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MRC Donates PowerMac Labs to Two Area Schools
SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Mac Recycle Clinic (MRC) got the school year off to a good start with donations for two area schools:
– 12 complete PowerMac systems went to the Cheverly (Md.) STEM Education Center located in the Cheverly United Methodist Church. The school provides Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) classes for area home schoolers.
– 6 additional towers went to the Chance Academy, which is located in the Michigan Park Christian Church in Washington, D.C.. This school provides the homeschool network in Maryland and the District of Columbia with academic programs in the sciences.
All of the machines (including monitors, keyboards and mice) from the MRC are donated Macs that are reconditioned to make sure everything is working properly. We have a “master” hard drive that we clone (copy) so that all machines have the same set of software when they go out the door.
Since all these machines were PowerPC Macs (pre-Intel chip machines), the software is all optimized to work with OS 10.5.8 – the last OS version that works with PPC Macs.
MacRecycleClinic Heads into 2013
MRC Volunteer Jim Ritz works with a client’s iMac
We’ve hit January yet again and MRC continues to move forward with its goal of recycling and refurbishing Macs. Over the past few months, we have started moving away from most of the older PPC models save the newest and fastest model G4s and G5s. Interestingly, one of the predictors here are Macs that use the original Airport card. Turns out they are becoming incompatible with newer wireless systems – they are not able to provide the higher level of security these new wireless systems demand and won’t let the Macs log into the network. That said – if you need an original Airport or Airport Express let us know – we have many for sale inexpensively!
We’re starting to see some Intels coming in finally but many have had hard use or were damaged when picked up. So we have continued to gather equipment and then try to make one good machine from 2 or more that are damaged.
We’ve continued to donate machines to local school students and families in the Silver Spring area and remain open to recommendations from school counselors or non profits. Recently, we gave a machine to a 6 year old who is being home-schooled. He and his mom took a cab and buses all the way over from Landover to pick up their iMac. We are planning once again to provide laptops to Montgomery County Schools in the Downcounty Consortium for their AfterProm/PostProm parties. We were able to provide machines to every school in the Downcounty last year!
Machines that can not be salvaged are now totally disassembled (to the extent that they can) and are recycled both to a third part recycling company or back to the Montgomery County Government’s Shady Grove Transfer Station in Derwood.
MRC Volunteers Jade Curtis and Phil Marchetti work on a sad iMac while MRC clients look on.
We continue our Monday Night Clinic at Marvin Church (Four Corners/Silver Spring) from 7 to 9 pm and tho we are not overwhelmed (a good thing!), we have had a steady stream of folks coming in for help. Some folks have sick Macs, others are looking for help transferring their data from an old machine to a new one. We’re here to help! And trust that we will tell you if we can’t repair something as well.
One frustration remains the Mac Lab we set up at Marvin for use by students or the community – it just sits there unused at the moment. We are hoping the folks at Marvin can find a way to get some adult supervision in the afternoon so the lab can be used.
Please let us know how we can help! We have folks with many, many years of experience who are willing to do things Apple and local businesses are unwilling to do (because it is not cost effective for the most part). As a non-profit, we simply ask for a donation for our time – all the money goes to MRC since we are all volunteers.
An Update and Look Forward to the Summer
Once again I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for reading the blog and giving us a chance to talk about what MacRecycleClinic is all about. The stats say we have had more than 7,000 hits – just amazing for an occasional blog. So thank you!
The Clinic is only open Mondays (save holidays) from 7 to 9 PM which makes it a challenge for folks to find us or take advantage of our services. We only work on out-of-warranty machines but love to answer questions and can help install software or hardware on any Mac. We have also been asked to help grab information from older machines (going WAY BACK in fact to original Macs and even Apple IIs and ///s) or just help keep older machines working.
Recycling Memories: 2002
These early Bondi iMacs were refurbished by the old Washington Apple Pi "Tuesday Night Crew" that is now MacRecycleClinic. They all went to good homes. Note the G4 towers providing support!
As I have time – I will reprint some articles about recycling that I (or others in what is now the MacRecycleClinic group) wrote about our efforts over the years to refurbish and return Macs back into the community. I’m doing this not only to preserve the articles but to show just how far back MRC and our old Washington Apple Pi Tuesday Night Crew goes – how our efforts to recycle have gone back to Apple II days in fact. I’ll add photos as well when possible.
Note that in 2012 MCPS – Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools – basically only supports PCs these days. That said, MRC has had luck working with school counselors and PTSAs to get computers to students and families that don’t have computers. If you have a group that is trying to recycle computers, be sure to check and see what your local school district will – or won’t – accept. But there are many non-profits, students and families who would appreciate a refurbished computer. I just read the newspaper, work with local churches and school groups and never have a problem finding someone who could use a recycled Macintosh.
