# IBM Board Collection



## oldgoldman (Oct 8, 2012)

Have been clearing out some material and came to the "too pretty to crush pile"

here is a some of the old IBM boards. would love to hear what the functions were from some old IBM experts .. 

any of these boards still in use somewhere ?

still debating whether to crush or not ..

thanks in advance ..


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## butcher (Oct 8, 2012)

Well I will not want to change your mind one way or the other, but I think a pretty small gold button takes up less space, I know what I would do. but I am not an IT man, I like to recycle that pretty stuff.


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## g_axelsson (Oct 9, 2012)

The boards in the back with the blue and black cover, are they core memory boards?
If they are, they are more valuable as collectible than gold scrap.

The rest is hard to tell anything about other than they are old IBM boards. I need more detailed photos or details about markings on them to have a chance to identify them.

/Göran.


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## oldgoldman (Oct 9, 2012)

Great info .. I'll shoot a couple more more detailed pictures today .. the blue cartridges say things like IOSW, DMSW, 3020 4MB, STER on the pull handle .. 

all the best


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## glorycloud (Oct 9, 2012)

The boards in the back with the blue and black covers look like they came out of an old IBM 3745 comm controller.

Nice boards - they all look like art. You would have to market them to collectors who might prize them
as "eye candy". 8)


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## Auggie (Oct 14, 2012)

There's a post somewhere where GSP says that the boards with the solder grid and the square aluminum cap chips that have the connectors sheathed in a greenish plastic shell used to pay out $70/lbs back in the 1980s or 1990s. There is apparently a 10K gold square overlay on each individual pin. Inspect it closely with a loupe or you can pick at it with your fingernail and feel it.


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## CBentre (Oct 14, 2012)

Auggie said:


> There's a post somewhere where GSP says that the boards with the solder grid and the square aluminum cap chips that have the connectors sheathed in a greenish plastic shell used to pay out $70/lbs back in the 1980s or 1990s. There is apparently a 10K gold square overlay on each individual pin. Inspect it closely with a loupe or you can pick at it with your fingernail and feel it.



Are you talking about these? Been holding these for some reason.


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## oldgoldman (Oct 14, 2012)

For g_axelsson, I've taken some more detailed photos. Let me know if you can identify .. Thanks in advance.

For Auggie .. so I took the heat gun to a corner of the green board solder grid. Melted the solder and banged the board on the workbench to knock off solder. The through hole in the boards were then exposed. I heated it again and used a wire brush to clear off the excess solder. The square overlay sure has a gold tint to it relative to the resistor tin plated connector in the picture. It looks promising. Would love to hear from GSP on this rumor !?!?

Thanks !!


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## acpeacemaker (Oct 14, 2012)

I was thinking he was talking about these pins. But I might be wrong. I just did about 150 lbs of these boards and all had this style with a square gold plated silver tab.

All the best,
Andrew


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## oldgoldman (Oct 14, 2012)

apeacemaker .. did you process the through hole connectors .. or just the connector ending like you have pictured ?

i've attached one more picture of possibly the square overlay in question ..

all the best


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## acpeacemaker (Oct 14, 2012)

With this lot it was just the connecting ends like I have pictured. 

Take care,
Andrew


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## nivrnb (Oct 15, 2012)

Great Thread!!!

Just wanted to thank you for starting this thread, I cam across some old IBM boards like you have posted that came from and IBM 360 machine. I am very interested in the board where you have the loupe photo. Interested in all aspects of these boards like the components on them, I will take more photos as time permit’s. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Rob


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## g_axelsson (Oct 15, 2012)

oldgoldman said:


> For g_axelsson, I've taken some more detailed photos. Let me know if you can identify .. Thanks in advance.


I'm sorry, I can't identify these boards based on the pictures but I would guess that any board marked "Test" could fetch a good price on eBay. It sound like a board used for service and test of the machine.

Is there any markings on the edge on the boards or on the handle? These boards should be possible to identify when they sit in the machine so you don't have to pull them out just to identify them. Do you know what model of IBM computer they come from?

/Göran


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 15, 2012)

Auggie said:


> There's a post somewhere where GSP says that the boards with the solder grid and the square aluminum cap chips that have the connectors sheathed in a greenish plastic shell used to pay out $70/lbs back in the 1980s or 1990s. There is apparently a 10K gold square overlay on each individual pin. Inspect it closely with a loupe or you can pick at it with your fingernail and feel it.



