Cores 100 times enlarged:

I bought a binocular stereo microscope. It's a  40 years old original CARL ZEISS in very good condition. You can enlarge from
15x up to 100x. It's really enough to have a great look on cores from cpus or memory chips. The lights I have built myself on it.
I took two white LED Lights, each with 12 ultra bright LEDs. These lights are on a swan neck, so you are able to move them
around the chip without any problems. Bright lights are very important, because if you enlarge 40 times, you will have 40 times
less light!

If you look the first time through a microscope you will be very amazed about what you will see. It's a perfect journey into the
microcosms. You will find signs, date codes and many other things on a cpu core.


Here some pictures of the microscope:


Taking pictures through the Microscope:

It's not really easy to take a  picture of that you will see through a microscope. Normally you need special oculars and  carriers
for a camera. But I was very lucky. I tried to take pictures without any carriers and without any special oculars. It works!! With my
Nikon CoolPix 4500 I am  able to shoot great photos. By pure chance  the optic of the camera goes with the oculars of the microscope.


I just switch the camera into the macro modus, zoom 1x into the picture, and the rest is done by the auto focus.
But you should not forget to switch off the flash! Without flash the camera will expose about a half second.
So you will have enough light on your photo.




And here some photos:


C1701, 25x enlarged

C8051E, 25x enlarged

3301A, 40x enlarged

C4001 40x enlarged

C1702A 25x enlarged

Siemens chip 40x enlarged

Motor. 68010 15x enlarged

R80186 15x enlarged

Pentium 60 62,5x enlarged

80387 40x enlarged

Core Memory 40x enlarged

Samsung CCD 100x enlarged
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