I desoldered a bunch of tiny smd caps from one graphics card and soldered them to fix another. A microscope was an invaluable tool in that situation.

I do ! I've desoldered SRAM sockets from a dead pcchips board to add real cache to a board which had fake cache ... I even plan to salvage ISA slots from some of my dead boards to replace ISA slots on boards with battery damage and add ISA slots to my Asus K7M which has spots for an ISA slot but no slot present.

Also I take RAM slots because they can be used as well.

Soon I think I'll go one step further and use a heat gun to remove everything from a PCB and then take what's salvageable (chips, connectors, etc) and recycle the rest.

One thing I'd like to find for rather cheap is a trashed super socket 7 with a good VIA VT82C586B southbridge because I have a board that is almost working, but has a bad southbridge and I can't find any affordable one online.

All the time! I mainly work on older retro game consoles and so I use the parts from non-repairable donors to fix others. As an example, I might use parts from a damaged Atari 5200 to replace a broken component on an Atari 7800. I've removed IC sockets and things as well to keep on hand as one never knows when you might need them.

If it's still in good shape and I need it: hell yeah.

In fact currently actively looking for some dead stuff to scavenge hard-to-find parts (SCSI terminator resistor networks...)

dionb wrote on 2021-03-02, 23:11:

If it's still in good shape and I need it: hell yeah.

Why do I feel like this quote originated with Dr Frankenstein ?

I scavenge parts off of dead boards. Sometimes it is not until I need a part. Other times it is when I am scrapping dead boards and I scavenge everything I thing I would possibly need off of them.

A hot air workstation is great for removing all the surface mount items in short order.

douglar wrote on 2021-03-03, 04:02:

dionb wrote on 2021-03-02, 23:11:

If it's still in good shape and I need it: hell yeah.

Why do I feel like this quote originated with Dr Frankenstein ?

Not consciously, but... if I could, I would 😉

Computers are just semi-stable constellations of spare parts. You could say the same of a human body.

Recently I started to disassemble a VLB cl5428 which has a bad PCB (front to back angle 15' and no readable image until I force the PCB streight a bit, but still weird character)
Took off the RAM to upgrade another 5428 😁
I guess I'll keep the chip itself just in case I need one some day.

Also I got a nice XT board with a little crack over 2/3 of the PCB. I salvaged a few sockets from it for an xt-cf device 😀

I've always disassembled stuff from dead boards, so I have extra stuff like jumpers, BIOS chips, anything that can be removed from a board without needing a soldering iron.
Good thing I kept many of the broken boards, I used to throw out stuff more easily back when the hobby was still new to me.