Thread
9 IIci's and an LC that were left outside in the rain.
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5104/photoaw9.jpg
This picture does not do justice to the injustice these Macs have received.
We will be parting basically all of these out. Most of the motherboards are crap. We may get some PSUs, the hard drives are probably good, maybe a few floppy drives, some RAM or cache cards we can clean off. A few NuBus cards.
And a big pile of scrap plastic.
Not to mention the LC 575s and LC 580s covered in mud that we are parting out immediately.
Let's give a warm welcome to Texas City ISD for storing their surplus equipment outside directly on a football field.
This picture does not do justice to the injustice these Macs have received.
We will be parting basically all of these out. Most of the motherboards are crap. We may get some PSUs, the hard drives are probably good, maybe a few floppy drives, some RAM or cache cards we can clean off. A few NuBus cards.
And a big pile of scrap plastic.
Not to mention the LC 575s and LC 580s covered in mud that we are parting out immediately.
Let's give a warm welcome to Texas City ISD for storing their surplus equipment outside directly on a football field.
8-o :O [xx(] ]'> [V]
With people doing stupid things like that it's no wonder I can't ever find the IIci I've always wanted. [
!] !]'>
!] !]'>
Are they rusted out?
We just finished chopping them.
- Only one IIci motherboard looked decent enough to even consider testing. The others had corroded batteries and/or significant rust.
- We save five IIci tops and one bottom. The rest were extremely nasty and have been crushed.
- We saved all of the PSUs for testing and refurbishment.
- We kept any cards. All of the memory was pulled before we got them (or they had no memory, I can't remember if IIci had onboard memory)
- Hard drives look good, but floppy drives were exposed to weather and were all rusted out.
One LC 520 had a live lizard in it, and the LC 575 had baby spiders.
9 IIci's and an LC still look like $81,700 worth of taxpayer investment to me. A school district wouldn't leave $82k worth of older textbooks out in a field. I don't understand this peculiar tendency to view even the most recently "obsolete" hardware as worthless.
Books tend to not get obsolete (except for some bleeding edge scientific ones but those are no schools books).
I still have a spare IIci motherboard, could use a case and a PS :;
Wonder how long those machines were sitting out in the weather, could be they rusted in the schools basement that had a water leak and they just dumped them in the field for disposal.
Did the school inscribe their name and ID # in the case plastics (hate that). One of my IIgs and both LC3's have school markings on them. What do schools do with the massive amount of old mac software they have anyway?
I still have a spare IIci motherboard, could use a case and a PS :;
Wonder how long those machines were sitting out in the weather, could be they rusted in the schools basement that had a water leak and they just dumped them in the field for disposal.
Did the school inscribe their name and ID # in the case plastics (hate that). One of my IIgs and both LC3's have school markings on them. What do schools do with the massive amount of old mac software they have anyway?
They make CD shredders. [V]
Let me know how the power supply testing goes with those IIcis. I could use a new one for mine.
CD shredders are for user created backups and data, you can toss MS Windows CDs and apps directly into the trash without any issues.
I was thinking more about floppies since both the IIci's and LCs would have had software on floppy.
I was thinking more about floppies since both the IIci's and LCs would have had software on floppy.
In my case, I find a bunch of it rotting in a cabinet in my high school. I figured since it was, and since probably nobody knew about it or had seen it in over 10 years, and since they were moving out of the building at the end of the year and it would have all been destroyed, I helped myself to it. It's now all sitting in a box in a spare room. I think I made the right choice.
When I was at school there was a lot of old Mac software sitting in boxes in cupboards and drawers. Quite often it would gather dust and then get chucked out - fortunately I managed to save the vast majority of software before that happened to it. The school was always glad to give away their old stuff to someone who would appreciate it.
Computers tend to rot quite quickly if they are left outdoors in the rain for any length of time. I have rescued a couple that have been out for a couple of days and often after drying they work fine. Once I even found a SE/30 that looked like it had been out for at least 2 weeks and after stripping down, cleaning and drying it worked perfectly (and still does). Once rust and other corrosion kicks in though there is generally little hope.
