This is the only time I will cover this extensively. This will be the only thread post I allow a general discussion for refining.
i will not help. Period. Full stop. I will assume you understand the risks involved in refining. Acids. Bases. How to neutralise one or the other. Electricity. Chemical bonding. Etc. I simply accept if you try anything you do so at your own risk. In fact I intend to go through and purge any instructions on refining over the coming future. Refining can be dangerous. You can get hurt. You can die. You can cause damage that makes you wish you were dead!
your stuck with it after refining. Chris doesn’t want anything treated with any acids or bases. He will not pay for any such items. You may be charged for disposal of such items. Do NOT send them to Boardsort.
First the obvious and most talked about on the internet. The ceramic Pentium Pro. Uh, NO. The value is in the cap and pins. And honestly I’d take a single K5 over three P-Pros any day. If your after gold the pentium pro is a joke. There’s other materials in the pro that are expensive and keep its recycling value up there but gold is only one aspect of it. As always: YouTube is full of it. You can not get rich refining pentium pros for gold.
Where’s the gold? We’ll start at the low end to keep the suspense up. Pinless LGA chips. Oh, fun. Seriously! These are so easy to refine the gold from! Just drop them in acid and wait. Lol.
Gold pins. Gold pin CPUs. Same thing. Quick and easy.
Caps. Again, quick and easy. Also more gold than pins. Popping caps takes practice but once you get the hang of it it’s a quick process. Top caps are easy. Flip chip caps, not so much. Cut the pins and then treat them like LGAs.
CPUs. Generally a hard task. You need to mill them to get high end results. A step commonly left out of the YouTube videos. The numbers they tell you to make sponsors happy and hook you are for milled refining; but the process they often show is simply cracking and breaking, if anything at all. Same thing do all gold containing components.
Grail points: Starting on the low end: Pentium pro, k62 gold cap, original Winchip flip chip.
K5, K6 from AMD. Thick heavy nickel and tungsten caps with a heavy gold plate. Despite the bright colour (the lighter the colour the les gold in general) these are actually fairly expensive. The colour comes from the plating process. These aren’t electroplated like most caps. They are sprayed in multiple layers. Each thin layer on top of the previous.
Intel 80486, AM386, IBM PowerPC, last 80s Motorola long dip gold caps. All have easily removable caps.
DIP chips with gold caps. 8080, 8086, 8065, AM 2650, Motorola 2k and 4K series etc. Heavy plated pins. Gold caps. Easy access.
4000 series Intel chips. 300 series bell chips. Old B&W ICs. Hammond organ controllers. Mill the chips. Lots of gold
Pre late 80s tripod capacitors and resistors. Look like the alien things from War of the Worlds. The oils are a problem. But major gold to weight ratios.
Gold fuses. Gold vacuum tubes. Obviously glass is an issue. But nearly pure gold. No refining required. You’ll only find this at a reasonable price still installed in equipment. Don’t buy them alone for the gold. You will overpay for it.
The real holy grail! Soviet pre 1985 dip ICs. It’s hit or miss but many were made with the pins being a bent (l shaped) gold plated wedge. The gold, having no real value (comparatively) to the Soviet society, was not a cost factor in this design. So, they plated the entire pin; thickly. The inferior die manufacturing makes these real easy to split with experience. Split the chip. Remove the pins. Scoop out the internals. Refine. White and purple are the easiest to break. Black ceramics are a different design where the top sits over and around the bottom. Grey ceramics are one piece. And need to be milled. They are baked wet powder to make a solid ceramic package.
So there you have it Boardsort users! The true holy grail. If you have questions hit like or subs... oh... sorry. Lol! ;) Seriously. This will be an open discussion as long as you DO NOT ask me about the actual refining process. Did I miss something? Want to know more ? CUS!
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