Why there's still people buying ebay guides ?

[blueduck]

I dont know about a no-sell list, but I sent an email over a month ago and got no reply, and i never posted anything at all about her books god, bad or indifferent at that time. It was a bout the time I offered whoever had the 200 oxygen sensors a quarter a piece if they shipped them to me..... even at that i might have been over stepping my boundaries of knowledge at the time, but i figured if a big company could offer that I could compete kinda.... but the fella did not take that as an offer..... and I took that price from another post that one of the fellas put up and in that they wanted a ton of the little units make a person wonder at that.

Anyhow I believe that as more hobbyists get into the PGM's the buyers will have to straighten up their acts, cause no one can suffer through a network of folks who post free information as to who does the best at price and honesty in the buying realm and scaling out. And though i prefer a face to face buyer, since I live in the middle of Idaho state, i know I will have to ship and trust the people I ship to not to take me on weight or price [been there done that with lumber, lost some really nice specialty wood to a buyer with a A-1 rating, cause i did not brand my wood... only once way back in 1994 but such has stuck in my craw ever since].

networking with like minded folks has its benefits for other reasons too.... and although I have always went by the standard "advice is worth what you pay for it" this particular forum is worth way more as the fellas giving the advice and help are truly informative and helpful...... for free.

William

 

[jimdoc]

I have a question about an older Ebay post for info.
It was one of those information sellers about computer
scrap that said that there is a certain hard drive that
has close to an ounce of gold in it. Does anybody know
what hard drive he was talking about? Just curious, not
curious enough to buy the info for , but I figured one of
you may know.
Jim

 

[Harold_V]

An ounce of gold? My guess would be the ones you place your Maple Leaf in-----otherwise I'm not buying it.

I say nonsense. This guy surely must be looking for suckers.

If it got down to conductivity, silver is a better conductor, so it would be used for that purpose, and as far as I know, it's not.

I can't imagine the need for a large volume of gold in such a device. Even guidance systems for military aircraft wouldn't have a high concentration of gold----in spite of the fact that some of the components are actually made of gold alloy (balance screws in the gyroscopes).

Harold

 

[Charlena]

I have been a techie since 98 and I’ve never heard of such a thing either.

However I do recall back in the days of 2 ft x 1 ft (that’s a estimate only as its been darn near 20 years since I saw it but..) or bigger hard drive that before I even knew what a computer was I was still a scrapper and we came across a couple of these so called "hard drives" and I only knew they were hard drives because as we tore them open someone who knew about computers then was explaining how they work. BOY this thing was huge in comparison to that of even the XT!
I guess it was to a VERY large server or something. I remember having to lay it on the ground, mount it and use a huge ratchet to get the torque broken on the cover...I couldn’t believe how tight it was. These days I understand why that was.
But anyways what I was getting at was that something like those are the only things I can think of that may possibly have anywhere close to that much gold in them. Based on the size and the fact that gold wasn't as expensive, technologies were very new and they may have been experimenting with such things...? Who knows...but now I’m interested in finding out!

 

[jimdoc]

I think he said it was a chip/heatsink? I figured it
must be some super rarity military or nasa item,
that the common person will never see anyway.
He mentioned it as a teaser to buy his info.
The load of computers and parts I got yesterday
had some different looking very old hard drives
in the parts boxes. that is what got me thinking
about what that guy stated again.
Thanks. Jim

 

[Charlena]

The load of computers and parts I got yesterday
had some different looking very old hard drives
in the parts boxes. that is what got me thinking
about what that guy stated again.
Thanks. Jim

Those really old MFM drives if that is what you mean ..can be very valuable at times. Look em up for kicks before you do anything with them. Ive seen them sell at times for 100-200 dollars . Vintage computing is sooooo weird that way. Heck a couple years ago if you had an old "clicky" keyboard brand new in the box, you know those really old early keyboards that everyone swore by that made that clicky sound when hitting the keys? 1000 dollars and sometimes more for a new one...and even an old beat up one missing keys and all dirty brought you 500. I dunno what that trend was all about but it didnt last long. made me sooo mad...I must of had truckloads of those old dinasours and I got rid of them because I was tired of hearing from everyone.."what in the heck are you ever gonna do with that old thing???" well I sure made sure they SAW the things selling for 500 bucks no matter what condition when it was going on! I'm now ignoring those voices when they start in on me.

 

[jimdoc]

Charlena,
There was a few of those mfm drives, they are in pieces already.
There was an older one that was twice as thick as those, that is in \pieces already also. I will have to check it for a name or identification.
The clicky keyboard thing is also news to me. I have probably scrapped a bunch of them, even new in the box ones. You never know about the value of anything untill you check it out.
Thanks. Jim

 

[lazersteve]

I can't imagine a hard drive cpu or board containing an ounce of gold. I have several very old hard drives on hand. Here's some photos:

[img:582:1134]http://www.goldrecovery.us/images/oldhdd.jpg[/img]

These have date codes from 89-91. They are twice as thick as 'normal' drives.

Steve

 

[goldsilverpro]

Steve, how much gold do you think is in them?

 

[lazersteve]

Chris,

I don't like to speculate on unknowns such as these critters. I'm sure it's not much. Proper tests would be the only way to confirm the correct figures.

The platters are coated with ferric oxide in these old drives, no gold, no platinum. I assume the chips and pins are more or less about the same as standard plastic pack chips and header pins.

