Next we have the huge CPU soldered to the board. These are 386/486/586 era computers. To pun Star Wars it's the revenge of the clones. The brand new Apple and IBM computers were $2000-$10000 but these clones were almost as good, almost the same; and cost $900 or less! Some via based computers were under $300! Basically the put just enough in the design. Then "permanently" soldered everything to the board. They were designed to do the most computation at the lowest price. We're looking at Tandy diamond, leading edge, star etc. First there's a fraction of the precious metals content because there's few or no sockets. Second the components are incomplete and/or cast off equipment. CPUs with missing registers and cache. Ram with missing banks. Little or no floating point computation. When IBM had 50 million damaged ram chips in 1987 the sold them to Tc limited. Who put them in these supply chains for a fraction of normal cost. Finally any damage to these boards makes recycling that much more difficult. These boards were notorious for burn outs. And a burnt board, much like burnt wire, is much harder to properly recycle. Making the overall value lower.
_________________ 42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D
|