[COFF] Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[COFF] Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[segaloco via COFF]

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Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical. Part of this is to inform what and where to look for old hardware things.

So the details may differ with era, but what I'm curious about is back in the day, when a mainframe or mini was essentially decommissioned, what was more likely to be done with the central unit, and peripherals if they weren't forward compatible with that user's new system.

Were machines typically offloaded for money to smaller ops, or was it more common to simply dispose of/recycle components? As a more pointed example, if you worked in a shop that had IBM S/3x0, PDPs, larger 3B hardware, when those fell out of use, what was the protocol for getting rid of it? Were most machines "disposed of" in a complete way, or was it very typical to parts it out first, meaning most machines that reached EOL simply don't exist anymore, they weren't moved as a unit, rather, they're any number of independent parts floating around anywhere from individual collections to slowly decaying in a landfill somewhere.

My fear is that the latter was more common, as that's what I've seen in my lab days; old instrumentation wasn't just auctioned off or otherwise gotten rid of complete, we'd typically parts the things out resulting in a chassis and some of the paneling going in one waste stream, unsalvageable parts like burnt out boards going in another, and anything reusable like ribbon cables and controller boards being stashed to replace parts on their siblings in the lab. I dunno if this is apples to oranges though because the main instruments I'm thinking of, the HP/Agilent 5890, 6890, and 7890 series, had different lifespan expectations than computing systems had, and share a lot more of the under the hood components like solenoids and gas tubing systems, so that may not be a good comparison, just the closest one I have from my own personal experience.

Thoughts?

- Matt G.

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[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[steve jenkin]

Matt,

You ask _great_ questions.

How far back are you talking?
I think drawing a time box (start, end) around what you collect
would give you returns.

There’s a central problem:

	there’s no money in old gear,
	while storage costs mount over time.

i.e. Who’s Going to Fund You?	[ Midnight Oil: Who’s Going to Save You? ]
It comes down to individuals keeping relics and privately funding collections.

Some manufacturers had museums, archives & collections,
but those were broken up when companies closed / merged.
There’s a famous archive collection that was lost due to wild fires…

Gordon Bell points out that in 1984, there were 91 US Computer Manufacturers.
Of them, in 1990 IBM & HP  plus DEC & Data General) were left.
 [ MIPS, SGI, SUN & a host of others using RISC came & went over 1-2 decades ]

In 2000, just IBM & HP left from 1984, with computing being excised from HP at some point.

IBM survived 1991/ 92 after declaring the largest corporate losses in US history, to the time.
I think there’s around 10,000 IBM mainframes left now.
Conversely, the number of running ‘instances’ continues to grow 
while physical machines & sites keep dwindling. 
Specialists firms now host many mainframes.

The real US experts are CHM, whom you already know.
	<https://computerhistory.org>

This is the Aussie version - which has had problems with keeping its physical collection.
They’d been given ‘cheap’ (free) storage space, then the owners developed the site.

	<https://acms.org.au>

A useful research project would be to compile a definitive list :)

	<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_museums>

The collective noun / Industry Term for obsolete equipment used to be “boat anchor”.
Finding old pieces of historic machines is hard. They’re big & often fragile.

Older (60’s & 70’s) gear was worth crushing & extracting the gold & copper.
That happened to a system I once worked on - it took a whole floor of an exchange :-/

I was asked in the mid 1980’s about reusing chips from a later model IBM 370 (40xx?).
A friend’s company was upgrading all it gear after _3_ years.
They got a quote for removal - it was worth less than nothing, 
they had to pay to have it removed & broken down. As a Mech-Eng, he couldn’t believe it.
He took it for the steel cabinets & dumped the electronics.

Remember that floor space, volume, power (kW), environment/ HVAC shrunk significantly over time
and various types of equipment & media stopped being used:
	cards, paper tape, 1/2” mag tape, disk packs…

There’s no point in keeping old media if you can’t read the data therein,
and older peripherals aren’t “free” - you’ve got to keep old machines that can attach to them.
Which costs space, power and maintenance and sometimes important data is accidentally ‘orphaned’.