Computers tend to rot quite quickly if they are left outdoors in the rain for any length of time. I have rescued a couple that have been out for a couple of days and often after drying they work fine. Once I even found a SE/30 that looked like it had been out for at least 2 weeks and after stripping down, cleaning and drying it worked perfectly (and still does). Once rust and other corrosion kicks in though there is generally little hope.
Lucky.
When my elementary school was getting rid of their Macs (LC575s, 5400s, 9500s) back in 2004 for some crappy PC's that were even slower than the Macs, I asked about buying one (I was even willing to pay), and they said "We have a deal with a recycler."
Heaven forbid they could let ONE computer go. :-/ :
Did you salvage any of the plastic reset/interrupt button extender things? I could use one of those.
Best time to get macs is when the school is closed over the summer and they are getting rid of their macs. }Lucky.
When my elementary school was getting rid of their Macs (LC575s, 5400s, 9500s) back in 2004 for some crappy PC's that were even slower than the Macs, I asked about buying one (I was even willing to pay), and they said "We have a deal with a recycler."
Heaven forbid they could let ONE computer go. :-/ :
Economics of old computers?
The IIci was discontinued in February 1993. The accountants probably wrote them off as zero value in 1999, and anyone who chose to use one in a production environment would know that they were pushing their luck. The cost of a replacement power supply (new, from an Apple dealer) would have been half the cost of a new Mac. And, yes, I do know about the salvage market but many organisations *can't* buy off eBay.
So at the time that the Macs were put in a field, they had zero value to the owner.
Having worked with computer scrappers, I know the unwritten rules. I will give the scrapper loads of junk that s/he will consider unsalable and thus pay money for its disposal. I will also give the scrapper some useful stuff, which has no value to me. However, the scrapper will clean it up or remove the useful electronics, and resell it. I am obliged to give more useful stuff than unusable stuff.
As the person who gives away the scrap, I don't care about its value to others. It has no value to my organisation, and it is up to the scrapper to determine what is salable. I worry about managing desktop environments and the infrastructure that supports them, and similarly leave the scrapper to run his/her business.
Dumping kit outdoors is stupid from a business relationship perspective. The scrapper knows what can be sold, so if your organisation is scrapping kit, store it in the same way as if you wished to reuse it.
I would have tried cleaning those boards - just because they "look" bad doesn't mean they won't work. So cleaning them thoroughly and removing the rust with vinegar will not hurt. Corroded batteries can be replaced.
At the time those Macs were put in a field, they had intrinsic value as machines capable of doing everything they did twenty years ago. The owner is the Texas City ISD and the people of Texas City, and there is a much better use for older computers than the acceptance of a few dollars from a recycler. Why should they not transfer the depreciated equipment and software licenses to the families and children receiving other forms of public assistance in an effort to support the overall educational mission?
Those tax funds were allocated to enhance the educational opportunities offered to the children of Texas City. In spite of the depreciation their capabilities from an educational perspective are intact. I consider this cycle of investment and disposal a colossal waste. Even an Apple IIe has some practical value with a few decent programs, with the potential to help a kid something as simple as phonics or multiplication tables.
This waste is the reason I run a non-profit organization, rounding up the 1995 - 1997 wave of outgoing IT expenditure and channeling it into the lower income communities here in Houston.
My current place of work has been known before to deliberately break equipment before scrapping it so that it is of no use to anyone. This was back in the day when they threw everything in the general waste skips, including computers, and they didn't want anyone salvaging stuff. Despite being broken, occasionally useful bits (RAM, drives etc) could be recovered from machines. Fortunately they are now required to use a proper electronics disposal container and they have mostly stopped smashing things before they go in. However, I did see them compacting a load of stuff into the container by ramming it with a forklift, so it is generally best to save anything before the container gets full!
Travis, I think you make some excellent points, here. These are indeed public property in this case, and they could still be very useful for at-home use for low-income folks (especially for young kids doing math practice and such, as you say).
