My late husband worked in high tech in the 70's, 80's and part of the 90's. In going through things in the basement, I'm finding he kept quite a few chips and transistors and other such things. I'm told some of it is scrapable for precious metals. Some of the chips might be collectible in their whole form. How does one know which are best collected rather than scrapped? Searching online has given me a very little amount of information thus far. I'll include some pictures with this post -- just a sampling. There are boxes full of items like those in the pictures -- dozens of transistors alone (every shape size and color).
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Old chips
- Thread starter Dot
- Start date
I'm glad you aren't just scraping them. The gold chips in the 3rd picture look very interesting. I'm sure someone on here will know what they are.
Unless you are willing to look up the part numbers, you won't be able to know for sure what they are. You would also then have to work out what a reasonable price would be. Unless you are really into this sort of thing I doubt you will find it very interesting.
The only thing I can really advise is to put it in the items for sale section, and put your location. I'm sure there is someone who would find this very interesting.
Unless you are willing to look up the part numbers, you won't be able to know for sure what they are. You would also then have to work out what a reasonable price would be. Unless you are really into this sort of thing I doubt you will find it very interesting.
The only thing I can really advise is to put it in the items for sale section, and put your location. I'm sure there is someone who would find this very interesting.
Hey thanks for the information / suggestions! It's kind of a labor of love. These things are interesting to me only because they were to my husband. I don't want to destroy anything a collector would like to have. Charging a price would, I hope, safeguard them from being scrapped.
I wasn't sure if parts were sold on this forum or just whole computers. I can try a few and just say "best offer" if I'm not sure what to ask. I found an early Texas Instruments chip that is really kind of beautiful, and an early Intel chip. Some of the parts I'm not sure are computer parts. Might be vintage radio.
I'm new on here, and I must have missed where one puts their location in. Will go back and try to correct that.
daver2
10k Member
Hi Dot,
Sorry to hear about your husband.
There is a ‘marketplace’ section if you go to the top level of the forum.
Be aware that some of these items (especially the integrated circuits and transistors etc.) will be static electricity sensitive. So touching them with your fingers could destroy them! This is why your husband stored them in a box with black conductive foam.
The ‘interesting’ numbers are on the top of the devices, so some close-up shots of the various devices would help to identify what they are.
I see that the one IC number I can read has been written on stating something like ‘Fail’. So I suspect this device is dead (unfortunately).
I suspect some of the other devices are non computer devices, but I am interested in what the box of devices are in photograph 3 on the left...
You will get very little for them for scrap.
Yes, please add your location (so we know where the parts are located).
Unless you are willing to put a bit of effort in to identifying what the devices are, my suggestion would be to just list them as a ‘job lot’ for clearance and let the highest bidder put the effort in.
Just a thought.
Dave
Sorry to hear about your husband.
There is a ‘marketplace’ section if you go to the top level of the forum.
Be aware that some of these items (especially the integrated circuits and transistors etc.) will be static electricity sensitive. So touching them with your fingers could destroy them! This is why your husband stored them in a box with black conductive foam.
The ‘interesting’ numbers are on the top of the devices, so some close-up shots of the various devices would help to identify what they are.
I see that the one IC number I can read has been written on stating something like ‘Fail’. So I suspect this device is dead (unfortunately).
I suspect some of the other devices are non computer devices, but I am interested in what the box of devices are in photograph 3 on the left...
You will get very little for them for scrap.
Yes, please add your location (so we know where the parts are located).
Unless you are willing to put a bit of effort in to identifying what the devices are, my suggestion would be to just list them as a ‘job lot’ for clearance and let the highest bidder put the effort in.
Just a thought.
Dave