> Rumor has it that John Foust may have mentioned these words:
> >At 10:07 PM 10/12/00 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> >>As much as I hate having seemingly useless crap like this, I still refuse
> >>to throw it out. It's useful to SOMEONE.
> >
> >Probably not. I'd collected most of these older PCs from the
> >trash from a local computer dealer. That doesn't mean they were
> >broken, it means he didn't want them and the customer didn't
> >want them.
>
> Unforch, you seem to forget not everyone lives in sillycon valley...
> Our local *high* school is still 75% 486 based... they'd *kill* for some
> tossed Pentiums, no matter what RAM/HD/CDROM/etc...
Around here it's pretty hard to get 'em to take anything less than a
high end box for the schools. A friend said Intel donated a pile of
PII's to their local Catholic school as part of some project.
>
> >If I really need a new firewall or new utility PC, why shouldn't I
> >spend $400 and get a new whiz-bang disposable eMachine from Best Buy?
>
Because $400 is a waste for a firewall...
A reasonable 486 with FreeBSD will handle a 10BaseT connection
firewall with ease (and I don't know any folk with 100BaseT home DSL
or Cable modem connections)...
> >I'm not truly reformed, though. I saved a couple known-working
> >486/66s to revive for my three kids. They're sharing an eMachine
> >now, but it would be fun to have one in each kid's room. But I'm
> >sure that ten minutes after installation, I'll be asked by a
> >five-year-old why he can't get to ToonDisney.com, which requires
> >a browser with Flash and who knows what else.
>
Actually my daughter (6 1/2) did pretty good with Win95/IE4, a
DX2/66 and ethernet with 32mb of memory.
She's been upgraded to a Cyrix 233 now... but it worked fine
with the DX2/66.
> And my answer to my 10 year old son is "because you don't need it." Just
> like my father's answer to the snowmobile use was "if you can't start it or
> help fix it, you can't ride it."
>
> >Two weeks ago, the school superintendent asked me where *he* could
> >dump old PCs. They've got too many, and their technology director
> >would never allow such mutts in the classroom. Have you been to a
> >school or a library lately?
>
> This morning. It was *ahem* pitiful, what the kids around here are forced
> to "learn" on. Oh, and our (Michigan's) Govenor just *cut* technology
> funding for hardware for schools. :-(
If you've got people willing to prowl the net and hit companies with
requests, there's a ton of places with low end pentiums (and even some
PII's to donate). The problem is getting them to trust you to get the
internal data off.
I can't donate anything at work -- because they're afraid someone's
hi-tech prototype will end up either a science fair project for a kid or
MS will find someone with some software that got left behind on a disk
and sue.
>
> [[ And if you don't think this is your problem (in the U.S.) - he was in
> high consideration for running for President a few years back... ]]
Please.... the politics in NJ is just as bad.
>
> Anywho, just my other side of the coin...
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger
> --
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
> Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
>
> If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
> disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
>
Bill
--
bpechter_at_monmouth.com | FreeBSD since 1.0.2, Linux since 0.99.10
| Unix Sys Admin since Sys V/BSD 4.2
| Windows System Administration: "Magical Misery Tour
Received on Fri Oct 13 2000 - 19:09:00 BST