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I miss the days when you could do things like connecting the L5 bridges on the surface of the AMD Athlon XP Palomino [0] CPU packaging with a silver trace pen to transform them into fancier SMP multi-socket capable Athlon MPs, e.g. Barton [1].

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/how-did-you-unlock-you...

Some folks even got this working with only a pencil, haha.

Nowadays, silicon designers have found highly effective ways to close off these hacking avenues, with techniques, such as the microscopic, nearly invisible, and as parent post mentions, totally inaccessible e-fuses.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/KL_AMD_A...

[1] https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/a/af/Atlhon_MP_%28.13_micro...



I'm one of those folks that did it with a pencil. Haha. Maybe I was lucky? That was my first overclock and it ran pretty well.




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