Call for salvaged hardware!

[Gron Arthur]

The problem with old machines is not what to do with them.  It's the
cost of storage.  We do a poor job of producing garbage.  Yes, garbage
is produced.  It is collected with large trucks, manufactured by being
sorted or badly sorted in depots, bought/sold/traded.  Kitchen waste
ends up with electronics, tin with paper, plastics do not get sorted.
Imagine if old electronics where shipped to to the dessert and stored
in a very dry environment.  It'd still be a form of landfill, however,
it would be well a sorted landfill ready to be used once somebody came
up with an idea for the stuff (like a better form of material recovery
or secondary use for a machine).

Here is a secondary use for an old machine I want to try.  Get an old
printer, pull out the stepper motor, use the printer cable to connect
the the motor to the parallel port.  Find a power inverter from
another old machine to power the motor. Now you have a robot.
http://electronics-diy.com/electronics/stepper_motors.php

I'm wondering, if the purpose of teaching students is to have them
understand more about electronics, then perhaps the hindrance of an
old machine could be turned to a benefit.  Going slower, learning
more?  Perhaps starting with an older copy of Linux, having them learn
to format a drive, and partition it?





On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Matt Price <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 7:33 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> | From: Matt Price <matt.price-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>
>> | Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:52:50 -0500
>> |
>> | some of you may remember that years ago I taught a linux-focussed "build
>> | your own computer" course using salvaged hardware. I'm reviving this
>> | course in the new year at a downtown elementary school, and am looking
>> | for parts for 15 or 16 systems that school kids will build up, install
>> | ubuntu on, and learn to use.  If it's successful, I'm hoping to expand
>> | the program out into a bunch of neighbourhood schools, and maybe get a
>> | kind of computer club going where kids learn a little bit of programming
>> | and systems administrations.
>> |
>> | Anyway, that said:  i thought I had a line on a substantial supply, but
>> | my source has fallen through.  So I'm putting out a general plea for
>> | hardware -- boxes, parts, monitors, keyboards, mice, etc...  Meanwhile
>> | I'll keep plying my other connections as well.
>>
>> How did this go?
>>
>> Did it turn out to be a way to "consume" old computers?
>>
>> How old?  I ask because I'm finally thinking of getting rid of some of
>> my heap of old machines.  Mostly PII era stuff.
>> --
>
> i'd say more that it turned out to be a way to consume *used*
> computers, most of which were not actually very old.  PII's are not so
> great for beginners to use!  because it's hard to run the big shiny
> new distros on them -- and the mroe customization you have to do
> before yo start, the more there is for folks to learn.  We used mostly
> fast P3's and some P4's (a couple with processors in the 2-3GHz
> range).
>
> It would be nice to know what to do with genuinely old computers.
> There's also an environmental question -- when you can buy an embedded
> system with the same processing power, it's not obvious that running
> big fat p2 desktops is really a green alternative.  i would very much
> like to hear others' ideas on this subject.
>
> matt
> --
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