This picture is of a Pentium Classic CPU core I removed from it's ceramic packaging.
Here's how I did it. I put the CPU in a vice very carefully and used a fresh, sharp razor blade and hammered it to cleave off all the pins. This looks nice, but it messy to clean up. However, it's needed for the next step.
I then took the razor blade and hammered it between the gold plate covering the bottom of the CPU and the ceramic it's glued it. If you're very careful, you can do this without harming the CPU core inside.
Once that's off you've got a nicely exposed core. However, it's still attached to the ceramic behind the CPU.
I wish I could tell you how it did it, but I can't. It just popped off one day. Since the ceramic was cracked and smashed behind it, there was a tiny bit of core exposed. I guess that was all that was needed. Perhaps I'll get a boatload more someday and try to see how to pop out the core without cracking or annihilating it.
For now, just having a collection of 386, 486, and 586 core's exposed is great!
Also, the Flickr to Google blogger tool works well, as I used it to make this post. But you probably knew that.
