#231785 - 28/08/2004 16:42
What to do with old computer hardware ?
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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I'm having a bit of a clear out of my office, because we are going to be redecorating it this weekend (or starting the job at least). I find myself struggling with the same problem I always have when doing this task, what to do with all my old computer hardware. At the moment I have a box with things to throw out in. It has: - a 486 DX4 100 Tosh laptop (8Mb RAM, 250Mb HD) - a CH Flight Stick Pro, with a broken vertical centering spring (I had forgotten how solid the build quality on these were compared to the current crap in the shops) - a RS232 Microsoft Mouse - assorted PCMCIA modem and Ethernet cards that I can't find the pigtails for - modem adapters for half a dozen European countries - 4 IDE hard disks (ranging from 105Mb to 4Gb) - 2 128Mb SODIMMS There were a few other bits and pieces in there that I have already reconsidered and taken out. I know that by the time I get to throw this lot out I will have decided that for most of it "I might need it some time"... Am I the only muppet who is hoarding useless computer junk ? Right, time to get back to it, before Eryl realises I am slacking and have stopped clearing 
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#231786 - 28/08/2004 18:32
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andy]
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member
Registered: 07/02/2002
Posts: 193
Loc: New Richmond, WI
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The battery from the laptop will need to be recycled. The rest can be placed in the waste basket, you can call your local waste management to make sure. About once a year I clean out my collection of Ooo Ooo I might be able to use that junk and it all goes out with all my other waste. Oh and most waste management places won't take monitors either, they need to go to a recycling place as well.
I hope that's what you were asking about.
_________________________
Drive fast, Play it loud!!!
20GB Original Blue Lens MKIIa Rio SN 030102760, Blue Buttons.
20GB Original Green Lens MKIIa Rio SN 040103268 Grey Buttons.
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#231787 - 28/08/2004 20:02
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andy]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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If you're in the US, I don't think it's recommended to throw it in the trash. Every county in my state has a "consumer electronics recycling day" where you can take said items to a central location for proper disposal. Mine's coming up and I have a stack of old computers and things to go out.
Apparently, many elements in computers contain lead, mercury, and other nasty things. If you're in the US, look for electronics recycling in your area. Start on your state's web page (http://www.state.nj.us/ for example), drill down to the recycling section, and look for electronics.
<rant-ish>
After recently reading about how mercury leached into the environment has poluted the bodies of large populations of shark, trout, and other sea life; I'm very concerned about putting this stuff back into the environment. Sure, mercury probably gets to the fish because manufacturers are dumping into oceans, whos poluted water is harming the small fish living in it, which polutes the bodies of larger fish that eat them.
So the polution is probably not from landfills, but consider this: If we continued to use old computers, we wouldn't need new ones, which would lead to less manufacturing, and thus less polution. And why do we need new computers? Because Microsoft and the lot continues to give us unnecessary "great new features that we need" thus antiquating our hardware, causing tons of perfectly working parts to go into big holes in the ground for no reason.
</rant-ish>
Hey, if you don't need those 4gig hard drives, hook me up! With a smart install of Win2k, the average business user (using computers that I manage) hardly fills a 4 gig drive. Seems easier to use old 4gig or 8 gig drives than buy these 40gig monsters that they never need. I've always always wondered if computer hardware makers could use modern technology to make previous-generation-sized parts, could there be a reduction in size, materials used, and thus cost? (ie: use current HDD density and speed to create 8 gig drives. they'd only need one platter which could probably be half the size, thus needing a smaller metal enclosure (brought up to 3.5" size by plastic spacers); all of which should cost less, right? same for laptop processors. 90nm technology for a 1ghz machine = smaller, cooler, simpler, less power hungry, less heat, less cooling = less cost)
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- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#231788 - 28/08/2004 20:55
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andy]
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old hand
Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
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Stick it on ebay. People buy anything!
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Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
Rio Karma - now on ebay...
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#231789 - 28/08/2004 21:17
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: FireFox31]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote:
So the polution is probably not from landfills, but consider this: If we continued to use old computers, we wouldn't need new ones, which would lead to less manufacturing, and thus less polution. And why do we need new computers?
Well, lets see. We now have games that rival CG effects from 10 years ago. We now have the ability to make near life like renderings for CG. We have enough computer power to squeeze 650mb or raw music down to 65 megs, and continue to push that smaller. This again something that wasn't really possible 10 years ago. That same compression technology also makes its way into set top boxes, allowing more TV channels and video on demand possible.
15 years ago, we didn't have the ability to view information with images easially. Now, I can type in hundreds of URLs to bring me sites more rich then any color newspaper or magazine. Oh, and more and more of those photos you see either online or off never touched a physical medium like film. Manipulation of a few million pixels in a few second? Someone would have laughed at you for suggesting such 15 years ago, but now people just plug in their camera, select Billy's eyes, and click a single button to take out the red eye effect.