The problem, I think, is the cost of distribution, setup, and support. To set up an office and/or use staff time to figure out who's eligible, to do all the communication and outreach, to bring the computers to homes and make sure they're up and running, to install the relevant software, and to do even minimal tech support - that would be a major expense. If the town or school district were able to raise or allocate enough money for all that, then they would probably wish to do so for computers that were a bit more current - i.e. capable of going on the internet. If you were talking about, say, 200 computers, they could probably bulk-purchase a bunch of internet capable Linux machines for less than $80,000 - still a lot of money, but in another sense probably far less than the combined other costs of such a program (staff, transportation, etc.).
Now, it would be great if they could instead donate the computers to nonprofits like yours - which are already set up to weed out the busted units, refurbish the good ones, and deliver them one by one to needy homes.
M
Giving the less fortunate anything older then 7 years old is a waste of time. Those machines are too slow, have low ram, and have an obsolete OS that the apps they can get their hands on will not run well. Plus the odds of a major component blowing up are high and they cannot afford the local computer repair prices to fix.
Anything 10 year old or older are just for hobbyists and collectors.
Anything 10 year old or older are just for hobbyists and collectors.
Don't forget geography books (and for that matter any history book which may have a modern map somewhere). We were still using books with the USSR on a "present-day" map as late as 2000 in our school. (The book, however, was medieval history so the content inside of it worked fine).
There are other reasons schools may adopt new textbooks. New mathematics books include technology exercises for newer equipment--even if the older books usually do offer more practice problems and sometimes explain things a bit better (I was always a fan of the Mary Dolciani math books, even if they couldn't be used with a TI graphing calculator). There are also plenty of books nowadays that are better suited to NCLB standards than their predecessors. Several even include test-prep exercises within the books (I am currently tutoring a student from a mathematics book which not only includes said exercises but is also a "Pennsylvania edition").
Schools will often donate textbooks to less fortunate districts/schools. We did this with a set of social studies books in 1997 and again with hundreds of secondary math books in 2005. However, if one book gets left out and you ask a teacher about it, they just might give it to you. I have a Prentice-Hall geometry text (from 1998) because this situation came up--much like it does when we get surplus computers.
What wackymacs said. My first IIcx came to me via post from an eBay seller even further into rural NSW than I was at the time. It was filled with silt, had been through a flood, even leaves had come through the missing nubus slot covers and settled on the logic board. Mice had set up a nest underneath the power supply and filled the box with their droppings and corrosive pee.
A long clean later, it booted right up
.Dana
Battery acid blew all over the inside of the cases which were brittle to begin with. The cases sat outside so long the colors of the Apple emblems were almost faded off. Most of the motherboards have so much battery acid on them that the entire battery cage has rotted off of the motherboard. The acid eats off the traces screwing up all the connections. These are not resale or even reuse quality. I keep anything even half decent, I have a stack of about 10 good IIci's (that just need new caps), but these ones were just past their time.
However, I'll gladly ship a board to anyone who is interested for the cost of materials and postage. I'll try to choose one of the better ones that still has a battery cage. They are crawling, however, with tiny little bugs that settled on them whilst outside.
I also have about 15 of the NuBus slot covers. $1.50 each + shipping
I also have IIci lids that survived. Not too bad condition, light yellowing, $3 each + shipping.
The PSU's are all drying out right now. We need to take them apart to check for any plant or bug life and we'll start firing them up.
However, I'll gladly ship a board to anyone who is interested for the cost of materials and postage. I'll try to choose one of the better ones that still has a battery cage. They are crawling, however, with tiny little bugs that settled on them whilst outside.
Yes, we got a good lot of these, at least 6, how about $2 each + shipping. Send me a PM.
I also have about 15 of the NuBus slot covers. $1.50 each + shipping
I also have IIci lids that survived. Not too bad condition, light yellowing, $3 each + shipping.
The PSU's are all drying out right now. We need to take them apart to check for any plant or bug life and we'll start firing them up.
It's unusual for a school district around here to take the stuff directly to a recycler. Most districts try to auction the machines off.Lucky.
