The key to unlocking a locked Thunderbird (or Duron) are those eight dots next to the "L1". If the top dots are connected together with the bottom dots, the CPU becomes unlocked. How do you connect them? The easiest way is to just use a lead pencil. I used a 0.5mm  mechanical pencil.

This is looking at the CPU after I "connected the dots". You have to make sure that you only connect the top dot with the corresponding bottom dot. Do NOT connect them any other way or you will be sorry. Also make sure that each of the pencil lines don't touch each other.  If you don't have steady hands, you may wish to ask someone who does to do this operation for you. You know the procedure is  successful when you change the multiplier settings on your motherboard and it boots up with the new settings.

One of the problems with overclocking the TBird 1200 is that my motherboard (and most AMD motherboard) has a maximum multiplier setting of 12.5X. Since the TBird 1200 already runs on a 12X multiplier, the highest I can overclock is another 50Mhz, which it did without problems.

Unlocking the TBird 1200 did have one good side effect. It allowed me to turn the CPU into a TBird 1200A processor. AMD just  started shipping A processors. They're really nothing more than same processors made to run on a 133Mhz front side bus. Kinda like Intel's "EB" CPUs. But wait a minute. Didn't I write on the first page that AMD motherboards don't work above 115Mhz front side bus? Meet the KT133A. 

Next page: Life begins at 133Mhz FSB

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