For “Sound & Film”, Australia keeps a national archive and is in a constant race against time
transferring content from old media to current.
The problem once was unstable “nitrate” film stock, now it’s 2” tape masters :(

	<https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/using-collection/film-australia-collection>

While MIPS, GB & TB expanded, LAN’s and affordable networks gave us workstations & much more.
There’s many generations of superseded kit, data and software to choose from :)

There may have been 60,000 PDP-11’s produced and some were kept running for decades commercially.
Old, rusting hulks might be sitting in the corner of factories & barns still
	- the same as vintage cars sitting ’somewhere’, rusting away.

Australia has the “Honour” of still having the only complete pre-1950 valve computer known.

It was built in Sydney & used there from 1949 to 1955, then moved to Melbourne in 1956 & used until 1964.

It was then put in storage & mostly forgotten about until 1996, when it was made to work again.
It was put on display for a few years. Not quite bureaucratic “benign neglect”, but close.

	<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC>

CSIRAC’s 1953 replacement at Sydney Uni ran until 1963, then was ‘broken up’.
	<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILLIAC>

All the best in your quest - it’s a great question.

I hope others can give you better, more concrete leads in where to find “Old Electronics Kit”.
It might be OK to drive around the country side looking for old cars rusting in fields or barns,
but that’s not going to work for old electronics.
People simply won’t know what they’re looking at when ‘cleaning out’ an old house,
they won’t understand that some of the items have value to collectors.

I’ve seen this with my own family. The Big Clean Out was unplanned & hurried.
Some people took stuff they thought might be valuable, but making a buck was the motive.
A bunch of working electronics was tossed in the ’skip’ (dumpster), not even recycled.

Ken Thompson wrote he once got interested in player pianos and discovered there’s a firm
somewhere in the USA that has a large collection and will restore items on demand.

There might be people that curate & repair Old Electronics in the same way.


all my best
steve j

=================

	The Last of the First, CSIRAC: Australia’s First Computer
		<https://cis.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/3775482/the-last-of-the-first-csirac-ebook.pdf>

	While other first generation computers around the world were being shut down and dismantled, 
	CSIRAC at the University of Melbourne began a ser- viceable second life. 

	Further engineering improvements were gradually incorporated into CSIRAC during its time in Melbourne.
	 For a further 8 years CSIRAC functioned as an open-shop computing service and during this period, 
		from June 1956 to June 1964, 
	CSIRAC was switched on for about 30,000 hours 
	and processed about 700 computing projects. 

	Total maintenance time was approximately 10% of switch-on time.

	At the time of CSIRAC’s shutdown in November 1964 it was already recognised by its operators to be an historically important technological artefact. 
	This realisation was probably the major factor that contributed towards its preservation. 

	Most other first generation electronic computers were dismantled and scrapped.
	In most cases only a few minor artefacts remain extant. 

	Although Museum Victoria accepted CSIRAC for its collection the computer was never put on public display.
	Its sheer bulk, and the relative drabness of its exterior, mitigated against it being easily placed in any exhibition.

	From 1964 to 1980 it was kept in storage at the museum’s warehouse at Abbotsford where it was only sighted by staff and a few enthusiasts.

	In 1980, Gerry Maynard, then Head of the Department of Electronic Data Processing at Caulfield, 
	decided it would be an appropriate tribute to Trevor Pearcey to have CSIRAC placed on display at Caulfield.

	Arrangements were made to move the computer from Museum Victoria to the Caulfield campus.
	Assembly was supervised by John Daly. 
	From 1980 to 1992 CSIRAC remained on show at Caulfield and was a popular public attraction on Open Days.

	In September 1992 the computer was returned to Museum Victoria (Scienceworks),
		but once again was placed in storage,
		this time at a museum store in Maribyrnong.

	While in storage there, CSIRAC, in January 1995, was lucky to survive a flood of the Maribyrnong River. 
	Water reached the base of the computer but fortunately no damage was done.

