

Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards? - bunglebooz
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/550-gold-motherboard-chemistry.html

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rdtsc
I knew a lot of hardware hackers who did this as a side-business. They would
find old electronic equipment and sell to someone else who, would sell it
someone else and so on, until all that hardware ended with someone who had a
large vat of acid just lying around.

It was in Eastern Europe, where, as everyone knows, people just have large
vats of H2SO4 lying around in their back yard ;-)

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yread
Awesome! Recovering gold from the contacts with several steps involving
electrolysis in 95% sulphuric acid and a reaction 2 Au + 3 Cl2 -> 2 AuCl3!

I wish there would be more chemical hacking articles like this. It's a pity
they didn't write more about how did they come up with the process and how
does it work.

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larsalan
If you research it a bit you'll find there are a few processes to get back the
gold. Some more hazardous yielding higher returns while some are more
cautious. I looked at it a while back and one process seemed feasible for DIY
gold recovery but, you'll need to collect thousands of pounds of boards. Where
you could do that I have no idea.

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elblanco
When I was just out of High School, I worked at a computer repair shop. We
probably tossed out 50-60 pounds of fried motherboards and expansion cards a
week until the owner worked a deal with somebody to haul away the stuff to get
the gold out. After that we had a dedicated dumpster out back for throwing
circuit board stuff into. We easily got to a couple thousand pounds that year.

I think he got some percentage of the money out of the parts, it wasn't a ton
of money, but better than just throwing the stuff away.

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ambiate
There was a DEA agent giving a speech the other day. One of the stories he
told was about a meth user who used his 3-4 days of being awake to harvest the
gold from cpus/motherboards over the months. He stated the guy had a ball in
between the size of a golf ball and baseball. He was just getting free
equipment out of dumpsters in the city.

~~~
k33n
Kind if makes me want to start smoking meth. Imagine how much code I could
write.

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forinti
The author forgot to give instructions on how to safely dispose of these nasty
chemicals.

~~~
slig
If you have access to that kind of stuff, you probably know what to do next.

~~~
gacba
Never assume the power of idiocy will be subsumed by the power of common
sense.

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rbanffy
As a vintage computer collector and restorer, I find this rather alarming...

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redrobot5050
Nobody weeps for the pentium 60, my friend.

You should consider if your hobby isn't some kind of OCD or hoarding disorder.

~~~
rbanffy
Not all discarded computers are PCs. There is a lot of history that could be
permanently lost if it's not deliberately preserved.

I keep a couple generations of Apple IIs, an 8-bit Atari, Amigas, RISC boxes
and Macs (a couple months back you could see a perfectly functional Mac SE as
part of my living-room decor) preserved. Lots of other important machines have
been destroyed or recycled. I try to do my part preserving a small part of our
heritage.

~~~
redrobot5050
Believe me, there are enough people hoarding old computers. I could find all
of those in my dad's basement. There is an official computer museum, we have
our bases covered.

~~~
rbanffy
There is no "official" computer museum in my city. There are a couple private
collectors with interesting artifacts and there is a group that is trying to
establish a "real", curated, computer museum, but so far there is nothing
definitive.

You also know not everybody lives on or close to Mountain View ;-)

You should also take into consideration all geographic differences in
computing machinery. There were computers in Asia, Eastern Europe or South
America that simply are not available elsewhere. A friend of mine has one of
the few Macintosh clones (68K, Fat Mac-like) ever made and from that machine
we can prove Apple's allegations to the DoJ against the Brazilian manufacturer
were false - they removed the reverse-engineered ROM and put an original ROM
inside the machine in order to show they were copies.

Those little moments will end up lost if we don't take care.

If we fail, one day our descendants will sing songs about the Whalers on the
Moon and their heroic exploits.

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DanielBMarkham
I know a guy who has done this as a business for at least the last 20 years.
Nice little business model.

~~~
ff0066mote
That guy you know is doing the world a favor.

This is an alternative:
<[http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china>](http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china>);

~~~
Luc
Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more
of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way
(there's residential houses 10m from the factory).

I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was
richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

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prs
_Production capacity_ for gold exceeds 100 tonnes per year according to
[http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.com/metals_products/precio...](http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.com/metals_products/precious_metals/)

~~~
Luc
Right you are. According to p. 9 of this 2009 Umicore presentation production
of gold at the Hoboken plant is 25 tonnes/year (still 1% of world mining
production):

[http://impeltfs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/umicore-
impel-...](http://impeltfs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/umicore-impel-tfs-
conference-march-2009.pdf)

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blahblahblah
The industrial process for refining gold ores uses cyanide in one of the
processing steps. Good thing he didn't try that process for a DIY project.
He's already insane enough for using concentrated sulfuric acid without a fume
hood, emergency shower/eyewash station, and full face shield.

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dchs
The challenge seems to be scaling this up... as ever!

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sfall
I have a friend who's father makes his living by buying old computer equipment
and selling the precious metals.

