MMFJ
Well-known member
I'm new around here, but reading and learning lots (and, getting the 'bug', for sure!)
We get loads from various places, mostly gov't lots and until recently, we just tossed (to a scrap guy) anything we couldn't find for sale elsewhere on the internet.
Some units look too good to give away and/or we haven't gotten around to researching them yet, etc. - we call these "chicken" units (those that sit around, taking up space - you want to do something about them, but feel they might not have any value, so you don't waste your time...).
Well, yesterday, I got into one of them and found a manufacturer number. After calling and a couple emails, looks like this is just too old for them/resale, so I decided to scrap it out - and I'm pretty glad I did!
From the one unit, we pulled;
Plus, about 15 lbs of aluminum - mostly painted, but 3-4 lbs was clean.
Only took about an hour to tear it all down (not nearly as long as I thought it would) and much of that time was getting the backplanes out (this unit was built by combining pre-manufactured units and securing them into an outer shell - loads of screws - just over 1/2 pound!)
So, now, I'm storing just cards. But, they are cards with a good amount of gold on them (I think) - it is obvious just by looking at the fingers which cards are older - the gold has a much richer (almost brown-ish - maybe just oxidation?) color. The finger on the top-right side of the card on the left is 1" of 'solid' metal!
Next step, more forum reading to determine just what all I should capture from these boards (other than fingers, CPUs and other obvious gold) and starting the deconstruction process on them (the nice thing is that the memory chips are all in sockets, just pop 'em out!). I think I'm pretty ready for everything except removing the traces from the back of the memory board (the only one with gold traces), but I'm sure open to ideas!
We get loads from various places, mostly gov't lots and until recently, we just tossed (to a scrap guy) anything we couldn't find for sale elsewhere on the internet.
Some units look too good to give away and/or we haven't gotten around to researching them yet, etc. - we call these "chicken" units (those that sit around, taking up space - you want to do something about them, but feel they might not have any value, so you don't waste your time...).
Well, yesterday, I got into one of them and found a manufacturer number. After calling and a couple emails, looks like this is just too old for them/resale, so I decided to scrap it out - and I'm pretty glad I did!
From the one unit, we pulled;
Plus, about 15 lbs of aluminum - mostly painted, but 3-4 lbs was clean.
Only took about an hour to tear it all down (not nearly as long as I thought it would) and much of that time was getting the backplanes out (this unit was built by combining pre-manufactured units and securing them into an outer shell - loads of screws - just over 1/2 pound!)
So, now, I'm storing just cards. But, they are cards with a good amount of gold on them (I think) - it is obvious just by looking at the fingers which cards are older - the gold has a much richer (almost brown-ish - maybe just oxidation?) color. The finger on the top-right side of the card on the left is 1" of 'solid' metal!
Next step, more forum reading to determine just what all I should capture from these boards (other than fingers, CPUs and other obvious gold) and starting the deconstruction process on them (the nice thing is that the memory chips are all in sockets, just pop 'em out!). I think I'm pretty ready for everything except removing the traces from the back of the memory board (the only one with gold traces), but I'm sure open to ideas!