Then we have the advancement of simulators. Would you prefer a car that was tested a few times by crashing it into a wall, or one that has done the same, but also has been smashed into walls and other objects hundreds of times in a computer as well?
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. All aspects of life can be improved with the ever constant march of technology.
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#231790 - 28/08/2004 22:28
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/01/2002
Posts: 3584
Loc: Columbus, OH
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If those SODIMMs are PC100, I'll take them off your hands. Just tell me where to send the postage.
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~ John
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#231791 - 29/08/2004 05:41
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. All aspects of life can be improved with the ever constant march of technology.
Yeah, but it still takes just as long to type a memo as it did twenty years ago. 
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#231792 - 29/08/2004 15:28
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Quote:
All aspects of life can be improved with the ever constant march of technology.
No doubt. I don't think he was suggesting that new stuff stop, only that the planned obsolescence do so. Does your Mom really need that 1.8GHz Pentium 4 with 768MB RAM and an 80 GB hard drive that uses a video chipset with enough power to put the computers that made Toy Story to shame? Nope. All she needs is to be able to send and receive email, browse the web, and write a few things to be printed out. She could easily do this on a Pentium 200 with 64MB of RAM and a simple frame buffer with no acceleration. Probably less. But instead, Microsoft has told her that she needs to get Office XP, which won't run on anything less than Windows 2000, which itself requires a quite modern processor and loads of RAM. The thing is, while there's certainly a place for all that new technology, there's nothing really wrong with the old stuff. Sure, many of us want to upgrade -- to have the latest stuff. But your Mom doesn't. But, in many cases, she's forced to.
Combine that with the fact that many people use a pre-installed computer until Windows rot makes it barely work anymore and then buy a new computer, thinking that the old one's worn out or something doesn't help matters.
And don't get me started on how Microsoft has bottomed out the populaces expectations of how well computers should work.
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Bitt Faulk
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#231793 - 29/08/2004 16:28
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote:
No doubt. I don't think he was suggesting that new stuff stop, only that the planned obsolescence do so. Does your Mom really need that 1.8GHz Pentium 4 with 768MB RAM and an 80 GB hard drive that uses a video chipset with enough power to put the computers that made Toy Story to shame? Nope.
Yep. Because she does more then "basic" tasks. She uses iTunes now to rip CDs to her hard disk, then uses it to burn custom CDs back for her car. She still is a computer novice, but can find things to do with it beyond typing. She has also used her laptop to watch DVD movies in bed, something she never thought of before.
My grandparents are the same way. I got them an iBook last christmas, and already they took it with them on vacation for DVD playback. If she gets a new camera, it's likely to be a digital one, now that she has iPhoto.
The faster the computer goes, the less impatient they are with them, and more likely to use it for more then e-mail. Want to explain to my mother why it takes 3 hours to rip a CD to the hard drive if it was a Pentium 200?
This is one reason I started liking Apple more once Jobs came back. He showed the company selling solutions is better then selling a computer. Advertise the iMac as a movie editing machine, and not a computer, and look what happened. If you show consumers new uses for the computer, they may adopt one to do it. And again, they don't care how or why, but how fast it can do it. So, the need for faster systems.
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#231794 - 29/08/2004 18:23
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Even so, some, I'd say even many, people are simply too stupid, ignorant, lazy, or incompetent to use a modern computer to its full extent. My mom fits in one of those categories, and she uses a computer at work all day long. Yet when she decides that she wants a computer at home, she'll be required to buy something fancy, because the computer industry has decided that that's all it's going to sell, and the recycling of old computers is virtually nonexistant.
The automobile industry understands that while some of us want 300HP cars, others of us get by just fine with a 75HP car. Why doesn't the computer industry? (And I know that there's legitimate reasons for only making a smaller line of products. I'm just pointing out that not all people need the top of the line.)
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Bitt Faulk
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#231795 - 29/08/2004 18:35
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736
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#231796 - 29/08/2004 19:14
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andy]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 21/07/1999
Posts: 1765
Loc: Brisbane, Queensland, Australi...
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you're no the only one to keep crap. My dad has an apple II, mac IIfx and countless bits of scsi hard drives totalling about 3 gig.
He's got to get rid of it sometime, i hope.
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--
Murray
I What part of 'no' don't you understand?
Is it the 'N', or the 'Zero'?
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#231797 - 29/08/2004 19:47
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: muzza]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
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Wow a IIFX! That was the dogs danglies when I was at school!
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Cheers,
Andy M
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#231798 - 29/08/2004 19:56
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
Wow a IIFX! That was the dogs danglies when I was at school!
Yeah, really old hardware is often easier to get rid of than only slightly obsolete stuff -- there's always some daft geek who'll buy it on Ebay.
