Sun Ultra Sparc CPUs

Just tore down 2 main frame servers I got from a scrap yard the other day got 20 of these CPUs out of them (18 of the smaller ones & 2 of the larger ones) along with the plastic thing (loaded with gold wires) that makes the connection between the CPU & the board.

The plastic things (that make the connection between the CPU & the board have about .65 grams of wire each so thats about 13 grams of wire recovered in the dish - not sure yet if that equals a 13 gram gold yeald - if so the wires alone will more then pay back what I payed for the entire tuck load of computers I bought that included the 2 servers

Anyone have any info on recovery &/or value of the CPUs - is it just the gold plating on the bottom - or are there gold wires under the lid &/or inbedded in the ceramic ?

Kurt

kurt said:

The plastic things (that make the connection between the CPU & the board have about .65 grams of wire each so thats about 13 grams of wire recovered in the dish - not sure yet if that equals a 13 gram gold yeald - if so the wires alone will more then pay back what I payed for the entire tuck load of computers I bought that included the 2 servers

Click to expand...

The "wires" is small gold plated springs most probably made of beryllium copper. It isn't solid gold but as they are thin the surface area is high compared to the total weigh of the springs. What that does in percent I don't know.

I would doubt that the ceramics have any gold inside, but there could be gold plate, gold bond wires and gold braze under the lid. Break one in half, have a look and let us know.

/Göran

Curious about this also. I've had a few of these that I sold as-is with other CPU's when shipping to E-Scrap buyers. If I member correctly they weren't priced anywhere close to the higher yielding ceramics. I agree with Goran that the base metal is likely copper for the wires. One thing to keep in mind is the copper is probably nickel plated. Gold plate over nickel plate over copper.

Please let us know what you find out.

broke one of these apart see what was in the inside just thought you'd like to know.

I am not at my shop for accurate data, but (from memory) the berry-copper-gold wool is 55% gold by weight and the sun spark chips are very very low yield by weight. very low. The copper-tungsten heat spreader throws the yield numbers drastically.

Share with us how you removed all the spring wool!

The processors are diabolical mate. Sorry to lay that on you but this was one of my first enquiries too on this forum. Even the wires in the interface plates are pretty rubbish.

Sorry an' all but it's the sad truth.

Jon

Hi, these pinless CPU connectors are called Fuzz Button connectors and yes as Glondor said their yield is very high , base metal can be Beryllium copper or Molybdenum, look for Custom Interconnect Fuzz Button Connectors and Cinch's Cin::Apse website for more information. I refined a batch of 350 grams (whole connectors,75-80 gms pins approximately ) got about 28 gram fines.

Well I'm all ears and more than willing to admit failure here! Seriously you got that return on the fibres?

I get lots of servers and the spacers with the fuzz wires are the best yielding things I ever did. There are a lot of variations and types of those fuzz wires over the years. Some have more connections than others,but the larger sparc IV processor fuzzes gave me the best yields. .65 grams of contacts (each one) yielded .4 grams of gold. The last one I did had 16 processors in it. that gave over 6 grams just for the fuzz connectors. there was 8 sticks of ram for each processor. And they were the larger heavy sticks. i dont remember exactly but it was 15 - 17 # of ram total. I found with a thin stainless straight dental pick you can poke the fuzz wires out pretty fast while watching tv or zoning. Also many of those servers I did, had silver buttons in them instead of gold. I have not processed any of those. If I can ever figure out how to post pics on here I would post the various types

How do you get the "fuzz connectors" of these plastic CPU holders? I have a lot of
them as well and I haven't cracked that code yet. I have run the whole things
in hot HCL and it seems to take forever for the springs to drop out (if they ever do).

I used a knife blade to scrape/pry them off the housing carefully as they can fly away from the container and have hard time in re-collection.

I just put them straight into AR. The plastic is unaffected.

I daren't tell you how many of those fuzz connectors I have but I'm going to process a large amount in AR tomorrow and I'll let you know what I get.

I'll get weights etc so it's done correctly.

Ok - its been over a year ago that I first posted this thread - so I don't remember numbers (weight of starting fuzz - recovered value) but I do remember I was quite happy with the outcome - happy enough that they now get thrown I my personal stash for processing & not sold to my board buyers

Kurt

Great, I know I have a small box full of those things out in the shop. Now I must go find them. Man on a mission!
:shock:

Thanks for the info. Fuzz Buttons were a new concept to me, and somehow I never heard of them before. Here's an interesting webpage on them that I found:

http://www.custominterconnects.com/fuzzbuttons.html

My first and only experience with these fuzzy things was by luck. It was early learning days and I had no clue what they were when I recieved them as bonus items with a bunch of bare boards and connectors from ebay, bought 36 Lbs of boards and connectors for $350 , I thought they have high yield , instead I got literally nothing from them in the AP test run, I was upset and mad on this whole gold recovery concept, then I test run 5 connectors fuzz and I was amazed, sold the rest of the junk back on ebay, collected the gold powder for future second refining. This is how I got hooked to this hobby.

Martyn and I have put 80 into AR tonight- it's now 01:10 here so we'll pick it up tomorrow and see what yields we get.

We processed 320 in AR as a total today, with an initial yield total of 36.6g.

0.1143g per fuzzy - all sun sparc ones. We will get slightly more over time as the solutions aren't yet completely barren but we ran out of time and won't be able to have another look for two or three weeks. One thing's for sure though - it won't be going anywhere.

Thanks for the info about these Kurtak, I had been led to believe they were completely useless and it's one of those situations where being wrong is a bonus. 8)

I'll upload a couple of photos later when I get settled at home.