I saw this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=5156497437&rd=1 on ebay, and I can't see how a sample of a chip would be a good idea unless it was for shopping around before it was picked up by nintendo? I thought Gekko was a custom for nintendo design, and I fell this might be someone with a broken gamecube and a hot air desolder taking advantage of people, until I saw the confidential on it. Sometimes defective chips are given away as keepsakes, you think this is what it is? K
Sample Chips These are not uncommon in the manufacturing process. IBM's internal test dept as well as Nintendo itself would have wanted sample chips to ensure that the silicon was performing as planned. Pretty much any CPU or GPU existed in sample form at one time. I still have a working AMD K7 CPU here. -hl718
That's pretty cool - but good luck soldering that on as the solder spots are under the chip and not on the edges.
Lol, yeh I saw those chips on eBay a while back, but could'nt trace their parentage. ...Although they are marked 'Confidential' they could be made for 'anything', not necessarily Nintendo, in fact most likely not Nintendo! ...In fact it's not unusual for manufacture's to dish out sample 'dummy' PBGA chips that purely demonstrate their overall 'footprint'. In other words you get the case and ball grid but no 'internals'! ...PBGA chips like these are 'two-a-penny' in real terms, although I see this one on eBay is starting the creep up, which is scary if someone buy's it because they hope/believe its connected with the GC.
Its 100% legit auction. IBM as well as AMD and Intel tend to make samples of soon to be released chips for testing, etc. Like how Anandtech or THG tend to get prototype builds of CPUs marked confidential on it, stuff like that. The seller lives near where I live so I guess I could pay him a visit .
Well are there any other plans for the Gecko? I havent really done my homework on this, but I think the "conventional" PPCs are no longer used by Apple.
