Sunday, December 21, 2003
Sources of Macs
Someone browsed this BLOG and asked where do all the Macs come from. There are 2 answers. The ones I've been mentioning recently are all at the elementary school where my wife teaches. Donations to other schools and surplus Macs come mainly from the FLMUG user group in Orlando.
Years ago, my wife's school purchased a bunch of 580's and 575's (one for each classroom plus several in the library). Then, after I met my wife and started volunteering, they bought a lab of bondi iMacs (about 32). More recently they bought 2 carts of iBooks and some wireless base stations, a variety of newer CRT iMacs in various colors, and 1 eMac.
The school also solicits and accepts used, donated Macs. A few years back they got all the surplus Macs from the local fire department, mostly 6100's and 630's. The district tech people were furious with the principal for accepting these, but the computer teacher knew that they could be put to good use, and that I was available as a volunteer to work on them. The computer teacher also asked other schools in the district for any PowerMacs they no longer needed, and this how the school got about 30 5x00's, a dozen 7200's, and various other models.
Previously in the BLOG I mentioned getting 12 8100's for another public school, and 36 6100 and 7100's for a private school. These all come from FLMUG's RD&S project, which accepts unwanted Macs from the Orlando area, fixes them up, and donates them to charities as needed. I've been involved in both the school and RD&S for about 5 years now.
RD&S gets a lot more donations than they can handle, so they often let me take away really old models. First I got a van load of compacts and imagewriters. I continue to prep these as homework computers and give them to low income families with kids at the school. More recently RD&S decided to unload all the pre-Quadras, and then all the Quadras, so I have a variety of those.
In the next few days or weeks, RD&S may find a new location, suspend activity and put equipment into storage, or disband altogether. I would like to see them continue somehow. But every couple of years they seem to lose their workshop space. If they don't find a new workshop, maybe just finding storage (even renting a storage unit) and working in members' garages could be a new way to continue the operation.
Someone browsed this BLOG and asked where do all the Macs come from. There are 2 answers. The ones I've been mentioning recently are all at the elementary school where my wife teaches. Donations to other schools and surplus Macs come mainly from the FLMUG user group in Orlando.
Years ago, my wife's school purchased a bunch of 580's and 575's (one for each classroom plus several in the library). Then, after I met my wife and started volunteering, they bought a lab of bondi iMacs (about 32). More recently they bought 2 carts of iBooks and some wireless base stations, a variety of newer CRT iMacs in various colors, and 1 eMac.
The school also solicits and accepts used, donated Macs. A few years back they got all the surplus Macs from the local fire department, mostly 6100's and 630's. The district tech people were furious with the principal for accepting these, but the computer teacher knew that they could be put to good use, and that I was available as a volunteer to work on them. The computer teacher also asked other schools in the district for any PowerMacs they no longer needed, and this how the school got about 30 5x00's, a dozen 7200's, and various other models.
Previously in the BLOG I mentioned getting 12 8100's for another public school, and 36 6100 and 7100's for a private school. These all come from FLMUG's RD&S project, which accepts unwanted Macs from the Orlando area, fixes them up, and donates them to charities as needed. I've been involved in both the school and RD&S for about 5 years now.
RD&S gets a lot more donations than they can handle, so they often let me take away really old models. First I got a van load of compacts and imagewriters. I continue to prep these as homework computers and give them to low income families with kids at the school. More recently RD&S decided to unload all the pre-Quadras, and then all the Quadras, so I have a variety of those.
In the next few days or weeks, RD&S may find a new location, suspend activity and put equipment into storage, or disband altogether. I would like to see them continue somehow. But every couple of years they seem to lose their workshop space. If they don't find a new workshop, maybe just finding storage (even renting a storage unit) and working in members' garages could be a new way to continue the operation.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
End of semester/calendar year
One last day at the school before the winter break. Finished up the refurb of 4 more Macs: a 6500, an 8100, a 7250, and a 5400. Spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out why the 5400 would bomb with a fresh system install, but was OK with extensions off. It turned out to be a bad comm slot II ethernet card.
Only 2 Macs left to fix in this bunch. No time to work on the 5500 with the bad color. I did swap a logic board into the 6100. It seemed to be working fine, but then ethernet would not come up. It might be a software issue or the AAUI/10-Base-T adapter, but I suspect the ethernet portion of the logic board is bad.
One last day at the school before the winter break. Finished up the refurb of 4 more Macs: a 6500, an 8100, a 7250, and a 5400. Spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out why the 5400 would bomb with a fresh system install, but was OK with extensions off. It turned out to be a bad comm slot II ethernet card.
Only 2 Macs left to fix in this bunch. No time to work on the 5500 with the bad color. I did swap a logic board into the 6100. It seemed to be working fine, but then ethernet would not come up. It might be a software issue or the AAUI/10-Base-T adapter, but I suspect the ethernet portion of the logic board is bad.
Friday, December 12, 2003
Been back to the school twice since the last post. The first time I struggled with a 7250. I knew it had a bad CD-ROM, so I replaced that and loaded OS 8.6 from CD. But then when I tried to get other software over the LAN, the ethernet interface proved flaky. It is on the logic board, so I removed the 7250 to the repair area and replaced it with a 5200.
Yesterday things went much better. I completely prepped another 5200 as well as a 5300 and a 5400. There are 6 more power macs remaining in the repair area: a 5400 and a 6500 just need to finish loading software; an 8100 that needs both a new CD drive and a new or cleaned floppy drive; and the 7250 for which I will try to find a pci ethernet card or a new logic board.
There is a 6100 which was marked "flaky" last time I checked it. I know where some 6100 logic boards are being discarded, so I will try to get 1 of those plus an ethernet dongle and a replacement CD drive for the one that was scavenged.
That leaves just a 5500, a very nice machine when working. But this one has a bad HD and no comm slot II ethernet card (it was scavenged), and no red from the monitor! I have some more IDE hard drives and can probably find either a pci or csII ethernet card. To fix the red, I might try re-soldering connections on the video card which works for this problem on the 15" multiscan monitors.
