» What should I do with my old Macs?
What should I do with my old Macs?
I have two very old Macintosh computers in my basement: a Mac SE bought in 1987 and a PowerMac 7200 bought in 1995. I also have hundreds of floppy disks for these computers, with all sorts of games and utilities, including the very first versions of Word and Excel!
These computers are still functionning, but what can you do with these except powering them once in a while to show kids how slow and limited they were compared to today's computers? Also, most probably many of the floppies have lost their data.
So what should I do? Trash them? They represent so many memories and so much time spent staring at their screens. That's a difficult decision, but they are taking to much space! My old Apple IIe, bought in 1984, is still alive, but is still at my parent's house. They ofen tell me to take it back, so asking them to host my old Macs seems out of question :-)
I think that at some point you have to consider that time has passed, and bury those old things that you once loved. Note that I had absolutely no problem trashing my old PCs!!!
2 ways :
- easy way: give me the SE :P
- best way: give them to the Silicium Museum based in Toulouse http://www.silicium.org/ ;)
It took me until last year to get rid of my i386 PC that I bought when the i386 was the hot new chip in town, so I know what you're going through. ;-) I ended up offering the PC on Freecycle. That way, I knew I was giving it to someone who could use it, rather than simply trashing it.
Thanks Martin! At least I know now that I'm not completely crazy having this kind of sentimental thinking. Or at least I'm not alone to be crazy :-D
The SE looks perfect for a macquarium.
Other than that, I suppose they could be a bit of fun if you have a spare stick of dynamite.
One word: EBay. There's no shortage of loonies who will pay a LOT of money for worthless old Apple hardware.
Hi Sylvain,
You could also propose them to the "Musée de l'Informatique" that has opened last year near Paris.
Eric
PS: congrats for your new blog, the only thing that seems to be missing is OpenID support ;) ...
I visited this museum last year, and I was really thrilled to see all the computers I had been using, including the Radio Shack TRS-80 on which I wrote my very first BASIC program when I was 11 or 12 years old.
Regarding OpenID, Drupal does support it to create new accounts, but not yet for comments. But this is something I'd like to have, so I need to work on it :-)
OpenID is really great for comments: on my blog the comments submitted using OpenID are neither moderated nor submitted to any kind of antispam and it looks like spammers do not know how to defeat it (maybe because they focus on low hanging fruits, but that's a great benefit anyway).
Eric
i386 PC my first PC
eh....first PC like first women, like first botlle of beer, like first car.