Author: Joey deVilla

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

In the previous post, I announced that I was giving away my old 12″ 867 MHz PowerBook G4 and said that I’d give it to the person who emailed me with the most compelling reason to give it to him or her. The most compelling one came from Sue from CARD — that’s Community Association for Riding for the Disabled — who requested it for her organization.

CARD’s mission is to improve the lives of children and adults with disabilities through therapeutic horse riding programs, which helps with their mobility, communication and social skills, and self-esteem. All riders are assessed to ensure the program will benefit them, and to ensure they are placed appropriately in a hippotherapy, psycho-education, therapeutic riding or horsemanship class. Some of their riders who have progressed through the ranks and competed internationally at the Paralympic games and in other ParaEquestrian events.

CARD is 100% self-funded. They rely on grants, donations, sponsorship and fundraising efforts and don’t get any government support. They need to update their office equipment and are looking for donors and donations; they’re currently running on 8 year old iMacs. Of all the people who emailed me, CARD sounded like the people who needed the PowerBook the most, so it’s theirs.

I’ve got another machine to give away, so watch this space!

Update: The PowerBook has been given away.

Last time, I gave away a Mac clone from the ’90s. This time, I’m giving away this machine: a 2003-era 12″ PowerBook G4:

Some specs:

• 867 Mhz PowerPC G4 processor
• 640K RAM (the maximum)
• 1024 * 768 screen resolution
• 40 GB hard drive
• “Combodrive” (Reads and burns CD-ROMs, reads DVDs)
• AirPort Extreme card

Here’s a peek at the ports on its left side:

The right side has just the CD/DVD slot:

And yes, it can be yours…FREE!

How Can You Get This Machine?

Alas, you can’t anymore; it’s been given away.

When I got this photo, it came with the caption “The ice cream truck is here!”. Feel free to come up with one of your own and post it in the comments!

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I try not to bore the readers of this blog with overly technical stuff; that’s why I started my programming and technology blog, Global Nerdy.

In my latest post there, I comment on the recent TechCrunch post in which influential tech blogger Mike Arrington reports on changes to the way my former employer b5media pays its bloggers in a post titled b5media’s Changes to Blogger Pay: Right, Fair and Still a Sweet Deal.

…so posting will be light today. But damn, do I look good:

Update: The machine has been claimed!

My sudden surplus of free time has given me some time to do some thing I’d been meaning to do but never got around to doing. One of those things is doing a little decluttering, and as a result, I have a number of computers that I don’t need anymore.

Rather than put them up for sale, I’ve decided to give the computers away to people who need them. I could put them up for sale on eBay or Craigslist, but I’ve decided to use this opportunity to do a good deed and put some goodwill out there. Some of these machines might be a bit old for everyday use and are probably of interest to collectors, but giving you an old computer makes your day better and frees up my space, that’s a good thing.

The First Free Machine

This is an oldie, but if you pine for the days of pre-Return-of-Jobs Apple, you’ll love this machine. It’s a Umax C600/240 PowerMac clone from about a dozen years ago. Some of its specs:

• 240Mhz PowerPC 603e processor
• 96 MB Ram
• 2GB hard drive
• Two video cards — the standard Mac one from that era, plus an ATI card. You can dual-monitor this baby!
• Ethernet card

It comes with an AppleVision 17″ CRT monitor, SuperMac ADB keyboard and Apple ADB mouse. It’s got a whole bunch of old Mac software too.

How Do You Get This Machine? [Update]

You can’t anymore — it’s been claimed!

How About the Other Machines?

I’ve got an appointment right now, so I’ll have to write about them later. Watch this space!