phreakindee
Well-known member
First a bit of back story - Skip ahead if you want to get to the goods
I did some work for a local church years back involving restoring a few older computers (Pentium IIs and such) for use in a tutoring program they were doing for children. Mainly to teach typing and such. They essentially collected unwanted computers from people and wanted me to restore them, which I did what they had at the time. Years passed, and recently it happened to come up again in conversation. It appears the program was abandoned and the computers were still sitting in an old house. There was no power, place was all locked up, nobody had been there in an unknown amount of time and thought the computers were still there.
Fast-forward to today, and well...
It seems the stuff is indeed still there! The first is a room of computers, some of which I had worked on long ago. Still working? Who knows, the power was cut off and the house has started smelling a bit musty. Everything from DOS-era 486 machines, to a newish Compaq Presario Pentium III. Also of note is a huge server machine, complete with every storage medium imaginable, from tape drives on up. No Macs, but some Mac hardware and software is scattered around, as well as some Apple II disks!
The other rooms hold some other random Pentium-era machines as well as mountains of peripherals, books and software. The bags were mostly full of said things (after I had scooped up the mess, they were just tossed all over the floor) - processors, mice (some ADB), serial items and converters, more cables, plenty of expansion cards and associated software and manuals, first and third-party documentation/hint books, boxes of motherboards, AT-style keyboards, and on and on.
Of most interest were two boxes of 5.25" floppies, labeled Tandy. Contained are old booter DOS floppies (3.2 etc) and Microsoft Windows. Not sure of the version, but that's all it says, no version number. Also some Epson DOS versions, and plenty of games and educational stuff. Some games from Capcom in there too for PC (like Megaman) as well as a "Noid" game from Dominoes from 1989, the original Kid Pix and Math Blaster disks, and so many other random things, I'll have to sort this stuff. Also found an HD-15 to VGA converter, which is GREAT because I was really needing one since my lame Apple monitor died for my Performa!
All this, for free. At this time, I haven't been able to get the computers themselves, as I was told they had to make sure they didn't want them anymore, but it's seeming they won't. There may be some other stuff too, we will have to look around. They let me take anything else though, so I took basically everything but the printers, speakers, and scanners (several dot-matrixes WITH boxes of paper!) just no room for them yet. Anyways, looks I will be occupied for a while!
Not too many Mac things, and no one thing is particularly amazing, but the software and plenty of old drives and older hardware make it worth it for me.
I did some work for a local church years back involving restoring a few older computers (Pentium IIs and such) for use in a tutoring program they were doing for children. Mainly to teach typing and such. They essentially collected unwanted computers from people and wanted me to restore them, which I did what they had at the time. Years passed, and recently it happened to come up again in conversation. It appears the program was abandoned and the computers were still sitting in an old house. There was no power, place was all locked up, nobody had been there in an unknown amount of time and thought the computers were still there.
Fast-forward to today, and well...
It seems the stuff is indeed still there! The first is a room of computers, some of which I had worked on long ago. Still working? Who knows, the power was cut off and the house has started smelling a bit musty. Everything from DOS-era 486 machines, to a newish Compaq Presario Pentium III. Also of note is a huge server machine, complete with every storage medium imaginable, from tape drives on up. No Macs, but some Mac hardware and software is scattered around, as well as some Apple II disks!
The other rooms hold some other random Pentium-era machines as well as mountains of peripherals, books and software. The bags were mostly full of said things (after I had scooped up the mess, they were just tossed all over the floor) - processors, mice (some ADB), serial items and converters, more cables, plenty of expansion cards and associated software and manuals, first and third-party documentation/hint books, boxes of motherboards, AT-style keyboards, and on and on.
Of most interest were two boxes of 5.25" floppies, labeled Tandy. Contained are old booter DOS floppies (3.2 etc) and Microsoft Windows. Not sure of the version, but that's all it says, no version number. Also some Epson DOS versions, and plenty of games and educational stuff. Some games from Capcom in there too for PC (like Megaman) as well as a "Noid" game from Dominoes from 1989, the original Kid Pix and Math Blaster disks, and so many other random things, I'll have to sort this stuff. Also found an HD-15 to VGA converter, which is GREAT because I was really needing one since my lame Apple monitor died for my Performa!
All this, for free. At this time, I haven't been able to get the computers themselves, as I was told they had to make sure they didn't want them anymore, but it's seeming they won't. There may be some other stuff too, we will have to look around. They let me take anything else though, so I took basically everything but the printers, speakers, and scanners (several dot-matrixes WITH boxes of paper!) just no room for them yet. Anyways, looks I will be occupied for a while!
Not too many Mac things, and no one thing is particularly amazing, but the software and plenty of old drives and older hardware make it worth it for me.