I'm incredibly pleased to announce that the microcode for the Intel 80386 has been decoded.
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I'm incredibly pleased to announce that the microcode for the Intel 80386 has been decoded.
It was an group effort by a bunch of talented people to extract and correct the physical bits, but the major work of decoding them was done by reenigne - you may know him from such incredible PC demos as 8088 MPH and Area 5150, as well as being the person who decoded the 8088 microcode previously.
Please, check out his writeup.
#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #microcode #reverseengineering
@gloriouscow I just wanna say as an Old Skool nerd, this is absolutely amazing. As John and Hank Green would say, this is definitely committing to the bit. Bravo!
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@bitcrush_io That is true. I think a version without the black might look better.
I think the complete lack of intention behind it is something magical though.
@bitcrush_io so, good news! I've been able to recover this particular disaster workflow.
I'm not sure the exact parameters so an exact recreation may not be possible, but I was able to produce these. Which one do you like best? (the upper-left one is the original, for comparison).
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Here's a little bit of banana for scale to appreciate how tiny the features we're working with are.
I have this acrylic keychain that has an actual 386 die in it.
It's Today's Choice, you see. (The rear side has a 486 die, with "Tomorrows Vision" labelled above it, something that I will never get tired of reading. Oh my god, I'm so old.)
@gloriouscow This weirdly reminds me of those plastic trinkets you used to get that contained """real""" moon dust
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@gloriouscow This weirdly reminds me of those plastic trinkets you used to get that contained """real""" moon dust
@lunarloony there's actually a shit ton of moon dust out there, they brought back 842 pounds rock and soil over all the Apollo missions
I'm not sure I'd be confident about any random keychain, but its not infeasible. It's fun reading about how many moon rocks were stolen or lost, too.
Here’s All the Rocks We Hauled Back From the Moon
The 12 human beings who walked on the Moon collected, catalogued and returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil. Each sample has been meticulously documented in NASA's Lunar Sample Catalog.
Beautiful Public Data (www.beautifulpublicdata.com)
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I'm incredibly pleased to announce that the microcode for the Intel 80386 has been decoded.
It was an group effort by a bunch of talented people to extract and correct the physical bits, but the major work of decoding them was done by reenigne - you may know him from such incredible PC demos as 8088 MPH and Area 5150, as well as being the person who decoded the 8088 microcode previously.
Please, check out his writeup.
#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #microcode #reverseengineering
@gloriouscow I was so excited to get a machine with a 386 + math coprocessor when I was 16 y/o. I didn't yet know there was microcode fetching, decoding, and executing the instructions.
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It's fairly easy to visually decode them. But now just do that 94,000 times.
@gloriouscow a couple OSM nerds and less than a week.. sounds doable.
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@datenwolf Oh hey, I get OCT done on my retinas yearly.
Structure size - that's a very good question, maybe @infosecdj could answer more confidently.
The original 286 was a 1.5µm process, but this is a later 80C286.
@gloriouscow @datenwolf The pitch between vertical lines on that image is about 5.7 micron.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Here's a little bit of banana for scale to appreciate how tiny the features we're working with are.
I have this acrylic keychain that has an actual 386 die in it.
It's Today's Choice, you see. (The rear side has a 486 die, with "Tomorrows Vision" labelled above it, something that I will never get tired of reading. Oh my god, I'm so old.)
@gloriouscow
Hot damn I love that thing, I own lapel pins of Intel and IBM dies but wasn't aware of that one. Totally jealous! -
@ask Further complicating matters is that once you've decapped a chip like this unless you have some sort of professional-grade clean-room filtration setup you've pretty much destroyed it because of all the microscopic schmutz floating in your average air that will get in and start bridging microscopic traces everywhere.
@gloriouscow @ask Not true if there is a remotely decent passivation layer over the top insulating it.
Of course, I have no idea if these older parts actually have exposed metal anywhere... but on anything like 350nm and newer there's gonna be a micron or two of nitride/oxide on top insulating the die surface and protecting it from physical damage. The top metal traces aren't directly exposed.
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@gloriouscow@oldbytes.space how long until the 486? that's the one i am most interested in
(only half joking...)@linear
A 486DX2 in FPGA form would be awesome. I cannot start to fathom the amount of work needed to bring that to life
@gloriouscow -
There is a way to extract the contents of an implant ROM. The doping that creates the gates means that you can etch the silicon in a way that the doped areas will stand out.
The acids involved in this process are some of the nastiest chemicals on the planet. Stuff like hydrofluoric acid.
Oh, you spilled it on yourself? no big deal. It's just going to dissolve your bones.
@gloriouscow I have wanted to develop a Dash etch process in my lab for a while and might be willing to make an attempt at some point, but am way too busy to try it in the near term.
I have a proper wet bench with (dilute) HF and nitric acid already, I don't think I have acetic in stock but that's easy for me to procure.
But I have little to no experience working on chips that ancient so it may take me a while to even get decap etc working with good clean results. 350nm is about as old as I go these days.
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There is a way to extract the contents of an implant ROM. The doping that creates the gates means that you can etch the silicon in a way that the doped areas will stand out.
The acids involved in this process are some of the nastiest chemicals on the planet. Stuff like hydrofluoric acid.
Oh, you spilled it on yourself? no big deal. It's just going to dissolve your bones.
@gloriouscow if you have a rough traveler I can do it for you
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I'm incredibly pleased to announce that the microcode for the Intel 80386 has been decoded.
It was an group effort by a bunch of talented people to extract and correct the physical bits, but the major work of decoding them was done by reenigne - you may know him from such incredible PC demos as 8088 MPH and Area 5150, as well as being the person who decoded the 8088 microcode previously.
Please, check out his writeup.
#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #microcode #reverseengineering
@gloriouscow@oldbytes.space That's really impressive -
@gloriouscow if you have a rough traveler I can do it for you
@gloriouscow if you have a clean die that would be preferable to having to decap one though
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@gloriouscow @datenwolf The pitch between vertical lines on that image is about 5.7 micron.
This places this straight into OCM (optical coherence microscopy) territory. I'm a little bit concerned that speckle could cause issues. But just this Thursday I was in a seminar, in which a couple of ideas for speckle reduction were presented. Worth a shot.
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This places this straight into OCM (optical coherence microscopy) territory. I'm a little bit concerned that speckle could cause issues. But just this Thursday I was in a seminar, in which a couple of ideas for speckle reduction were presented. Worth a shot.
@datenwolf @gloriouscow I'd be very interested to hear about any results you get!
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@datenwolf @gloriouscow I'd be very interested to hear about any results you get!
I'll need a decapped 80286 first. I think I might have a few AMD made 286 somewhere in the basement, but I have zero experience in decapping.
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One of my early experiments in OpenCV produced an unintentional piece of Microcode Art I'm still fond of.
This was a result of attempting auto-segmentation using incrementing hue on the various segments. Needless to say, a lovely disaster.
@gloriouscow oh really neat
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I'll need a decapped 80286 first. I think I might have a few AMD made 286 somewhere in the basement, but I have zero experience in decapping.
@datenwolf @gloriouscow I think I can provide a few. At least I have the one that was imaged, and I could also try to get you one more with the die stripped down to substrate.
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@datenwolf @gloriouscow I think I can provide a few. At least I have the one that was imaged, and I could also try to get you one more with the die stripped down to substrate.
If I can help coordinate this in any way left me know. I'd be happy to reimburse you for shipping things - although through some other means besides Ted Pella
