[hblug] recycling older PCs

[chris morris]

Rose McGillicuddy wrote:
> Just a thought about which distro might be used.  While I haven't used 
> it for some time vectorlinux runs fantastically on older hardware.  It 
> is a bit more difficult to install, but is stable and fast.  There is 
> a new version out, which I haven't yet tried. One of the reasons I 
> went away from it was difficulty configuring dial-up, but I'm sure 
> that could be overcome.
> Rosemary
Agreed. What we need is a skinny distro that still has all the basic 
stuff ( internet / email / instant msg / digital camera software / 
office / cd burning / audio-video player ( +mp3 codec   ) etc as most of 
the hardware will be old and slow.
KDE 3.4xx has all the bells & whistles but is a tad hungry on system 
resources.
We also needs to have a GUI software installer such as Adept or Synaptic.
    ( Noobies wont want to muck about with apt-get via konsole )
Modems are going to be big issue as most will probably be winmodems of 
dubious linux compatibility.
Lan cards will be fine as long as they are PCI - configuring ISA lan 
cards on linux is a job for experts, so that counts me out :)
Older ISA sound cards can be very troublesome too.

I would suggest we need to salvage PCI modems / vid cards / sound cards 
/ Lan cards from anything that is otherwise junk before it gets turfed out.
This will allow us to mix-n-match with systems that have Linux 
unfriendly hardware.
The same goes with Hard Drives - any that are thrown out need to be 
physically destroyed first ( big hammer ) so that data is not retrievable.

We would need a system something like this:

1, Old PC get dumped on us.
2, We firstly plug it all in and see if it runs.
3, If it does. We check specs and hardware for compatibility, then go 
ahead with the refresh.
4, If it doesnt. We put it aside for cannibalization or more discovery 
as to why it doesnt go.
5, Refreshed PC gets tested ( internet / plays music - video / burns cd 
whatever ) then a quick physical external clean.
6, Refreshed PC is made available for sale, with any compatible 
peripherals that we may aquire (scanners / printers etc)

Prospective customer needs to be taught about the use / misuse  of root 
passwords etc, Also he/she needs to be told that they cant install 
windows software either via CDROM or downloaded from the net.
Perhaps a printed README should be supplied with each PC..

ok thats enough from me..

chris