What to do with dead ICs?

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mrr19121970
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What to do with dead ICs?

Post by mrr19121970 »

I am slowly building a pile of MOS ICs that are dead. I am sure you can't really throw them away in the household waste, probably better in the battery bin for recycling?

But it's a shame to throw them away, I was thinking what else can you do with them? I have seen USB sticks and keyrings offered. I was thinking to cast in polyester resin and make a paperweight.

Has anyone attempted this, or have any other ideas how to use these as 'trinkets' ?
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ral-clan
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Re: What to do with dead ICs?

Post by ral-clan »

I would keep them, if they were mine. Making a craft with them like you suggested is a creative idea.

If not a craft, then who knows what technology might be invented in the future that could possibly repair them! Perhaps it *might* be possible to rebuild the burned internal traces one day --- okay, I'll admit this kind of molecular repair probably won't be available, or feasible, in our lifetimes, but it's theoretically possible and may one day trickle down to the home user level.

Think about what has happened in the past 30 years: Ubiquitous desktop 3D printing is almost here. People are starting to repair machinery which has been out of service for decades because it's finally possible to make out-of-production replacement parts. I can think of several devices I threw out years ago which if I'd kept I would have been able to revive had I forseen 3D printing.

Essentially, anything originally manufactured by Commodore is a finite resource now. Once it gets thrown out, there is one less in the world, broken or not.

Maybe you'll attend a computer fair or make a presentation about retro-computing to kids one day. You can use the broken MOS IC as a prop people can handle without fear of damaging a working copy. It will have some small value as an historical artefact.
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