9 Jul
2001
9 Jul
'01
9:08 p.m.
Here's a chap in Bristol, England, with various PC bits to give away.
Please reply to original sender.
Reply-to: <jbryant(a)iee.org>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 23:08:38 +0200
From: "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF" <jbryant(a)iee.org>
Subject: Re: Old PCs in Bristol - England
I have the following:-
Compaq Deskpro 386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
IBM PC-XT
3 Keyboards
2 13" Colour monitors
1 13" Green monitor
386 Twinhead B&W notebook, PSU and mouse
Victor AT B&W Laptop & PSU - twin 720 Kbyte floppies, no hard drive
16-bit Sound card - unused
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
10 Jul
10 Jul
2:35 p.m.
Vintage Computer Festival skrev:
Here's a chap in Bristol, England, with various PC
bits to give away.
Please reply to original sender.
Compaq Deskpro 386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
IBM PC-XT
3 Keyboards
2 13" Colour monitors
1 13" Green monitor
386 Twinhead B&W notebook, PSU and mouse
Victor AT B&W Laptop & PSU - twin 720 Kbyte floppies, no hard drive
16-bit Sound card - unused
Obviously, the best home for these are down in Africa or other particularly
poor homes.
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
11 Jul
11 Jul
4:51 a.m.
At 12:35 AM 7/11/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
And why would they want them? Nothing's worse than being poor,
and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
- John
Compaq Deskpro
386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
IBM PC-XT
[...]
Obviously, the best home for these are down in Africa or other particularly
poor homes.
12 Jul
12 Jul
5:20 a.m.
John Foust skrev:
At 12:35 AM 7/11/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
>>Compaq Deskpro 386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
>>IBM PC-XT
>>[...]
>Obviously, the best home for these are down in Africa or other particularly
>poor homes.
And why would they want them? Nothing's worse than
being poor,
and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
Oh, come on, that's easy to say if you're from the rich world and have had
computers for twenty years. Even I would rather have a 386 than no computer at
all.
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
A liberal is someone too poor to be conservative, and too rich to be a
communist.
5:55 a.m.
At 03:20 PM 7/12/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
John Foust skrev:
Giving them a small stack of money might help more, considering
they probably don't have electricity. (Average annual income in
Nigeria, $300 a year.) And the computer should come with software,
manuals (in a useful language) and training in how to use it.
And a printer, so they can make banners that say "Boy, I sure
am hungry."
- John
And why would they want them? Nothing's worse
than being poor,
and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
Oh, come on, that's easy to say if you're from the rich world and have had
computers for twenty years. Even I would rather have a 386 than no computer at
all.
5:11 p.m.
John Foust skrev:
At 03:20 PM 7/12/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
>John Foust skrev:
>>And why would they want them? Nothing's worse than being poor,
>>and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
>
>Oh, come on, that's easy to say if you're from the rich world and have had
>computers for twenty years. Even I would rather have a 386 than no computer
>at all.
Giving them a small stack of money might help more,
considering
they probably don't have electricity. (Average annual income in
Nigeria, $300 a year.) And the computer should come with software,
manuals (in a useful language) and training in how to use it.
And a printer, so they can make banners that say "Boy, I sure
am hungry."
While the lack of electricity could be a problem, there are certainly parts of
Africa where electricity and portable television sets aren't all that
uncommon. Who knows, a million 386es might build up a cottage industry, so
that Silicon valley might one day hire dirt-cheap African programmers instead
of Indians.
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
10:08 a.m.
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11:56 a.m.
On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
We need to recognize, Tony, that there are a vast number of people out
there who firmly believe that if they are not running Windoze or Macos
that it is impossible to do anything productive.
- don
John Foust skrev:
IMHO, more clueful/knowledgeable people can do useful work on less
powerful computers.
For example, if I _had_ to, I could get useful work done using only a Z80
box running CP/M. I'd not want that as my only computer, but I'd find a
way to configure some kind of word processor to drive a printer and
produce reasonable documents. Sure it wouldn't be as nice as LaTeX, but
it would get the job done.
And I could certainly write useful programs on it to support my hardware
hacking type projects.
And I could certainly do useful work on just about any unix box, however
old. That includes all 386+ PCs that can run linux.
But most people can't. They can't write special software (which generally
_is_ requeired to use older machines -- there just aren't ready-written
applications for a lot of uses). They can't wire up special cables or
make interfaces to hook them up to other devices (like printers). Heck,
they'd even be lost if faced with a command line.... At 12:35 AM 7/11/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote:
>>Compaq Deskpro 386 (forget how big the hard drive is)
>>IBM PC-XT
>>[...]
>Obviously, the best home for these are down in Africa or other particularly
>poor homes.
And why would they want them? Nothing's worse
than being poor,
and given something worthless by someone who thinks it'll help you.
Oh, come on, that's easy to say if you're from the rich world and have had
computers for twenty years. Even I would rather have a 386 than no computer at
all. 
12:20 p.m.
We need to recognize, Tony, that there are a vast
number of people out
there who firmly believe that if they are not running Windoze or Macos
that it is impossible to do anything productive.
Which is pretty funny since productive things on computers
were being accomplished decades before either one of them showed up.
There are also a lot of people who don't realize that there exists
any type of system other than a Windows box There just aren't that
many people willing to go further to learn about stuff. They want it
fed to them by the advertising agencies without having to put forth
any further effort. Of course, if they do ask an 'expert' about
something, they'll often reinforce such thinking because it's their
bread and butter.
Getting back on the original comment though, there are few
systems that I have here that I would truly call useless, and that
would likely be more due to lack of knowledge on my part than
shortcomings on the system's part. Even my Timex-Sinclair has it's
simple uses.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
1:33 p.m.
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12:47 p.m.
Yes, but if one learns how to use computers without being exposed to GUIs,
as I believe many of us have, one becomes very proficient.
Peace... Sridhar
On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
IMHO, more clueful/knowledgeable people can do useful
work on less
powerful computers.
For example, if I _had_ to, I could get useful work done using only a Z80
box running CP/M. I'd not want that as my only computer, but I'd find a
way to configure some kind of word processor to drive a printer and
produce reasonable documents. Sure it wouldn't be as nice as LaTeX, but
it would get the job done.
And I could certainly write useful programs on it to support my hardware
hacking type projects.
And I could certainly do useful work on just about any unix box, however
old. That includes all 386+ PCs that can run linux.
But most people can't. They can't write special software (which generally
_is_ requeired to use older machines -- there just aren't ready-written
applications for a lot of uses). They can't wire up special cables or
make interfaces to hook them up to other devices (like printers). Heck,
they'd even be lost if faced with a command line....
-tony
7:29 p.m.
And I could certainly write useful programs on it to
support my hardware
hacking type projects.
And I could certainly do useful work on just about any unix box, however
old. That includes all 386+ PCs that can run linux.
But most people can't. They can't write special software (which generally
The secret of sell ing older computers in the third world (Yorkshire?) is
not to give a rodents back side about copyrights and just fill the hard
drive with a package of the best stuff that runs on the machine. Too much
work to get one or two machines going unless you had nothing else to do,
but a trivial task if you plan on selling containers of older computers.
Even an old computer is 100% better than no computer, and for strict
business uses 386 and 486 machines work just fine.
13 Jul
13 Jul
1:10 p.m.
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8412
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8415
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12 comments
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participants (8)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
donm＠cts.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
jhellige＠earthlink.net -
mikeford＠socal.rr.com -
optimus＠canit.se -
vance＠ikickass.org -
vcf＠siconic.com