Vintage Dual Pentium Pro board

[HiTechMike]

Check out this is vintage workstation board. It has even been upgraded to the 1M cache Black Pentium Pro cpu's! I would guess this was probably top of the line back in the day!

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/m_s1662_100.pdf

[travistemple202020]

now resale would be better for the whole board, but as scrap I wonder what gold ratio the pro gold caps vs. the black would be

[HiTechMike]

I wonder what gold ratio the pro gold caps vs. the black would be

I'm sure the gold content is much lower, but as far as performance, the black ones have better specs. Gold capped Pentium Pros have 256M or 512M caches and the black ones have a 1M cache.

[NobleMetalWorks]

Pentium Pros with the gold cap will yield anywhere from .30g - .33g of gold on average.

There is a lot of misleading information, as well as one document specifically that would make claims there is as much as a gram per CPU, this is simply not true. I have processed literally hundreds of these types of CPUs and have never averaged more than .33 grams per CPU.

Scott

[TheDude80]

.33 at current spot rate of $1230.40/oz = $13.05 Yet people are still paying 20-25 per on ebay. My guess is SOME people are actually purchasing them for reuse, but the vast majority are just uninformed I guess.

[TheDude80]

I hope that you are trying to sell this for more then scrap value.

[NobleMetalWorks]

.33 at current spot rate of $1230.40/oz = $13.05 Yet people are still paying 20-25 per on ebay. My guess is SOME people are actually purchasing them for reuse, but the vast majority are just uninformed I guess.

It's called gold fever. People, in part because of a document that has been propagated, believe there is a lot more gold in these CPUs than there actually is. Against all reason in fact. A sq inch of normal spec gold plating will yield about .30-.35 cents. Add that to the gold plating on the pins, and whatever super fine gold wires are inside the chip and you can understand better the actual gold content.

People do pay a lot more on Ebay than the actual gold value for many reasons. Hobby refiners will just to get their hands on a chip that is so legendary. Collectors, people who just collect pretty CPUs will because they are legendary. And some just want to experience recover the gold from this type of CPU. Still others as I said before will pay stupid amounts of money for these CPUs because they believe everyone else is clueless in regards to their real value. And finally, some people hoard them because they have gold on them, and it's difficult to fake gold plating, then hold onto them until gold prices go up, and right now we have seen gold making a move up in the market.

I did some work for someone who wanted me to test an unusual ore concentrate, as payment he sent me 288 Pentium Pros all gold cap. He had been buying them off ebay, and hoarding them for a few years. Ended up his ore concentrate didn't have any recoverable precious metal values, but instead had other values that still made it profitable, and the CPUs covered the costs involved in the testing I was able to do so it was a win for both of us. Trading either work for this type of material, or trading for different material is another option you might want to consider. You could even perhaps post on GRF that you might be interested in trading these and the boards for something else.

One last thing, there are forums that exist for people that collect old computer parts. Many of the people who buy this type of thing are also Silicon Valley geeks that work in the computer industry. I used to rub shoulders with these guys when I was a WAN admin, and was always surprised when parting out old server equipment, how much some of these people will pay for vintage computer parts. These people hold some of the highest paying jobs and don't mind shelling out good money for really nice vintage parts.

Scott

[unknownk]

Very nice board! it is missing both VRMs so it won't work as is. Collectors will buy it for use. Heatsinks are getting hard to find for those chips.

[HiTechMike]

it is missing both VRMs so it won't work as is.

I have plenty VRM's!

[HiTechMike]

Heatsinks are getting hard to find for those chips.

Do you happen to know what the heatsinks look like?

[unknownk]

Socket 8 heatsinks example:

[unknownk]

Check the VRM model numbers to make sure they are for a PPro. Some Pentium II boards used them and so did some Apple G3 boards, not all the same.

[sledge]

Here is one in a Compaq Proliant 800 Server- Untouched- this is as I got it So I assume it is original.

*Edit* BTW this is a Dual Pentium Pro Board, Sadly this server only came with (1) 200 Mhz Pentium Pro.
My other Socket is sad, lonely and empty.

[ryanw]

My first scrap yard buy. This was in the lot....been a long time. This was a compaq server as well! I got 4 of them though neener neener!

[sledge]

My first scrap yard buy. This was in the lot....been a long time. This was a compaq server as well! I got 4 of them though neener neener!

Me thinks a part of my body just got a bit swollen!

[unknownk]

That server would have been worth more to a collector then scrap.

[ryanw]

unknownk - Yeah, although I had just started in this, I did think it could have more value. However, it had spent at least one winter outside at the scrap yard, and there was a ton of corrosion on everything. I would have tried harder knowing what I do now, but back then it was into the scrap pile.