Unknown and Unobtainable – Mystery Chips

Intel 60077 Unknown

There are always interesting surprises when collecting CPUs, and anything really.  There are those chips that are unicorns, or white whales, spoke of, maybe even documented but never (or almost never) seen.  For example Hitachi made a copy of the Intel 4004 CPU.  Its documented, and I think I have seen one in my life, but it’s certainly not a chip that you ever expect to see, it’s almost (I did say ALMOST) pointless to try to find one.   They are, in a word, unobtainium.

There are also chips that are completely unknown, you can hold it in your hand, and know it exists, but not WHAT it is.   For some manufactures of chips this is pretty common, brands like LSI, Motorola, and VLSI made A LOT of fully custom devices. There is no documentation of what these are, who they were made for or anything else.  Such documentation would have been for internal use only, and likely destroyed or lost by now (especially as companies went out of business or got acquired).

Intel was a company NOT known for custom parts, but it’s a bit of their history that got a bit forgotten.  They of course, like other companies, custom marked parts for various companies, with special part numbers or markings (Burroughs, HP, ATT etc).  They would also make a part for you with somewhat different specs (custom testing or speed rating).  Intel did make completely custom products, at least through the 1980’s.

We discovered one of these back in 2020, the Intel N60066 8051 based ASIC. At least in the 1980’s Intel custom parts tended to have a part number like 60xxx.  I am sure you could spec whatever you wanted but if you didn’t Intel would just sequentially assign them.  SOme of them may reuse Intel IP (Intellectual property) like a MCU core, or RAM/ROM, or be completely custom to the customers needs.

Intel 60077 die, note the duplicated blocks. Appears to be random logic on the left.

This particular one is marked 60077 and a copyright of 1988 (which is marked  on the die as well).  Its a SAMPLE and in a package that reflects that, a gold lead CQFP164 lead package.  Its likely the production part would be in something a bit more economical, but that would also be spec’d by the customer. Looking at the die it appears to have a pair of each block, perhaps for redundancy?  Its hard to say, none of it matches anything I have seen before as far as a microcontroller or processor.  Its function, and customer are a mystery, It is, in a word, an unknownium, and thats part of the fun of collecting.