# I have these various boards, they are very old.



## TheGuardian (Aug 2, 2012)

Ive run into these boards, they are very old and look like they might be from a government auction or something of that extent. Ive begun removing the gold fingers off of a few of them but would like an opinion about what else might be depopulated from them and How I might identify them. Many thanks in advance sincerely, The Guardian.


----------



## NobleMetalWorks (Aug 2, 2012)

Do you have any pictures?

Scott


----------



## TheGuardian (Aug 2, 2012)

I will edit, I was in such a rush to post that I forgot :shock:


----------



## NobleMetalWorks (Aug 2, 2012)

Some of the pictures are too small to see what the components are, but in a couple pictures it looks like one of the boards is a back-plane board with wire strong between gold pins?

Military boards usually have inspection stickers, and a lot of times dates stamped on the boards. The white board should be a sign that they are old, the gold plating on the finger boards if they are as old as they look, should be raised and you should feel it easily with your finger.

Honestly, they look like telecom boards to me, but there is no way to be sure unless you post larger pictures.

All the chips that are ceramic should have some PMs, a lot of times if they don't have gold, they have silver or palladium on the inside. So they would have to be crushed and processed accordingly.

Not sure what type of capacitors ,if they are mono or not, but those also might have Pd.

On the back-plane boards, if that is what they are, the pins should be gold plate over Cu. The wires though might be something totally different. If that is a back-plane board with wires between the pins, can you post what color the wire is? Blue? Gold? Green?

Not only does the finger boards have gold plating, but the connecting pins should be Au over Cu also.

If the boards are telecom or military, the PC board traces, the metal lines between components, might be silver. I have a lot of military boards I haven't run yet that have silver on them, if I get a chance I'll take a picture so you can see what I am talking about. 

Also, if they are military boards you might see somewhere on them something like mil-spec 3 or mil-spec 6. The number would be from 1-6 with 6 being the best. These boards however might be too old to have that printed on them anywhere.

Scott


----------



## macfixer01 (Aug 3, 2012)

SBrown said:


> Some of the pictures are too small to see what the components are, but in a couple pictures it looks like one of the boards is a back-plane board with wire strong between gold pins?
> 
> Military boards usually have inspection stickers, and a lot of times dates stamped on the boards. The white board should be a sign that they are old, the gold plating on the finger boards if they are as old as they look, should be raised and you should feel it easily with your finger.
> 
> ...




Scott,
Yes the photos are too small to be much good, but I don't see anything that looks to me like a backplane board (or wire-wrap board as you're actually describing). Are you referring to the board in the last picture (there's also a smaller image of it in another photo along with four other boards), that board with the green female Berg type connector at it's top edge? It appears to be just an extender board with edge fingers at the bottom and a female slot connector on top, and straight traces connecting them. They're used so a card may be plugged into a backplane or motherboard but it's also raised up above other boards where it may be accessed more easily to check voltages and signals.

The green 10-turn potentiometers seen on two of the boards 'may' contain some gold plated pieces inside.

macfixer01


----------



## glorycloud (Aug 3, 2012)

The gold fingers look very nice. I imagine the yields from them would be good. 8)


----------



## samuel-a (Aug 3, 2012)

Hoard the fingers, low grade the rest of the board.

Little hard to tell by these tiny pictures, but i think, as they are now (with fingers) you would be lucky to fetch mid grade for them.


----------



## goldsilverpro (Aug 3, 2012)

I guess the term "old" is in the eye of the beholder.


----------



## TheGuardian (Aug 3, 2012)

The plating on the fingers is very much raised and double sided on some, I have removed the fingers yet will be gathering some more boards before I do AP. I will also be removing the "green 10-turn potentiometers".


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 3, 2012)

TheGuardian said:


> The plating on the fingers is very much raised and double sided on some, I have removed the fingers yet will be gathering some more boards before I do AP. I will also be removing the "green 10-turn potentiometers".



Plating is not raised. It is just plating. Perhaps we can agree that plated contacts are raised. Fingers are mostly double sided. If you plan to process boards then don't forget to collect all IC chips and monolythic capacitors and resistors.


----------



## TheGuardian (Aug 3, 2012)

Yes I have not used the correct terminology and I stand corrected, the plated contacts themselves are raised, which gives me the impression that there is a higher gold content, Im aware that this may not be the case. as far as preparing the boards for processing, should they be as depopulated as possible?


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 3, 2012)

By processing boards I meant to cut off fingers, desolder chips and scrape off resistors and capacitors. That is as far as I would go. I see no point of soaking these boards whole. 
I know that many people here strip off that green board coating and try to recover plating which is sometimes under but I am yet to see anyone who actually made profit doing that. When you will count cost of acids and amount of labour involved I think you will be safer to go and buy bullion instead. Maybe this is not true in some rare cases when you have some *very very old* boards, military or telecom type. 
I do not say that that type of gold cant be recovered, it is being done in huge volumes in copper smelters. I bend over and collect every 1c coin I see on floor, but some type of recovery is simply not suitable for hobbyist or backyard refiner.


----------

