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Re: Old Computers



I've done the following with all the old macs left to the school ( One poor
SE 030 left in the street for trash collection)

DOWNGRADE them to system 6.0.8 (free from apple) - boot time falls to about
8 seconds and they can still print to a local talk network - they run
wonderfully! under this system. These old computers often come with system
7.6 installed and they are painfully slow. Upgrade RAM to 4 Meg. Chips can
be found for less than 10$. Add a menu click hold init to make the Windoze
student users feel at home as they slowly read each item on the menu - their
fingers get tired of holding down the mouse button for so long.

For software run Graphical Analysis by Vernier along with a simple data
taking interface - wonderful graphing stop watches. Also will run several
great pieces of simulation software(solar system simulations, electric Field
plotters etc. Older versions of WriteNow make the best word processor if you
can find it. Small foot prints makes it possible for me to a have lab full
of computers in a very small classroom. Squish them all in a corner and let
students grab and set up as needed - not pretty but it works.

Best of luck - don't kill em.

Scott




on 7/23/01 10:32 PM, Tim Folkerts at tfolkert@FHSU.EDU wrote:

Once again, I came across a bunch of old computers - Mac SE & LE in this
case, plus external 5 1/4 drives, power supplies, etc. Can anyone think of
a good reason to rescue them. It just seems a shame to throw out something
that used to be valuable.

What about...
* stripping magnets from the disc drives?
* digging out power supplies (+/- 5V, +/- 12V) for electronics labs?
* saving stepper motors for other experiments?
* using the printer port for digital signals? (assumes you could easily
program it to turn on any pin as desired)
* salvaging CRT for e/m experiments?

I checked Ebay, and they are luck to get $20 for such computers. If you
have any good uses, let me know. If I get enough ideas, maybe I'll compile
them for a TPT article. Otherwise, I'll just pretend I never the sad old
computers waiting for the garbage man. Reminds me of the old story of
"Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel."

Tim

--
*****************************
Scott Goelzer
Physics Teacher
Coe - Brown Northwood Academy
Northwood NH 03261
603-942-5531 ext43
sgoelzer@coebrownacademy.com
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