

 

[Emericana]

i never knew sony leaked modchip stuff... i mean, they are trying to put all of the companies out of buisiness who make them now for the PS2... maybe it is all just one big conspiracy... or not hehe

 

[Gilgamesh]

i never knew sony leaked modchip stuff... i mean, they are trying to put all of the companies out of buisiness who make them now for the PS2... maybe it is all just one big conspiracy... or not hehe

more than 100 million of consoles sold will give you an idea besides there are plenty of joe sixpacks in Japan and US. Europe was the worse market for sony because 70% of the games were ilegal. But in the US i guess the percentage doesn't reach the 25%.