Old PCs in Bristol, England need good home

From: Don Maslin <donm_at_cts.com>
Date: Thu Jul 12 15:56:52 2001

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Tony Duell wrote:

> >
> > John Foust skrev:
> >
> > >At 12:35 AM 7/11/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
> > >>>Compaq Deskpro 386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
> > >>>IBM PC-XT
> > >>>[...]
> > >>Obviously, the best home for these are down in Africa or other particularly
> > >>poor homes.
> >
> > >And why would they want them? Nothing's worse than being poor,
> > >and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
> >
> > Oh, come on, that's easy to say if you're from the rich world and have had
> > computers for twenty years. Even I would rather have a 386 than no computer at
> > all.
>
> IMHO, more clueful/knowledgeable people can do useful work on less
> powerful computers.
>
> For example, if I _had_ to, I could get useful work done using only a Z80
> box running CP/M. I'd not want that as my only computer, but I'd find a
> way to configure some kind of word processor to drive a printer and
> produce reasonable documents. Sure it wouldn't be as nice as LaTeX, but
> it would get the job done.
>
> And I could certainly write useful programs on it to support my hardware
> hacking type projects.
>
> And I could certainly do useful work on just about any unix box, however
> old. That includes all 386+ PCs that can run linux.
>
> But most people can't. They can't write special software (which generally
> _is_ requeired to use older machines -- there just aren't ready-written
> applications for a lot of uses). They can't wire up special cables or
> make interfaces to hook them up to other devices (like printers). Heck,
> they'd even be lost if faced with a command line....

We need to recognize, Tony, that there are a vast number of people out
there who firmly believe that if they are not running Windoze or Macos
that it is impossible to do anything productive.

                                                 - don
Received on Thu Jul 12 2001 - 15:56:52 BST