# Super Old Computer Boards.



## Deldaddio (Oct 23, 2011)

I thought you guys would get a kick out of checking out this old board. I have no idea what it came from, it came from my scrappin' buddy. The color of the oxidation on the wires suggests to me that they are silver. I thought someone out there might have an idea of the age of this thing. I figure it is from the 50's or 60's sometime, before they started just tracing the circuits on the board.


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## Deldaddio (Oct 23, 2011)

This is the other side.


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## resabed01 (Oct 23, 2011)

It's a wire wrap board. Wire wrap is still used today for prototyping. It can be a quick way to interconnect some chips to get a working project for testing. Sometimes it's used to produce a small run of production boards. Most likely your board is 70s or 80s.
The wiring would be silver plated copper wire. Gold is on those wire wrap post.


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## Deldaddio (Oct 23, 2011)

Cool, thanks!


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## MMFJ (Oct 24, 2011)

You'll most likely want to remove the wrapped wires before processing (there's no sense in mixing the silver-plated copper in with the gold-plated stuff).

Oh, it looks like a slow and painful process - don't worry - it is! 

But, there's a special tool for it, looks like a tube with a little hook on the end of it which gets the unwrapping started. Then, it is just a couple twists to loosen it enough to pull off. They also make a quickie hand tool (looks like a little pistol) and even an attachment for a drill/electric screwdriver (talk about getting those wires off FAST! 

Hardly worth the investment if you are doing only one board, but with as many wires as you have, and over time you will likely get more (if you stick with gathering gold, you will.... - so, you will need one.

I don't have a link for any of them, but a search for 'wire-wrap tool' should bring up several options. I used to have one in my tool box when I did a lot of wire-wrapping many years ago (when we built prototype boards, but also used a LOT in the telecom industry - at least up until 1995, when I got out of it).

If someone knows of a good place to get a single tool (haven't checked, maybe Radio Shack?), I'd be interested. I've got some backplanes out of a 'new' Cisco router that has a ton of wirewrap on it that I need to clean up one of these days (when I get so totally bored that I'll dig into it!


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## resabed01 (Oct 24, 2011)

This should help you out...

http://search.digikey.com/us/en/cat/tools/wire-wrap/1245295?k=wire%20wrap


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