ES chips without gold

[Chook]

I just bought three socket 423 ES and when they arrived, two of them were in very poor condition, with no gold anywhere on them and unreadable markings. It looks to me as if they have been through a gold recovery process. The seller was happy to refund and told me that someone had told him that there were ES chips made without gold. I didn't think this was the case. Thoughts?

[Neon_WA]

maybe one PCB layer for some unknown reason.. but both PCB layers are missing their gold finish

is the solder on the underside still shiny or is it dull?

[mavroxur]

It looks to me that it's been through a recovery process, seeing as how the thru-holes in the PCB are all empty, and the pins are bare now.

[CPUShack]

yah pretty clearly been stripped of gold

[Marcin]

[kosmokrator]

BTW..A not so prof. refiner.........
if u ctually broke the layers of pcb and near-round of cpu chip die there are also some gold as the outside .....or just not want to broke to give u the feeling of some special rare chip.....
imo ..... its just Gold recovered in Acid bath

[frag_]

If it was the acid bath why pins and capacitor solder are not dissolved?
Probably it was gold-specific solvent, like cyanides or so?

[kosmokrator]

there are many many mix of acids "focus" on specific type of metals.....
but for sure if not take in my hands something icant say for sure...... All this corrosion on pins and metal cap is from acid .....im sure.....

if leaved some more days in the solution the pins ect will disaper too.....

[susl45]

I remember I also have one non-gold pins socket 423 ES like your which came with other normal 423 ES as well.
For some special test or gold refined, not sure

[mavroxur]

[ovidiuanghel]

[Vlasta]

Interesting - if I was to refine for gold though I would have to crush the things up in an industrial shredder first to make sure I got everything. I had to dispose of 30,000 (yes that is right - 30,000) EPROM at work in a very secure fashion and we took them to an industrial place where they put them through this shredder thing 3 times turning them virtually into powder - certainly no bits bigger than 2x2x2 mm