On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 12:08:40AM -0400, David M. Moore wrote:
> I'm trying to do some house cleaning over the next few weeks. Among
> other things, I've got anywhere from 8 to a dozen or so older PCs.
> We're talking PIIs and PIIIs here, and possibly a couple of Pentiums,
> 486s, and I think there's even a 286 or 386 machine in the pile. I
> also have some loose motherboards of the same sort of vintage. None
> will have memory or hard drives. The PC carcasses *I think* all have
> CD drives, as well as processors. I also have a few CRT monitors.
>
> This stuff is spread throughout my house (its a big house) and is
> nowhere near ready for anyone to pick them up. That would be at least
> two or three weeks down the road. But I want to know if anyone here
> is even interested in having this kind of stuff (free of course). I
> live just off SR46 in Bartholomew County (Columbus) just a few miles
> past the Bartholomew/Brown county line.
>
> Otherwise if no one is interested, conveniently one of my clients is a
> large scrap metal processor and I'm just going to start carrying stuff
> over there every time I pass it.
Interestingly, I think almost all the computers I own are also from this
age range. I think my wife would kill me if I accepted all eight, but
I'd be very interested in some of them. I was thinking if someone else
is interested we could split it up so each person has the opportunity
to take similarly aged components. However if I'm the only one foolish
enough to be interested, I'd be happy to take the cream of your crop
off your hands (which, interestingly enough, would include some of the
free-floating parts. I may be able to upgrade some of my boxes...).
I also wanted to remind people that FreeDOS 1.0 has been out for some
time. A 286 -- even without a hard drive -- makes a pretty nice dumb
terminal. With a network card and a hard drive or a carefully crafted
boot floppy, you're looking at basically a dumb terminal that uses SSH
instead of a serial line. (Assuming you just want to use it as a gateway
to a real machine.) Also a reminder: Dumb terminals are great for kids!
Cheers,
--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
