Computer parts Breakdown and identification

This is a 5.25 inch floppy drive. I would put these on ebay and sell them instead of scrapping them. But if you want to scrap them you can take the board off of these just like you would a cd/dvd drive.


This is a 3.5/5.25 combo floppy drive. DO NOT SCRAP THESE. Sell them on ebay. I just sold this one for $20 with free shipping on ebay untested. So after shipipng and fees I still made about $12.

OK these next three pics show me taking apart acd/dvd rom drive just to get the board out. It took me a whole minute to do it and take all 3 pics. These boards fetch motherboard price if im not mistakin. Back panel was held on by 4 screws and then lifts right off. Then board just held in by plastic clamps and it to lifts right out. If you get DVDRW drives dont scrap them either. I sell them for $15 on ebay and $20 for the lightscribe ones.





This is a pic of all diferent kinds of EPROMS/IC CHIPS/FLATBACKS. They all sell for same price.


This is called ribbon cable. Cut the black parts off this is where all the gold plated pins are. When cut from copper wires throw them in a bucket with your connector ends from other cables like monitor and printer cables. Shown below.



This is power supply. Personaly I just cut the wires off and throw the rest in my shred. Some yards will pay low copper breakage for them too. All depends on yard. Some yards even have there own prices for them.


These are 3.5 inch hard drives. There are older 5.25 inch hard drives and 2.5 inch you will find in laptops. They pretty much all look the same. Pull the baords off and sell them seperate. They usualy go for 2 times the motherboard rate or better depending on buyer. the back plate is usualy Stainless and the rest of the drive body is cast alluminum. The boards are usualy only held on with a couple screws and come off real easy.



Well thats it I hope this helps you all and if I missed anything let me know and ill add it to this post with an edit.

Originally Posted by recyclerscrap

THank you that is a very good post I am trying to learn how to best scrap recycle Computers E waste and Other various recyclables

Thank you for your kind words. Im also a buyer here on the forum so feel free to PM with any questions you may have and ill be glad to answer them if I can.

The short answer is no you don't remove all the gold, the gold bits make the boards have the value they have.

There's a lot more to it than that but you can do some more reading in other threads to help your knowledge. For now I suggest you hold onto your boards until you know more and can judge what is best for your business. Mike.

Originally Posted by nat0420

I want to know how to tell what those different little metals are on the boards. I want to start collecting the palladium and platinum. if u could help

Nope cant help you there sorry. I dont know what parts are made of what I just know what they are. Might want to try gold refining forum for those types of answers.

Originally Posted by Chuckvanstinkle

i was wondering if anyone was familiar with 5 pin solid state protectors. i have a garbage can full of used one and 4/5 of the pins/plugs are gold. i opened one up and the gold plug runs through the entire body of the plastic portion. so if anyone has any information regarding scrapping one of these id appreciate. oh yea I'm new here. first post. whoop.whoop.

I'm not familiar with them.