(Large amount of destroyed panels removed before the picture was taken)
I have heard that ROM in these printers stores EVERY document ever printed, scanned or faxxed. So, you can't just junk the thing when it fails, you have to DESTROY it, in detail. The "re-cycle centers" are NOT going to do that, and paying minimum wage to their peeps, those slaves might be incentivized to remove your docs and sell them to an evil person.
I suppose I could build a fire and torch the thing, but I am a CONSERVATIONIST, and I don't want to foul the air without cause to do so. One never knows what poly-ethyl-badshit plastic they build these things out of, so, no torch. Take it to the gun range and give it an AR Funeral? My range frowns on that.
So, I removed each screw I could get at and used a heavy crowbar on the rest to get it down to chunks and get the digital boards out of it. BTW, I DID spend some time online trying to find a diagram which would tell me just where the data cache was on one of those boards, but never found that. I had planned to chuck a big wall-drill in a drill-motor and hole out the offending part, but without a diagram of where that offending part was, couldn't do that.
Eye-protection, gloves and crowbar did the work in about 15 minutes.
When I think of the sensitive crap I copied and scanned on that machine, it gives me the willies thinking that someone else might get it...
Happened on this from a link on my blog I made years ago. I'm a retired EE who designed many microprocessor systems.
ROM is "read-only memory" - it cannot store anything not programmed into it at the factory. EEPROM can be erased and re-programmed, but has limited capacity.
There is memory - "flash" - think USB thumb drives - that can hold large amounts of data, but they are ultimately limited. Same goes for hard drives.
I know some copier machines store the last X images they copy, but at some point either the memory or disk gets filled and no new stuff gets stored, or the oldest stuff gets overwritten.
A printer with an Ethernet port, or one with a wireless connection could, conceivably send each copied image back to the home office. A packet sniffer would prove if this is happening.
Years ago, I had a Brother FAX / printer that used a 8" wide plastic ribbon cartridge to print. It had a negative of every FAX received and every page printed on the ribbon - those got ceremonially burned when used up.
As suggested, applying voltage to the PC boards might damage them, but the most secure method is shredding or burning. Well designed circuitry can't be reliably blown up by applying the wrong voltage - the critical parts might survive. If someone really wants to recover the data on a hard drive or flash chip, there are methods using electron microscopes and other expensive tools that can read the data. The only totally safe methid of destruction is to pulverize the storage parts.
Posted by: Chuck Kuecker | June 01, 2017 at 18:15
I suspect that an application of 12 volts or higher, with a bit of amperage behind it, would suffice to destroy any sort of electronics components. I think AC would work better, as diodes are included in some circuits to protect from reverse voltage.
A hard drive disc should be physically destroyed.
I've not seen any articles on the subject of the electronics, just the discs.
Perhaps you could entice someone like Borepatch ( http://borepatch.blogspot.com/ ) or Silicon Graybeard (http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/ ) to weigh in on the subject.
Perhaps an automotive battery charger, or a welder, would work.
Posted by: Will | May 24, 2017 at 22:13