Recycler rescues mysterious trove of rare aerospace hardware, and sets out to discover its past

A technological time capsule of artifacts from the Seattle region’s aerospace history was saved from the waste bin by an electronics recycler this week. Now he’s trying to solve the mystery: Who owned them, where did they come from, and what exactly are they, anyway?

Computer and electronic parts dating back nearly 50 years were among a donation of items dropped off at the Bellevue, Wash., location of Living Green Technology. Instead of the usual assortment of obsolete laptops, gaming consoles and tangled cords, the lot was like a pristine engineering archive consisting of gold-plated prototype chips, raw silicon architectures exposed under glass, and experimental fiber-optic cables used to pioneer early flight control systems.

Tyler Rivers, founder and CEO of the 13-year-old company, personally inspects weekly collections from his company’s public drop-off sites, and he instantly realized the pieces were far too rare to be shredded for their precious metals.

“I’m kind of the nerd for all this stuff,” Rivers told GeekWire on Wednesday. “I go down many, many rabbit holes with different things.”

Rivers was looking into whether the donor could be tracked down to help piece together the high-tech puzzle. He did his own digging and GeekWire also leaned on Google’s Gemini AI to help identify items in photographs Rivers shared. We’re hoping readers might also email us with their own insights.

For now, we’ve determined that the collection paints a picture of a highly specialized, Cold War-era engineering workspace focused on the physical dawn of modern aviation, spacecraft engineering, and early fiber-optic data networks. It includes:

Texas Instruments SBP9900X microprocessor: A rare, military-grade 16-bit processor from 1977 marked “Experimental.” Built using a specialized architecture resistant to extreme temperatures and ionizing cosmic radiation, this line of chips was famously utilized by NASA and military defense contractors for deep-space and missile guidance systems.

Canstar 8×8 optical star coupler: A beautifully preserved, heavy-duty glass-and-metal fiber-optic coupler stamped “8X8 100/120/140.” This component physically fused fiber-optic strands together to split and route light signals — a critical building block for prototyping early, interference-proof “Fly-by-Light” flight control systems.

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

Un-lidded hybrid microcircuits: Custom-engineered ceramic and metal cavities housing bare silicon architectures connected by microscopic, gold-bonded wire arrays. These high-reliability hybrids were custom-crafted by hand for military and aerospace programs to pack dense electronic circuitry into compact, hermetically sealed packages.

Rivers has no formal aerospace, computer science or electronics background — he’s a 2012 University of Washington graduate in economics. He started his company as a college student while working at a UPS Store, setting up a drop-off bin on the counter to collect, repair, and resell old cell phones and iPods.

Today, in addition to public e-recycling, Living Green Technology assists businesses, government agencies and others in secure data destruction, asset recovery and more.

Rivers’ hands-on curiosity regularly follows him home. When unique or puzzling items show up at his public drop-off sites, he often takes them home to dissect them in his garage. Among his previous saves is a NASA laptop, complete with receipts and tagging showing it was modified for spaceflight.

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

This particular assortment of salvaged history offers a physical look at engineering hurdles solved decades ago, representing a transition period when computers were first being ruggedized to survive the extreme environments of military aviation and space flight.

For further insight, GeekWire reached out to Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a renowned hardware hacker, author, and MIT-trained electrical engineering Ph.D. widely known for his pioneering work in reverse engineering and open-source hardware. His blog is a hardware geek’s must-read.

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

“The random tray of components on the black ESD foam… I almost would be inclined to think this was more of a collage of components kept by a technician from various projects,” Huang said. “There’s some pretty nice optical sensors in there with enormous active areas, a random segmented LED display, and an old 2K EEPROM.”

Given the Seattle region’s history around aviation, aerospace and technology, there are surely countless boxes stuck in garages, attics and storage spaces holding the artifacts of innovation.

Lāth Carlson is the former executive director of Living Computers: Museum + Labs, the now-closed Seattle institution founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as a home for vintage computing equipment. Carlson was accustomed to random boxes showing up on his doorstep.

“Many people don’t realize that most museums would not exist without collectors — people that say, ‘well, that seems like it’s worth keeping’ and put it in a box,” said Carlson, who now leads Seattle’s National Nordic Museum. “Sometimes we get really lucky and they end up being more right than they realize.”

Without speaking for local e-recycling outfits, Carlson recommended getting in touch before just leaving things at a museum, because most are bound by policy to dispose of such items.

For now, Rivers’ latest rescue is safe from the shredder, perhaps waiting for its full story to be uncovered.