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    Drilled motherboards

    Hello,
    I was looking to buy some faulty boards to be used as donor boards for repairs (mainly macbooks but also other manufacturers).

    I was surprised to learn how many boards are offered with holes drilled inside them. I wonder why is that. I could understand if HDD/SDD is drilled to protect any sensitive data, but don't know about logic boards.


    Can anybody shed some light on the topic?

    Thank you!

    #2
    Re: Drilled motherboards

    Prevent resale market, especially for big companies that collect their old computers (apple sounds like a good candidate.)

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Drilled motherboards

      So it seems that in most cases manufacturers themselves are drilling holes. So much about recycling and reusing....

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Drilled motherboards

        They want you to recycle the materials not compete with their new products...

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Drilled motherboards

          Originally posted by Askic
          I was surprised to learn how many boards are offered with holes drilled inside them. I wonder why is that. I could understand if HDD/SDD is drilled to protect any sensitive data, but don't know about logic boards.
          If the motherboards have an SSD or other storage soldered onto the motherboard (such as tablets and many of the modern ultra-thin laptops), then that's probably the reason why... which is silly, because you don't even need to fully low-level format an SSD to make the data completely irrecoverable, unlike on a conventional HDD. Just wiping the file table on the SSD of where all the files are stored is typically enough... and since SSDs are fast, I'm sure there's software out there that can do this on the fly in very little time. But some people/companies are too dumb to learn new ways and would rather smash/destroy stuff than put a little effort and time and recover much of that investment back while also helping the environment and local community.

          Originally posted by eccerr0r View Post
          They want you to recycle the materials not compete with their new products...
          Which is bullshit, because majority of the "materials" in the PCB are various non-recyclable organics and very little metal. On top of that, even then a lot of the metal recovery is not very effective... so you end up with a lot of waste.
          Last edited by momaka; 02-25-2021, 03:22 AM.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Drilled motherboards

            They will have been written off against tax, the holes ensure they can't be repaired and any possible data recovered but they can be reused for parts which is better than shredding.
            If it has a T2 chip and wasn't wiped by the previous owner it's scrap anyway.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Drilled motherboards

              Originally posted by momaka View Post
              Which is bullshit, because majority of the "materials" in the PCB are various non-recyclable organics and very little metal. On top of that, even then a lot of the metal recovery is not very effective... so you end up with a lot of waste.
              This is how business works: "NOT MY PROBLEM... IT'S NOW YOUR PROBLEM!"

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Drilled motherboards

                Originally posted by eccerr0r View Post
                This is how business works: "NOT MY PROBLEM... IT'S NOW YOUR PROBLEM!"
                This is so true
                9 PC LCD Monitor
                6 LCD Flat Screen TV
                30 Desk Top Switching Power Supply
                10 Battery Charger Switching Power Supply for Power Tool
                6 18v Lithium Battery Power Boards for Tool Battery Packs
                1 XBox 360 Switching Power Supply and M Board
                25 Servo Drives 220/460 3 Phase
                6 De-soldering Station Switching Power Supply 1 Power Supply
                1 Dell Mother Board
                15 Computer Power Supply
                1 HP Printer Supply & Control Board * lighting finished it *


                These two repairs where found with a ESR meter...> Temp at 50*F then at 90*F the ESR reading more than 10%

                1 Over Head Crane Current Sensing Board ( VFD Failure Five Years Later )
                2 Hem Saw Computer Stack Board

                All of these had CAPs POOF
                All of the mosfet that are taken out by bad caps

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Drilled motherboards

                  Pisses me off, if they can't get electronics to fail and force people to throw it away, they get software to not run on old hardware anymore and force people throw it away too...why *can't* I still use my P3 and Athlon XP...

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Drilled motherboards

                    Originally posted by eccerr0r View Post
                    Pisses me off, if they can't get electronics to fail and force people to throw it away, they get software to not run on old hardware anymore and force people throw it away too...
                    Looks like that will backfire for anything manufactured in the 2010s, with the coronavirus pandemic! Because many people can't even get a later video card!
                    ASRock B550 PG Velocita

                    Ryzen 9 "Vermeer" 5900X

                    16 GB AData XPG Spectrix D41

                    Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6750 XT

                    eVGA Supernova G3 750W

                    Western Digital Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD

                    Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                    "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                    "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                    "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                    "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Drilled motherboards

                      Originally posted by Askic View Post
                      So it seems that in most cases manufacturers themselves are drilling holes. So much about recycling and reusing....
                      ^This, businesses recycling their own equipment generally don't care what happens to it once the HDD/SSD is removed/wiped so they generally aren't the ones requiring stuff to be destroyed. However manufacture's "official" recycling programs (especially Apple) often specifically require their contractors destroy equipment to prevent it's reuse, this is largely a result of their vendetta against independent repair (Apple is certainly the worst offender in this, but many other manufactures are following their lead), since it is much harder for independent repair shops to operate if they can't get parts, and since Apple won't sell new parts to " non-authorized" repair shops, used parts were often the only source, but now they are attacking that as well.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Drilled motherboards

                        hard drives at least tend to be automatically obsoleted by size/speed, so they don't need to destroy them... alas I'm still using old drives despite this...

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Drilled motherboards

                          Originally posted by dmill89 View Post
                          vendetta against independent repair (Apple is certainly the worst offender in this, but many other manufactures are following their lead), since it is much harder for independent repair shops to operate if they can't get parts, and since Apple won't sell new parts to " non-authorized" repair shops, used parts were often the only source, but now they are attacking that as well.
                          That backfired with the automobile industry! And even for "big-ag", with John Deere, there were revolts.
                          ASRock B550 PG Velocita

                          Ryzen 9 "Vermeer" 5900X

                          16 GB AData XPG Spectrix D41

                          Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6750 XT

                          eVGA Supernova G3 750W

                          Western Digital Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD

                          Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                          "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                          "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                          "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                          "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Drilled motherboards

                            Why don’t we just stop buying this crap if companies want do this kind-a crap oh I forgot that you can not talk bad about a company like that they might retaliate in some way

                            But sure would be nice though
                            9 PC LCD Monitor
                            6 LCD Flat Screen TV
                            30 Desk Top Switching Power Supply
                            10 Battery Charger Switching Power Supply for Power Tool
                            6 18v Lithium Battery Power Boards for Tool Battery Packs
                            1 XBox 360 Switching Power Supply and M Board
                            25 Servo Drives 220/460 3 Phase
                            6 De-soldering Station Switching Power Supply 1 Power Supply
                            1 Dell Mother Board
                            15 Computer Power Supply
                            1 HP Printer Supply & Control Board * lighting finished it *


                            These two repairs where found with a ESR meter...> Temp at 50*F then at 90*F the ESR reading more than 10%

                            1 Over Head Crane Current Sensing Board ( VFD Failure Five Years Later )
                            2 Hem Saw Computer Stack Board

                            All of these had CAPs POOF
                            All of the mosfet that are taken out by bad caps

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Drilled motherboards

                              problem is that the products are "so good" that getting an alternative is "suboptimal" ...

                              ... until it breaks and suddenly the "so good" item is "suboptimal"...

                              Comment

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