>Surprisingly good market for $100-200 computers, of the 386/486 variety.
>People on Unemployment, Supporting Parent and Invalid Pensions can't
>afford to buy $1500 new computers, and typically just want to play a few
>games and do a little word processing......
That sounds like part of what I was thinking of as well... a place where
people could bring all sorts of random PC parts and help put systems
together for people who might not otherwise be able to afford a computer
system... We'd be able to do a service for people...
>Seriously, I think your concept is good, biggest headache is floor space,
>my bet is that you need to set up in a smaller place, a country town, not
>too far from a big city, but where the rents for warehouse space don't
>look like the NASA budget. I suspect this is why most museums I've
>seen/heard of concentrate on desktop stuff, they don't need a huge area
>to house it.
That is a problem... cost for space. I decided to call around today
and see if I could get a ballpark idea of what space might cost. So
far I've only gotten through to one place -- an old mill complex in
Saxonville, Mass. When I called, I was told that all they had left was
a 2500 sq-ft area... at *$8* per sq-ft. That's US$20000 (I believe for
a year), $1667/month. If this could be a club formed as a non-profit
organization, and if I could get $10/month out of people, we'd need
167 members just to pay for the space... Then we have electric, which
I would suspect will be a major part of the cost for such a power-oriented
hobby.
I know of one group who has space at $3/sq-ft, and a person who posted
recently saying that they had space for free...
I've got a call into Whittier Partners about space at the Maynard, Mass.
mill complex (birthplace of DEC) but have not gotten a call back yet.
Does anyone know if there might happen to be any grants or something
equivalent that such an organization might be able to apply for?
Doing a little more thinking about memberships, I was thinking of
a tiered approach (typical) which ranks members on their level of
usage of the facilities. And maybe there could be breaks for those
who provide help to others... (just some more rambling)
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '_at_' in place of '!' |
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http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Received on Tue Mar 23 1999 - 20:16:35 GMT