Undercover in the scrapyard...

[donutty]

Especially for johnorun, plus all others that would be interested... undercover pictures from inside a military scrap yard. Well... OK, it's not secret, but thought you might want a look. There are about 8 big cages / pallets of PCBs. Here is one of them:

http://www.nitrate.plus.com/Files/Pics/PCB/compScrap1.JPG
http://www.nitrate.plus.com/Files/Pics/PCB/compScrap2.JPG

Only taken with my phone camera, so not good quality.

[debs3759]

Oh my! You've been to heaven!

[donutty]

Well... there's more.

Next to this place is another that deals in old test equipment; this is where I get a lot of good stuff too (HP, Intel ceramic stuff etc.) but it often closed (run by an old guy).

I might take some more pictures if you are interested.

[D.8080]

Seriously man, ain't no fair...

My other core of the brain says congrats, the other one i saturated with envy!

[donutty]

Hey, I paid for it big time on Saturday with sun beating down like crazy... (quite nice for England but sometimes too hot). 3 Hours digging!

[chip68]

Looks like my attic.

- CMW

[johnorun]

OMG>>>OMG>>OMG!

Oh Where, Oh Where is this stuff hiding out in the Midwest US?
I'm sure there are tons of vintage PCBs waiting to be scrapped SOMEWHERE close to me....
I'm sick , donutty, you lucky devil.

[Neon]

donutty, help us out. Are there similar scrap facilities throughout the USA that we could be looking for?

[johnorun]

[Neon]

[donutty]

Guys... there is probably something right under your nose. Yours is the land of opportunity...

There are 3 places within 20 miles of me where I get my stuff, and this is only in 1 county (state).

And then there are auctions (real ones.. i.e. not eBay), carboot sales (do you have a version of this? flea market? yard sale?) and hamfests.

How about an online map-based (ie using Google Maps) chip-finder where we can add sources? I am aware that some people might want to keep theirs private, or that only they can gain access due to some special arrangement, and the last thing we need are chip collectors battling it out over a pile of PCBs

[Windmiller]

[Neon]

I know of a flea market - will plan to try there this weekend.

It seems the collectors here are geographically diverse, so hopefully there would not be any junk yard battles.

I briefly considered bringing my poodle for some extra convincing, just in case; however, a flea market is probably not the best place for a dog.

[johnorun]

Finally-----!

I got into a local Electronic Scrap Recycling yard today!

Step 1: I spent time Google-ing keywords like "scrap dealers", computer recycling, mainframe scrap dealers, Scrap metal dealers, etc, etc.
Nothing seemed to be specific about one business, but I looked in the local Yellow Pages and found this place. (Try everything)
I then Google'd the place and found their website and saw that they were actively seeking to buy all types of electronic equipment and obsolete computers.

Step 2: I called the scrap dealer and asked for the owner, to see if he would be warm to the idea of me wanting to acquire some circuit boards and chips to preserve and save from being destroyed for gold recovery.
The owner wasn't in, so I asked for and got his name and email addy.

Step 3: I sent an email addressed to the owner describing my mission to "acquire obsolete chips and boards in order to preserve some computer history, before it was all sent to recycling and destroyed forever."
I was floored to get a reply back within an hour stating: "....you'll have to come up here to choose what you want".
YESSSSS....!
That was 2 weeks ago, and I didn't get up there until today because their hours are during weekdays only. I found the owner, who was very casual and unsuspicious towards me. I introduced myself and told him I was the one who sent him the email. I asked again if I could look for and purchase some chips/boards and he led me inside the main storage building and pointed to a large box that he said had been FULL OF BOARDS until it was emptied by the metal refiner the day before. He left me to examine inside the box and I found several dozen boards, mostly huge server Comm-cards (Xilinx and Altera large plastics) PC M-boards with CPU's pulled, and several long "royal blue" colored boards with Motorola 68000s, 2 of which I grabbed. Within 5 minutes I had also stripped 6 more 68000s, an AMD Duron ceramic CPU, 2 socket 370 Intel CPUs and a few older OKI and ZILOG PDIP CPUs.
After my box finds, I looked around for several minutes and there were pallets of PC-CPU units, laptops and several large SUN-MICRO server cabinets with 40+ hard drives inside just one panel. I wished I could have seen the CPU board, but there was no time this trip....
I felt like a kid in the candy store.

I asked him how much he wanted for the 2 nice boards and dozen chips I held and he said $2 bucks! He said that's about what the gold extractors would have paid him....I thanked him, handed him $5 and told him to keep the change in return for letting me look at my leisure.
We left it that I would call him every few weeks to check if the "board box" was getting full so I could return to pick through it before it got hauled off again.

I didn't find the "motherload" of any old military or vintage stuff this trip, but next time, who knows? It was a start.

......to be continued......

(Thanks to FDIV and donutty for some coaching about scrap dealers....)

JOhn O'C.

[el_gecko]