PghMac.com

Goodwill CRC update, July 23, 2010

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:10:27 -0400

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, Tucker Trainor, and Dave Sevick for joining me at the Goodwill Computer Recycling Center yesterday.

We learned another bit of Mac trivia yesterday. Just how many CDs can some jagoff jam into a slot-load CD G3 iMac? Yunz really want to know?

The answer is four. The 600 MHz iMac in question was repaired with a replacement CD and added to the inventory.

Fitz and Charlie's brain surgery continued on the flat-panel G4 iMacs. After getting one working last week, we hit a roadblock as we're unable to test key components individually. The task was finally put on hold before insanity could set in. We'll be revisiting these machines after we figure out how best to deal with the dozen candidates, each with a slightly different flaw.

We added 6 Macs to our refurbished inventory and de-manufactured 19 Macs. Our all-time total of refurbished Macs is now 2,590.

All of these machines came in the donation bin this week. They were accompanied by just a dozen keyboards and 6 mice. The deficit just grows...

A gentle reminder the ComputerWorks store is now open in its temporary quarters in Goodwill's retail store at 2700 East Carson St., just a block from the former location on Pittsburgh's South Side. It's a bit smaller that the previous store, but they still carry everything they used to display, you just may have to ask for it if you don't see it. When you enter the store, turn right and head for the back of the store.

Due to an amazing coincidence of personal events for several volunteers next Friday, we'll be taking a week off. We'll have another workday in two weeks on Friday, August 6, 2010.

We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Goodwill CRC update, July 16, 2010

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:13:18 -0400

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, John Hamill, Tucker Trainor, and Dave Sevick for joining me at the Goodwill Computer Recycling Center last Friday.

I'm sorry this update is late again, but my life has been pretty busy lately. I was going to relate a bunch of funny stuff from Friday, but I've forgotten just why it was funny at the time...

Fitz and Charlie began the intense surgery on the iMac G4s we've been sitting on. They managed to replace an optical drive on one, and made another from parts of two that had opposite fatal flaws; the logic board from one and the flat-panel screen from another were married together to make a working model. No Frankenstein jokes, please. We hope to do more soon.

We added 10 Macs to our refurbished inventory, re-imaged one, a repaired G4 iMac, and de-manufactured 8 Macs. Our all-time total of refurbished Macs is now 2,584.

A gentle reminder the ComputerWorks store is now open in its temporary quarters in Goodwill's retail store at 2700 East Carson St., just a block from the former location on Pittsburgh's South Side. It's a bit smaller that the previous store, but they still carry everything they used to display, you just may have to ask for it if you don't see it. When you enter the store, turn right and head for the back of the store.

We saw just three keyboards and two mice in the weekly donation bin. You know the drill...

We'll have another workday next Friday, July 23, 2010.

We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Goodwill CRC update, July 9, 2010

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:48:15 -0400

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, John Hamill, Tucker Trainor, Aristide Niyungeko, Charles Firth and Dave Sevick for joining me at the Goodwill Computer Recycling Center last Friday.

Please forgive this late update; it's been a really busy week for everyone. I could tell a white lie and say we were up all night celebrating the birth of Dave Sevick's first grandchild, Max David Anderson, but in reality, only Dave stayed up... :-)

Charles Firth paid a visit to tune up our G5 server and install a new switch dedicated to imaging satanic Windows PCs with Ubuntu Linux, a future endeavor rapidly approaching.

We subjected rookie volunteer Aristide Niyungeko to one of the worst indignities possible. We made him de-manufacture an eMac, but, sadly, we forgot to make him count the screws he took out. Maybe next time...

We added 11 Macs to our refurbished inventory, re-imaged one from a ComputerWorks store return, and de-manufactured 13 Macs, one Apple printer, and 14 Apple CRT Studio Displays. Our all-time total of refurbished Macs is now 2,575.

A gentle reminder the ComputerWorks store is now open in its temporary quarters in Goodwill's retail store at 2700 East Carson St., just a block from the former location on Pittsburgh's South Side. It's a bit smaller that the previous store, but they still carry everything they used to display, you just may have to ask for it if you don't see it. When you enter the store, turn right and head for the back of the store.

Among the things you might not see on the shelves are 18 G4 eMacs and 29 G4 PowerMac Towers.

We saw just four keyboards and two mice in the weekly donation bin. You know the drill...

We'll have another workday next Friday, July 16, 2010.

We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Mac Online Treasures has been updated

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 17:06:55 -0400

A new article has been posted in Mac Online Treasures, courtesy of Janet Balas and COWMUG. Her July article, “Once Upon a Time Every Mac User was a Beginner”, offers advice and resources for all Mac beginners, even those who might not be able to attend MUG meetings.

Summary of the July 6 meeting with Johnny Qwalick from Goodwill

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 10:11:16 -0400

We welcomed Johnny Qwalick from Goodwill.

In a lab setting at MacOutfitters, we explored Edubuntu and Ubuntu on a G4 eMac and two PCs.

We imaged two PCs with the PXE server and Clonezilla.

We spent a majority of our time with interactive demonstrations of the many apps on the Ubuntu Desktop and compared them to what we know who to use on Macs.

Aristide Niyungeko, our exchange student from Burundi, Africa took the floor and showed how he could easily localize the freshly imaged Ubuntu based CPU to be native to his country that speaks primarily French.

Will there be a Linux support group here in Pittsburgh? ...we'll let you know!

Marty Swartz and our Goodwill volunteers are still working on a Ubuntu PPC 10.04 solution that will use low RAM and less hard drive space for G3 machines. That project is next as we put our heads together. It is not as easy as the PC installs.

For now we do have a workable solution with low-end Intel PCs that hopefully will NOT be de-manufactured and can be used for humanitarian outreach...

More news soon.

Many thanks to Johnny again for his efforts to keep us current with all things Mac and Open Source.

Nightcap was at Primanti Brothers!

Dave