Mike Ford wrote: If somebody can give me an idea of how many boards there are in such a machine, ideally a picture of some boards, or at least an estimate as to the dimensions of said boards and what sort of package chips they used, plastic, ceramic, gold capped or gold pins etc, I'll try to come up with a ballpark figure, and might ask some other people I know in the business for input. I scrap/dispose of/remarket gear for a living, so I've dealt with a lot of scrap, though nothing really mainframe related. Gold processors like Pentium 60's have around $50 a pound worth of gold in them, never pentiums maybe only $35 to $40(that's what's in them, the scrapyards will pay around half that) The presence of other things like platinum, palladium, rhodium or other more exotic metals can complicate these calculations, and old processors most likely have more precious metals content than the old pentiums. If they use anything like the TCM modules in IBM mainframes (the HUGE PGA package chips maybe 4 inches on a side, and use them in any quantity, there may be some real scrap value, since those things have around $75 worth of metals apiece in them by current prices. Standard PC motherboards go for around 65 cents a pound, daughtercards go for almost $1/lb, card edges $25/lb. Aluminum drives go for around 10 cents/lb or so, more like 15 when the Al market is decent. The racks are pretty much worthless if they're steel. I've heard figures as high as $3/lb on old Q-bus boards, though I'm not sure if the place was buying them for scrap or resale as Q-bus boards. If anybody can get me any further information I'll do my best to come up with a figure. -Chris