[COFF] Typical Fate of Older Hardware

[Brad Spencer]

Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at 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 at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org