# Today's pickup-- The motherload!!



## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

The last three days have been very busy for us as we are in the process of removing over 200 rack mounted servers from a data center. Not only are there servers, but a lot of switch gear too. So on the way home from the job, we get a call from another customer that wants a store room cleaned out. Well we always like those jobs, it's more like a treasure hunt! Sure enough, BONANZA!!! 1000's of cards, boards, wire wrapped pin boards, memory, parts, etc.
Most of this stuff is mid 70's vintage! Except the servers/switchgear, ect!

Photos attached, enjoy.

Also a pic of the first batch of servers/switches.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#2


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#3


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#4


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#5 All these boards are date stamped 1975, 76, or 77.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#6

A backplane that I pulled the plastic off of.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

#7


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

Last one


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## lazersteve (Feb 12, 2010)

Very nice score!

Steve


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

Thanks Steve!

I do have a question for you.

The wire on the pin boards looks to be silver plated copper. How would you refine the gold from these boards with all the wire and silver there?


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## lazersteve (Feb 12, 2010)

That's a tough one. The wire is coated with Teflon or some other plastic usually that is resistant to acid. It's best to melt or burn it off with the proper setup.

Secondly, the silver plating is so thin it doesn't warrant the use of expensive nitric to recover.

The best answer I can come up with is to use the stripped wire to inquart karat gold and recover the silver that way. Another solution may be to melt the wire together and use the resulting copper/silver alloy bar to cement silver from nitrate solutions. The copper would cement the silver as normal from the solution and the silver in the alloy would join the cemented silver in the bottom of the beaker.

Steve


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## gold4mike (Feb 12, 2010)

Congratulations on a very nice score!

I'm jealous :mrgreen:


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## Anonymous (Feb 12, 2010)

Hopefully you got to double dip and got paid to hull the stuff away :lol: 

jim


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## Irons (Feb 12, 2010)

lazersteve said:


> That's a tough one. The wire is coated with Teflon or some other plastic usually that is resistant to acid. It's best to melt or burn it off with the proper setup.
> 
> Secondly, the silver plating is so thin it doesn't warrant the use of expensive nitric to recover.
> 
> ...



Like Steve said, the wire-wrap 30 guage wire insulation is usually KYNAR (PolyvinylFluoride) or TEFZEL a DuPont Fluorpolymer.

Be careful not to breath the fumes when trying to incinerate. It's a pain in the butt.


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## ander (Feb 12, 2010)

I would not incinerate any fluoropolymer, it's extreamally hazardous to just anyone in 100 yards radius. I processed 200g of very nice looking wires from polish computer, It wass supposed to be milspec grade. It seemed all silver, I incinerated insulation- some kind of polyolefin, then I dissolved in acid and processed as usual. So after all I got so tiny amount of silver that I did not melt it- waste of time and money.


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## rfd298 (Feb 12, 2010)

That is a beautiful score! Have fun with it.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

I've noticed that the pin boards have push in type IC's. It looks like the legs are silver plated. Anyone seen them like that before? Also, if you crack one of the older Texas Insturments IC open, there is gold in them.

I know, I know, Pics, but the camera batteries are recharging!


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## leavemealone (Feb 12, 2010)

Those are just incredible bud.I'm happy to see you got an excellent load.If you want to sell any let us know :mrgreen: <---green with envy
Johnny


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 12, 2010)

leavemealone said:


> Those are just incredible bud.I'm happy to see you got an excellent load.If you want to sell any let us know :mrgreen: <---green with envy
> Johnny




*Well it's all for sale!* 

As some of you know, I do not refine anything myself. I do not have any time to start a new hobby

We are going to have goldsilverpro assay some batches of the pins to see just what is here.

All those cards in the boxes have finger edges on them. The plating is thick enough that you can feel it with a fingernail going along the trace onto the gold plating.

We went back today to get more of the stuff, but it was mostly motors, power supplies, etc. While talking to the guy who used to run this department he told me that this equipment was used to read the old paper credit card recipts back in the day. It could read 1200 slips per minute and they had three of these machines running a day. He said the machines were so well built and so very expensive when new that even though newer, smaller versions became avaliable, they still kept these. They are built to milspec standards he claimed. As he was cleaning out his file cabinet he was showing records of purchase for some of the larger boards. $20,000.00 each back in the late 70's! Holy cow!!!

I think I saw a tear in his eye as we hauled the last of it out today. You could really tell this old guy loved that equipment.


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## leavemealone (Feb 12, 2010)

PM sent.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 13, 2010)

Thanks!


