2 Jun
2007
2 Jun
'07
11:37 a.m.
I'm under-informed, but I'd guess that the
largest amount is within
IC chips themselves, with the bond-out wires and other surfaces inside
that were plated. Nextmost would be card edges and headers.
There is indeed often a large amount of gold on the leadframes and
bond out wires. Even on many worthless looking plastic DIPs.
About two years ago I had some scrap EMC memory boards for some sort
of system, loaded with Oki 256K DRAMs. Plastic, boring looking DRAMs.
If I flexed the board enough, the tops of the plastic DIP split and
popped off the leadframes. Goooold.........
--
Will