EMACs and IMACs

EMACs and IMACs

Recently I bid on an auction lot of PCs, which I never seem to win. They also had several lots of EMACs and colored IMACs and just for the heck of it I bid on a few lots of those as well. As usual I did not get the PCs, but won 3 lots of EMACs (27per lot) and one lot of IMACs (27ea). So I thought I would provide some tear down details.

First the general over view. It was a sealed bid auction and I bid $117 per lot, $4.33 per computer. I way over bid as all the rest of the lots sold for $57 per lot. Total including gas (125 miles each way, 2 trips) was $580 plus I gave 3 EMACs to my computer guy for the loan of his trailer.

I sold:

$250 5 EMACs with operating systems keyboards and mice for $50 each on craig’s list
$200 65 keyboards and 67 mice to a computer store
$710 80 GB hard drives, DVD/CD RW drives, 512mb ram, and a few other things to my computer guy
$404 Scrap steel, aluminum, low grade boards, copper yokes, degaussing wire and insulated wire to scrap yard.
$356 Mother boards, hard drive cards and smaller memory

Total $1920 for a profit of $1340 and I still have 4 computers I have not torn down and about 12 pounds of #1 copper for sale some other time.

So was it worth it? To a part timer like me, yes, because it got my lazy butt off the couch and working. To someone trying to make a living at it maybe not because it took an average of 21 ½ minutes to break each computer down into component parts. That time does not include stripping degaussing cable, cutting ribbon ends off, or removing the iron doodads off the sheet aluminum pieces.


Now the details. Every computer had a hard drive in it. About 30% were 80Gb, 6% were 61Gb and the rest 40 Gb. I scrapped the 40s and sold the rest. Getting the hard drives out is a pain so I would expect any lots of EMACs would still have their hard drives in them. I plugged in every computer before I scrapped it and found 7 EMACs and 2 IMACs that still had their operating systems. They were password protected, but it was an easy 5 minute job to break the password and set up a new password. Between the 5 EMACs with operating systems I sold for $50 each and the 80 Gb / 61 Gb hard drives I sold for $10 each I broke even on the cost and everything else was profit.

Tip #1 The EMACs have 7 screws that are about ½ inch wide, but have only a 2.5mm hex drive hole. I stripped the tips of several drivers trying to get them out. Tried using an angle grinder to cut out the stubborn ones and also ground slots in some to use a flathead screwdriver on. Eventually I used a small allen wrench to break the screws loose and then a screwdriver with a hex head to remove them. Never had a problem after that.

It took an average of 9:06 to pull the cover, remove the fan, hard drive section, remove the aluminum shield and low grade board, pull the yoke (0.52 lbs copper) and degaussing cable (0.52 lbs copper) and speakers and put the cover back on with 2 screws. I would do 3 computers at a time because it was faster to do the same step on all three before moving to the next step. This left you with a hard drive section, low grade board section, a bin of yokes and degaussing cables, fan and the CRT with the cover back on it to take to the dump (more on that later).

The hard drive section took 6:13 to disassemble. This provided the hard drive, a RW DVD/CD (sold for $5 each), 0.08 lbs memory, a 0.92 lb motherboard, 2.7 ounces of aluminum, 1.4 lbs steel and 0.16 pounds of #1 copper and 1 oz of copper/al radiator. The #1 copper was a 1 3/8 inch square by ¼ inch thick block of copper with a groove cut into it. It weighed just under 2.5 ounces. A ¼ copper tube was pressed into the groove and had aluminum radiator fins on the other end. The CPUs are soldered on the mother board and I did not remove them.

Tip #2 It was a pain to pry the ¼ inch tube from the block of copper. After I had done about half of them I found that if pulled the tube straight out they came out easily and I could do 10 that way in the time it took me to pry one out the old way.



The low grade board section took 6:06 to disassemble. It provided 0.73 lbs of transformers, 1.62 lbs of sheet aluminum, 0.23 lbs of extruded aluminum, 0.5 lbs of insulated wire, a 1.73 lb low grade board, and 0.19 lbs of copper backed transistors.

Disposal of the tubes: I took the stripped tubes with the cover back on to the local transfer station (dump) and they helped me unload the first dozen. After the first 50 though they told me I had to take them all the way to the main dump, 11 miles further away. They took them at the main dump as well, no problems and no charges. I was told they would charge $1.65 per 100 lbs, but they never did. A stripped EMAC weighs about 32 lbs.

The IMACs were a different story. The cover is in about 5-6 pieces, is a pain to get off and nearly impossible to get back on. However it is possible to remove one panel and through that remove the RW DVD/CD, hard drive and motherboard. After taking 2 completely apart I said screw this and just did the partial removal (3-5 minutes) and left the low grade board, yoke and degaussing cable on them and took them to the dump. The CPU is soldered on like the EMACs, but the heat sink is aluminum not copper like on the EMACs. I seriously doubt I will bid on any of the IMACs in the future unless they are darn near free.

This has been long and rambling. Hopefully somebody got something out of it.

Starbits

PS: The EMACs weigh 48.5 lbs. My first load of 54 EMACs and 2 boxes of keyboards, mice and power cords weighed 2700 lbs not counting the weight of the 8x14 double axel trailer…. just slightly above my SUVs towing capacity of 1650 lbs.