[X4U] Recycling Mac's

Rod Duncan roduncan at telus.net
Thu Feb 8 14:20:50 PST 2007


This recent iMac thread and about recycling Mac's reminded me to 
share this most recent story in the last couple of months. Turned out 
to be a timely Christmas gift.

A client recently gave me back her old Performa 578. It was the full 
meal deal at the time she got it and the only reason we upgraded her 
now to a newer 20" iMac was her old Apple serial printer and eyes 
were giving out - not necessarily in that order. I still had a 
similar Performa 580 in storage and wanted to donate them. Well... 
nobody wants these designated *obsolete* pre PPC machines. Well... 
almost nobody.

I didn't want to create more land fill so started a serious search 
and enquiry to find a home for these two senior citizens. A 
reasonably exhaustive search led me to a High School teacher in a 
neighbouring town who absolutely loved and used these old Performa's 
in her teen-age, special need's class. When I heard this, I 
remembered I had been given a huge box of shoot'em-up games that had 
never been used - even had a couple of ADB game controllers too.

As she knew her way around these old Mac's she almost screamed when 
she heard I had installed PDS ethernet cards in both comm slots 
allowing her to plug them into her network. In addition, I gave her 
an old Syquest Syjet SCSI drive with a whack of removable cartridges 
for backup etc. A menage of goodies including ADB trackballs (perfect 
for handicapped users) extra keyboards and an external SCSI HD etc.

I was happy to send them to a good home where they will get used and 
used. The powers that be in her school district wanted to get rid of 
these Performa's years ago but she convinced them to hold off as the 
particular software she was using was the best for her charges and 
nothing had been developed to replace it. Regardless of platform. And 
these Performa's, they just keep on ticking like the Energizer bunny.

Guess the moral of the story is don't take "no" for an answer when it 
comes to recycling our old Mac's. The old cliche... someone's garbage 
is another's treasure still holds.

Rod


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