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.
Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
#22As a vintage computer collector and restorer, I find this rather alarming...
You should consider if your hobby isn't some kind of OCD or hoarding disorder.
Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
#23As a vintage computer collector and restorer, I find this rather alarming...
Nobody weeps for the pentium 60, my friend. You should consider if your hobby isn't some kind of OCD or hoarding disorder.
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.
Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody weeps for the pentium 60, my friend. You should consider if your hobby isn't some kind of OCD or hoarding disorder.
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 preservi…
Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 preservi…
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.
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.
Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
#26There 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.