Use this forum to share stories about donation projects or to offer your own time, hardware, or expertise for others.

Search Forum Home   Donation Stories  Decatur  Pat, Richard, K...  Pat, Richard, Kevin, Gene, Michael, and Josh donate SMART KIDS PC    9/19/2006 5:35:07 AM host 3 posts Pat, Richard, Kevin, Gene, Michael, and Josh donate SMART KIDS PC It took parts from four machines to do it, but the SMART KIDS PC is up and running. The Stats 1 Ghz Processor, Motherboard, Case (Richard) 128 Megabytes of Memory (Pat) DVD ROM (Pat) Licensed Copy of Windows 2K Professional (Gene) The memory is a bit scare, but perhaps we can get something to replace it at a later date. The Play by Play Five kids in Atlanta were in need of a computer to help them do some work to help get them into college. With very little money and little support, Pat's sister Laverne wanted to help them. Pat had an old computer, but it was only 350 megahertz. Richard donated a few boards and processors that had been abandoned by a company, and Gene donated a licensed copy of W2K Professional. This was a team effort. Good job! Michael and Josh "took the field" to assemble the parts. They took out the memory from Pat's machine and the DVD ROM and put it into the only machine from Richard that could accept that type of memory. They swapped the boot order in the BIOS and then tried to install XP PRO Media Center.... Whoops! We had a perfect game until now, but chalk up a big fat 1 in the ERRORS column of the Runs, Hits, and Errors tallies! You may even just double count this one. Not only did these amateurs underistimate the sheer weight of this heavy weight goliath of an OS, they didn't realize the implications of its most gruesome defender: Windows Activation. Windows Activation stood at the gate like a sentinnel, glaring at entrants and begrudingly granting them a 30 day pass after which he promised to hunt them down and extinguish their stay. Not Good. They had to pick another offense. They considered a totally legal and totally free alternative: Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux is a distribution created by South Africa's first Astronaut, Mark Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is a self-made millionaire who founded Thawte and sold it to VeriSign for a "cool" 575 million dollars in 1999 at age 26. But, his goal with Ubuntu Linux is to make it a "Linux for Humans", and indeed it is. It runs pretty well and is quite intuitive! It comes prepackaged with Open Office 2.0, FireFox, Evolution, and other tools, and is packed with desktop games. However, Gene stepped up to the plate and slugged a home run with a licensed copy of Win2K Professional. Instead of installing Ubuntu on the hard drive, the duo chose to burn a "Live CD" with it that will allow the new owners to play around with it at their leisure. We've heard that one of the new owners is a game programming guru, so we're going to give him some good downloads from Microsoft, like Visual C# Express and other good free downloads. As of now, the machine is loaded and ready for an initial test drive. While lacking in powerful memory, the processor is adequate and the DVD ROM is a plus. Great job team! P.S. As of this writing, Michael is fast at work unscrewing and rescrewing motherboards and chips, evaluating the potential utility of the remaining specimens for another donation.... Stay tuned....  9/19/2006 5:42:15 AM host 3 posts Re: Pat, Richard, Kevin, Gene, Michael, and Josh donate SMART KIDS PC Here are some pictures! Michael holding up the old computer from his Mom: The three machines from Richard. The one on the bottom is the one we ended up rebuilding. Windows 2000 Pro is installing on the monitor.  Page 1 of 1   Donation Stories  Decatur  Pat, Richard, K... Flat View Tree View Oldest To Newest Newest To Oldest