=================

> On 30 Jul 2023, at 09:26, segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical. Part of this is to inform what and where to look for old hardware things.
> 
> So the details may differ with era, but what I'm curious about is back in the day, when a mainframe or mini was essentially decommissioned, what was more likely to be done with the central unit, and peripherals if they weren't forward compatible with that user's new system.
> 
> Were machines typically offloaded for money to smaller ops, or was it more common to simply dispose of/recycle components? As a more pointed example, if you worked in a shop that had IBM S/3x0, PDPs, larger 3B hardware, when those fell out of use, what was the protocol for getting rid of it? Were most machines "disposed of" in a complete way, or was it very typical to parts it out first, meaning most machines that reached EOL simply don't exist anymore, they weren't moved as a unit, rather, they're any number of independent parts floating around anywhere from individual collections to slowly decaying in a landfill somewhere.
> 
> My fear is that the latter was more common, as that's what I've seen in my lab days; old instrumentation wasn't just auctioned off or otherwise gotten rid of complete, we'd typically parts the things out resulting in a chassis and some of the paneling going in one waste stream, unsalvageable parts like burnt out boards going in another, and anything reusable like ribbon cables and controller boards being stashed to replace parts on their siblings in the lab. I dunno if this is apples to oranges though because the main instruments I'm thinking of, the HP/Agilent 5890, 6890, and 7890 series, had different lifespan expectations than computing systems had, and share a lot more of the under the hood components like solenoids and gas tubing systems, so that may not be a good comparison, just the closest one I have from my own personal experience.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> - Matt G.

--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[segaloco via COFF]

> How far back are you talking?
> I think drawing a time box (start, end) around what you collect
> would give you returns.
> ...
> Steve Jenkin

I actually don't consider myself much of a collector of anything besides information.  Even the physical books and such I've accumulated lately, save for select pieces, I eventually want to get into some other library.  I'm not on the hunt for some piece of hardware I want to order and keep around here, rather, seeing if there's avenues I should keep my eye on while searching around for documents and other history that, say, I could then get the CHM or another involved with.  For instance, one "goal" if you will is to somehow run down a (working or not) 3B20S and put the right folks in contact to see about preserving the thing.  Even better if I can travel and help with some of the restore, but honestly at the end of the day I'm just after lost history.

That said, hardware significant to the pre-divestiture UNIX-and-adjacent history takes priority with me, stuff like Interdata 32-bit, various 3B machines, etc. so to put years on it would be 69-84.  I'm actually kicking myself because there was a MacTutor (WE Mac-8 SBC) on eBay this past couple of years and it had been bought by the time I made up my mind on it.  My hope was to document it as much as I could and then see if LCM or CHM were interested in it for their archives.

I do have a AT&T UNIX PC I intend to get rolling eventually but that's about as far as my on-hand hardware ambitions go, and certainly isn't relevant to early history.  I would maybe go for a higher end SGI for myself if I found one at an agreeable price, but even that would be mostly to experiment with IRIS GL and their specific graphics hardware.  I'm trying not to let too many hardware distractions get between me and my SBC experiments though, too much coding for the past will keep me from coding for the present.  After all, one of my chief personal motivations in studying the past is to better understand how we got here and where we're headed.

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Grant Taylor via COFF]

On 7/29/23 6:26 PM, segaloco via COFF wrote:
> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards 
> to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical.

My experience disposing of things is from the late '90s and early '00s 
and is for much smaller things.  So it may very well differ.

But, that being said, I observed basically three different phases of 
hardware divestiture where I was working.

1)  Send everything, effectively donating it, to a municipal / state 
facility that served as a surplus property sale house hosting monthly 
auctions.  --  Conceptually some proceeds supposedly came back to us ... 
eventually.

2)  Per prodding form some of us employees who were interested in 
running some of the things at home persuaded the powers that be to sell 
things through public approved outlets, e.g. GovDeals(.com), where the 
public and employees, could bid on equipment.

The problem was that selling things this way didn't yield enough profit 
to offset the expense of doing so.

3)  The municipality decided that it was more fiscally responsible to 
return to the first method.

> Part of this is to inform what and where to look for old hardware things.

I think that saved searches on typical sites are probably the best 
locations that I've found.  I'd be interested in learning about more.

  - eBay
  - Craigslist
  - Mercari
  - GovDeals

Others suggest:

  - etsy

I was never in geographic proximity to any electronics recycling / 
salvage stores like were so common on the coasts.  The best I had was 
the aforementioned state run surplus auction and others further away.

There is also the very unofficial and always denied "fell off of a 
truck" ostensibly on it's way to aforementioned surplus disposal locations.

> So the details may differ with era, but what I'm curious about is back 
> in the day, when a mainframe or mini was essentially decommissioned, 
> what was more likely to be done with the central unit, and peripherals 
> if they weren't forward compatible with that user's new system.

