Bunch of OLD CPUs...scrap gold?

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DellAxim

Gawd
Joined
Feb 14, 2003
Messages
999
I just got a box of about 1000 old CPUs...pentium 1 and older, as well as about 25 pounds of SIMMs. They're worthless as computers, (that's why I was given them :D ) but I see alot of big lots of processors on ebay listed for scrap gold. How much gold is in this stuff? Would it be worth my time to try and get the gold extracted? Or should I just sell them on ebay as scrap? :)
 
1000, you've probably got less than an ounce. For the cost it's probably not worth your time.
 
But if you want to post me a few sticks of ram / cpus they'd make very nice keyrings :)

Actually you'd probably make more money if you made keyrings out of them and sold them on ebay.
 
your not gonna get much out of them,

hell if your close ill give you a couple bucks and pick them up (i want to use them as molding for my room, just slam them into the wall all along the top of it.
 
yes, pins are gold plated. You have only few millionts of an inch of gold over a Nickle / Kovar (it's an Iron nickle coblat alloy) / Copper base.
 
Heh. You just need to find around a thousand old mobo's. Then you could build a huge cluster out of ancient hardware! THAT would be 1337. :D

I've always thought that a solid state hard drive could be made using old types of RAM that nobody wants anymore. The problem would be power consumption and the physical size. I may actually try to design one, one of these days.
 
I know there's not much gold in these things...but I have ALOT of them. :D They're still worth over a grand on ebay...what are all those people buying them for?
 
I heard that NASA's interested in old junk like that because their systems are slowly failing and they can't afford to upgrade their entire system nor can they adapt the failed portions to modern technology. It's rather funny when you think about it.
 
i doubt there is harly any even if you had 1k cpus because i think the pins and stuff is jsut gike covered in gold and if you scrape it off chances are u will take parts of metal or some other crap that my make the gold worthless
 
Mr_Evil said:
I heard that NASA's interested in old junk like that because their systems are slowly failing and they can't afford to upgrade their entire system nor can they adapt the failed portions to modern technology. It's rather funny when you think about it.
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There is no way NASA is just going to buy some CPUs from some guy who has a box full of them.
 
Mr_Evil said:
I heard that NASA's interested in old junk like that because...they can't afford to upgrade their entire system
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Ha. That's crap. We feed NASA before we feed the hungry. I'm not sure where Kerry stands, but as long as Bush is around, NASA is doin' just fine.
 
DellAxim said:
I know there's not much gold in these things...but I have ALOT of them. :D They're still worth over a grand on ebay...what are all those people buying them for?
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Because people in general are stupid. If you can sell them on ebay for a grand, I'd say do it. Of course you haven't said what type of processors, 286, 386, 486, pentium? The type would definately affect their general resale value.

Of course if you want to look at the equipment involved in recovering that miniscule amount of gold, http://shorinternational.com/goldrecovery.htm

And if you just want to sell them to a company interested in buying them

http://electronics.exchangesystem.net/specs/gr030505.html

of course, they pay $0.12US / lb. Minimum of a truckload (40000 lbs)
 
GJSNeptune said:
Ha. That's crap. We feed NASA before we feed the hungry. I'm not sure where Kerry stands, but as long as Bush is around, NASA is doin' just fine.
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Well, the article I'm remembering was back during the Clinton administration. Now that I think about it more it may have been because they couldn't adapt to newer systems than a budget crunch. All I remember was that NASA was looking for old circa 1980's computer equipment to repair their systems. That's usually because my memory is a big pile of crap.
 
It isnt worth the time my dad used to do this it involves alot of hazardous chemicals and work. Large containers full of acid to disolve stripped down and broken up circut boards. You are left with this blackish sludge at the bottom of the bucket well that sludge is full of the miniscule ammounts of both gold and silver in circut boards that sludge has to be put into another type of chemical to disolve every thing but the gold then the gold has to be nutralized and cleaned. In the end you get a small vial with gold dust in it and that is from a stockpile larger than you discribed... Way less than an ounce. It would be quicker and more fun to strain the gold from Goldschlager to get an ammount of gold worth the work...








For those who dont know Goldschlager is Cinnamon Schnapps with gold flakes in it each bottle contains less than .01 ounce.
 
The only reason I can see these going for 1K on ebay is that if you literally have 1000+ CPU's that'd be paying $1 a chip - and you could do something like tile your bathroom. TBH $1 a tile isn't that expensive. :p And what techie could resist having their bathroom be a shrine to cores past?
 
Heh at a buck a cpu, that's damn expensive tile :) A quick froogle search found me a price of $2.31 / sq ft. Estimating 1.5 inches square for a cpu, at $1 / cpu, we're looking at $64 / sq ft of cpu tile :)
 
But they're even better than Hand painted! :p

And how can you compare froogled tile to a CPU tile? Tile hand painted by some secret craftsperson would be better - I know that there are handpainted/crafted 4 inch tiles sold for over $20 each. At prices like those the CPU's don't look so bad. ;)
 
GJSNeptune said:
Ha. That's crap. We feed NASA before we feed the hungry. I'm not sure where Kerry stands, but as long as Bush is around, NASA is doin' just fine.
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It's the government's job to feed NASA
It's your OWN job to feed yourself

I don't buy into this whole government give aways for people before giveaways for science deal that seems so popular these days... government is for society, not individuals

edit: sorry for hijacking thread off topic...
 
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