BarsMonster

9 ms·

31.
by BarsMonster 9y ago
These fakes chips were labeled as Ti on the plastic package... They tried to make it look like real deal...
32.
Ti NE555 – real vs fake: weekend die-shot(zeptobars.com)
194 points by BarsMonster 9y ago|103 comments
33.
by BarsMonster 11y ago
As far as I understand, common practice was lapping. Yield was always acceptable. It is still being done now, for open-source hardware too, like here : http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/KR580VM80A-intel-i8080-verilog-r..
34.
by BarsMonster 11y ago
They were much less behind than it is now (1-2-5 years max). The problem is that leadership of USSR wanted to take advantage of using existing software - hence demanded 100% exact copy of hardware (starting from IBM-360). By many these acti
35.
by BarsMonster 11y ago
90nm is probably too good for microcontrollers :-) STMicroelecronics make most of (cheaper) microcontrollers on 180nm, AVR's are closer to 500nm... There are lots of Russian microcontrollers already available (based on Cortex-M3, M0, M
36.
by BarsMonster 11y ago
There is some controversy here. In Russia all domestic chips authorized to be used in military equipment must be packaged in ceramic case. But the reasons for this lost in time when plastic packages were not good enough. These days it seems
37.
by BarsMonster 11y ago
That is right, this is definitely for military and aerospace markets (there is not much modern civilian microelectronics manufacturing in Russia), but there are no redundancy or error correction on this chip. It is made on bulk silicon (&qu
38.
by BarsMonster 12y ago
http://www.degate.org/ There is also numerous proprietary/non-public tools. For example ChipWorks has some advanced software.
39.
by BarsMonster 12y ago
All this was done at no cost at the spare time by guys interested in retro computers. All chip decapsulation/microphotography work took ~10 hours, vectorizing layers and making actual schematic/verilog took about 1000 hours.
40.
by BarsMonster 12y ago
This is optical microscope with 5mp digital camera. Multiple shots (from 4 to 800 for large chips) are stitched in 1 big panorama.
41.
1986VE91T: What's inside Russian ARM?(zeptobars.ru)
3 points by BarsMonster 13y ago|0 comments
42.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
It's metallographic microscope BM-158J with some unnamed 5 megapixel camera attachment. To make large photo I had to take 20-100 shots, and then stitch them into 1 large photo.
43.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
No, I use hot-plate and IR thermometer to control temperature.
44.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
They have CDN service in beta test - http://www.ovh.com/fr/cdn/
45.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
Everything is possible. Cloning whole chip is probably economically not viable, but definitely possible (it's cheaper to design from scratch with modern automatic design tools), but retrieving secret keys is a popular task. For a company ha
46.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
FYI, I've just switched image hosting to OVH CDN, let me know if images are not loading for you. Thanks.
47.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
Initially I was trying that, but 98% sulfuric acid and 40% hydrogen peroxide needed like 3 days to etch plastic (with like 10 fresh "mixes"). Now I can try that with higher concentrations, would be great if It could lower temperature.
48.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
Check out these videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/Andorianin/videos?view=0&flo... There is also software for automatic photo->schematics conversion, but this is quite complicated & not something you can buy at store.
49.
by BarsMonster 14y ago
I am the one who have done all these chip photos. I am still looking to find soviet 286 (КР1847ВМ286), but it seems it is extremely rare. If anyone have one - contact me ASAP :-) Just to be fair - I didn't find that soviet "clones" were clo
50.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
You quote in Russia have nothing to do with 'restricting access' to the Internet. I don't care about gov's propaganda, because I am free. I don't own a TV, I don't read newspapers, so they can't reach me.
51.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
Hehe, yes it does survive :-)
52.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
I only add that "Owners of internet cafés or other places providing internet access must restrict their access to belarusian domains" is a complete lye. Cafes are only recording IDs of users, and that's it. So, noone would be able to conduc
53.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
How much watts?
54.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
For this winter, I've made 99400 lumen lighting powered by 1kW of metal halide lamps with full, close-to-sun spectrum. This is about 50-100 times brighter than usual room lighting (100-200W of incandescent lamps or 15-35W of luminescent lam
55.
by BarsMonster 15y ago
When I was a child back in early 90s in USSR and seeing happy life in 'Home Alone' I was asking "Why I was born in USSR, not USA?". Yeah, life was shit then. 20 years later, I am happy that I was born in USSR precisely due to these nasty th
56.
by BarsMonster 17y ago
What about not just cook, but grow it at your back-yard? :-)
57.
by BarsMonster 17y ago
Yes, some of CPUs mentioned in article are reproducible, and everyone can make it :-)
58.
by BarsMonster 17y ago
If you do so, you would eventually be invited to huge corp :-)
59.
Homemade CPU – from scratch(3.14.by)
118 points by BarsMonster 17y ago|31 comments
60.
by BarsMonster 17y ago
That's right. But on nVidia ION platform limit is 4Gb.

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