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Not really sure what either of these are.

The green and black blocks were not something I recognized on the demodulator boards so wanted to know what they were and then how they'd be graded?



The big board with all the yellow cylinders, also has some nice large heatsinks (blocks of brass) on the board that I figured I could be bothered to take apart. Out of curiosity what might this have come from and since I'd be taking apart a good chunk of the board already, what else should I do to get the best grade out of it?

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Top ones are easy. They’re delay boards. They say as much. ;)
Looks like signal controllers.

Looks like part of a commercial production setup. My guess would be analog to digital or very large format film projection.

But it’s definitely video equipment.

I’ve seen stuff similar to this in some OLD high end projection systems (theme park, not theatre).
Looks like they both suffered burnouts too. :’(

Bottom board is not likely to be above midgrade but I can’t tell you for sure with the heat shield still on.

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So nothing there that shouldn't be recycled? I wasn't sure since I hadn't seen anything quite like them before.

The delay boards would go as?

I'll get the A/V boards sometime this week and do some work on them. I wanted to take pics before I bought them, there were at least 5 of them.

And thank you again lost!

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Is that brass on the big board solid, or just a shell? If it is solid there should be a decent payout for that board from the brass. This is the kind of board that I will strip for copper, aluminum, IC chips, those copper/brass backed components, (etc...).

We’re going to step way outside normal discussion on this, because it’s a spot I have experience.
The intended operating environment of stuff like this pushes into the 150c• range. Or higher. So anything that deforms or melts below 200f• is out.

There’s not going to see lead in these. It melts way too low.
So your tracing and solder is likely nickel or silver.
Brass is also more likely than aluminium. Likely a naval class brass with high nickel content.
Expect brass and pure nickel pins. All vias and lines are usually nickel or silver. Throughs tend to be silver.

These tend to be part of gigantic rack units or “portable” cube racks on wheels.
But calling it portable makes the IBM Executive line of lugables look like a cell phone.

I’ve also tracked down two potential sources. Both are large production boxes. So this is definitely incomplete.
You’re missing the primary motherboard, and a giant fan board.

You got something here. A case where most scrap yards would say shred:low grade junk. But actual real value. Nickel is above $4 per pound. Silver in the low teens per ounce.
The big yellow capacitors are probably silver core aluminium canisters. Rather than the more common iron ceramic bar which would crack.

Your issue here isn’t the value but finding someone who recognises it. When you actually have them I’d call Chris and reference this thread and see if he’s interested.
Beyond that you can ebay stuff like this for a home refiner to play with.
As for a scrap aspect in a revolving business it’s probably in the peripheral range. (If they know what it is and are willing to bend the rules to take it).
Broken down to raw components is major man-hours. And that’s not something Boardsort actually does.

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Lost, I really enjoy when you take the time to share! Thank you.

AAK2, yes they are solid brass heatsinks (just shy of 8 pounds) topped with aluminum (2 pounds there).

For this board I wanted to get a better idea of what's there so I had to take the capacitors off to access the screws. There were smaller amounts of steel, stainless and copper. There were several long thin boards that popped right out and the two boards running on the top of the capacitors.

The boards all have Creos International or Creos Ltd. I found some patents related to transformers and such but was having trouble finding the actual company so I gave up on that. Didn't help that I was looking while I was still at work.

Anywho... here's a bunch of photos of the board if anyone has any additional comments:

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

I’ll be back on this mid day Wednesday. Tomorrow/today.
The capacitors are replacements. They post date the boards. Looks like they replace the silver oxide caps with a solid core unit. (And probably then wondered about power issues, :facepalm:)

I have experience in the field but it’s not a daily thing so it’s gonna take a bit of time to track this down. There’s above average value here. Not hundreds but definitely double digits.

You may also have a secondary market if enough is stile viable. I’ll have to, again, dig into things. But units like this are popular in the euro-style music industry as well for an art known as “video bending”.
I’d highly suggest holding off here till I can track some further info down. This isn’t common stuff.

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Well: I’m stumped.
As in completely!
The internet quickly brings up a biotech company.

My database is almost completely giving me a Central European energy company. Purely as a holding company. That lasted under a year. Lol

I did find This though.
And this makes sense.

Last time I had seen stuff like this in the open was a decade ago in Imagination at Disney.

The capacitors look like Al x Al2O3 crystallised. Which are used for holding some extreme voltages.

Honestly I’m going to just guess. Looks like an entertainment company built a lot of very high end boards from top grade off the shelf parts, in house.
Tandy had a development group that did that as well in the 70s and 80s, being the owners of Radio Shack. Almost everything they made pre-83 was made by Tandy themselves. (Their mid-to-late 70s audio equipment is some of the best sounding ever made).
It’s not rare; just rare to see something that high end make it out as scrap as whole boards! I’m surprised that didn’t get recovered by the company for a parts scrounge.

I forwarded the his to Chris. Who will reply here or directly on any interest.
My personal choice if you have the knowledge and tools would be to desolder the board and sell parts.
With the seals off it shouldn’t be hard to get a local buyer interested in those Al/AlO caps. Brass. Nickel. Silver. Copper.

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The place I'm getting them from is fairly close to Austin so there's definitely people/companies with the know-how to build stuff. I think I'm up close to 10 of these boards now, still have a bunch of boards on top I was trying to sort through to get to these.

Not sure if I'll find any other boards from whatever unit these were in but I'll try and keep my eyes peeled for anything that looks similar and post pics if I can.

If Chris isn't interested, I'll take one to my local buyer and see what he thinks. Or I may end up scrapping them like the one I already disassembled :\ If I do I'll desolder the capacitors instead of breaking them :D

_________________
Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

I forwarded this to Chris directly.

Things like this tend to be a bit diy in general. Be it a person or a small company. Buying one of those cubes will set you back 5 digits. Or build one from breadboard for under a grand.

This has some legitimate effort and mechanical production to the boards so that Canadian company is likely the original source. Disney switched to their own in-house designs for their parks in the late 90s and Universal has switched over to in house as well. Both used IBM equipment before that.

I can almost guess this was theme park stuff that someone fired up after being down for COVID for months. Not preheating some of those components can cause thermal stress blowouts like the photos show.

Like i originally said this stuff is almost always super high end theatre or augmented reality type use. Light shoes, projection, “holography” and the like.

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