I've been around a number of locations that retained compatible 
peripherals for as long as they could and as long as they worked. 
Leveraging the existing investment was often a significant influence 
into choosing new systems, at least up to (close to) the replacement 
cost for said peripherals.

> Were machines typically offloaded for money to smaller ops, or was it 
> more common to simply dispose of/recycle components? As a more pointed 
> example, if you worked in a shop that had IBM S/3x0, PDPs, larger 3B 
> hardware, when those fell out of use, what was the protocol for getting 
> rid of it? Were most machines "disposed of" in a complete way, or was it 
> very typical to parts it out first, meaning most machines that reached 
> EOL simply don't exist anymore, they weren't moved as a unit, rather, 
> they're any number of independent parts floating around anywhere from 
> individual collections to slowly decaying in a landfill somewhere.

The other thing that I saw done was businesses holding onto older 
equipment and simply storing it somewhere because divesting it was 
problematic for one reason or another.  So there was usually a room, in 
a basement or attic that collected things.  --  Usually basement as 
heavy things have a natural tendency to go down.  --  Then once every so 
often (3-8 years seemed to be what I saw) the older things in the room, 
if not the entire room, would be purged.  Often unceremoniously and 
without any respect for the equipment.

> Thoughts?

At my last job I whitnessed, and could do nothing to stop, a bunch of 
servers have their hard drives removed, still on the sleds, and 
shredded.  Then the systems they were in were sold at surplus -- again 
for very little money.  The lack of sleds made the systems much less 
usable.  But the business found it to not be worth the time and effort 
to remove the drives from the sleds and return the sleds to the systems 
for resale.

It seems like it really always does come down to what is the most 
economical / least expensive option for businesses.  :-(



Grant. . . .

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Grant Taylor via COFF wrote in
 <5ec59010-d848-8adc-9872-7a4e6fb599eb@tnetconsulting.net>:
 |On 7/29/23 6:26 PM, segaloco via COFF wrote:
 |> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards 
 |> to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical.
 |
 |My experience disposing of things is from the late '90s and early '00s 
 |and is for much smaller things.  So it may very well differ.

Around 1990(+ a bit) i worked during holiday for a company which
collected old computers, monitors etc from authorities and, well,
other companies.  Myriads of (plastic) keyboards, cables, etc., it
all was thrown into containers (ie rolled down the floor, then
blindly thrown), all mixed up.  I (a prowd owner of an i386 DX 40
by that time iirc) shortly thought of, you know, but to no avail.
I have no idea, i am pretty sure it all went down to Africa or
India, where young people and other unlucky then had to pave their
way through, as is still mostly the case today, _i think_.  Let's
just hope they do not have illnesses because of the (likely) toxic
interour.  (Having said that, i myself also worked for a short
time for another company where i was crawling through cable and
such shafts, .. without any mask ..  Not to talk about waste
incinator and chemical industry here (Merck and Rhön etc), they
were also filter free, .. and then i was also smoking for over
twenty years.  How did i end up here now??  I hope i am still from
one of those generations which can live a hundred years
nonetheless.)

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Paul Winalski]

On 7/29/23, segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> Were machines typically offloaded for money to smaller ops, or was it more
> common to simply dispose of/recycle components? As a more pointed example,
> if you worked in a shop that had IBM S/3x0, PDPs, larger 3B hardware, when
> those fell out of use, what was the protocol for getting rid of it? Were
> most machines "disposed of" in a complete way, or was it very typical to
> parts it out first, meaning most machines that reached EOL simply don't
> exist anymore, they weren't moved as a unit, rather, they're any number of
> independent parts floating around anywhere from individual collections to
> slowly decaying in a landfill somewhere.

In the 1970s there was an active market for used IBM gear.  Those
shops still running second generation computers such as the IBM 1400
and 9000 series were often willing to buy CPUs to cannibalize them for
spare parts to keep their own systems running. Otherwise there wasn't
much call for second-hand CPUs.  Aside from them being much slower,
one year's electricity needed to power a second generation CPU could
probably pay for a third generation CPU.

Peripherals had more of a second hand market.  Older card readers,
card punches, printers, and tape drives still worked perfectly well
with newer hardware.  This was especially true of the IBM 1403
printer.  This was arguably the best line printer ever made.  When
System/370 came along, IBM had a newer line printer (the 3203) for it,
but nearly everyone (including myself) considered it inferior to the
older 1403.  I know of one shop that sold off its 1400 system, which
had a1401 CPU, 1402 card read/punch, and 1403 printer.  The used
computer dealer offered them $18,000 for the whole system, or $15,000
just for the 1403 printer.

