Busman's Holiday
Yes, Virginia, There Are Santa Clauses!
- January 12, 1999
Busman's Holiday? What does a columnist do on his day off but write
another column!
Reader responses are a mixed bag. Five readers will tell me I have
expressed publicly what they desperately wished someone would say about
Apple, or Company X, or.... Another reader of the same column will send
a one or two line zinger or a three page tirade. One of my favorites
was an empty email with the subject line, "Last Rights - Last Rites,"
in reference to my poor proofreading on "Christmas Bloat and New Year's
Mayhem." (Thanks to Calvin E.) One of my least favorites starred in the
column, "Losing Educational Market Share: One Apple Rep at a Time." The
email is always lively, and I relish the good relationships and
information it sometimes fosters.
In late November I received the following short email in response to
SE Fever: The Lure (and Reward) of Vintage Computing":
I have 2 or 3 SEs and 1 or 2 accelerators for
them. I'll donate them.
TR
You never know quite what to think of such an offer. Not wanting to
appear greedy, and being rather smug that I have never accepted any
goodies from those I review, I suggested he might donate them to his
local school. But, I also offered to foot the postage if his local
school demurred.
I received the following message the next day:
I would like to give them to someone who can
"support" them. In town here, I'm afraid they'll just sit in a
corner. Send me ship to info...
TR
I didn't hear back from TR on that subject for over a month. I had
totally forgotten about it, when I received the following inventory of
what was coming our way:
-
|
Qty
|
item
|
Qty
|
item
|
|
2
|
|
1
|
030/25 accelerator
|
2
|
Hi Res Display Cards
|
|
1
|
68881/25
|
1
|
Techworks ethernet card
|
|
1
|
68030/20
|
1
|
SCSI HD
|
|
1
|
68881/20
|
5
|
Apple microphones
|
|
1
|
Mac IIsi accelerator, cache, math card
|
1
|
030/50 MHz
|
|
1
|
MPEG Media System
|
1
|
PB 140/170 6 MB
|
|
1
|
Apple Avid Video System
|
1
|
PB 140/170 modem
|
|
1
|
SCSI Hard Drive
|
4
|
4 MB 30 pin
|
|
1
|
SCSI Hard drive for Portable
|
25
|
1 MB 30 pin
|
|
2
|
Duo 280c logic boards
|
1
|
MS Word
|
|
1
|
Duo display
|
1
|
Faxcilitate
|
|
1
|
Mac IIfx
|
5
|
Mac OS 7.5
|
|
1
|
Mac Portable
|
1
|
Mac OS 7.6
|
I was stunned.
I
told our school's technology coordinator what was coming, and he
immediately offered to help. He had space where the items could be
stored until we decided what to do with them all.
Eight large boxes of parts arrived about a week later. Some were so
heavy that I just scooted them onto a cart before moving them to the
techie's office. Then the fun began as "the evil NT techie" and I,
equipped with our inventory sheets, tore into the boxes. Another staff
member finally excused herself from the office amid the comments of,
"Gee whiz, look at this! Hey, this is a graphics accelerator! Look at
that display! Is this a 40 chip upgrade? What will it fit?" I think she
was totally geeked out:-).
To the casual eye, this might appear to be a
computer garage sale cleanup. But if you look closely, there's a lot of
value in what we received. I immediately put an Ethernet card to use in
a "new" Mac IIfx in my classroom. A display (not pictured) will go with
a Mac IIsi that was donated by
an eBay vendor. An SE/30 case with a very good
monitor was quickly combined with a motherboard and drives I'd been
intending to work on. One classroom teacher who has another SE/30 has
already spoken for it.
I can tell the Mac Portable is going to be
running again, soon. "The evil NT techie," oops, our technology
coordinator, is totally taken by it and kept fiddling with it and the
various extra parts while we were sorting. (Maybe there's a Mac future
for our techie, after all?) We sorted through the boxes identifying
parts for which we had an immediate or future need.
Obviously, not everything will fit into our computing
situation. He volunteered to handle most of the distribution within our
school and also began assembling a list of other Mac-oriented schools
in the area with which to share the bounty. Schools are pretty limited
by state regulations on selling surplus items, but swapping with other
techies and schools may slide by the state board of accounts. I
immediately thought of something Dan Knight
had told me some time ago and I finally found the email he sent:
I'd like to add a new section to
MacInSchool where needy
schools can post what they're looking for and who to contact. Once I
collect a decent list, I'll send a note to the 8 Mac email lists I
manage soliciting donations of spare computers.
While I'm sure we'd all call ourselves needy, Dan really does have a
good idea here. My school is extremely fortunate to be about in the
middle of the pack - somewhere between hardware heaven and extremely
needy. I've kicked up a good fuss over reliability of some of our
machines, but we do have at least one fairly good computer in each
classroom.
One thing I'd like to push is for schools
that already have computers and are upgrading to donate one older
computer for each two they receive. Not a hard and fast rule, but a way
they can spread the wealth. (There are schools where an Apple II would
be a blessing.)
This is a real biggie! I have seen working Apple IIs cast out
when teachers received their new Macs! (And boy, were some of them
sorry.) Now, it seems to be the SE and SE/30s that are being pitched
(and saved by me). I know a guy who uses SEs in tandem with Apple IIs
who could use a couple of my off-inventory machines!
Dan might not appreciate this part, but a general computer listing
and exchange might be a good move. In an ideal world, it would make
sense to just have a posting site for all computer platforms, including
the Evil Empire machines. But he's starting out right - not too big and
trying to serve the Mac community which he knows so well. I hope Dan
can pull it off, as there are people out there, such as TR, who wishes
to remain anonymous in this column, who can and will supply usable
materials to schools that will actually put them to good use.
I offer my heartfelt thanks to TR for his generous gift. I'd also
ask that if readers have materials they'd wish to donate to needy
schools, they contact Dan Knight
, as he has
already shown an interest in heading up such an enterprise. I'm not
going to have time to do any such thing. I'm too loaded down with parts
to use!
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