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## scrapit (Feb 14, 2010)

Were do you find this stuff??? My jaw just hit the floor


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 14, 2010)

The stuff's still out there, tons of it. You just have to find it. We have been hauling electronic scrap for this company for over 10 years now. All the stuff you see in the photos came out of a store room. It was all support parts for these three machines. We scrapped the machines over three years ago and we knew about the storeroom then. It took the company this long to let the stuff go. I was just knocked out by the amount of stuff they still had! 

Crazy ain't it?!!!


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## flankdrive04 (Feb 14, 2010)

WOW!!

Gives us all hope!

Plating looks nice and thick too.

Well done!


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 14, 2010)

Flankdrive

Love the Hammer Time avatar!


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## scrapit (Feb 17, 2010)

What kind of company do you run? Is it a scraping business, how do you make money off that stuff? I'd love to start a recycling business like that I already do it in my free time for extra cash I enjoy ripping stuff apart and finding things. I'd love to here more about this job of yours.


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## goldmankc (Feb 18, 2010)

that's awsome,


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## Geld Konig (Feb 18, 2010)

silversaddle1 said:


> Last one


What a wonderful vision. All this boards and slots. I fill like UNCLE SCROOGE.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 18, 2010)

scrapit said:


> What kind of company do you run? Is it a scraping business, how do you make money off that stuff? I'd love to start a recycling business like that I already do it in my free time for extra cash I enjoy ripping stuff apart and finding things. I'd love to here more about this job of yours.




Yes, I own a metal recycling business. Our main type of work is railroad contracting. We tear out old RR track, cut up loco's and cars, and do general clean up work for the railroad. We have been doing that for about 16 years. The electronics side of the business started by chance when we were contacted by a large data company to remove and dispose of two huge UPS's. And these things were monster systems with transformers in them the size of a pony. It has just grow and grow from there and the electronics side is starting to catch up with the railroad side. It's great winter work when there is little railroad work to do. As far as making money off it, we strip all the computer stuff down to basic parts and then sell them to recycling companies around the country.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 18, 2010)

silversaddle1 said:


> Yes, I own a metal recycling business. Our main type of work is railroad contracting. We tear out old RR track, cut up loco's and cars, and do general clean up work for the railroad. We have been doing that for about 16 years. The electronics side of the business started by chance when we were contacted by a large data company to remove and dispose of two huge UPS's. And these things were monster systems with transformers in them the size of a pony. It has just grow and grow from there and the electronics side is starting to catch up with the railroad side. It's great winter work when there is little railroad work to do. As far as making money off it, we strip all the computer stuff down to basic parts and then sell them to recycling companies around the country.



Have you thought about offering items to members of the board?

Possibly pictures?


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## scrapit (Feb 19, 2010)

That's a cool business you got going there. Thank you for the insight


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## Chumbawamba (Feb 19, 2010)

Man, it's actually kind of a shame that those machines couldn't be preserved in a museum. They may have well been the last of their breed. Or even one of a kind systems, with all that wire-wrapping. That was a ton of work.

At any rate, I've never gotten a haul quite like that in my electronics recycling business, but I do still get stuff like that, occasionally. It is out there, especially if you go looking. Of course, if I got this, I'd be hard pressed to scrap it. It'd go into my museum


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 19, 2010)

Chumbawamba said:


> Man, it's actually kind of a shame that those machines couldn't be preserved in a museum. They may have well been the last of their breed. Or even one of a kind systems, with all that wire-wrapping. That was a ton of work.
> 
> At any rate, I've never gotten a haul quite like that in my electronics recycling business, but I do still get stuff like that, occasionally. It is out there, especially if you go looking. Of course, if I got this, I'd be hard pressed to scrap it. It'd go into my museum



I'm sure more are still around. Maybe not. Some of the boards I did not show are wire wrapped just like the gold ones, only they have silver colored pins on them. They look just like the gold ones and even have the same date span on them, just silver pins. I'm thinking they are tin coted, I'm not sure. They do still have the gold socket liner where the IC plugs in to the board. And 100's of IC's plugged into the board! If I get time tonight, I'll post more pics of some of the other neat stuff that is turning up in this batch of stuff!


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## pinwheel (Feb 20, 2010)

Good score.


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## flankdrive04 (Feb 21, 2010)

silversaddle1 said:


> Flankdrive
> 
> Love the Hammer Time avatar!



LOL!! Cheers mate.


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 24, 2010)

Just thought I would update and let you know that so far this load of stuff has yielded 13 pounds of gold finger edges and we are still not done. We have 1 gaylord box hand stacked full of PCB's, and about 1/2 of another. If we don't fill the second, I'd be suprised. 

Onward!


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## silversaddle1 (Feb 24, 2010)

I listed the backplane. See my other post in "ebay" section for link.

Did not want to double post the link. :wink:


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