What to do with really old Macs

At 8:48 AM -0700 8/24/04, Rob Managan wrote:
>Would anyone still want it as a donation??

Since it came up on the list, I'll mention that I know a special ed
teacher in a public elementary school. Through the endeavors of her
son and collected friends, we stock her classroom with older Macs as
a computing lab. At this point we've moved her up to PowerPC
machines, and have a vague hope of moving over to New World machines
in a year or so.

Anyone in Southern California who has a Mac or printer to contribute,
please contact me off-list. She can provide donation receipts for
tax purposes.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

Even a very old Mac *might* be useful in the right circumstances. About
10 years ago, for example, I was able to come up with a short
introduction to word processing for a group of adult literacy students
using some donated Mac Pluses or SEs. I remember we were able to hook
them up to a printer somehow, but I can't remember the specifics.

Anyway, it worked, I think, because:

 - The basic concepts (cut/copy/paste, opening and closing files, menus,
 etc.) have remained remarkably constant on the Mac. (I'm convinced that
 if I taught someone MacWrite on an orginal Mac and then set them loose
 on Word 2004, they'd probably get the hang of Word pretty quick.)
 - There was a product at the end -- a printed document -- that looked
 pretty much the same as it would coming from a new machine.
 - The orginal Mac system, through System 7 or so, was so damn easy and
 largely unbreakable, even if crash-prone sometimes.

That said, you'd have to find either *just* the right circumstance where
an old Mac would be a good tool for the job at hand, and/or be willing
to spend some time to help make it the right tool. I agree that it might
be useful for young kids. Another key point is to have software that
matches the hardware. Luckily, older Macs of that era usually came with
a lot of good stuff (like HyperCard and ClarisWorks).

Otherwise it's best just to junk it rather than approach a nonprofit or
a school with it. I get offers to take old equiment all the time, and
ninety-some percent of the time it's 486 or Pentium I -era stuff that is
completely useless, and sometimes leaves me in the position of sounding
ungrateful if I don't take it.

--------------
Jeff Carter
Executive Director
DC LEARNs

jcarterdclearns.org -w
jeffbrilliantbeast.com -h

Rob, since you're in the bay area, try http://crc.org/ -- the
computer recycling center.

They take old stuff and try to refurb it when needed, strip it down
to usable components when appropriate, etc. And they have pick-ups
all over the bay area, as I recall.

I dropped off a load at the Pac Bell Park parking lot just last week
-- two Power Computing clones, a IIci, a Quadra, a Performa, two
displays, two stylewriters, an old personal laserwriter, and a bag
full of ADB keyboards and mice.

--
Jason Snell: jsnellintertext.com - AIM/iChat: mw jsnell
www.teevee.org - sports.intertext.com

The public schools in NYC are usually desperate to have donations of
any working computer equipment, and so are many community centers and
after school programs like the Police Athletic League and Girl's/Boy's
Clubs. I'd start by trying a local high school, particularly one with a
vocational program that might also need older machines to teach kids
how to fix or upgrade them.

Marilyn

The IIsi can make an excellent fax server; I use a Classic II for this
(though I admit I do have a SCSI to Ethernet adapter on it I don't use
that much); the box has been running for years except when it has been
moved. If one has a spare port on a KVM switch so much the better.

Joe

At 08:48 -0700 UTC, on 2004/08/24, Rob Managan wrote:

> Adam's write-up of Take Control of Buying a Mac prompts this
> question. As we cleaned out the garage this weekend trying to make
> some room I realized I still have a Mac IIsi hanging around in
> storage. Since it does not have Ethernet does that old of a machine
> have any uses? Would anyone still want it as a donation??

I just gave a Mac Classic to my nephew for his 9th birthday. He absolutely
loved that! He thinks it looks great, and whole-heartedly agreed that its
small size was perfect for his small room & desk. He and his friend kept on
commenting (positively) on how small the screen was - until they popped the
question "hey, but where is the computer?" :)

All he knows is Windows PCs and he knows them as things you play games on (I
had him play with GarageBand once, and he keeps on referring to that as a
"game" too :)) and that break down, after which you have to wait for others
to fix things. I'm hoping to have him realize that 'puters can be controlled
- no need to be controlled.

