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Goodwill CRC update, Friday, February 3, 2012

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 20:00:25 -0500

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, John Hamill, Marty Swartz, Dave Sevick, Noah Covert and his dad, Damon, for joining me today for our weekly workday at our Goodwill Computer Recycling Center “annex.”

It was good to see our friend Noah today after a prolonged absence due to his moving into middle school this year. He’s now 11.

It was also good to find out he’s a lot more interested in our inventory of classic Macs than anyone else. Noah spent the day pulling them out from the nether regions of our space and plugging them in to see if they booted. Most did, which leads us to believe their previous owners sort of just quit using them as they acquired newer, speedier Macs.

Here’s one happy guy:

Please note these Macs were obsolete when he was born. The newest one is seven years older than him.

One final word about Noah. Never, EVER, play Macintosh trivia against him. I’ll bet you don’t know the variations in the power supplies of classic Macs, or the sizes and model numbers of cooling fans in a dozen different Macs. He does. Think of it as him saving your brain from having to remember this stuff.

Today, our percentage of winners vs. losers greatly increased over the past few weeks. We refurbished 14 Macs and de-manufactured just three. Our all time total is now 3,217. None of them are Noah’s classic Macs; they still need much work. Anyone with a 400K Disk Tools floppy, just holler out...

Here’s hoping this week’s Snow Leopard Security Update didn’t bite you, and your beloved copy of AppleWorks is still working.

We’ll have another workday next Friday, February 10. We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Goodwill CRC update, Friday, January 27, 2012

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:20:43 -0500

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, John Hamill, and Marty Swartz for joining me today for our weekly workday at our Goodwill Computer Recycling Center “annex.”

Today we said goodbye to an old friend and suffered the return of an old nemesis.

For three and one-half years we’ve treasured a delightful 12-inch G4 iBook as an in-house ‘swiss army knife’ to perform a variety of tasks from Firewire imaging other Macs to running DiskWarrior directory repairs. Today we realized we have been using our personal Mac laptops or other in-house Macs to do these tasks.

We wiped its hard drive and re-imaged it, and now it will head to the Goodwill ComputerWorks store for sale. It’s time for this delightful little box to generate some revenue...

Remember our success last week with imaging an old G4 PowerMac Tower that had resisted netbooting? The problem came back today in spades. Two more of that particular PowerMac model steadfastly refused to netboot or boot via Firewire. I believe I set some sort of record in zapping their PRAM and double checking to make sure their firmware had been updated. In addition to the dreading opaque start button, they also sport two logic board reset buttons.

If anybody has a clue to get these things to behave as their slightly newer brethren, we’re all ears. Their future as OS 9 boxes is dubious.

For the third week in a row, we refurbished 10 Macs and de-manufactured 6 others. It’s a pattern we’d be delighted to have continue. Our all time total is now 3,203.

We’ll have another workday next Friday, February 3. We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Highlights and links from the COWMUG meeting of January 5, 2012

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:10:33 -0500

Apple news

Happy New Year! Apple celebrates the Lunar New Year with discounts at its Apple Stores - but only in China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia. (That’s a long trek for a modest bargain.)
Apple Lunar New Year Sale offers small discounts | MacNN

Macworld joins forces with iLife to present this year’s expo of all things Apple, now named iWorld. It happens in San Francisco January 26 - 28.
Macworld | iWorld

Why do some people get so passionate about their Macs and i-devices? Part of the answer may be in their head, say brain scientists.
Apple Provides Fans With Religious Experience, Brain Scans Reveal | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Remember Psystar, the company that thought it could legally sell clones of Apple computers? It lost that case in 2009 and was shut down. About the only thing the judge didn’t find in Apple's favor was the request to keep secret details of how the operating system worked.
Apple denied attempt to keep info secret in Psystar case | Electronista

App news

Apple briefly listed its new app called GameStore on its App Store, but removed it after three days and offered refunds to purchasers. The iOS program allowed users of role-playing games to buy (using real money) virtual products such as Awesome Swords, Force Fields, and extra lives.
Aborted GameStore app ‘premature,’ Apple issues refunds | MacNN

A real app that may be handy for international travelers is Google Translate. You can now speak words or phrases into your iPhone and have it translate them into a foreign language.
App Store - Google Translate

Want to take your work with you on the road? Apple’s iWork fits onto your iPad or iPhone and lets you craft phrases, crunch numbers, and create presentations on the go.
Apple - iWork - Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The Mac way.