Peter (Macintosh Plus, Iris Indigo, Sparcstation 4, Sun Ultra 1, DEC Multia)
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#231799 - 29/08/2004 20:06
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
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Yeah me too,
AndyM (Sun Sparcstation 5, SGI Indy, RISC PC)
EDIT: I should add I've had the RISC PC from new.
Edited by andym (29/08/2004 20:14)
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Cheers,
Andy M
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#231800 - 29/08/2004 20:34
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: wfaulk]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
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Hey cool, I like the birthday logo. Nice touch. BTW Bitt, you're 2 days shy of a year older than me. Happy Birthday!
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#231801 - 30/08/2004 04:04
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
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Say, either you or Peter want to upgrade those SGI machines to an Indigo 2? I have two of them, here...  (2 Indigo 2, 1 DEC Alpha, 2 Pentium MMX, 1 486 DX4, and, of course, one whatever the heck is in the Empeg.)
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#231802 - 30/08/2004 04:20
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: peter]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 21/07/1999
Posts: 1765
Loc: Brisbane, Queensland, Australi...
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gee, I can't believe i forgot the other stuff, he's also got a quadra 950 (with protools audio system and timecode DAT). I should get it on ebay so someone can get it into a museum.
_________________________
--
Murray
I What part of 'no' don't you understand?
Is it the 'N', or the 'Zero'?
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#231803 - 30/08/2004 08:43
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: muzza]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
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Muzza: We've got a box of old Protools cards at work if that's of any use.
CanukinLA: YES PLEASE!!!!!
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Cheers,
Andy M
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#231804 - 30/08/2004 09:16
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: peter]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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At some point I will have to clear out more - got rid of my RS6000 and two of my Personal Iris boxes (well, I bought chairs so didn't need them so much any more) but there are still my Indigo 1, Osborne 1 (still works perfectly), some Contura Aero laptops (I had mostly completed a Beowulf some years back, just to have them hanging in my attic like bats - geek factor, pretty high?) and far too many 486s. But they work, mostly running Linux, and they all do stuff, so I hate to get rid of them...
must get bigger house!!
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#231805 - 30/08/2004 10:19
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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Have you got any idea how to get hold of a floppy drive connector cable for the Multia?
_________________________
One of the few remaining Mk1 owners...  #00015
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#231806 - 30/08/2004 11:32
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
I should add I've had the RISC PC from new.
I wasn't counting my RISC PC as obsolete! Although perhaps (sheds a tear) actually it is.
RobS: unfortunately the only Multia floppy drive cable I've got is the one I'm using, and I'm kind of loth to part with it, at least until I've figured out how to diskless-boot it (apparently some firmwares won't let you). I've already scavenged the mini-IDC SCSI cable for another toy.
Peter
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#231807 - 30/08/2004 13:35
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
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Quote:
I wasn't counting my RISC PC as obsolete! Although perhaps (sheds a tear) actually it is.
Yes, I'm loathed to think of it as obsolete, it was/still is one hell of a computer.
_________________________
Cheers,
Andy M
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#231808 - 30/08/2004 14:37
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
Yes, I'm loathed to think of it as obsolete
<Bitt>Loath to think...</Bitt>
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#231809 - 31/08/2004 01:11
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
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The automobile industry understands that while some of us want 300HP cars, others of us get by just fine with a 75HP car. Why doesn't the computer industry?
Because the computer industry can now sell us the 300 HP equivalent at about 1/4 the price that the 75 HP model cost when it was state of the art.
Do you not remember the bad old days when you would only tell your spreadsheet to re-calc just before you went out to lunch, otherwise half the morning would be wasted?
Do you not remember what it was like installing software before operating systems became "bloated" enough to have their own drivers built in? I remember installing software that took most of an afternoon, dealing with IRQs and Interrupts and arranging the memory stacks so the drivers didn't conflict with something else already installed, editing win.ini and config.ini and config.sys and autoexec bat and running memmaker all in a desperate hope that somehow I could get it to work...
I see nothing wrong with an operating system that takes up a gigabyte or more of space, when a gigabyte of hard drive costs less than a megabyte did just a few years back. That much storage costs me less than a can of soda now.
Are you going to get rid of your TI scientific calculator and replace it with an abacus because you never ever use logarithms of trignometric functions?
No, bring it on. I have so much transparent power at my fingertips now at a small fraction of what it used to cost, I'd never go back. And while I'm certainly no power user (just ask Tony Fabris about some of the dumb questions I've had to ask him!) the savings that could be realized by producing a lesser computer that more nearly matched my needs/abilities would be minuscule at best.
tasntaafl.
_________________________
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
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#231810 - 31/08/2004 06:13
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: tanstaafl.]
