19 Jan
2004
19 Jan
'04
9:13 a.m.
There really isn't any gold in the chip itself,
its all in the
interconnecting wires from the outside pins to the actual small piece of
silicon the chip is made on.
Well, yes. The is "no" gold inside the die - although gold was one of
the early dopants, but I think it fell out of favor late in the 1950s.
the more pins to the socket the more gold there
is. Especially on much older chips where thicker interconnects were used (a
small cost compared to what the equipment was sold for).
It mostly depends on the maker and the chip. Sometimes (and the reason is
still unknown to me, even though I have been given an explanation by a
buddy in the fab biz) a run of chips will be mounted on gold plate, just
as sometimes they need to use gold bond-in wires. For example, most AMD
EPROM dies are mounted on gold, but some aren't. An equivalent Intel part
may almost never be mounted on gold. "Almost never".
Most scrapper probably don't want to use space
holding bulky computer
equipment that only a few dozen people in the US would pay above scrap value
for (and he has no way to find or contact them anyway).
This is also a concern, for the scrappers that are short of space.
However, some might not complain too much if they get a few times above
scrap value for a rack.
Plus once you do buy something for a
decent amount of cash you know dam well they be actively keeping those items
for ebay (is it better to save a classic from scrapping to put in your
collection cheaply or have it end up on ebay for crazy $$$$ you don't want
to pay).
Maybe, but green talks as well. Loudly, sometimes. Yes folks, the IRS *has*
*started* auditing those that use Ebay.
Circuit boards hold more gold in them per ton then the
rich gold mines
corporations operate. Most mines are not profitable until gold is over $400
an ounce, making circuit boards even more valuable. No idea how much copper
is in a board, but probably worth allot in a ton of circuitboards.
Good question. Probably a few hundred pounds, assuming halfway decent
computer stuff. Consumer electronics boards are pretty worthless, even
for the copper.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org