Maryland Recycles Website – Worth the Visit
Looking for new links for RecycleMac and what should come up than a great website that focuses on recycling in Maryland – mdrecycles.org. Our links (on the right side of the blog) offer a lot of resources, including one from Montgomery County where the MacRecycleClinic operates. But this site comes from the state and offers a ton of great information.
As it says: “Whether you’re at home, at work or somewhere in between, recycled materials are present in almost everything we use. In fact, recycled material is so common, it’s easy to forget that recycling is a conscious decision, a choice we make based on a variety of factors. On mdrecycles.org, you’ll discover which materials are recyclable, find companies that will pick up recyclable material, and learn how to reduce your waste management costs while helping to create a cleaner environment for all of us.”
UConn vs. Butler: The Recycling Final Two
Update: Congratulations to the Huskies for winning their third national championship tonight (Monday, April 4) over Butler.
UConn and Butler are in the men’s NCAA National Championship game Monday night. Both are excellent basketball teams. But how do those schools match up where recycling is concerned? The University of Connecticut is a large school located in Storrs, Connecticut – closer to Boston than New York. Butler is what’s called a “mid-major” – a small school located just outside Indianapolis, Indiana.
Quick Shoutout for Prosoft Engineering’s Great iPad Service
Update: April 10, 2011 – I got four disks back on Saturday – two PC, Two Mac – as Gordon Bell says they ran the CF Card through both versions of their software. It appears that all the jpgs that were damaged have been restored – great news! Again – I offer my thanks to Mr. Bell and everyone at Prosoft for their help in restoring my photos. We’ll certainly point folks who come into MacRecycleClinic’s Monday clinic to them when Mac users with corrupted flash cards come our way.
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I wanted to give a quick “Thank You” to Prosoft Engineering / The Data Rescue Center in Livermore, California. I tried to upload photos from a Compact Flash card to my iPad 1 and a number of the photos got corrupted. Prosoft – through its JoeSoft subsidiary – offers a program called Klix that is designed for digital picture recovery. I purchased the program – but it was only able to recover one of the photos on the card.
When I reported the problem to the company, owner Gordon Bell sprang into action – and asked me to send my old 8GB card to him so they could check out the problems associated with importing photos into an iPad (via the USB dongle and a Sony card reader in this case). Gordon sent me a new – and better – 8GB card in return. Excellent service! I may not be able to get those photos back, but I will continue to be a customer of JoeSoft. (In fact I already own Drive Genius 3 to help keep my hard drive healthy.)
Not a lot of research has been done on issues related to the direct import of photos into the iPad – let us know if you have had any and we’ll compile them here. This could well be an issue our folks at the Mac Recycle Clinic might come up against in the future, so any information – and how you might have dealt with it – would be appreciated.
Five Myths About Recycling Your Mac
1) I’m Just One Person – What Does It Matter?
Time and again, we see examples of individuals really making a difference. The 7 year old who raises money to help the families of our Wounded Warriors. The cancer victim who walks with many others each year to raise research funds. The church members who individually volunteer their time at everything from soup kitchens to homeless shelters. Americans like to look on themselves as individuals but the fact is we work pretty well together when there’s a need. Recycling computers and other electronics is important and something we can all be part of. Whether you donate your old PowerMac G4, G5, iMac, eMac or Intel machine to a group like MacRecycleClinic to refurbish for others, take it to your local Apple, Best Buy or other store for recycling or your county or state recycling center, you make a difference each time you or your neighbor makes the decision to recycle rather than throw away.
Fix, Refurbish, Recycle
CNN Writer P.J. Robinson (left) types her script in November, 1983 on an IBM Selectric while Producers Pam Benson and Carol Cratty converse. It took a long time for the DC Bureau to move from Selectrics to computers to type scripts.
The first “personal” computer I ever used was at CNN’s original Washington, DC Bureau in what we called “Upper Georgetown.” At that time (likely 1983) we still typed on IBM Selectric typewriters to write our scripts. We also had access to dumb terminals connected to a central server – running a news program called “Basys” that allowed us to send internal text messages and check the wires, rundowns and other information (CNN was the first to use it, if I remember correctly).
But I still went in every morning at 3 A.M. for years and pulled stories for the morning shows from the teletype machines so my writers could write their stories on the Selectrics.
One day I noticed that our assistant bureau chief was trying to work with a computer called an Apple ///. She was actually taking it home to learn how to use it. I’m not sure how that went, but I happily ended up with it when I started doing the intern program for the bureau. That initial experience ultimately led me to purchase my own Apple ///, an external hard drive and a set of ten floppy disks – at $10.00 each! I could have purchased an original Macintosh instead for about the same price – but since I’d worked with the ///, I felt I would get better use of it – and I did for many years.
MacRecycleClinic Photos
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