Recycler rescues mysterious trove of rare aerospace hardware, and aims to find its past – GeekWire

A technological time capsule of artifacts from the Seattle region’s aerospace history was saved from a trash can by an electronics developer this week. Now you’re trying to solve this mystery: Who owns them, where do they come from, and what exactly are they, anyway?

Computer and electronic parts dating back nearly 50 years were among the items being dropped off at the Bellevue, Wash., location of Living Green Technology. Instead of the usual assortment of outdated laptops, game consoles and tangled wires, the lot resembled an engineering archive that included gold-plated prototype chips, green silicon structures exposed under glass, and fiber-optic test cables used to pioneer early flight control systems.

Tyler Rivers, founder and CEO of the 13-year-old company, personally inspects the weekly collections from his company’s public landfills, and quickly realized that these pieces were too rare to be mined for their precious metals.

“I’m a geek about all these things,” Rivers told GeekWire on Wednesday. “I went down a lot of rabbit holes with different things.”

Rivers was looking to see if the donor could be tracked down to help piece together the high-tech puzzle. He did his own digging and GeekWire also relied on Google’s Gemini AI to help identify objects in the photos Rivers shared. We hope readers may email us with their details.

For now, we’ve determined that the collection paints a picture of a highly specialized, Cold War-era engineering workplace focused on the real output of modern aircraft, spacecraft engineering, and early fiber-optic data networks. Includes:

Texas Instruments SBP9900X microprocessor: A rare, military-grade 16-bit processor from 1977 marked “Experimental.” Built using a special structure resistant to extreme temperatures and ionizing cosmic rays, this line of chips was popularly used by NASA and military defense contractors in deep-space and missile guidance systems.

Canstar 8×8 optical star coupler: A well-maintained, heavy-duty-metal fiber-optic coupler stamped “8X8 100/120/140.” This component physically bundles fiber-optic fibers together to separate and transmit light signals – a key building block for early prototyping, non-interfering “Fly-by-Light” flight control systems.

DDC Total-AceXtreme avionics module: A sample of mechanical engineering marked by Data Device Corporation (DDC), a pioneer of 1970s and ’80s military aircraft systems. The component is designed for MIL-STD-1553, a data bus protocol that allows cockpit computers, sensors, and avionics to communicate on military aircraft and spacecraft.

Non-closed hybrid microcircuits: The custom-made ceramic and metal housings are empty silicon structures connected by microscopic, gold-plated wires. These high-reliability hybrids are hand-customized for military and aerospace applications to pack dense electrical circuits into compact, hermetically sealed packages.

Rivers has no formal aerospace, computer science or electronics background – he is a 2012 University of Washington graduate in economics. He started his company as a college student while working at a UPS Store, placing a dumpster on the counter to collect, repair and resell old cell phones and iPods.

Today, in addition to community e-recycling, Living Green Technology helps businesses, government agencies and others with data destruction, asset recovery and more.

Rivers’ curiosity always follows her home. When unique or puzzling items turn up in his public dumpsters, he often takes them home to dissect them in his garage. Among his previous possessions is a NASA laptop, complete with receipts and markings indicating that it was prepared for spaceflight.

“I dive really deep and gather as much information as I can,” Rivers said. “Usually, sadly after that, I stick it on a shelf in my workshop and leave it there until I figure out what I want to do with it next.”

This one-of-a-kind preserved history offers a realistic look at the engineering hurdles that were overcome decades ago, representing a revolutionary time when computers were first abused to survive the harsh environments of military aircraft and space flight.

For more information, GeekWire reached out to Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a well-known hardware hacker, author, and MIT-trained electrical engineering Ph.D. he is best known for his pioneering work in reverse engineering and open source hardware. His blog is a must read for any hardware geek.

After reviewing photos of the Bellevue transport, Huang pointed out that the collection may not be a single, unified archive from a single aerospace project. Rather, he suspects it is the ultimate “collage” of high-tech memorabilia.

“A random tray of black ESD foam parts … I would probably be inclined to think that this was part of a collage of parts kept by a technician from various projects,” Huang said. “There are good optical sensors in there with large active areas, a randomly spaced LED display, and the old 2K EEPROM.”

Given the Seattle region’s history in aviation, aerospace and technology, there are countless boxes tucked away in garages, attics and warehouses that hold the artifacts of innovation.

Lāth Carlson was the executive director of Living Computers: Museum + Labs, a now-closed Seattle facility founded by Microsoft founder Paul Allen as a home for vintage computer equipment. Carlson was used to random boxes showing up at his door.

“A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of museums wouldn’t exist without collectors — people who say, ‘well, that looks like something worth keeping’ and put it in a box,” said Carlson, who now heads Seattle’s National Nordic Museum. “Sometimes we get lucky and they end up being better than they think.”

In addition to advocating local clothing for recycling, Carlson recommended contacting the museum before leaving items, because most are bound by the policy of discarding such items.

For now, Rivers’ latest rescue is safe on the roller coaster, perhaps waiting for its case to be fully revealed.