Some of my ewaste finds (Pics included) - Page 6

Can't believe I missed this thread. I don't do a lot of telecom stuff, though. (I wish)
Ohhhh the tantalum! Dreamy! Mouse nest cracked me up.
Notification button must be lit up now. lol. Excellent photos, jimi!
p.s. love your old truck.

sorry, your math and others was bugging me lol (junkfreak had it right)

13 caps per .1oz: 130 caps per 1oz: 2,080 caps per lb (16oz)
13 caps per 30sec: 130 caps per 5mins (300 sec): 2,080 caps per 80mins (1hr 20m)
$25 per lb: $18.75 per hr: $0.012 per cap

This is all under perfect conditions of course, boards lined up and ready to get clipped. Like the pics and the updates. Happy scrapping!

Well thank you Mike. I have a lot more stuff to pick up and some that's just sitting in my garage but I have other things to do right now.

I'm not real happy with the pictures because they don't show the gold plating well. I was watching some videos this morning on how to take good pics for ebay by using multiple lights and homemade light diffusers. I might try that and see how it goes.

I'm loving it.

The IT guy came to my desk yesterday and said he had another box for me. I got 7 pounds of gold finger cards and 10 sticks of RAM along with 4 power supplies PC fans and heat sinks.

I also found about 10 of the 2500 style analog phones and about 10 handheld scanning devices in the dumpster. I'm interested to see what is inside them.

Overall not a lot but it's adding up.

Originally Posted by bigburtchino

Got like the "IT Guy" feeding you the good stuff, take care of him!

Yeah, I try to take care of him and others at the shop also. I ask him and others that if they need anything let me know. I have headsets for phones, power strips and power cords, dry erase boards and I've given a few people monitors for their PC's at home. Everybody knows that I recycle electronics and many give me their old broken stuff. I got 4 more towers today from the IT guy and about 25 digital phones from the warehouse guy.

I found some interesting looking IC chips today. They are light purple in color but no gold cap or legs.

My focus has been on the ferrous side of scrapping. In time I became educated in some of the non ferrous metals because of what has been shared on this forum. Now it is time to learn more about ewaste and your thread has been very valuable. I enjoy the pictures and the insight you provide. Thank you.

I wanted to show a quick breakdown of 2 scanners I got the other day.



The hardest part was trying to figure out how to get the things apart. Both had some nice boards and gold plated contacts for the batteries and touch pads. The reflectors in the laser part looks like gold plating. I wondering if the laser part could be used for anything.

I remember someone saying last week to always keep an empty truck. I've always tried to do that even if it means unloading at 10 pm.

I was on my way home from work Thursday last week and got a call. I was about 3 miles from the business that called and thankfully my van was empty.

I ended up with 4 PC's, 1 Cisco router, 8 keyboards, 11 monitors, 16 printers and a big box of cable.

The PC's are Pentium 4's with XP and will be scrapped. I believe all but maybe 2 monitors work so I'll keep them and try to sell them.


I'll tell you right now, I don't like printers but I have to take it all especially when it's free. I give the printers to my neighbor after I remove the circuit boards. He puts them in with his shred.


These are the boards from the printers.

I was able to pick up a few things the other day on the way home from work.

5 printers, 5 laptops and a small NEC phone system with 12 phones.


Also a NEC 2400 PBX, rectifier, batteries and a box full of copper wire.

I wanted to do a quick breakdown of the NEC 2400 PBX from my last post so you guys can see what's inside in case you ever run across one.

Front view showing the circuit boards. The 2 boxes on the bottom right are the redundant CPU's. It also had redundant power supplies but a direct lightning strike makes redundancy a moot point.


Rear view showing the 4 back planes


One of the 2 CPU's


Each CPU had a large socket mother board, a green fiber processor, a gold finger card, 2 sticks of gold ram (not shown) and a few other boards.


I had to remove the bottom bay to gain access to the internal wiring.


This was a small portion of the wire removed. There was about 50 pounds total.


Almost 70 pounds of gold finger telecom boards ready to be boxed up.


And 14 pounds of back planes.


Total time spent was about 4 hours but that included taking pictures and creating this post.

This is the operator console that went to the NEC 2400 PBX I scrapped in the post above. Nothing spectacular but I wanted to see what was inside and thought I'd share.

Originally Posted by Longhairboy

So what is the difference between that and an IC chip? They look the same to me?

Any chip thats made in short runs, gets used intentsively, is military, or keeps people alive or such, weather forcasting, number cruncher, deep pocketed buyer, corporate, NASA or security, programable, is made to a higher standard.
That normally translates as 'More Gold' in them.

Now those EPROMs are programable. They have a little window above the chip. When they want to blank the imformation on the chip, they expose the chip to a bright UV light for a while. Somehow that blanks the chip. (now I have to find out exactly how..)

By looking thru the window you can see if it has Gold or Silver wires going to the chip itself, from the legs.
The Gold wires makes it worth more. But even Silver wire is worth more than in normal chips.
Also, under the chips they paint little splash of Gold or Silver paint before they mount the chip. This acts as a heatsink for the chip and makes it worth more too.

So divide up your EPROMS into these 4 catagorys, Buyers definations can be different from others too. So it pays to be thorough anyway.

If you find any odd ceramic chips, like a 'double stacked' chip (a smaller chip plugged into the top of the larger chip) its woth good money to a collector of chips (hobbyists)
Same goes with finding a board covered in these purple or white chips. More$$$$