Are these worth pulling off the board?

[spare time toys]

I got an old computer and have broken it down into big chunks. It had 2 nice 386 chips in it and lots of fingers. My question is are all these other chips worth removing for processing because I dont see any gold on them?

As always thanks for any and all help.

 

[Marcel]

Mostly SDRAMs and some TTLs. The DIP chips are difficult to desolder if you dont have the right means. If you can cut them off, it´s worth a try, you never know with theses old ICs..
In any case you could try to get the sockets. They have goldplated contacts as you can see. Either heat the board with a hot air blower from the back side, which may take long or lay the board on a hot plate, or do both. Once the solder melts you can pull all these components with some pliers - and training.

 

[Geo]

most of the IC's will have gold bonding wires.

 

[macfixer01]

I got an old computer and have broken it down into big chunks. It had 2 nice 386 chips in it and lots of fingers. My question is are all these other chips worth removing for processing because I dont see any gold on them?

As always thanks for any and all help.

Of course "some" are worth pulling off, not necessarily all. Those brownish looking chips in your photo may be ceramic packages. If so they're easy enough to split apart and see if there is gold inside or not. A lot of the plastic chips may also have small amounts of gold inside, under the chip itself or on the inside ends of the pins, and of course the bonding wires. Especially brands like Motorola. This has been talked about several times. For example here:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12902

You don't have to waste a lot of time on them desoldering. I just grab them with a pair of end cutters and give a twist to break them loose from the board. They'll need to be incinerated to separate the metals from the plastic.

macfixer01