# Phone Jacks



## jamthe3 (Jan 25, 2009)

Does anyone know what the little gold things inside the phone jacks and square plugs on the cables are? 

Also, how do you post pictures??


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## Harold_V (Jan 25, 2009)

jamthe3 said:


> Does anyone know what the little gold things inside the phone jacks and square plugs on the cables are?


No help on this one. 



> Also, how do you post pictures??



Click on the button that's below the box in which you enter your post. It says Browse. That allows you to go to your pictures, where you can click on the one you want to post. Make sure it's not larger than 800 pixels in width, and 600 pixels in height. It is also wise to limit file size, so those with a dial-up don't have to wait for unnecessarily large files to download. 

Here's a link to IrfanView, a free download that allows you to manipulate pictures. http://www.irfanview.com/

Harold

edit: corrected spelling


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## jamthe3 (Jan 25, 2009)

Thankyou Harold


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## butcher (Jan 25, 2009)

well Harold is full of helpfull information. thanks
the telephone stuff is gold plated, check with magnet to see if non ferrous, if magnetic may be kovar(?spelling) as they have spring tension.
real old telephone equiptment was a gold mine, when made back when gold was not so high.


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## jamthe3 (Jan 25, 2009)

Thanks Butcher, & yes he is. Don't sell yourself short though as I've read quite a few of your posts also.

Had to move a network office at a hospital and the people gave me a box full of things and thought I'd try to take a pic of the boards and power supplies to see if any one had any suggestions as to what they were and/or possible uses, i.e.; maybe the power supplies could be used for a cell.


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## fixinator (Jan 26, 2009)

I have tried processing these with no yield. Later I found out that they are made of phosphor bronze and not gold at all.


Fix


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## jamthe3 (Jan 26, 2009)

Would phosphor bronze be magnetic? These have a low magnetivity (if that's even close to the way to put it, lol.) Did a search on Kovar, fairly expensive.

If it is Kovar, would it be gold plated or possibly bronze/brass plated?


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## butcher (Jan 27, 2009)

phone connectors, these can be vary similar to other connectors in electronic boards. there are many different metal combinations used in electrical/electronic industry
they do plate gold on phosphor bronze also, either of these you should be able to recover the gold. although it is a little more difficult than from a copper/nickel plated gold.
iron or tin do complicate thins a little more, but electronic refining is more complicated to refine.
kovar is Iron, nickel,cobalt, maybe minute amount carbon silicone magnesium or similar complex alloy .
phosphor bronze is copper with 3% to 10%tin,1% phosphorous or similar complex alloy. 

Iron or nickel can be magnetic
if you dissolve these they wont be kovar, or phosphor bronze,any more, as this is a name for the alloy of metals (like brass)and the expense may be in making the metal & not in its contents.


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## jamthe3 (Jan 27, 2009)

Thankyou Butcher,

I assumed it would take a zillion of 'em anyway, but I get ahold of so much wire and smash everything to bejesus anyway that I was curious if it would be wiser to perhaps put them in a different pile....before I used to just index card them off into a brass container. Think I'll try to stock up a couple pounds or so instead now and have a blast getting frustrated trying to dissolve them.

By the way, thx to everyone who takes the time to answer & help me. When I do come on the forum I actually do search through the posts extensively trying to gather info & ideas; sometimes its overwhelming. Really can't explain the enjoyment it brings me and with any luck & a lot of perserveriance hopefully I'll be able to contribute more myself.

Cheers,
John


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## Anonymous (Jan 27, 2009)

I think this is a great place to learn and exchange ideas.

I thank everyone.

Jim


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## jamthe3 (Jan 31, 2009)

Thanks for telling me how to upload them Harold, hopefully I'll get it right. Took a while to find the camera and charge the battery but here's the pics of the stuff they gave me.

If anybody has any suggestions, ideas or knows what the big boards actually are I'd love to learn.