Maintenance and support are, I think, the two main roadblocks to an
aftermarket for used computers.  By the time a shop decides to upgrade
and get rid of its old hardware, it will already be difficult to find
a support specialist trained on the gear and to find spare parts.
That's why used computers, especially the CPUs, tenddc to become spare
parts themselves.

-Paul W.

[COFF] Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Paul Winalski]

I just read that on average one gram of gold is extracted from one ton
of gold ore.  Between the circuit runs inside chip packages and the
gold coating on contacts, I'd think that discarded circuit boards
could match conventional gold ore in terms of yield.

There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the world's
supply of rare earth metals, which are needed for, among other things,
the permanent magnets in disk drives.  Wouldn't discarded hard drives
be a good source of these metals vs. virgin ores?

--Paul W.

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Brad Spencer]

Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> writes:

> I just read that on average one gram of gold is extracted from one ton
> of gold ore.  Between the circuit runs inside chip packages and the
> gold coating on contacts, I'd think that discarded circuit boards
> could match conventional gold ore in terms of yield.

My understanding is the extraction of the gold from the contacts is more
often than not, more expensive to do then to mine new gold.  If I recall
the details correctly, there are not a lot of ways to do that with gold
because it doesn't react with a lot of other elements so it ends up
being hard to reduce.

> There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the world's
> supply of rare earth metals, which are needed for, among other things,
> the permanent magnets in disk drives.  Wouldn't discarded hard drives
> be a good source of these metals vs. virgin ores?

Shug... maybe... but with more and more systems going to solid state
storage, the need for spinning rust is decreasing each year (and
probably each quarter at this point).

> --Paul W.






-- 
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Paul Winalski wrote in
 <CABH=_VQvVkMtK9V7_etXzLo3aoOBoriCgW07fM9vdyt83vLTfA@mail.gmail.com>:
 |I just read that on average one gram of gold is extracted from one ton
 |of gold ore.  Between the circuit runs inside chip packages and the
 |gold coating on contacts, I'd think that discarded circuit boards
 |could match conventional gold ore in terms of yield.
 |
 |There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the world's
 |supply of rare earth metals, which are needed for, among other things,
 |the permanent magnets in disk drives.  Wouldn't discarded hard drives
 |be a good source of these metals vs. virgin ores?

The entire world has to go closed-loop economy.
Our (the german) chancellor (and despite the absolutely
non-understandable support of the frantic west) is talking this
ever since.  First really europe-wide noted in his speech at
"Karlsuniversität Prag"(ue) in August last year.

  Die Technologien dafür sind heute schon da. Was wir brauchen,
  sind gemeinsame Standards für den Einstieg in eine echte
  europäische Kreislaufwirtschaft ‑ ich nenne es: ein
  strategisches Update unseres Binnenmarkts.

  The necessary technologies exist already today.  What we need
  are common standards to enter a real european closed-loop
  economy -- i call it: a strategic update of our domestic market.

'Problem seems to be that the hundreds of millions of (most often,
poor) refugees which have to leave the coasts inland-wise, and all
the "contained" countries, and all the exsanguinated countries,
will not have the necessary resources to do the necessary
investment.  Of course -- we can then sell something.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[segaloco via COFF]

> My understanding is the extraction of the gold from the contacts is more
> often than not, more expensive to do then to mine new gold. If I recall
> the details correctly, there are not a lot of ways to do that with gold
> because it doesn't react with a lot of other elements so it ends up
> being hard to reduce.
> Brad Spencer

Pardon the length, caught the chemist in me interested.

