How Can I Donate Old Hardware to Developers? 76
olddoc asks: "I have a computer I'd like to get rid of. It is still pretty useful for a developer, being a fairly powerful dual Athlon MP box, but there is no Microsoft OS on it so most charities in the area don't want it. I live in Eastern Pennsylvania, USA and I'm sure there are dozens of people who are developing GPL or BSD licensed software, who would be happy to get their hands on it. If my old computer is used to help develop free software, I'll get all warm and fuzzy inside. If I get a tax deduction for it so much the better. Does anyone know how to give a worthy project a hardware gift?"
Contact + Pickup (Score:3, Informative)
Donate it to a student? (Score:1)
Re:Donate it to a student? (Score:2)
I have to admit, the box is bigger than anything I currently have, but then again, I'm willing to put up with more than most people. On the other side of things, my wife won't let me get another box until atleast 1 is gone (5 computers and growing).
What she doens't know is that all the small boxes being shipped to me from the states to "upgrade" my main box are the workings to secretly make a newer, faster, better computer... M
Re:Donate it to a student? (Score:1)
I keep old stuff, but my brother went a step further to disect adapters for electronic components and wirings.
LUG's (Score:4, Interesting)
What is a LUG? (Score:2)
Do LUGs include people who use Linksys routers?
Linux developers OTOH frequently also develop on Win32, Solaris, BSD and other stuff
Re:LUG's (Score:4, Informative)
Philly has several large ones [freecycle.org].
Educational institutions? (Score:2)
Email it to me (Score:1)
Re:Email it to me (Score:2)
Re:Donate to Assistant Professor! (Score:1)
Re:Donate to Assistant Professor! (Score:1)
Re:Donate to Assistant Professor! (Score:1)
Owned?
Re:Donate to Assistant Professor! (Score:2)
Re:Donate to Assistant Professor! (Score:1)
me me me (Score:3)
Doesn't the East Coast have FreeGeek Yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't the East Coast have FreeGeek Yet? (Score:1)
or craigslist (Score:3, Informative)
Or Freecycle it... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Or Freecycle it... (Score:1)
OSS projects often need hardware (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.freebsd.org/donations/ [freebsd.org]
You can get a tax deductionn too.
Re:OSS projects often need hardware (Score:2)
After repeated queries I couldn't get anybody to respond from the appropriate e-mail addresses. There were guys on the list who wanted the gear, but unfortunately they went to a reseller instead because the letter couldn't be done.
Re:OSS projects often need hardware (Score:1)
I'm an OSS developer who could use an extra box. (Score:1)
KDE (Score:3, Informative)
Send it to me. (Score:1, Offtopic)
the hardest part (Score:5, Insightful)
The hardest part won't be giving it away. The hardest part will be finding someone that will actually put it to good use. I mean, if you just take every request at face value, a lot of them are probably just nobodies who want a free SMP system. (I know this, because I pondered the same thing for a nanosecond or two.)
What you ought to do is find an active open source project where developer access to an SMP system would be useful. Good candidates are the Linux kernel and the BSD's, as well as number-crunching, desktop environments, and multimedia applications. Perferably it should be a project who's work you admire or use on a daily basis. Join their mailing list, lurk for awhile, and try to figure out who's who. Then post your offer to one of their mailing lists. Then and only then, offer your system to someone who you know to be a proven member of the community that has contributed a significant amount of code in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future.
This is probably the best way to ensure that your gift ends up in the right hands.
Re:the hardest part (Score:3, Insightful)
Good candidates are the Linux kernel and the BSD's, as well as number-crunching, desktop environments, and multimedia applications.
Don't donate to desktop environments, we want the KDE and GNOME developers to have old, slow hardware so they don't get too bloated!
Re:the hardest part (Score:1)
The desktop environments are already bloated, they need powerful hardware just to compile the libraries and software to test their changes, otherwise it could take 4 weeks every full compile..
