Talk:Motherboard Sorting

We may want to revise how motherboards are sorted.

A note from Ted
Hey again Treehouse Team,

Of the six or seven motherboard boxes from the treehouse, here's the sorting I thought would be useful to do to get things to the best places for assessment and potential repair and testing:

First-pass motherboard sorting -- leads to four groups:

1) bad capacitor motherboards,

2) full-tower form factor motherboards,

3) mini-tower form factor motherboards,

4) dual-processor, on-board SCSI, oldies and oddballs,

Flow of sorted motherboards:

category 1. . . to treehouse repair team,

category 2. . . to advanced motherboard testing,

categories 3 and 4. . . go to Second-pass sorting,

Ted's descriptive terms explained:

'Full tower' motherboards have 6 - 7 card slots. 'Mini tower' motherboards have only 3 - 4 card slots, and fit nicely in the shorter cases like the small Dell Dimension cases and TINY brand cases.

Second-pass motherboard sorting:

"Category 1" motherboards with blown capacitors need a more thorough visual inspection. Boards with smashed pins on chips, or burned components, or broken dinged copper traces on either side of the board should go to recycling. Those damages are typically not practical to repair. This goes also for boards with these damages and all good capacitors.

"Category 3" mini-tower boards may not meet our minimum FreekBox spec', but may still be useful because of their small size. We have considerably fewer of these than the full size boards.

"Category 4" motherboards would be good to sort according to needs. Perhaps there are some special requests for systems with SCSI support. Dual-processor boards may interest the White Hole team. Otherwise dual-proc boards would make likely good sellers in the Thrift Store. And a lot of these less-typical motherboards it may make sense to send straight to advanced motherboard testing.

These again are ideas and suggestions -- nothing cut in stone. I'm open to other's ideas as well.

Definitely write the list if are motherboard needs or criteria for keeping you see that I've missed.

- Ted