Looking for a reasonable substitute for AppleWorks and its Draw module? Check out Pages, one of the iWorks programs. It not only functions as a decent word processor, it also gives you the ability to draw the circles, boxes, lines, arrows, and other geometric shapes found in AppleWorks. You can download a free copy of the Macintosh program and try it out for 30 days.
Apple - iWork - Pages - Create beautiful documents in minutes.

If you’re pining for a successor to the database in AppleWorks, look over in the direction of Bento. It's a streamlined database program from the FileMaker company, designed for the Intel Macintosh, with lots of templates to make it easier to get started. It doesn’t have all of the advanced features of FileMaker Pro, but for the home or small office it’s a good solution. Over 1 million copies of Bento have now been sold.
FileMaker cracks 1M in combined Mac, iOS Bento sales | iPodNN

And as COWMUG Barb Mitchell testified, Bento can save you lots of re-typing by importing old AppleWorks files and making venerable information available on new Macs.

Devices

What can your iPad do for you besides read books? If you’re fortunate (or persuasive), it can get you across the U.S. border when you've forgotten to pack your passport.
Canadian man passes customs without passport but with iPad | Electronista

What can your Mac to when you need to sign a PDF document? The built-in iSight camera is just the thing to scan in your written signature - just write your name on a piece of paper, start the Preview program, and hold the paper up to the camera.
Mac 101: Capture your signature using OS X Lion’s Preview app | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Fun stuff

What happens when Steve Wozniak and Leonard Nimoy have a meeting of the minds?
Nimoy, Wozniak to mind-meld on technology at conference | MacNN

TankBot - its only connection to a Mac is the USB battery charger, but it is cute and a lot of fun.
Tankbot

The Church of Kopimism takes file-sharing to a new level.
Sweden Formally Recognizes File-Sharing as a Religion | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Pittsburgh Dad - short monologues from a guy with a real Pittsburgh attitude (and accent). New episodes posted weekly.
pittsburghdad’s Channel - YouTube

Goodwill CRC update, Friday, January 20, 2012

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:30:09 -0500

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, John Hamill, Marty Swartz and Dave Sevick for joining me today for our weekly workday at our Goodwill Computer Recycling Center “annex.”

We think we may have discovered an answer to a perplexing problem we’ve had for some time. Tucker Trainor (remember him?) once observed that certain early models of Power Mac G4 Towers (350 and 400 MHz) would not netboot, making them unable to image with our OS X package. He noted they all had opaque start buttons.

Today we had another one on the bench, and sort of knew it would be a turkey. It was a really clean machine, so I began to work on it. Sure enough, it would not netboot at the appropriate time. Well, now what?

In the course of playing around, I accidentally zapped the Mac’s PRAM a second time. Suddenly, it netbooted. We don’t know if this is THE solution, but we’ll be looking for those opaque button G4s to try it again.

And now, we get to needle Mr. Trainor by remote control. Change another diaper, pal. We’ve got your back...

I’m told the pumpkin spice french toast at lunch was really swell...

Just like last week, we refurbished 10 Macs and de-manufactured 6 others. One Apple display was forwarded for responsible recycling. Our all time total is now 3,193.

We’ll have another workday next Friday, January 27. We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson

Goodwill CRC update, Friday, January 13, 2012

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:30:17 -0500

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, Rich Fitzgibbon, John Hamill, Marty Swartz and Dave Sevick for joining me today for our weekly workday at our Goodwill Computer Recycling Center “annex.”

We dodged our first weather bullet today, with our travel unaffected by the previous day’s predictions of morning ice and snow. In fact, Charlie and I arrived earlier than normal due to less traffic than usual.

Despite the ominous Friday the 13th date, we had an unusually uneventful workday. There were no surprise crises, with the working Macs we handled refurbishing smoothly. Aside for a balky ethernet port on an iMac Charlie refurbished, it was smooth sailing. The de-manfactured Macs were obvious parts kits.

We refurbished 10 Macs and de-manufactured 6 others. Our all time total is now 3,184.

We’ll have another workday this Friday, January 20. We hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson