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Online Hardware Swap-Meet
ShadowRayven wrote to us about a cool service called freeboxen: "Freeboxen is an online community for sharing computer hardware. Many of us have old, unused PC hardware sitting around. Why not give it to someone who wants it? Freeboxen makes it easy to post your hardware and give it to a thankful recipient. You can also use Freeboxen to claim the hardware that people are giving away."
If you happen to live in Northern Germany, there is a very similar project called
Nutzmüll
(See this article in the newspaper DIE WELT)
The people working are former long-time unemployed folks paid by the Hamburg community. They are now learning about IT-technology, thus improving their resume and their chances of getting a "real" job in the near future.
The computers you donate to them are given to organizations and people who cannot afford a new computer. (I wanted to buy some old hardware for a livingroom network router from them, but they didn't give it to me. Well, they're right and now that I know that, I have an even higher opinion of them.)
Anyway, Nutzmüll also accepts old software (think Windows95 CDRoms and licenses) that they use to install on the computers. I recently gave them a tip to have a look at Linux and linuxrouter.org and hope that they will find some use for them of the even more outdated hardware they get.
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You may like my a cappella music
Yeah, but I just tried to contact them to let them know about a php coding tip, and here's what I got back: (Looks like their contact info isn't correct)
Subject:
Returned mail: User unknown
Date:
Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:51:21 -0500
From:
Mail Delivery Subsystem
To:
The original message was received at Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:51:20 -0500
from staver.fimble.com [206.26.107.19]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx00.mindspring.com.:
>>> RCPT To:
... User unknown
>>> RCPT To:
... User unknown
Reporting-MTA: dns; fimble.com
Received-From-MTA: DNS; staver.fimble.com
Arrival-Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:51:20 -0500
Final-Recipient: RFC822; jlincoln@mindspring.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; mx00.mindspring.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 User unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:51:21 -0500
Final-Recipient: RFC822; spamdrop@mindspring.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; mx00.mindspring.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 User unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:51:21 -0500
Subject:
advice for your site
Date:
Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:45:45 -0600
From:
Mike Staver
To:
jlincoln@mindspring.com, spamdrop@mindspring.com
Alright, I'm a php3 programmer myself, and I noticed a little problem on
your site that's extremely common in php based applications.
"ISA motherboard with 486DX50 (that\\\'s right not a DX/2). 8 30pin 4MB
SIMM slots."
Obivously, this person did not intend to have the \\\ before the 's.
This can be easily fixed in your code using the "stripslashes()"
function. Simply store the post as a string, let's say you called it
"poster". We would then do this:
$poster = stripslashes($poster);
I'm also working on a site that is very similar to your own, it's been
up for over a year now, but it deals with text books for college
students. I was sick of students being ripped off by campus book
stores, so I started:
http://www.fimble.com/buysell
Hope I was able to help. Talk to you later.
--
yeah -- i suppose it'll remain to be seen whether hundreds/thousands of new users will serve the purposes of such a site well (depends, really, on how generous the /. demographic is...) see, we have a website sorta like this locally -- most likely, many of you living in the bay area have heard of it (craigslist) with increasing volume from the local "hip" weeklies and whatnot... turns out the folks reading these weeklies are just a bit *too* hip to take a model based on community/sharing and turn it into a minature antique market -- where prices on whatever you might want to purchase were of the "take it away, i don't need it, variety" we're now seeing the "my junk is gold" user, (not to mention the college kids who are taking furniture off the street and selling it as "used" to fund beer runs, etc -- a cute idea, but shameful abuse of craigslist.)
what i'm saying here (ie, how it's applicable) is that services are only going to benefit from a greater user base if that base matches a balance necessary to such a model -- meaning, that there must be people who want to get stuff, and others who want to give.
as the internet lately seems to have been overtaken more and more by some mad mob mentality (post-93, 94, anyone?) obeying the theory that "people on computers in great numbers are infintely stupider" (don't believe it? go witness collective stupidity that overruns holzer's original "truisms" in her Please Change Beliefs work.) I have little hope for such a site to survive as a useful resource given greater numbers of traffic.
sorry, the glass is half empty, and the fuckers getting drunk on paper profits are pissing in it.
fisfhcuerk.
what? i can't say fuck?
Some reasons this isn't optimal:
In short, this has been tried before (think BIX,CIX, PRESTEL et al) as public timesharing ans as soon as the technology allowed we dropped it all like a rock. What's different this time?
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Inspired by the free yellow bicycles of Amsterdam (which you can just pick up on the street corner and ride around), the YNC takes donations of hardware, mostly old 486's, fixes them up, installs linux on them, and gives them away for free for use either as NAT servers and firewalls (so people may have multiple machines of any OS on a single network connection) and as Linux user workstations.
I gave my venerable old 486 to them. Like George Washington's axe, it started life as a 386, then got a new microprocessor, motherboard, CPU, case, memory and hard disk before finally going to the YNC.
Note that unlike some operating systems out there, Linux runs just fine on a 486 - I was using it as a web server on mine and could run the server and XWindows at the same time and never noticed any performance problems. Windows 95 was a dog on the same machine.
They also plan to build free internet kiosks in neighborhoods. You'd just be able to walk up to a weather-sealed machine and start browsing at no cost. I've heard the founder has one of these outside his house. What they'd do is hang off the DSL connection inside neighboring homes and businesses, perhaps through wireless.
They also give lessons on setting up firewalls and such, and go around giving public talks on their activities.
They have chapters in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, California, as well as Japan. I'll probably set one up in Maine if my home purchase there comes through.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
George Washington's axe had a 386 in it?
I acquired the board when some servers were being scrapped. The servers were new at the end of 1993. I've not been able to locate an ECU to download for this board.
See - it is junk!
I, for one, have got plenty of hardware that I need to list on their site... I'd much rather see people use old hardware than have it sit around gathering dust. J. Lincoln over at Freeboxen is also a really cool person, in my opinion.
Does anyone know if it's ok to donate old software, or does this violate alla them EULA's?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
One warship running Windows 2000 only used once...
An EISA 486 motherboard without the ECU disk.
A 6-port Serial card with no available device drivers, except those for a non-Y2K compliant OS.
An HP-Thinkjet clone printer, requiring a special non-standard cable which I've lost.
A broken sheet-feeder for a Canon BJ-10 printer.
2 14,400 plug-and-play modems.
A few IDE hard drives, including a 40MB one, an 80MB one, and a 200MB one with a lot of bad sectors.
An ISA sound card with capacitors so large that it requires 2 card slots.
Could I find a sucker for this junk?
Now if Freeboxen used some sort of monetary unit (i.e. Mojo Nation) to help even it out, I would be more likely to give old stuff to get old stuff. I'd rather build a new computer out of old parts than buy one outright anyway. All of my computers are old/stuck together/frankenboxen except one - my iMac. :)
Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
If anyone knows where I can get a Commodore PC-10 Model III let me know.
Toasted 486 cpu's (from overclocking just a bit too much!)
Yeah. The toasted 486 processors are wonderful. You can leave them upside down on your bedroom floor if you're really paranoid about your roommate coming in and suffocating you with a pillow in the middle of the night.
Of course, if you want to be really vicious, try a 68000. I've stepped on a 64-pin DIP. (It wasn't a Motorola 68000, it was a TMS9900, just for interests' sake.) That hurt more than stepping on the 486. I think the lesser number of pins causes more of them to pierce the skin.
Shortly after stepping on the IC, BTW, I decided that while genius is seldom tidy, it simply wasn't worth a repeat of that pain. Only papers and dirty laundry are piled on my floor now.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
http://www.freeboxen.com/dbconnect.inc
Not terribly fun.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
sadly I think you could be right, here is the message I just got from their site:
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Host 'csoft.net' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /export/home0/webtrade/www/dbconnect.inc on line 1
Unable to connect to database
slashdotted?
I love this freeboxen thing! I posted my OLD tandy 1000 w/printer/monitor etc...this afternoon...the terms were that the claimee pays shipping...I ALREADY got a claim! This is sweet! i will finally be able to get rid of all these puters in my basement! Thanks...whoever came up with freeboxen...ingenius.
The anti-salmon
It seems as though they could associate with freeboxen and benefit greatly from it; that way end users can build their own, YNC has a source of hardware as well, and I have a single location I can ship all my defunct hardware to. Cool!
The only differences is that you have to pay for the goods. It's called the State Fair Computer Sale. Great place to find amazing deals like books on Netscape 2.0, and DOS 5.0.
So now, thanks to this story on /., freeboxen is going to be inundated with hard-core geeks looking for boxes, and no new clueless newbies to donate new boxes. The website might not be /.ed, but...
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
What we need are local "scrap yards" that keep parts from obsolete PCs so people can keep them running. You can't distribute or peer-to-peer this service.
Note that while I'm on their mailing list and I'm pleased to have donated hardware to the YNC, I don't run it. I'll try to start a chapter myself once I get settled but at the present time my life is in too much flux.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
While I think the inspiration does go back to the white bikes of Amsterdam, the YNC FAQ says they're actually inspired by the Yellow Bike Coalition, which apparently did originally leave yellow bikes on the street, but now lends them for long term use.
Apparently the expectation that anyone could take a yellow bike often meant that someone who'd ridden to a friend's house or business would have their bike borrowed away from them when the left the bike unlocked to go inside.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Freeboxen is a way cool site that fills a needed trading niche, but there are other organizations that actively seek donations of old equipment, "de-obsolete" it by gutting it of counter-productive proprietary and weird components, and find organizations that can make use of it. See:
The Detwiler Foundation's Computers for Schools program
A neat Wired article about the people who do the gutting and filleting of the old stuff
I'm sure there are more-- please post what you know! You might want to consider volunteering with one of these groups, too; users aren't likely to get the most out of an old machine without some guidance or help. But they can learn, and you might feel better about yourself for having helped to lessen the digital divide a bit for a person or two who could really use a machine, any machine.
Granted, not all old equipment is useful. But much of it is far more useful than some of us gearheads might think. Better in the hands of someone who might actually use it than taking up space in a landfill.