The only items on these boards I can think of that may have higher precious metals content than todays components are the surface mounted parts. These drives were made back before the newer fabrication technologies emerged for SMD's. Thus the monolithics would likely contain both gold and platiunum, some were even made with palladium end contacts.

Maybe one day I'll get around to providing an accurate answer to this question.

Steve

 

[goldsilverpro]

Just a total guess, off the top of your head, in the form of a range. Your guess would probably be closer than anybody else's. Any information is better than no information.

 

[lazersteve]

Chris,

If I had to pull some numbers out of the hat I'd guess that a pound of the plastic ics from these boards would yield a gram of gold. Also 500 grams of the old monolithics could conceiveably produce 1g Pd, 1g Au, and 1/2g Pt or more. Probably some silver and ruthenium too.

These numbers are just guesses based upon my experience with this type of scrap and should not be considered hard figures by anyone. I could be way off. Milspec equipment would also provide higher yields.

Steve

 

[jimdoc]

I had a few that looked like the ones in Steve's pictures.
The biggest one was a Seagate ST-4038. Here is a link to
a website selling one for $175. I know there isn't that much
precious metals in there. I should have checked this stuff out
before I rip stuff apart. You don't think a 32mb hard drive should
be worth anything but scrap, but you never know.

http://www.aacomputech.com/aacomp-bin/web_store/web_store.cgi?product=MFM_RLL&cart_id=5527510_74571

http://www.mbiusa.com/mbi_000041.htm

There is no picture on that site, but this page has a picture of it;

http://paulaxford.com/computer_collection/pc_comps.htm

I guess everybody should remember to check the older stuff for
collectors value before you rip them apart.
Jim

 

[Charlena]

I will wait till you make the "how and how much to recover from old MFM drives" DVD

 

[Charlena]

I had a few that looked like the ones in Steve's pictures.
The biggest one was a Seagate ST-4038. Here is a link to
a website selling one for $175. I know there isn't that much
precious metals in there. I should have checked this stuff out
before I rip stuff apart. You don't think a 32mb hard drive should
be worth anything but scrap, but you never know.

I guess everybody should remember to check the older stuff for
collectors value before you rip them apart.
Jim

YES everyone please check into stuff before you rip into it. You will be amazed at how much some of the vintage stuff sells for. Just do a basic "vintage computer" search on ebay. then look at the completed sales items. Some of that stuff you'de never ever guess to sell at what it does. Thats all I do is collect old hardware and do research on it. Im pretty dang good at it now.
Pays off too
I just sold 16 old dinasuaric motorola cell phone modem thingies that were way obsolete, new but so old people would laugh at you if you asked them to buy them. I sold them for over 1000 bucks. I think it was like 1250 plus shipping. oh and my costs? 0 my time and labor in retrieving them...housing them. but all in all it was 100% profit. Hey I see an ebook on ebay in my future! LMAO NOT

 

[aflacglobal]

Hey I see an ebook on ebay in my future! Is that you Rose :?:

:shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[Cobraj]

Hi all,

The question of hard disks having Platinum is Yes, they do but the newest ones made today have 35% platinum in the fine coating on the disk. Today and disks from say 3 years ago have 35% Platinum. It is a Platinum/Cobalt alloy, the reason it’s used is for its magnetic properties which increases the amount of data that can fit on the disk. I have never assayed any but plan to down the line.


Info, there is more online:

Hard Disks

Platinum coated computer hard drive disks.
Click on image to enlarge or order. Platinum and data storage
The need for modern computers to store very large amounts of information has brought a rapid increase in the use of platinum to improve the data storage capacity of hard disks. The first hard disk drive, introduced by IBM in 1957, used fifty disks, each measuring 24 inches in diameter, to store just 5 megabytes of data. Nowadays, PC hard disks are available which can store 125 gigabytes (125,000 megabytes) of data, and capacity is increasing all the time. Manufacturers aim to continually reduce the average number of hard disks in each drive, so technology which can offer denser data storage is eagerly sought after.

Inside a hard disk
A hard disk drive looks and operates much like an old fashioned record player. Information is recorded and retrieved by a magnetic head mounted on a moveable arm, which hovers over a rapidly spinning disk. Each drive contains one or more disks; the disks in desktop PCs are usually made of aluminum, whereas high quality glass is often used for disks in laptop computers.

The disks are coated with a cobalt based alloy which has magnetic properties. This magnetic layer stores individual pieces of data, or "bits", in a series of circular tracks. The amount of data which can be recorded on a given surface area depends largely upon the strength of the field generated by the magnetic layer. Adding platinum enhances the magnetic qualities of the cobalt alloy, enabling data to be stored at higher densities and improving access times.

All disks contain platinum
Information storage requirements continue to expand at rapid rates, fuelled by the growing use of computers for video and audio applications. Today, all hard disks contain platinum in their magnetic layers, compared with around 50 per cent in 1997. The proportion of platinum in the magnetic alloy has been increasing steadily over time, from less than 10 per cent five years ago to over 35 per cent, on average, today.

 

[badastro]

Some of the newest hard disk platters contain atom thick layers of ruthenium...

Regardless, there is one ebook on ebay that discusses how to deplate platters in "minutes". I don't know how good the information is, but it seems to be unique.

 

[Charlena]

Info, there is more online:

Hard Disks

b]

can you please post a link to that info hun?
thanks!

 

[Cobraj]

The big guy

http://www.platinum.matthey.com/applications/harddisk.html