Plastic Surgery: Releasing The Athlon XP To Hit 2000+

Here's The Trick - Masking The Contacts

Before fiddling around with the conductive lacquer, the "burn holes" created by AMD's laser separation have to be sealed. If the silver lacquer trickles into these holes, you'll be up against the same grounding problem mentioned earlier. To the naked eye, it's not obvious that there's grounded copper leaf underneath.

First, the L1 contacts (top and bottom rows) are taped off using Scotch tape or another transparent tape. The idea behind this is to allow you to insulate the laser locks using super glue in the next step.

View of the L1 contacts on an Athlon XP 1900+.

Extreme close-up of the L1 contacts.

Careful! Press down firmly on the tape so that the glue won't go where it's not supposed to go.