Gold is famously difficult to attack with acids, which actually is a benefit moreso than a detriment.  One strategy to free native gold from a substrate is to instead attack that substrate.  The main acidic mixture which will actually attack gold is "aqua regia" which is typically a 1:1 nitric/hydrochloric mix, and is "regia" in that it can attack "regal" metals like gold and platinum.  Nitric on its own is a very effective acid and oxidizer, and can be used to knock out all sorts of other metals, up to and including silver.  However, nitric alone won't make a significant impact on the gold without the HCl there too.  One of the problems with HNO3 alone (can't recall if this is why gold is unresponsive) is that its strong oxidizing potential can, in some circumstances, actually prevent its acidic reactions by fully oxidizing the exposed surface area of a metal before the acid can dissociate it.  This can be observed with copper and anhydrous nitric: the copper will immediately oxidize on the surface and no further reaction occurs.  Add water to facilitate the dissolution of the iron nitrate being formed and the reaction goes apoplectic.  Still, this doesn't come into play as much simply in that anhydrous nitric is very uncommon, and it's hygroscopic so it'll sponge up enough water from the atmosphere if left to do so and then overcome the otherwise insoluble oxidation.

Long story short, you can extract all sorts of metals *from* gold given they present surface area to react with, while leaving much of the gold intact, by successive baths in individual strong acids, taking care to not have HNO3 and HCl in contact with the metal at the same time.  This isn't 100%; platinum, for instance, will also survive this process I'm pretty sure, as well as some minerals and other complexes, but its a good place to start.  You can then take what's left and dissolve it in aqua regia, yielding a solution containing gold, possibly platinum, but hopefully little if any other metals.  At that point, either electrolysis or precipitation reactions can be used to further purify, either by depositing the gold or at least eliminating remaining impurities.  Similar processes are used for preparing radioactive isotopes for analysis: several stages of precipitation reactions to eliminate unwanted isotopes and then a final precip of the target species onto a planchet for alpha spectrometry or beta emission counting.  For the curious, gamma is a different beast entirely, so this doesn't apply to particularly high potency radioisotopes.

That said, this all has to take into account the cost of the acids, safe handling vessels for actually performing the separation, disposal (or further refinement) of the secondary metals from the process, etc.  My hunch based on experiences in the environmental market, is that these sorts of costs are more often than not the barrier than any amount of technical difficulty.  Mining operations have the game figured out on how to balance production and environmental stuff (note balance doesn't necessarily mean accept and value, industrial ops often budget for compliance violations and smaller fines.)  Metal recycling operations likely have a lot more eyes on them, ironically, than extractive measures, and that is a newer industry.

So much of it too is informed by market volatility.  When gold peeks above a certain threshold, suddenly reclamation outweighs the costs, but then it dips again and you're bleeding money on a formal operation.  Mining, sadly, has more history behind it, so will probably continue to be the most supported avenue for pursuing resources until either the chemical and disposal costs involved in reclamation come down or we run so low on resources the tacit, implied violence towards the communities these resources are extracted from escalates into full blown war.

Of course, the other option is the steady march towards new horizons in semiconductor research, quantum computing, all of these attempts to get away from the current entrenched norms of IC implementation.

One of the possible solutions to these issues, now that I've thought about my chemistry and tech stuff in the same breath, is perhaps designing newer substrates from which gold can be more easily reclaimed.  If planned obsolescence is already a thing, those same engineers could at the very least design these frequently disposable devices with high turnover to have a recycling potential higher than what we have currently.  In other words, if things are going to be made cheaply and to be discarded every couple of years to keep a revolving customer base, at the very least, engineer processes to easily put those discarded resources right back into the pool, not into landfills.  Granted, I could go on for hours about that sort of humanistic engineering...

- Matt G.

P.S. You really awakend the chemist in me.  Not often I get to dredge some of those memories up talking tech.  There's a metallurgist living somewhere deep in my mind that enjoyed thinking about this at length.

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Paul Winalski]

Brad Spencer is right about the resistance of gold to attack by acids
makes using acids to attack the substrate an effective strategy.

One other interesting property of gold is that it dissolves in liquid
mercury.  One old and primitive--but effective--way to extract gold is
to grind the ore finely, mix it with liquid mercury, then allow the
substrate to settle out.  You then have liquid mercury with gold
dissolved in it.  You heat the mercury to evaporate it away and
there's your gold.  The problem with this method is of course the
extreme toxicity and volatility of liquid mercury.  It's difficult
(and expensive) to handle it safely, and in those parts of the world
where this method is still in use, it usually isn't handled safely.
The mercury-contaminated waste left over after the extraction is also
toxic and environmentally damaging to dispose of.

-Paul W.

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[segaloco via COFF]

> iron nitrate being formed and the reaction goes apoplectic.