Re:the hardest part (Score:2)
This guy is more noble than me... I just want the shit I've got out of my house. If you want a dual P3 700 or a 400mhz Sparc64 or some cat5 patch cables, please, dear god, come and get them out of my basement. They're not of sufficient value for the troubles of eBay, and I'm far to lazy to drive or ship them anywhere... If you're going to use them to develop free software, or u
Re:the hardest part (Score:2)
Re:the hardest part (Score:2)
Send me an e-mail.
Re:the hardest part (Score:2)
Re:the hardest part (Score:2)
I would certainly entertain shipping if you were up to it, but since you aren't....
A dual P3 would have been very useful as would a Sparc.
Send it down south... (Score:1)
Ask Slashdot Article (Score:4, Funny)
Bona fide non-profit (Score:2, Interesting)
Even though they make things fairly reasonable price-wise, there will be no Microsoft software in our organization. Everything is GPL F/OSS.
We rehabilitate raptors (birds of prey, not dinosaurs) and do conservation education outreach.
I can give you a nice, muchly grat
Re:Bona fide non-profit (Score:3, Funny)
so like... Klingon ships?
Re:Bona fide non-profit (Score:1)
Re:Bona fide non-profit (Score:2)
Missing desk part. (Score:1)
Ebay (Score:2, Interesting)
How about giving it to these guys.... (Score:3, Informative)
If I were you then I would contact Theo [mailto] to see how you can get the box to a developer. By the way, no matter who you end up donating it to, it's an awesome gesture on your part. Good on ya.
Re:How about giving it to these guys.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They were the ones that convinced us all to ditch telnet, and they did so by providing a feasable alternative. They've worked hard to convince wireless vendors to open their firmware, and gotten results. They were also one of the first groups to switch to X.Org. I guess what I'm trying to say is they have very high principles.
Recently, Theo de Raadt won an award from the FSF for his work.
I can't think of a better group to give it to. Unfortunt
Re:How about giving it to these guys.... (Score:2)
RedHat (Score:2)
Give it to RedHat - they obviously need one.
They released some VERY buggy SMP kernels over the weekend. Both FC3 and FC4 are horribly affected.
Friends and I have had to revert back to the older kernels as most (all?) dual-proc or hyperthread systems would panic on boot!
There are dozens of complaints and unanswered questions on fedoraforum. They must not have tested them under a dual-proc system at all.
The most amazing part is, they haven't released a new SMP kernel to fix the problem yet! (these came out
Give it to Philly School District (Score:1)
Donating hardware is too much of a hassle (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a developer and I often use Meld [sourceforge.net], a diff/merge tool. I also am an avid vim [vim.org] user. So every now and then I donate a few bucks to these worthy projects.
Oh, it's "DONATE"... (Score:1)
anyone want a DECstation 25? (Score:2)
I'm getting ready to move to a new apartment and this thing has been sitting here unused for some 10 yrs now! anyone want one? it has 'full' memory in it (48meg, I think?) and a 1gig drive with ultrix preloaded. I might even have the ultrix cdroms and cdrom reader, too (DECs weird caddy version).
probably too expensive to ship (I have the 16" display for it too). located in mtn view, ca.
Re:anyone want a DECstation 25? (Score:1)
Say, is that you Bob?
Re:anyone want a DECstation 25? (Score:2)
I started on a DECstation 3000. it was when I worked at DEC, back in maynard, around the late 80's.
I think the 1gb scsi1 HP drive in there costed me $600 when I bought it brand new at frys. I was happy as hell to have 'a full gig' of storage, too. and I found someone on ebay to sell me the special DEC memory to bring it from 32meg (I think that's all it had) up to 48meg. ethernet is AUI only, which means 10base5... yes, I can convert it to thinwire (10base2) or even 10baseT.
It usually is pretty simple... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dual Athlon MP is old?! (Score:1)
Considered distributed computing? (Score:2)
Drop the distributed computing project of your choice on it, hook up a wireless networking card to it and store it somewhere out of the way.
There are lots of worthy DC projects out there.
I leave my PC on 24/7 crunching numbers folding and I know my electric bill is about $25 more then it could be if I was turning my PC off every month. I am considering that my contribution to charity.
Just a thought.
Donating a rig to a charity is a wonderfu