Subject: RE: collecting silicon wafers

From: "Dave Wilson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 11 14:08:01 2003

I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my original posting
about collecting silicon wafers. Quite a few of you were a bit 
puzzled about where the interest lies, so I'll try to explain 
how I see it: 

These things (silicon microelectronics devices) are made in vast 
numbers. A large proportion are packaged and used as intended. 
Possibly even larger numbers are destroyed as scrap. Yet they 
each represent the collective effort of a vast number of people 
and are arguably some of the most complex human artefacts ever 
created. Sadly, the few wafers that survive unscathed are usually 
put to such ignoble uses as mats for coffee cups or decorative 
trinkets.  

There is another, older and more established area of collecting 
that shares many of the same characteristics - stamp collecting. 

1. Stamps are printed in vast numbers
2. They are used and, in most cases, eventually destroyed
3. They are difficult to forge (convincingly) 
4. Most are virtually worthless
5. A few a almost priceless
6. Many are beautiful
7. They have an inherent research interest - printing varieties, 
   flaws, rarities, historical interest etc. 
8. They are (usually) considered most valuable unused and even 
   more valuable in an unbroken sheet. 

Silicon has not attained this degree of interest to collectors, 
and maybe never will. As fabrication processes shrink ever further 
and the number of conducting layers increases, chips become 
featureless (on the surface) and increasingly difficult to study. 
Neverthless, early devices (on 4" wafers and smaller) are very 
accessible. 

So my intention is to find as many of these early wafers as I 
can and to spend some time studying them - building up a 
well-documented collection. I have just bought a toy Intel QX3+ 
microscope and I'm hoping that this will be good enough to 
reveal some of the detail - manufacturer, rev numbers etc. as 
well as those interesting signatures frequently sneaked on by 
the design team. 

My only anxiety is that the general interest in collecting 
silicon may take off in a big way before I have managed to build 
up a workable stock. 

If you have wafers you can supply, I'd be immensely grateful - 
though of course, you won't want to part with them now .....

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 11 14:57:00 2003

> though of course, you won't want to part with them now .....
Same here - I'd like a few silicon wafers - not blanks, wafers that have had
ICs manufactured on them and are in one piece. I'd love to put one under a
microscope and examine it, but like I said, most of the wafers I've seen for
sale are just transistors. I'd love to have a look at a wafer covered in ICs
under a microscope. I've got a nice little SLR and it shouldn't be too hard
to track down a bit of brass tubing to build a light-tight spacer to get it
onto the microscope.

Later.
--
Phil.
[email-masked]
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 11 15:21:01 2003

--- Philip Pemberton <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I'd love to have a look at a wafer covered in ICs  under a microscope.

Me, too, but I haven't seen any of the 4" or older wafers for sale.  I
have seen 8" wafers here and there.

> I've got a nice little SLR and it shouldn't be too hard to track down a
> bit of brass tubing to build a light-tight spacer to get it onto the 
> microscope.

I picked up a ring for my Konica SLR called a "T-mount adapter" - one
face fits my camera as if it were a lens, the other is a standard set
of threads that fits a variety of devices.  On the Ice, we had a
microscope with a light gate - flipped one way, you saw the specimen
under the objective; flipped the other way, the view switched to the
T-mount on the front - made microphotography easy.  Personally, I got
my adapter for astrophotography - they make T-mount adapters for amateur
telescopes.  The difference here is that with an SLR, you just mount it
on the end of your telescope and leave it there... just squeeze the
shutter bulb and hold it for as long as you need (I've had good results
with wide-field astrophotography (no telescope, just a regular lens)
with ASA 400 film and 45-120 seconds of exposure (aurorae, The Milky Way,
etc.).

-ethan

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 11 16:02:01 2003

> silicon may take off in a big way before I have managed to build

Indeed.  Just try to keep a "Silicon Wafers" category from being created
on eBay for as long as possible and you'll be in the clear for a while :)

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

 * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Tue Mar 11 17:35:35 2003

> to track down a bit of brass tubing to build a light-tight spacer to get it

You might be able to get a proper microscope adapter for the SLR. I found 
the one for my Exakta in a camera shop for \pounds 9.00, still in 
original box (no, I don't care about that, I bought it to use [1]). OK, 
that's a fair amount of money for a tube, but it is a nice tube, with the 
bayonet mount, a couple of extension tubes you can fit or not as you 
chose, the collet to clamp to the microscope, etc. Making it up would 
have taken a lot of time.

You want to find an old-fashioned sort of camera shop, preferably one 
that also sells second-hand cameras. They have the most amazing bits 
hidden away.

[1] I picked up a reasonable Zenith microscope with several objectives 
and eypieces for 20 quid or so in a charity shop (of all places). 

-tony

---

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 11 18:05:01 2003

> > I'd love to have a look at a wafer covered in ICs  under a microscope.

Have you played with the Intel microscope?  It's marketed as a toy, but
seems like it would be handy for this kind of thing.

---

From: "Hans Franke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Mar 12 05:22:01 2003

> [...]

The whole idea of wafer collecting got something to it, although
I think the stamp reference is a bit far fetched.

Gruss
H.

BTW: I realy love wafer masks ... they are just a bit hard to find.
So if one of y'all (sp?) got some laying around ...

--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/

---

From: "Chandra Bajpai" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Mar 12 07:06:00 2003

I got to ask this...what's a wafer mask...what's it look like?

-Chandra

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of Hans Franke
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 6:22 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: collecting silicon wafers

Gruss
H.