Copper...not iron...thought I proofread better than that.  Iron certainly will not spontaneously evolve from copper metal and nitric acid.  In any case, I had never considered mercury solubility Paul, that's quite an interesting way to go about it.  I wonder if gallium would do something similar...

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[steve jenkin]

Or cyanide :(

Used to reprocess ‘mullock’ heaps left after mercury extraction.
	<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_cyanidation>

> On 1 Aug 2023, at 07:20, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> One other interesting property of gold is that it dissolves in liquid
> mercury. 

--

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Wesley Parish]

I've also done a fair amount of work breaking up and down old PCs and 
Macintoshes, in the early 2000s.

The business owner talked about getting a furnace built to render down 
the old CRTs, but it hadn't happened by the time I left that company, 
and I doubt it had happened by the time of the Chirstchurch earthquakes 
2010-2011. I do know we sent the metal cases off to the local metal 
recyclers. But what happened to the boards, I have no idea.

Wesley Parish

On 31/07/23 08:33, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Grant Taylor via COFF wrote in
>   <5ec59010-d848-8adc-9872-7a4e6fb599eb@tnetconsulting.net>:
>   |On 7/29/23 6:26 PM, segaloco via COFF wrote:
>   |> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards
>   |> to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical.
>   |
>   |My experience disposing of things is from the late '90s and early '00s
>   |and is for much smaller things.  So it may very well differ.
>
> Around 1990(+ a bit) i worked during holiday for a company which
> collected old computers, monitors etc from authorities and, well,
> other companies.  Myriads of (plastic) keyboards, cables, etc., it
> all was thrown into containers (ie rolled down the floor, then
> blindly thrown), all mixed up.  I (a prowd owner of an i386 DX 40
> by that time iirc) shortly thought of, you know, but to no avail.
> I have no idea, i am pretty sure it all went down to Africa or
> India, where young people and other unlucky then had to pave their
> way through, as is still mostly the case today, _i think_.  Let's
> just hope they do not have illnesses because of the (likely) toxic
> interour.  (Having said that, i myself also worked for a short
> time for another company where i was crawling through cable and
> such shafts, .. without any mask ..  Not to talk about waste
> incinator and chemical industry here (Merck and Rhön etc), they
> were also filter free, .. and then i was also smoking for over
> twenty years.  How did i end up here now??  I hope i am still from
> one of those generations which can live a hundred years
> nonetheless.)
>
> --steffen
> |
> |Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
> |der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
> |einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
> |(By Robert Gernhardt)

[COFF] Re: Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

[resorting]

Wesley Parish wrote in
 <76501721-ab55-0c86-090a-dd06d53dc582@gmail.com>:
 |On 31/07/23 08:33, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> Grant Taylor via COFF wrote in
 |>   <5ec59010-d848-8adc-9872-7a4e6fb599eb@tnetconsulting.net>:
 |>|On 7/29/23 6:26 PM, segaloco via COFF wrote:
 |>|> Howdy folks, I wanted to get some thoughts and experiences with regards
 |>|> to what sort of EOL handling of mainframe/mini hardware was typical.
 |>|
 |>|My experience disposing of things is from the late '90s and early '00s
 |>|and is for much smaller things.  So it may very well differ.
 |>
 |> Around 1990(+ a bit) i worked during holiday for a company which
 |> collected old computers, monitors etc from authorities and, well,
 |> other companies.  Myriads of (plastic) keyboards, cables, etc., it
 |> all was thrown into containers (ie rolled down the floor, then
 |> blindly thrown), all mixed up.
 ...
 |I've also done a fair amount of work breaking up and down old PCs and 
 |Macintoshes, in the early 2000s.
 |
 |The business owner talked about getting a furnace built to render down 
 |the old CRTs, but it hadn't happened by the time I left that company, 
 |and I doubt it had happened by the time of the Chirstchurch earthquakes 
 |2010-2011. I do know we sent the metal cases off to the local metal 
 |recyclers. But what happened to the boards, I have no idea.

Yaaaaah, you know, as a native German of age by that time
i remember myriads of toxic waste affairs where that shit was
shipped to .. sheer "everywhere" (except first and second world,
of course).  So this was the tip of an iceberg the contours of
which were known from many years of newspapers, magazines, good
political TV documentations etc, yet the dullness of reality
overwhelmed me.  And, uh, oh, i acted conforming(ly) (very fast).

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)