OT: USED MACs

[Jeff Reynolds]

Stephen and Richard,

hey what ever you dont give away there was a school over in oakland (i  
think the jr high just behind the grand lake theatre) that had a lab  
program where the kids take in donated old equipment and either  
frankenstein together systems or recycle what is not recoverable and  
then either donate the computers to other schools that need them or  
low income families w/o a computer. Great all around, kids learn how  
to build computers and trouble shoot, computers go back into use by  
folks that would not otherwise have a system and at worst things are  
properly disposed/recycled! Would not be surprised if SF had a similar  
program somewhere in the area.

I donated my beloved old IIfx, a g3, an old power computing machine  
and a pile of misc equipment when we moved east from the Oakland about  
6 years back. Hope the program is still going on. they were doing macs  
and pcs but the teacher running it was very happy to get the mac  
equipment even though it was old because they had such stellar results  
with the mac equipment compared to the pc stuff and a greater demand  
for it!

I now get rid of old tech as fast as possible when i upgrade so that  
it can find a new home and be as useful for as long as possible in its  
next life. I use to hang onto stuff as i it was hard to let go of, but  
am trying to get better about it. also trying to purchase more for the  
long term than short term where possible and that has worked well with  
longer computer cycles now.

I never had a mac die (small parts sometimes broke, but never major  
failure), where as i have never had a pc last more than 3 years w/o a  
major failure in the last 30 years of computers... All the macs  
usually were give not desperate friends or sold off cheap to someone  
who could really use them and most are remarkably still living on  
today! My old SE from grad school is still being used (last i heard  
like a year back) by a friend who is a writer and for some odd reason  
finds it the best place to do her creative composing! running on a  
60mb quantum drive from 1988! She has to go through some convolutions  
to move her text over to her imac, but she still loves the old SE. i  
just cant believe it has not died or the hard drive has not seized up!  
The IIfx above had a cup of coffee spilled under it by a co worker and  
it was sucked up in side the machine, shorting out the whole underside  
of the motherboard (imagine the combination smell of burned coffee and  
electronics)! after tearing it all apart and cleaning it up the only  
thing fried was the eprom back up battery and the resistor soldered to  
it. those replaced and right back to working on and on and on... That  
was my portable computer for 2 years back and forth to a job in DC  
from the bay area in the early 90s, folk probably wondered what the  
large box i was stuffing in the overhead! BTW an apple high res 13"  
monitor also fit in the standard overhead!

sorry the old machines make me very nostalgic...

if i were still in the bay area i might take you up on an appleII but  
my wife would probably kill me! I lost track of the elementary school  
teacher friend who had my Basis 108 and was using it till the mid 90s  
for her classroom when i lost track of her...

cheers,

Jeffrey Reynolds

ps still have a kaypro lurking at my folks house and a sinclair z80 in  
the basement somewhere!


On Apr 21, 2009, at 8:55 PM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com  
wrote:

> I don't use the old stuff any more but I just rescued several of my  
> old macs
> from storage, and any list member in San Francisco that wants to  
> come over
> and adopt, be my guest.... I'd rather have them loved than go to E- 
> waste
> ville.
> Mac Cube G4 450?mhz
> G4 500 mhz with that odd AGP 'Space Blasters' monitor that's powered  
> through
> the cable
> 8100 ( with 4 track digidesign pro hardware card, rack and cables )  
> and the
> software probably works -- probably 16 bit/44.1
> 9600 (with firewire card and Adobe Premier
> the Laptop that came before the Wall Street (forgot the number)
> G3 Wall Street with Firewire, USB, and video cardbus adapters
> G3 iMac (Purple) AV version (needs new CD drive installed, included)
> 7100 with Audiomedia Card
> Tons of ADB keyboards and mice
> Many SCSI cables, SCSI drives, terminations(yuck)
> Mac Recorder
> A video to SCSI adapter
> Nubus 10baseT cards
> Mucho software. I had almost everything.
>
> The two 500's (all in one) went to Ewaste a while ago.
>
> for the real hard core gear slut:
> 2 complete Apple II systems with monitors, drives, and all cards,  
> FROB game
> development system for Atari VCS
> and a box of Documentation including the famous Red Book, Forth (with
> software), Sweet 16 docs, blah blah
>
> but I'm keeping the SE-30.....  ha ha
>
> I don't know if anybody here wants this stuff... but does it hurt to  
> ask?
> Pardon me if I've violated some rule....
>
> This collection looks like the history of Apple computer...