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This was essentially my first job. As a 17-year-old I was hired for the summer by a large office to see how many working PCs I could get out of a large walk-in

This was essentially my first job. As a 17-year-old I was hired for the summer by a large office to see how many working PCs I could get out of a large walk-in closet full of broken ones. Great work for a 17-year-old computer nerd: figure out what was wrong with each one (typically RAM or hard drive), decide which ones to keep as hosts and which ones to strip for donor parts, then mix and match and set them all up. Didn’t get paid much but I enjoyed it and learned a lot, and it was a great deal for the office, who ended up with about 20 extra working computers.

reaperducer 6y ago
Funny, I did that, too. This was right about when the IBM XT came out, and the company's spares room was a mixture of original IBM PC's, IBM minicomputers of various vintages, dumb terminals, and teletype machines. I remember putting together a bunch of IBM PC systems, loaded up with all kinds of things they didn't need like SDLC (Synchronous Data Link Communicator) cards "just in case."
drannex 6y ago
This one was one of my first "jobs" as well, I would mix and match parts from donated broken computers and tech and splice them all together (again, usually ram, hard drives, or fan related issues) and then we would donate them to families or organizations in need (we would also sell some of them to keep the non-profit afloat). It was mainly volunteer work, but we were paid in parts. I would spend hours after school tearing things down, scouting through rooms full of old tech graveyards and just build. FreeGeek is one of more popular organizations for doing things like this. They have a few locations around North America: Portland, Vancouver, NYC, Seattle, Fayetteville (AR). I would do the same thing in grades 8-11 and do this for the local school district as well.
derwiki 6y ago
This was close to my Eagle Scout project. Around y2k companies were throwing out machines, so we collected them, made Frankenstein machines, and distributed them to local schools.
- chokeartist 6y ago
  Based fellow Eagle Scout spotted. Nice project. I planted shrubs and trees to prevent kids from chasing their escaping soccer balls into a busy street. At that park the previous year a 7 yo got creamed chasing his ball when it rolled away :(.

reaperducer 6y ago

Funny, I did that, too. This was right about when the IBM XT came out, and the company's spares room was a mixture of original IBM PC's, IBM minicomputers of various vintages, dumb terminals, and teletype machines. I remember putting together a bunch of IBM PC systems, loaded up with all kinds of things they didn't need like SDLC (Synchronous Data Link Communicator) cards "just in case."

drannex 6y ago

This one was one of my first "jobs" as well, I would mix and match parts from donated broken computers and tech and splice them all together (again, usually ram, hard drives, or fan related issues) and then we would donate them to families or organizations in need (we would also sell some of them to keep the non-profit afloat). It was mainly volunteer work, but we were paid in parts. I would spend hours after school tearing things down, scouting through rooms full of old tech graveyards and just build. FreeGeek is one of more popular organizations for doing things like this. They have a few locations around North America: Portland, Vancouver, NYC, Seattle, Fayetteville (AR). I would do the same thing in grades 8-11 and do this for the local school district as well.

derwiki 6y ago

This was close to my Eagle Scout project. Around y2k companies were throwing out machines, so we collected them, made Frankenstein machines, and distributed them to local schools.

chokeartist 6y ago
Based fellow Eagle Scout spotted. Nice project. I planted shrubs and trees to prevent kids from chasing their escaping soccer balls into a busy street. At that park the previous year a 7 yo got creamed chasing his ball when it rolled away :(.