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addict
Registered: 25/06/2002
Posts: 456
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Quote:
editing win.ini and config.ini and config.sys and autoexec bat and running memmaker all in a desperate hope
Of course, people using the (equally under-powered) Macs of the day never had to do that. So there is an existence proof that modern-day bloat is not required in order to make things easier, cleaner, better, and more efficient.
(I know, I know, non-multi-tasking Macs made us deal with extreme weirdnesses like "Switcher" and "Desk Accessories" and you could hack around with RegEdit to tweak things. But you didn't have to do it, like you did on Paleolithic era PCs. And yes, under the hood Macs were nearly as ugly as PCs. Remember the days when some system calls took "Pascal Strings" and others took "C Strings" for no clear apparent reason?)
Quote:
I see nothing wrong with an operating system that takes up a gigabyte or more of space, when a gigabyte of hard drive costs less than a megabyte did just a few years back. That much storage costs me less than a can of soda now.
Again, my issue is not the negligible cost of storage or cycles. With size comes complexity. That's totally fine when you need the complexity. But when you don't need it... then for no reason you are biting off greater risk of instability, viruses, and perhaps increased learning curve time. And with hardware and storage asymptotically approaching free, the real cost is how much time I have to invest in learning something new, different, and whizzy when old, simple, and boring would have worked just as well.
But then, I'm a minimalist at heart.
Quote:
Are you going to get rid of your TI scientific calculator and replace it with an abacus because you never ever use logarithms of trignometric functions?
No way, Dude!
I want numeric integration of complex variables and entry of matrices even if all I'm going to do is balance my checkbook. Then again, I already paid the learning cost for that when I needed it. But I'm sure as heck not going to go out and buy a newer calculator with better 3-D graphing technology just to keep balancing my checkbook.
Quote:
I have so much transparent power at my fingertips now at a small fraction of what it used to cost, I'd never go back.
Sometimes it's fun to crack walnuts using a fusion-powered jackhammer, and other times it's equally as fun to just whack them with a hammer.
Quote:
the savings that could be realized by producing a lesser computer that more nearly matched my needs/abilities would be minuscule at best.
I think that's the heart of the matter.
Most PC's are relatively low margin (for the box-maker -- not for Intel or Microsoft), so there is no real incentive to make an even lower-margin product. Especially if it might cannibalize sales of the somewhat larger margin products.
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#231811 - 01/09/2004 03:27
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
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Quote:
CanukinLA: YES PLEASE!!!!!
Well, if you're serious, and willing to pay shipping (they weigh at least a couple dozen cement blocks each ), you're welcome to 'em. I think I payed maybe $5 for them. My intent was to turn the case into an empeg dock, but then I discovered just how much my dremel skills suck, and gave up on the idea. (It didn't help that Mark started offering docks shortly after that.) I've never booted them up, but I'm pretty sure they're in running condition, as they're decommissioned from my company (i.e. they've been used to make movies!). At this point, I'm not 100% sure there is either a hard-drive in them, or any RAM, but I can check on that before shipping if you do want one. At the moment, they're keeping a shelf from falling over when my cats jump onto it (all that weight is good for something anyway), so I don't plan to check if I don't need to.
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#231812 - 01/09/2004 05:06
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: music]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote:
Quote:
editing win.ini and config.ini and config.sys and autoexec bat and running memmaker all in a desperate hope
Of course, people using the (equally under-powered) Macs of the day never had to do that. So there is an existence proof that modern-day bloat is not required in order to make things easier, cleaner, better, and more efficient.
(I know, I know, non-multi-tasking Macs made us deal with extreme weirdnesses like "Switcher" and "Desk Accessories" and you could hack around with RegEdit to tweak things. But you didn't have to do it, like you did on Paleolithic era PCs. And yes, under the hood Macs were nearly as ugly as PCs. Remember the days when some system calls took "Pascal Strings" and others took "C Strings" for no clear apparent reason?)
Don't forget extension and control panel managment, the joys of having to manually allocate memory to programs if the defaults wern't good enough, the higher odds then a PC of the time that a bad program would take out everything, and the odd functions like "Rebuild the desktop".
All of these managment fuctions are missing from OS X. Sure, many of the concepts still exist, but are either automatic, or are just taken care of by some process.
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#231813 - 01/09/2004 13:52
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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I managed a whole network of Macs back in the System 7, Windows 3.11/95 days. Yes the Macs of that time where easy for newbies to use, but when the OS became unstable you ended up having to bin it and start again.
At least with Windows 3.11 at that time you could go and find the problem and fix it most of the time, because most settings were in a handful of text files. That changed with Win95 of course, with the registry managing to take on many of the same problems of a screwed Mac.
_________________________
Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#231814 - 01/09/2004 14:02
Re: What to do with old computer hardware ?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Dare I point out that Unix has existed since 1969 or so, running on hardware of similar power as that of its contemporaries? (Plus much bigger stuff, to be sure.)
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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