Moved into a new property with my girlfriend on Friday the 13th - signed the contract on Halloween. My parents wanted my room clear so they could use it. My old PC was in there. On Sunday I collected it and brought to my new home. On Monday I...
OFFERED: [All working, but have been unused for a year] //////////////////////////////////////////// Adaptec 29160-N SCSI controller card: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support/scsi/u160/ASC-29160N/index.htm //////////////////////////////////////////// 18gb SCSI hard drives*: 18gb Quantum 10000 rpm 18gb Maxtor 7200 rpm * I might have three of these drives - can't remember if I took one of them apart or if it was an old IDE ;-) //////////////////////////////////////////// collection only cheers, James. I joined Freecycle to try and get a bookcase and sofa for our new home. No luck. Then I thought I could get rid of my three SCSI hard drives and Adaptec 29160-N SCSI card. I posted the SCSI stuff on Freecycle and had a handful of responses immediately. I got confused and offered just the drives to the first guy who responded (he did not want the card) and then decided I wanted to get rid of the whole lot and rang the second guy. He wanted to backup his music projects. The first bloke had a Compaq Prolant 6400R with four SCSI bays - so I had to apologize to him, feeling bad, saying I made a mistake blah blah which I did blah blah. When I rang the second bloke, I was not confident he really understood what having a SCSI card and three SCSI hard drives would entail: did he have enough spare drive bays and PCI slots? He would need to download a driver for the card too. I mailed this info to him secretly hoping it might put him off - perhaps he did not have enough spare drive bays - so I could offer it back to the first bloke. Yesterday the SCSI card and SCSI drives were collected by the guy who wanted to backup his music projects. On a motorbike. I explained that one of the cables was faster than the other, and the 18gb Quantum 10k3 drive was faster than the two 18gb Seagate drives (I never told tell him I purchased the two Seagate drives off E-bay for a fiver). He thanked me and as he left he said that Freecycle was a weird thing - getting stuff for free off people you don't know. That did not make me feel too great. On Monday or Tuesday evening I cleaned the case of my old PC. It had coffee stains all over it and acrylic paint splatters from when I had it in my 'studio/garage' - my parents garage. It looked pretty good cleaned up. Desktop PC Tower + 17" Monitor ================================ Fully functional system. Hardware -------- PC Tower: *** AMD Atholon XP 3000+ processor *** 2gb RAM *** 50gb EIDE Hard drive *** Case with plenty of space for extra drives, two free PCI slots, etc. *** 450watt PSU with plenty of available power connectors - big fan low noise. *** CD writer/DVD drive (DVD is read only). *** Inbuilt sound and LAN. Monitor *** 17" Packard Bell CRT monitor (the speakers are removed) Mouse *** Trust optical USB mouse (wired). Keyboard *** An aging Compaq keyboard showing scratches and two damaged (but working) keys. Operating System *** Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 (GNU/Linux)[1] Additional software *** Firefox Web Browser *** Pidgin Internet Messenger (for AOL, MS Live, IRC, etc) *** OpenOffice.org - database, spreadsheet, documents, PDF export, etc. *** Brasero Disc Burning software *** Music and movie players. *** Software development tools *** Thousands of software packages available to download for free (with freedom) online. ***** WILL NOT SPLIT THIS UP AS I WISH ***** ***** TO GET RID OF THE WHOLE THING ***** Collection only. Cheers, James. ------------------------------------------- [1] What is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is an operating system built by a worldwide team of expert developers. It contains all the applications you need: a web browser, office suite, media apps, instant messaging and much more. Ubuntu is an open-source alternative to Windows and Office. http://www.ubuntu.com/ *** NOTE: this PC does not have Microsoft Windows installed, but you can always install it yourself if required (and you have an install disc). ------------------------------------ Then I took apart the keyboard because that too had coffee stains and fluff embedded between the keys. That took quite a while, but again - and despite the broken keys and scratches from where I once attacked a chair with it - it looked not bad afterward. By that time I was bored of cleaning and never bothered cleaning the monitor beyond a quick swipe with a damp cloth. Then I installed Ubuntu onto it. I was quite upset when I discovered that it supported the VIA (Unichrome) graphics hardware built in on the motherboard better than I had ever got it working in Debian - the 3d screensavers looked rather splendid. I had around 30 responses within a couple of hours of the post for the PC coming through the Freecyle list. Some were short and almost txt spk. Others wanted it for sons/daughters at school/college/university. All sorts of reasons for, and variants of, "give it to me please". I decided against the first-come first-served solution of who to give it too for reasons I won't go into here. There were several people straight away who I decided should not have it, for reasons I won't go into here. Then there were people who I felt inclined to give it to, but too many of these. In the end I decided I would write down the names of all those in the "i want to give it to you" category plus a few whose requests for ownership did not have anything for or against. My girlfriend pulled out a single tightly folded piece of paper out of a small plastic bowl and read out the name. I checked the email from that person and decided I did not wish that person to have it. Ha ha, so much for that idea. It then became the first round of the selection process and all the names were pulled out of the bowl and we decided between us who to eliminate after consulting the emailed request. After that, we paired the remaining *contestants* and decided who out each pair, we would rather give the PC to. This resulted in three names remaining and we compared all three and settled on a name. The PC was collected this afternoon. I had written down the username and password to login into Ubuntu on the machine and gave this to the man who wanted it for his son. I had the machine up and running on the kitchen table and very quickly showed him a few things and told him about how I plugged in my Orange Internet Anywhere dongle and it 'just worked'. I told him about the update manager and that he should update it because of security reasons and because a new version of Ubuntu had since been released. He was very thankful and gave me a tenner out of good will. He could not afford more as his working week had been cut to sixteen hours. I said it was ok. I told him after receiving all the responses I had thought perhaps I should have tried selling it but doubted I'd get much for it - and it only would sit around in the home for ages because no bugger was willing to splash out cash for it, but I didn't say that. So the PC has gone now. I had to go out for a smoke and paced up and down the garden path. Am I a mug for giving it away? Never mind. So what. I'm too lazy to try selling stuff on E-bay. The Logitech multimedia speaker system I advertised on Gumtree for fifteen squid has had no responses. The PC - It's gone. Tada! I've still got /my/ PC the one I bought the other year. Whatever. I'm sure there was something more intelligent I had to say about this but it's gone now. James. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