It's the Network Economy, after all, and for some, just being able to participate means a hell of a lot more than having a machine with mHz instead of gHz. As Harry Tuttle said in Brazil, "Hey, we're all in this together".
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
Reminds me of a store room at work a good number of years ago. Absolutly full of hardware that was obsolete even then, kept just in case it ever came in handy. 4Mbit Token ring cards (we didn't even use Token Ring!), 10MB Bernoulli drives and disks, a graphics co-processor card with neither documentation or software, EMS expansion boards, weird bus mice and other odd things. No-onw knew if any of this stuff worked. Eventually it was thrown away, with the odd bit salvaged. The EMS board came in handy for playing Wing Commander II on my 286 - got to see more graphics!
Give your old systems (complete, and working) to a local school which needs it. Most schools, both public and private, lack funds to provide sufficient computer technology for kids. Even an old 486 with a decent modem would be enough for a school library to help kids get information off the WWW, or a box with a CD-ROM that can run "Reader Rabbit" or simple math games.
Best of all, if the school gives you a letter stating that they've accepted your gift and what the value of the hardware is, then your donation becomes tax-deductible. Win-win all around.
I just claimed a k6-2 all it needs is a bit more memory and it will be perfect for my Samba server at home. Also there is a very big SGI box if you can afford to pick it up. Some very cool stuff really.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Yeah, the last time I threw an old hard disk out...we got Adam Sandler. Before that, the old S3 Virge that started acting up got us that kid in the Pepsi commercials. I think my dad threw out an old phone-test set around '75...and that got us Mark Hamill!!
Oh wait.....
Blech. Signatures.
It appears that their system needs work.
I just claimed probably that same k6-2, as well as the SGI, but they both still show as available.
-
Modems (2400 to 56K)
486 motherboards
Toasted 486 cpu's (from overclocking just a bit too much!)
Monochrome monitors with patterns long burnt into 'em
even 14 or 15" color monitors
Buttloads of old network cards
network cable with just a few too many kinks...
keyboards with sticky keys (but no one knows why...)
Mice with encoders that skip every other count
old copies of DOS or Windoze 3.1/95/95SE.
and the list goes on.
Feels like a walk through a computer museum! But it's really cool, 'cause somewhere out there is someone who really wants or needs this stuff!
--
Vote Homer Simpson for President!
a Gnutellized hardware sharing network : you put the client on your box (must support TCP/IP, so sorry, no ZX81 online), and it will talk to all other to-be-shared boxen. If someone wants it, he will have to locate you through your IP address, thus proving the lack of privacy of Gnutella-style networks, and then come to your place to pick it up.
Now for the fun : if you really do want to get rid of that box, install a Gnutella servant with Metallica mp3s on it, and simply wait for the lawyers to come to seize it. This way we can convert RIAA and MPAA lawyers into trash pickers, which will make them do some valuable work for public interest.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
If you haven't been to one, you are missing out. You can get great deals on computer and electronics junk. Last time I was there I bought all the cables I needed at the time and a really nice case for my laptop and spent less than $30 total. Some people like to hang around towards the end of the day when vendors reduce their prices or give stuff away to get rid of it.
I wil be there manning the booth for my company. We have a ton of old equipment to get rid of. If you see a stack of 150 mac classics, stop by and say 'hi'!
Yes, they were white bicycles, the project was first started in 1968. It lasted less than a month.
One of the student leaders is now a city councilman, and has just released a new version of the white bicycle. Very high tech, you can check out a bicycle from any of dozens of kiosks, ride it to another kiosk, and turn it back in. Its something like 1 guilder for 30 minutes. If you don't return it within an hour, then they put it on the stolen list, and then there is some kind of little transmitter built into the frame to help locate it.
I'll be up there next week, so maybe I'll see them.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Anyone want to take bets on how long it'll take Freeboxen to get cease-and-desisted because someone (or several people) start offering modified hardware (or illegally copied software) that violates EULA agreements, TOS's, etc?
I'm thinking specifically of the jokers at Digital Convergence swooping down on Freeboxen once someone posts a "Hey, I've got a modified CueCat -- free for anyone blah blah blah..."
You watch. I think Freeboxen is a *great* idea -- I'm going to list my old Mac stuff -- but, yeah, I'm sure someone is gonna attempt to sue them for listing software that isn't actually "owned" by the person listed or whatever.
I have lots of old hardwares, various macs which once ran netbsd, couple of sun 3/80s, low end sparc ipxs, sparc ipcs, low end p60mhz machines, some 486's, hp's and so on. they are in my basement gathering dust, i will like to give some of them out, but what if after giving out a hardware, you look on ebay and see the guy selling it? people are greedy and are more likely to do this, if i put an ad up, i think i will require that the person be a true geek, thus maybe i will shoot some unix/coding questions to them, if they are clueless, they go home empty handed.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Okay, they have a website where you can get free hardware if you don't have some. But without a computer, how do you access their website? How do you send an email to the guy offering it? Maybe we need another website to ... uh, wait ...
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
"Boxen" is a derivative of "Vaxen"
e n
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/b.html#box
Maybe you should SYFM and STFW.