When my elementary school was getting rid of their Macs (LC575s, 5400s, 9500s) back in 2004 for some crappy PC's that were even slower than the Macs, I asked about buying one (I was even willing to pay), and they said "We have a deal with a recycler."
Heaven forbid they could let ONE computer go. :-/ :
If that's how things worked around here, then no doubt, I'd be a happier person.It's unusual for a school district around here to take the stuff directly to a recycler. Most districts try to auction the machines off.Lucky.
When my elementary school was getting rid of their Macs (LC575s, 5400s, 9500s) back in 2004 for some crappy PC's that were even slower than the Macs, I asked about buying one (I was even willing to pay), and they said "We have a deal with a recycler."
Heaven forbid they could let ONE computer go. :-/ :
Ah, this story reminds me of a guy I met at a used-equipment fair who wanted to sell me a Macintosh IIcx and an Apple CD-ROM 300 for the rough equivalent of 250 dollars. They didn't look good and on closer inspection they were both suspiciously stinky. When I opened the IIcx the rust inside was so bad as to make it hard for me to remove the cover!
The bastard probably had taken both the Mac and the CD-ROM reader from the street after god knows how many days of rain and bad weather, cleaned them outside, and wanted to scam some poor ignorant tourist.
"You should be ashamed", I told him. At least he had a sheepy face and did not utter a word.
Cheers
Rick
The bastard probably had taken both the Mac and the CD-ROM reader from the street after god knows how many days of rain and bad weather, cleaned them outside, and wanted to scam some poor ignorant tourist.
"You should be ashamed", I told him. At least he had a sheepy face and did not utter a word.
Cheers
Rick
Schools in the UK seem to be funny about letting people have their old equipment, mainly from the liability sake. If someone buys or takes an old computer from them and it sets fire to their house, it is likely that person would claim against the school and win everything. It is an unfortunate attitude that seems to have crept into meany aspects of British society.
However, that is just from an official standpoint. It is unlikely you will find a school or college openly selling off old equipment but often by asking the right people it is possible to do a deal. Some places also have technicians who check equipment for electrical safety before selling / giving away, which also helps deal with the liability issues.
For a country where the government bangs on about recycling I think more should be done in the UK to distribute and re-use old computers. Currently the vast majority go to recyclers who strip them for parts and precious metals, or they just go into landfill.
However, that is just from an official standpoint. It is unlikely you will find a school or college openly selling off old equipment but often by asking the right people it is possible to do a deal. Some places also have technicians who check equipment for electrical safety before selling / giving away, which also helps deal with the liability issues.
For a country where the government bangs on about recycling I think more should be done in the UK to distribute and re-use old computers. Currently the vast majority go to recyclers who strip them for parts and precious metals, or they just go into landfill.
All public bodies are fussy about giving away kit to staff and students, and quite rightly. It is far too easy for a "piece of junk" (ie last year's PC) to be given away by an unscrupulous employee. Requiring that surplus is sold at auction or to a scrapper keeps people honest.
"Health and safety" is a UK myth, used by some as a defence for unpopular decisions and by others to attack public servants. Both attitudes should be treated with contempt.
We all know which models have better longevity, and concerns about hardware failure are minimal to me. I'm only distributing 3/4 of the inventory at any given time to allow for easy swaps when such situations do arise.
Why does a 10 year old computer need to be something for hobbyists and collectors only? With service issues aside, why is a computer from 1997 (in use purely for educational/personal productivity tasks, running contemporary applications) any less useful in that role that it was a decade ago? They are indeed "too slow, have low ram, and have an obsolete OS" for anything produced after their time or release, but those applications were excellent. I might even argue that these older machines are better suited for the task given the simplicity of the interface (AtEase or otherwise) and the clarity of the software. Frankly, I'm glad that the younger recipients aren't able to hop on the internet without supervision.
I understand the rationale for how surplus school computer equipment is treated. It's based on the need for responsible handling of public assets; but what I'm saying is there are shortcomings in this process that mean more to the community.