Linked by Richard White on Tue 15th Mar 2005 11:21 UTC
My basement is like a mortuary with the remains of computers all lying in state, waiting and hoping for a new lease on life. But what is there to do with the K6s, the Celerons, and Pentiums of the past. It seems nothing short of a miracle would bring these ghosts back to life.
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I have with the help of AKLUG now passed out more than a dozen computers to families with children that cannot afford a computer (aiming for 50+ in 2005). All of our computers came form businesses that were upgrading to new equipment – so nearly all of these machines came without software. We accept only computers with 400mzh or faster (though we has stripped slower machines for parts). The finished computers have 256mb ram, and 6gb hd or a 4gb and 2gb hd 17” monitor and Suse 9.2. We install KDE, Windowmaker, FMVW and encourage the uses of the smaller lighter windows managers some people use KDE and put up with the slight slowness. Our biggest problems is not the software but hardware - we cannot find enough printers or modems. In fact the only reason we have not already hit 50 computers given away this year is lack of modems – nearly all commercial computers we are getting now have no modems and our clients usually cannot afford DSL. We have been reduced to using Winmodems with free Linux drivers available.
Linux in the end makes this posible - one quick install and we have a fully usable computer. It works well on these old machines - it comes with a good spread of usable software and nearly all the devices work right out of the box - in fact the only rub so far is the modems - about half of the winmodems we get are not usable by us.
Now a shameless plug – request for aid – donations – if you have any hardware modems – isa or pci 33.6kb or better – we would love to get them. rspickles@kcialaska.org