Scrap Old Toshiba A60 Laptop

It has been more than 10 years since it was faulty, my Toshiba Satellite Laptop is being kept in the store left untouched. There was time wanted to give it away or sell it for few bucks to the scrap collectors, but something always holds me back from doing it. Until then i have an idea salvage some of the valuable parts and its electronic components from the motherboard.

The Toshiba Satellite is an old computer manufactured in the year 2000 and it was a regret to purchase it. It gets easily heated up when it was being use for 10 to 20 minutes or so. And eventually it end up faulty which most probably caused by the excessive heat on the processor and lead to the leads to the heat sink fan malfunction due to overwork.

Items we found

1. Copper - heat sink
2. Aluminum - heat sink, internal layer, hard disk casing
3. Neodymium Magnet - Hard disk and DVD drive
4. RAM
5. Processor
6. Infra Red sensor
7. Plastics - Outer casing
8. Keyboards / LCD screen
9. Laser diode - DVD Drive
10. Small speakers
11. DC motors - DVD drive and Hard disk
12. Cooling fans - High quality (Made In Japan)

Valuable items from the motherboards

1. Copper sheets
2. Gold pin from the Intel processor
3. Tantalum Capacitors from motherboards, DVD drive circuit board, and Hard disk circuit board
4. Screws
5. Infra Red sensors
6. LCD monitor
7. Touch pad sensors
8. Palladium Silver Capacitors

It's somewhat educational to open the laptops and understand how it is assemble and finding valuable parts in it. After doing a few of this I've learnt that laptops are assembled almost in similar structure, and it taught me how to perform basic fix on the laptop computer i.e. replacing keyboard, open hard-disk, replace LCD monitor, CMOS battery, etc. Apart from that there are valuable electronic components such as infra-red, neodymium magnets, touch sensors, DC motors we can get as hobby components and doing simple experiments. Or if you have the expertise and equipment like some people usually taking the gold fingers around the electronic circuit connectors.

YouTube provides quite an info about valuable electronic components

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGjkUoFE-P0 --- Tantalum Capacitors
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWftjRnNrNw --- Palladium Silver capacitors