May 2001

Spring Cleaning
by Brian Dunning

digg this article | del.icio.us this article

I finally did it...after all these years, I actually physically threw away eight old computers and untold obsolete boxed software packages.

Before my email inbox fills with flames for throwing away the hardware and not donating or recycling it, allow me to state my defense. First, the reason I didn't donate it to a school. A Quadra 800 with blown SCSI and ADB and two Mac Pluses with dead monitors are of even less value to a school than they are to me. It was oppressive enough to keep them on hand in my closet and garage. Most of these computers have moved four times with me to different homes and have occupied an estimated 35 cubic feet of storage space. Schools need their valuable space to store unused metal detectors.

The worst offender, an Apple Network Server 700, has never worked or served either a network or a useful purpose. It was scavenged for parts at least six years ago, weighs over 100 pounds and is the size of a small refrigerator. Only one of the casters was still present at last examination, and there are permanent scrapes in the wood floors of at least two of my former residences. To add insult to aggravation, I was the sucker of someone else who finally made their move and got rid of it by dumping it on the first person who would accept it. Why did I bend? I have no idea to this day. Maybe I was enthralled at the prospect of being the first to actually use AIX.

I never did test a Mac Plus as a boat anchor, despite repeated oaths sworn that I would one day try this.

Other computers disposed of included a Centris 610 with no drives or faceplate; an Apple IIGS with no keyboard, monitor, or mouse and thus no way to use it; two Power Computing machines that wouldn't run current software, crashed incessantly, and sucked; and last of all, a Color Classic whose screen image filled a parallelogram the size of a postage stamp in one corner of the screen (last time I checked it in 1994).

If you can come up with a persuasive reason to donate any of the above to a school, then flame away. I believe it would make more sense to give the schools a wild ferret, a minor geologic disaster, or responsibility for investigating presidential scandals.

Which brings us to the second alternative: recycling. True, much of this equipment could have been usefully recycled, or so I saw on television once several years ago but have never encountered in the real world. Allegedly, there is a company in Silicon Valley that takes obsolete or broken computer equipment and recycles it, recovering those 256K SIMMs and beer can-sized capacitors for use in Russian space station modules. Rather than launch that debris into space to have it fall on my head three months later, I concluded it would be simpler to throw it up on the dumpster. I would love nothing better than to be enlightened and convinced that there is a compelling reason to recycle Steve Wozniak's prototype Apple IIGS. At least the landfill guys don't laugh at me when I roll it into their facility.

Once the hardware was securely arranged in the dumpster, I packed it all tight with 4.1 million floppy disks, from System Tools 6.0.1 to hundreds labeled "Important documents" or, in most cases, unlabeled. Most of the rest provided 50 free hours with the new AOL version 2.0. Once these arrive at the landfill, the Earth's magnetic axis will probably shift about a half degree. But that's the price of sparing thousands of Bangladeshis a death by toxic fumes from Dupont's local disk melting facility.

The next layer I added to the dumpster was boxed software. This included a historical tour of various ClarisWorks versions, all still shrinkwrapped from the day they arrived new with each of the aforementioned computers. It also included all the free FileMaker boxes I got from attending Developer Conferences, also still shrinkwrapped. Then there were a few boxes of various applications that I'd been given to write reviews. There used to be a lot more of these, but over the years, I'd scalped most of them to friends for $20 each.

I then rejoiced in my newfound open space. It was like Julie Andrews on a hilltop in Austria. Spare Porsche parts are already starting to accumulate though; I may need the dumpster again soon.