The beginning, first board

[WEG]

I just happened to pick out an old DVR to start with. I'll try to add a few pictures in this (another first). When I got the drive apart I noticed the large goldish looking areas on the board so I placed a drop of nitric acid on one. There was no reaction which I guess is a good sign. Next I stripped the board of larger components saving the gold coated pins along with the flatpacks for burning and grinding. What would you say is the next step for the board? There appears to be a lot of gold on the board along with a lot of small surface mounted components.

 

[WEG]

Would incenarating be next?

 

[niteliteone]

After depopulating the entire board. I would put it in HCl/peroxide to eat the copper and release the gold.
Won't be a lot of gold, since it's flash plated.
To much agitation will break the gold into small flakes so go easy on the agitation.

Basically a standard HCl/peroxide process.

Hope this helps
Tom C.

 

[WEG]

After a couple more hours of reading I found a post that mentioned after depopulating a board to give it a brief wash in Hcl to eliminate any solder. As an experiment I placed a small coil of unused solder and a piece of what turned out to be copper plated tube in Muratic acid. After 24 hours the solder and copper plating was gone; I presume the solder and copper were desolved into the solution. If I were to soak the board in Muratic acid I'd guess that the solder and copper would desolved but what happens to the thin gold plating? Would it fall off as foils once the solder and copper are desolved?

I have not yet read about a HCl/peroxide solution.

 

[nickvc]

WEG no disrespect but asking the questions you are it seems obvious you haven't done your homework.
Have you read Hoke, the forum handbooks or visited Lazersteves site to view his videos?
Have you made your stannous to test solutions?
I know the urge to get stuck into recovering your gold but if you get things wrong it's going to take you a lot longer to actually hold your first button or if your very unlucky you might even lose your values by not knowing where they are.
You can't lose any gold if you just keep harvesting while your reading and getting the processes down pat for any item you have or might encounter, take your time and get it right, if you get stuck or don't understand something just post a question, but be aware you will get more replies and help if you csn prove by the way you post your question that you have down dime studying.

 

[WEG]

nick, you pretty much read me correctly. I did print out all 362 pages of Hoke's book so I could make notes on it and am reading it. I'm waiting for more hardware type items such as beakers, test tubes, funnels and filters ect so I can do some of the test asked for in the first few chapters. Once I have the equipment necessary for the "acquaintance" test I'll need to find some platinum filings for the first "acquaintance experiment". I really do not want to file on a 1 oz coin to get the filings; perhaps a talk with our local jeweler will help.

I've been to lazersteves site and tried to view videos but nothing comes up when I click on a link. A lot of signiture lines have links to videos, and again nothing comes up. I do not know why I can not view ANY video from links here or at Lazersteves; I'd very much like to view them.

I'm hoping to have the equipment I need very soon to follow Hoke's book. Until then I'm trying to do a few simple things such as finding out how to break down boards and learn which components are worth keeping. With this first board I have it striped of larger components but there are still a lot of very small surface mounted components. I'm sorting and keeping all components for later. I understand different components are processed in different ways which I need to learn.

So while I'm waiting on the lab equipment so I can do as directed in Hoke's book I'm looking at this board and wondering what is the next step; do people use chemicals at this point or incinerate? If the entire board is placed in chemicals then my next step is to stop and move on to the next board until I can finish Hoke's.

Please understand I am in the earliest stage of learning this and am trying to do so in the way recomended here.

Bill

 

[lazersteve]

Some of the older videos on my site (cell videos mostly) are hosted by the servers I use for my website. Since they are not streamed they take longer to load on your computer. Other problems can be windows media player codecs update, media player version (needs to be MP11), active x scripting could be disabled, firewall and internet security suite blocking media files. The browser you are using can also be to blame. Firefox requires a media player plugin and an IE Tab plugin to play some of the older files. Some cell phones won't play media player files as well.

What is your platform and browser?

On the FAQ page of my site are some Q & A which include fixes to some of the more common playback issues.

Sometimes it's simply a matter of being patient while the server downloads the content to your system.

All of the youtube hosted videos should play fine regardless of the above settings/software. All of my new videos are posted in this format.

Steve

 

[WEG]

I'm using Vista SP2 and IE 8.

 

[lazersteve]

Update your media player, adjust your web security to allow active X, and update your codecs.

That should fix it unless you have an internet security suite blocking the embedded media player.

Do you get the media player controls frame with an empty white box in it, or just a web place holder in the middle of the page?

Steve

 

[WEG]

No other page appears, the page I'm on will flash and that's it, I'm not taken to another page.
I'll Update my media player, and check the web security (to allow active X), and lastly update my codecs. I'll get it, thank you,
Bill

 

[Geo]

do you have a current flash player or web player?

 

[lazersteve]

No other page appears, the page I'm on will flash and that's it, I'm not taken to another page.
I'll Update my media player, and check the web security (to allow active X), and lastly update my codecs. I'll get it, thank you,
Bill

When you click the video link from the main site the page reloads to the video page. If you have not logged in you will be prompted for user name and password first (gold and goldm1ner*). The video page will have a media player frame with the controls on it and the video will start after it buffers. You can click the play button to make the video start during buffering, but it will stop again when the buffering continues.

Steve

 

[WEG]

Thanks Steve, at 7:00 PM I started Windows Update to begin updating everything; turn out it said I needed 51 updates! It took so long to download using a cable connection that I went to bed. This morning it was stuck on installing update 1 which had something to do with ActiveX so I told it to restart. In shutting down it said it was installing 1 of 51 updates and not to unplug or turn off the computer. When I go back upstairs if it's still on the first update I'm just going to shut it down. That laptop upstairs is what I use 90% of the time but it appears to have some problems.

I'm going to try from the system downstairs (this one) and see if I have better luck.
Bill