Is it worth pulling EPROMS? - Page 2

I have seen the ic's in tubes once. They come 20 or so in a tube that gets fed into a machine almost like a stapler is set up. They then get fed onto boards and soldered in place. At least thats how it was explained to me. The guy that had them offered to sell them to me at $2 #. He had something like 150# of them. This is when I just started scrapping and I turned him down If I only knew then what I know now....lol

Originally Posted by Bear

I don't ever recall seeing any in tubes etack

This is a picture of what IC tubes look like. This is what they come in when new.

Eric

Originally Posted by Bear

I think there is serious confusion still, between IC chips, and EPROMs.
I also think there are lots of discrepancies in the values of them all

EPROMs are IC's a particular type yes but IC's the same. The ones that the OP was talking about are reprogramming with UV rays that is why they have a window. there are also EPROMs that are made with the same polymers as the other black IC's and have no windows.

Eric

Originally Posted by Bear

I can't see where they're even worth messing with. Even at the $10 rate JG posted in that Ebay thing. There's at least a hundred chips there, and if you can find and pull them in less than a minute each, you're excessively well streamlined for targeting $10lb chips.
So, lets say they only costed you 90 minutes there, how much was the listing, not only in fees, but in time? The packing, and the shipping? Then, the possible chargebacks?
Now, lets go the simpler $5 route. You've got at least an hour and a half into these 90-100 chips that's worth $5, when most likely the boards you pulled them from bring $4, so you're making a dollar every hour and a half?
It just don't make sense to me

First of all i can pull the socketed ones out is less than 10 seconds with my bare fingers. Your blowing the ebay/problems thing way out of proportion. I average 1 return per 100 items sold. The shipping and fees are minimal also with a paypal merchant account and an ebay store, my fees average 10%. So say i sell 10 pounds of ic's for $100 after fees and shipping im still gonna clear $85 or $8.50 pound on them. If all i can get from a refiner is $4 im gonna go the ebay route every single time. Just saying.

Originally Posted by Bear

I'd like to watch you pull a bunch of them out with your bare fingers, haha! I've never tried it, but know for sure they can be "in there"

I've tried it and they always get stuck in my thumb then I bleed on the IC's it's no fun. I use a screw driver and the pop out fast. I do it when I'm removing the batteries and Ta caps from my boards.

jghilino next time you get 10# send then to a toll refiner and see if you come out better. I bet you will $85.00 is less than two grams of gold.

Eric

yes i forgot to mention sliding the flat blade screwdriver under the chip and prying it up before you grab it, ive gotten bit a few times also. I have over 10 pounds. I am not selling anytime soon, i am trying to get a large flat rate box full of them.

I used to scour the vintage computer area of ebay, there are people selling the ICs, Proms, Eproms in long plastic tubes. They are shaped so that the chips fit perfectly and are able to slide up and down the tube with little pins on each side to prevent them from falling out. When I get a chance I'll take a few pictures of them, I have hundreds.

If you look in the vintage area on ebay, you will see that people are selling bulk chips in these tubes, but also you will see people selling individual chips, sometimes for a lot of money. I came across small ICs that were gold plated on the legs and top. I was looking them up online, just googled number on the chip, and found out they were worth $35 usd each, so you know what I did. I sold them for $30 each to the same company.

Here some examples on ebay:

vintage eproms | eBay

Sometimes it's not the value of eprom attached to the board, or the refine value, but the actual value to people who restore vintage computer equipment. If you are careful and pay attention, specially to older computer equipment, you can find and save these little bits of history, and make a killing while you are at it.

Scott

It's hard to tell what they have unless you test them. Most of the silver you see on the inside, so far as my experience has been, is Pd (Palladium). Some of them actually yield a fairly good amount of Pd per lb, in the neighborhood of 1-2 grams, almost the same yield as MLCCs. In a few cases there is Pd and Pt, sometimes it's Pd and Ag. Just depends on the chips.

Generally speaking, refiners, if they are being careful, pay per lb when the metals are unknown, what they believe they can risk in relation to unknown metals the eproms might contain. That is why you see refiners paying less than what you might should get, not because they are trying to rip you off but rather they are trying to make sure they don't over pay.

If you do a little research on your chips on a site like Global Spec:

GlobalSpec - Engineering Search & Industrial Supplier Catalogs

As an example I did a quick search using "Pentium Pro" as the search string. Here were the results:

GlobalSpec - Searchable Engineering Catalogs on the Net

I know that looks like a lot of information, but you can scale your search down for exact results. The site collects and makes available information and specs on different items. There is a wealth of information on the site. If you have a bunch of ERPOMS and not sure what types of metals they might contain, or if you have ICs and/or Proms in quantity that are the same, it might be worth while to pull the specs, find out the metals used in the manufacture and sometimes even how much was used in each chip. I know I have said this before, but I'm going to mention it again. With a little extra work on the scrapping side, and adding this information to your sale, you will make more money. It's a value added service you are providing the end buyer. Anytime you do anything extra with your material, you are adding value. When I refine silver to such high purity that you can see the metal crystal structure in the bar, I just added value to my silver bar, and can command a price above what normally a silver bar would command because it has value beyond just the silver content.

Scott

If you get a cheap tool, usually called an IC Chip Puller, you can pull the EProms, Proms and ICs, relatively easy. I did an ebay search and this is what I came up with:

ic chip puller | eBay

Believe me, this simple little tiny tool will save you tons of money.

Also, if you have an eprom/ic/prom chip maker in your area, you might be able to call and ask about their QA rejects. You can pick them up cheap, and sometimes free. Many want proof of destruction but this is fairly simple. You throw them in a ball mill then ask for the specs of the metals in the chip at the same time. You can ball mill a lb worth of chips, record how many are in a lb, attach the specs and know with confidence exactly how much metal is contained in any given lb and post them on ebay. In this case, a refiner will know exactly how much is in the chips, and if they cannot recover that amount you just helped them realize they have a bug in their process and need to look for the rest of the metals in their waste solutions.

Again, value added service.

Sott