I made sure the hard disk was empty. Showed him how to switch it on and had
him realize that all by itself it would do nothing except for blinking a
question mark - we would need to put stuff in it that would tell it to do
things. I helped him place the first System 7 disk in and start installing.
Within 2 minutes he was bored and asked if it was OK if he would play with
his other big present - his new bike. He spent the next 2 hours biking,
coming back to see if his 'puter wanted the next floppy (some 6 or 7 floppy's
total). Thus he installed his first Operating System, all by himself.

The plan is for me to spend time there regularly. Bringing games[*]. Make
sure they're compressed, so he'll have to learn about compression,
'installing', disk space, etc. But mostly I hope he'll learn to realize that
'puters are things that you control, not the other way around. I feel that
todays systems are too complicated for that. System 6 or 7 is more easy to
learn to grasp.

(Btw, he thought it stupid that to get a floppy out you need to toss it in
the Trash. I guess the original Mac team had no kids around when they
designed that stupid concept ;))

Hopefully he'll get interested. If so I might introduce him to Hypercard
later on, bring another old Mac so he can create a (LocalTalk) network, maybe
a modem; if not, that's fine too. What's important is not that he loves or
even understands 'puters, but that he gets an opportunity to give something a
try.

[*] Even in spite of much linkrot, <http://www.jagshouse.com/> turned out to
still be a great source for old software. Another nice site I found through
there is <http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/oldmac.html>, which a.o. points to
games for old Macs and has bothered to catergorize for them age groups and
offer descriptions.

If anyone knows where to find free dutch language games or educational
software (be they original or *well* translated - most software translations
suck) for challenged 68k Macs (maxed out at 4MB RAM) I'd love to hear about
it.

--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

I've two dead Powerbook 100's I wish I could combine to get working.
Still, not an especially practical computer these days, I suppose. IMHO
anything better than a Plus will do fine as a word processor, small web
server if you can add ethernet, FTP server, legacy games machine, etc.

You just need to be creative and enjoy old hardware. It can still be
useful and give good karma :-) Stop by <http://www.lowendmac.com/> to
learn more. Truly an excellent site.

Regards,
 Jamie Kahn Genet

Over the past year, I've given away an LC II, a IIcx and a IIci, mostly to madmen with
'old Mac' collections, though. It helps that over here (Netherlands) we have an excellent
site (nl.secondhandmac.com) that has consolidated just about the entire 'second hand Mac'
market into one place (made it easy to find those madmen).
You may be able to get a $2 Ethernet card for the si at a swap meet.

Harro de Jong

Most older Macs could be utilized in an educational environment. This equipment is networkable (local talk), runs System 7.1 (a stable OS) and with pre-Power Mac software does faxing, wordprocessing, image editing, databases, programming, etc. These are still desirable tasks which provide a foundation to the richer and more complicated software and computers of today. I would say that software today actually scares some people away from computers. The complexity and seemingly endless set of preferences/options with poorly written documentation I would equate to introducing calculus to fifth graders.

The real task seems not in trying to find places lacking computers but in getting companies to release older versions of their software.

Larry Osolin Victoria, BC

What to do with really old Macs

Run CAD on them!!

Seriously, my family owns a machine shop that keeps a dual-headed IIci around running MacBravo. We can't upgrade the hardware, because the software requires 16bit mode, and don't want to upgrade the sofware because it's so much more elegant that any other option we have found (and we've looked).

I'm not sure about the legality of the whole "Abandonware" concept, but I'm sure that this software package is still floating around somewhere on the 'net, and I know that CAD programs for use in either education or business are either expensive or conceptually crippled.

Just a thought.

Themba

I have a sister in Amsterdam with an old Performa in the floor of her closet just taking up space. Thanks for the tip. I'll steer her to that site.

On the other hand, I have a perfectly working 7600/G3 running OS9.1 plus several external 10Gb SCSI hds that I don't really use any more. Suppose I could use it as a web server...if I needed one, which isn't the case at the moment. Don't think my ISP would take kindly to that, and I don't really need to do web serving. I'm in Paris and haven't found a good source for getting rid of old Macs and other stuff (also have an ISDN modem, Global Village serial modem, 4 port USB switch, RAM for older machines, etc.). I'd gladly donate the 7600 to a worthy institution (school, prison, charity organization, whatever) if I found one and it would take it.

cheers,

ncm

On 9/1/2004 8:27, "Larry Osolin" <rabbytshaw.ca> wrote:

> Most older Macs could be utilized in an educational environment.

That depends on the school system. The local district and the nearby large
district--both long time Mac shops--will no longer take any equipment that
doesn't officially support Mac OS X.

  --John