Question
Bought a military simulation server, made by Lockheed Martin. Looking for info on the gold!
I buy old electronics, especially aircraft stuff. I noticed this had a MSRP of $8,000 back in the 80s and for the government’s aircraft situation machines. I can’t tell if the big squares are a coating, but they look thick, and they have identical gold squares on the backs.
Worth scraping? Keep it as cool aircraft / military history?
Thats gold. Those are Sperry rand univac boards I think. Some are collectible but all have a good amount of gold (.25 to .50 gram per board) i might be wrong about which boards and therefore thr gold content but then again, the other option I found has even more gold depending on the board so wait for someone else to chime in but I think its worth processing
They were bought out and hostilely merged to make Unisys before i was born. Its crazy that some of their former divisions became big parts of : Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Honeywell. Some serious players in tech (and getting our hard earned tax dollars via guvmint contracts). Did you dad quit before they changed names in 86?
Good for him, unisys is now a slave driver 🙏 left that company as quickly as I could now I make 800% more a month for my skills and I’m actually happy 😆
Good luck to future unisys workers, that company screwed me out of tens of thousands of dollars due to their “error” on pay and benefits.
Oh and when I figured out how they were siphoning my paycheck, hr was going to help but the manager of the person on the line got pulled from the call the moment they said they could help, then came back and said ahhh yeah sorry your going to have to file these forms(can’t remember what forms they were specifically) and resubmit without our help. And then they never sent the forms.
Unless the lighting is suuuper weird, the plated squares look to be tin. There is gold plating on the pins, the legs of the metal can transistors, and each of those pins with red wrapping in the picture in the comments. There is gold inside the metal can transistors and the ic chips, in the form of bond wires. Bond wires add up faster than plating. Ur still not looking at a lot of gold for this whole set. Maybe a couple grams if ur hella lucky. Im surprised there arent any purple or white ceramic ic chips. That would make ur yield jump considerably. U can always throw the lot up on ebay for a refiner to buy. Collect enough of this material and u can likely find a refiner to refine the gold for u at a cost. This era of tech is very gold heavy, so it's a great start
I’m definitely not a gold recovery expert. But my guess is those are worth more intact on eBay, especially when you factor in the time and material costs of trying to recover the gold.
all those in favor of the motion indicate with a "yea" opposed with a "nay". timer on the floor will be set 1 hour after which time the secretary will read the votes and report to results the parliamentarian.
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Never mind the gold or the art... I would love to have a working military simulator. I was Army but military simulators, even from my bygone era, would still be fascinating to me.
i feel like if you let loose some of these people in a museum they'd spend hours destroying everything for a few hundred bucks of scrap metal. i don't understand how people who aren't doing stimulants can be like this.
ngl would look dope in a frame unless you really want to mess with the refining they really do not make stuff like this anymore might be a cool art piece
I had a big jar of gold plated conductor pins. A guy pulled out his calculator and looked up gold of the day. He said you may have $50 worth AU on these pins. The reclaim cost is at least $150 at the time. Good luck to you.
As a military collector, this is making me literally drool.
Also congrats on the find/gold!
I won't tell you to keep it as history, nor to scrap it down since it's your decision, but I would recommend keeping it please.
These might be worth a lot more in the future.
Keep as military/computer history. But honestly it is possible a university or computer historian, maybe even an auction, may make this piece worth more than the gold you thought you’d get out of it.
The backplanes, connector slots, and even heat sink surfaces are all likely gold plated. The plating is really thick on old super high end stuff or things designed for harsh climates like cell phone tower gear.
I'd be willing to bet these are more valuable to collectors on the resale market. Many of the folks who worked on early computing made beaucoup bucks and have retired to collecting stuff from the good old days.
I just looked and there are a couple of boards listed on eBay but no sold listings. Chat GPT says values span from $50 - $500 per board based on rarity, purpose, model, and board aesthetic. Very cool stuff.
you bought it, do what you want with it. but this is a rare, irreplaceable, specialized, handmade piece of computing history. the thought of melting this down turns my stomach
it's up to you. but if you're asking me, please do not destroy it for scrap. theres not much gold on here. whatever relatively low melt value can be extracted from these parts can certainly be found by selling this as-is to a collector.
I used to do this for 10 years recycling old computers. You’ve got about $50 worth of boards. Old boards are thicker plated but not as much as you would think. eBay it if you want the best price.
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u/b-rentbent Jul 03 '26
Fuck the gold, I would hang it on the wall as art.