# Sound Blaster Live! PCI cards



## kasm5150 (May 20, 2011)

I have a bunch of the brown colored Sound Blaster Live! PCI cards and it appears that they are entirely gold plated on both sides, with brown over it.I scratched it in several places and gold showed thru.Anybody familiar with these?If I'm right, how do I get the brown off?


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## Claudie (May 20, 2011)

You can try the solder mask removal method to remove the brown. There is a video showing how to do it on Lazersteve's site.


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## Crosswire3 (May 21, 2011)

I just did a test run with 20 of these cards and retrieved a VERY minimal amount of values. The gold came off as a fine powder as opposed to a foil. Unless someone else finds that these are worth processing, I would have to say it's not worth the trouble.


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## copperkid_18 (May 21, 2011)

I have 50 or so cards like these....just a different company but they are still intirely gold plated. PM me if interested.


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## lazersteve (May 22, 2011)

The gold is very thin on these. Not worth the effort to recover unless you have nothing better to do with your time and even then very disappointing yields. 

Steve


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## copperkid_18 (May 22, 2011)

to ebay they go! :twisted:


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## solar_plasma (May 5, 2013)

I examined some older Creative Labs Soundblaster or Vibra16 boards after I read on the forum, they are fully goldplated. But their plating looks very light and shiny, almost silverish. Why? Yes, I understand, the plating is very thin, BUT since there is copper under beneath, which is darker in colour, I can't explain myself, why they are that shiny. Is it a gold-nickel-alloy or what?


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## Claudie (May 5, 2013)

I am thinking that there is a layer of Nickel between the Gold & Copper to keep the Copper from migrating to the Gold. :|


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## DarkspARCS (Jun 11, 2013)

I think it's actually an Ag-Sn-Cu alloy which is widely used and often mistaken for gold. I was caught by the sb live card, compared it to gold fingers timmed from other cards and noticed that even the fingers on the sb live card were more silver in color... so I tossed it into the silver bin...


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## shmandi (Jun 11, 2013)

Has anyone tested this? I have many fingers from this kind of cards and I don't want to mix them with gold fingers if they are not gold. Some older E ISA cards are also entirely plated and looks very bright and silverish.


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## g_axelsson (Jun 11, 2013)

Some older cards could be tin-plated. Silver plate is VERY RARE as silver tarnish and isn't a suitable metal for low power signal connectors.
Some cheap cards are so thinly plated with gold that you almost see no yellow color at all, I have studied one such gold plate in an electron microscope.

Göran


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