Cheers,
John


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## jamthe3 (Jan 31, 2009)

didn't know i was so bad at taking pictures!


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## butcher (Jan 31, 2009)

looks like some high quality scrap,good find


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## jamthe3 (Jan 31, 2009)

Thanks any ideas what the boards are from and the best course of action?? The one w/ the Intel chip is dated 1989-1994. I'm assuming this kind is what ya'all refer to when saying "ceramic" chip. It all came from an Army hospital's information management division.

I mean, some are obvious like the bad power supplies and hard drives, but other than the i690 chip and what looks like memory sticks, I really don't have a clue.

Cheers,
John


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## g_axelsson (Jan 31, 2009)

The computer board with the I960 processor is an AMI series 428 SCSI card with 32 Mbyte buffer memory.
It could be worth a lot more than the gold contents, I found prices from $7 to $150 for it. The cheapest one was the auction on ebay

I was almost tempted to buy that myself but I realized that I didn't know what to use it for.


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## jamthe3 (Feb 5, 2009)

Went at it w/ a chisel for a bit. This is what's still left on the board & the flatpacks / IC's removed.

It didn't have a processor & the memory stick has gold colored fingers but the other card's fingers are metalic silver in color?

Are some of these chips worth accumalating for future processing when enough are gathered?

Thanks,
John


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## butcher (Feb 7, 2009)

yes save them for later batchs


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## jamthe3 (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks Butcher.

I've read post after post after post (this forum is true enjoyment for me) and have read and accumalated tidbits of infor and plan on taking a whack at it soon.

So far I read that possibly 1 kilo of these might contain up to 13 grams of silver & 1 gram of gold; that a decent way to smash them up would be using a 1" pipe w/ cap inside a 2" pipe w/ cap to get a powder; and that 1 gallon of nitric mixed w/ 1 gallon of water will dissolve 100 troy ozs of silver.

I'm thinking of getting past the pulverizing stage & then possibly incinerating and making an electro magnet cylinder to drop the incinerated powder through before trying to figure out how much nitric to use. I made some (hopefully at least) homemade nitric using new battery acid and 13.75-0-46 potassium nitrate. Don't remember the strength of the battery acid, but imagine it was already diluted. Will have to look it up I guess.

Anyway, thanks for the interest and patience w/ my questions...I know 13 grams of silver probably seems trivial to ya'all, but I'm having a blast just reading, accumalating and prepping. Can't wait to mess it all up, lol!!

Cheers,
John


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## qst42know (Feb 7, 2009)

There is no need to magnetically separate. Gold plating is applied to magnetic and non-magnetic E-scrap components.

Review the recipe for homemade nitric, your battery acid should be concentrated.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2887935/GOLD-REFINING-FORUM-HANBOOK-VOL-1


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## butcher (Feb 7, 2009)

the resins in electronics when incinerated are awful, if done need an after-burner in flue to burn the toxic smoke


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## jamthe3 (Mar 2, 2009)

Okay, actually got around to trying a couple grams of these things before committing to messing up a few lbs...lol.

Dissolved two grams in a bit of homemade nitric. Took quite a while and judging by the reaction and previous input from ya'all I'd guess it was probably the phosphorous bronze make up.

Obvious copper content, cloud/paste of what I believe is probably from tin. .2 grams of non-metallic, non-dissolving, same shape connector residue & what "looks" like an impressive amount of fine gold powder/flake floating around before filtering that I'm sure when dried & weighed won't even register on the scales...LoL!!

Ran it through nitric twice, any ideas of what the undisolved base might be?

Cheers,
John

I'll add this edit for the amusement of all---
Sometimes its fun being dumb....answered my own question, its the left over brass that I didn't have enough nitric to absorb....fizzing away right now in another couple mls, lol!!!


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## qst42know (Mar 2, 2009)

Nitric will not disolve stainless steel. If fresh nitric doesn't cut it it may be stainless.


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