20 Feb
2006
20 Feb
'06
10:09 p.m.
At 10:00 PM -0500 2/20/06, C. H. Dickman wrote:
Jay West wrote:
The scrapper that I know was specifically after the boards (he was
doing this for his retirement, and I've heard he had to stop a couple
months ago after a heart attack). He'd strip all the stuff down to
the boards, and even remove parts that weren't worth it from the
boards. Then he'd stick the boards into a huge box on a pallet.
Once the box was full he'd ship it to the smelter (or wherever it is
they melt the stuff down and extract the metals). I believe he was
dealing primarily with medical and test equipment, though I did get
my DEC Pro 380 from him. He was doing this in his garage, and it had
to be seen to be believed how densely stuff was packed in there.
Zane
--
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| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Unfortunately, it could be to a gold smelter.
Is there a financially significant precious metal content to old
computer equipment? When you factor in the hazardous materials
disposal issues such as lead, it would seem a losing proposition. I
can almost see a scrapper saying he would take everything except the
boards.