I do remember an average $7/pound at about '74 prices for the IBM cards mostly filled with the Al cans. They contained some Pt group metals. The curved connector pins do have a tiny karat gold contact point on all the ones I've seen. You can feel them but you almost need an eye loupe to see them


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## etack (Oct 15, 2012)

If you do strip these boards I would be interested in the tantalum capacitors.

PM for price

Eric



I need to retract what I posted above because I now believe that those are just network resistors. I put some to the torch and they only had a ceramic piece in them. there are so many different types of capacitors that its hard to know them all. if you see some and want to know if they are tantalum that the best way is fire them up. If they burn and leave a rectangle or a cylinder with a wire coming off one end that is a tantalum capacitor. You will not melt the tantalum and it will glow real bright.


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## glorycloud (Oct 15, 2012)

Here are my IBM boards. 8)


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## Auggie (Oct 31, 2012)

acpeacemaker said:


> I was thinking he was talking about these pins. But I might be wrong. I just did about 150 lbs of these boards and all had this style with a square gold plated silver tab.
> 
> All the best,
> Andrew



That is exactly what I was talking about. If you look at the photos in the post above (http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=159871#p159993), look at the very right-hand side of the boards in the top two photos. Those segmented blocks (in the second photo they say "TEST" on them) are plastic covering over the pins with the karat gold overlay. Pull the covers off and you'll see two rows of these pins on either side of the board.


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## nivrnb (Nov 2, 2012)

acpeacemaker said:


> I was thinking he was talking about these pins. But I might be wrong. I just did about 150 lbs of these boards and all had this style with a square gold plated silver tab.
> 
> All the best,
> Andrew



Andrew,

Did you clip the gold tips off of those pins before you processed them? Or did you process the whole pin. I have some of the brown IBM boards and I was looking at the individual soldered block on them. I don't know if I have the same type of boards as you do, it just looks like solder in the hole slots not like, the photos that oldgoldman has a photo of (the one with the maginfying glass).

Rob


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## toober (Nov 16, 2012)

I think the board laying down flat in the upper right is the processor from an S/38. System/38s came right before the AS/400, and are pretty rare machines today. I collect the old mainframes (mainly IBM, but branch into Control Data, Burroughs, etc.), and have not seen an S/38 come available for quite a few years. It is likely worth holding on to. 

--
Will


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## resabed01 (Nov 25, 2012)

goldsilverpro said:


> Auggie said:
> 
> 
> > There's a post somewhere where GSP says that the boards with the solder grid and the square aluminum cap chips that have the connectors sheathed in a greenish plastic shell used to pay out $70/lbs back in the 1980s or 1990s. There is apparently a 10K gold square overlay on each individual pin. Inspect it closely with a loupe or you can pick at it with your fingernail and feel it.
> ...



Digging through my scrap pile I've come across a few IBM boards with the curved connector pins. Does anyone know what the gold content is of these karat tips? Being a member here of this board pays off... If I hadn't read this thread I probably would have tossed the boards with pins attached not knowing any better.


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## chambersjr (Dec 19, 2012)

CBentre said:


> Auggie said:
> 
> 
> > There's a post somewhere where GSP says that the boards with the solder grid and the square aluminum cap chips that have the connectors sheathed in a greenish plastic shell used to pay out $70/lbs back in the 1980s or 1990s. There is apparently a 10K gold square overlay on each individual pin. Inspect it closely with a loupe or you can pick at it with your fingernail and feel it.
> ...



Does anyone know if their is anything special about the boards pictured in CBentre's post? I recently came across this exact board. Trying to figure out what to do with it. -- thanks


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## macfixer01 (Mar 2, 2022)

etack said:


> If you do strip these boards I would be interested in the tantalum capacitors.
> 
> PM for price
> 
> ...




I realize this is a very old thread but I was looking for some other information and stumbled across it. Yes the black and amber items you pointed out which are longer than 4 pins (also may be blue and aqua colored) are resistor networks. The 4-pin components can be either a resistor network (no polarity marking) or a Tantalum capacitor (leads marked -++- and part#5615372). Some boards are literally full of those 4-pin tantalum capacitors!


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