h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some days ago I got a third hand iMac from a colleague.

Nearly complete, only have to get this netbox to work and I have most platforms available.

PC on musof with a big variety of browsers.
PC on Linux with an as impressive list.
iMac OS 9

What processor? G3, G4?

Nice one TiT, and i too would like to know the processor too

RJR

Traveller in Time finding on the Mac
"It says G3, I had a system hardware overview the other day, now I cannot find it anymore.

I try to switch off windows on the left top on the musof systems too. "

I just recently got myself a second hand iMac, too. Not bad for £90, but a bit slow and clunky at times.

I found a Mac in a box in my attic. It's a very old one. I've never bothered to get it working.

I also have an Apple //e !

Traveller in Time
"I never 'find' something in my own house, I happen to have put it there myself.

I still got an original IBM PC 8088 running. Took me days but I managed to get it on the internet using WatTcp and a lynx build. Not jet managed to get the Z80 experimental boards to connect to the WEB in any way though. "

I'm sure I did put the Mac in the attic, but I had completely forgotten. I've worked with so many computers I don't remember them all. People give me old stuff and ask me if it would be any use to me. A lot of it just gets put in the attic.

I wish we had an attic. We've got the carcasses of old computers lying all over the house.

Traveller in Time taking the 'lowerator'
"Hmm, about time I redecorate the entry about my basement.

I have most of them stacked in the area just below the stairs. Piling up to the ceiling, only half a dozen is connected and those are on the desk just right of my 'physical desktop'. Doe stake a stack of hubs, monitors keyboards and switches to reach them. "

Just think of all the baked bean cans that lot could be made into!

Traveller in Time measuring cover thickness
"Some of the early boxes had a one mm thick plating nowadays the covers are just more than tinfoil

I have to stack them in ageing sequence, plastic covered nerar the ceiling. There is a carbon layer condensed on the inside just to provide some basic shielding. "

Hmm, stratification. Has anything begun to fossilise yet?

Gnomon,

I wish everyone who had old computers, or at least ones they didn't need any more, would give them away. There are so many people who would benefit. To total novices, any computer would be a bonus, a start to get them interested.

I know so many older people who have got involved simply because they were given sons'/daughters' old one. I doubt I would ever have joined the computer world, as it would have seemed a dreadful extravagance on our fixed income.

It opens up a whole new world, and gives an interest. I am disappointed that there don't seem to be many places that recycle them, though I know there are organisations that re-furbish and send them out to poorer countries.

Websailor

Actually, Websailor, there's been an investigation into that- a lot of those companies don't refurbish them. They dump them in poorer countries.

Be careful who you give an old computer to.

And there was me thinking you were on some special healthy diet

Traveller in Time ambiguous about second hand systems
"Most of my systems are too unrelyable to give them to 'newbees', they tend to get frustrated by the failing systems and will not try again.

The 'very old' systems are often more intercompatible, with four IBM-PCs I managed to create one 'working'. It is a trail and error busyness that way, great study material.
I am thinking of giving the iMac to my brother, he is a perfect newbee, not interfered by any knowledge or experience. "

I've always had OSX as my main platform, so I don't know what OS9 does.

Despite my recent problems with my mailbox, I really love my Mac.