News CT scan peels back the layers of time to reveal the engineering within Intel’s iconic 386 CPU — exposing intricate pin mapping, hidden power planes...

[Admin]

A high-resolution CT scan of Intel’s legendary 386 processor reveals its hidden inner world without breaking it open. See the complete 3D map of gold bond wires, detailed pin connections, and the layered power planes that powered one of computing’s most influential CPUs.

CT scan peels back the layers of time to reveal the engineering within Intel’s iconic 386 CPU — exposing intricate pin mapping, hidden power planes... : Read more

 

[abufrejoval]

Somehow my 386s must have been too precious to leave lying around, they went with the systems themselves to family and friends.

But I still have a 486 or two, because that's where the crazy replacements started and an 'ordinary' 33MHz part would get replaced with a DX2, and then several generations of AMD's DX3/4 or Kx parts, which hid quite a bit of extra functional scope and computing power in a form factor that was largely unchanged.

Most importantly those became noisy because they needed active cooling!

All those 80386 and 80486 were still fullly passive, just ceramics or even plastic in plain view, with only hard disks and power supplies playing a bit of a mid-range tune.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

The article says:

the 386 was the CPU that made contemporary multitasking PCs possible

Was the Motorola 68000 series not capable of multitasking at the time? Also, I assume that IBM's 801-based microprocessors were capable of multitasking. They began use about same the time as the Intel 80386.

I wonder if the CT scans and other techniques are capable of detecting hidden instructions and related features.