[Noisebridge-discuss] PC parts heaven

[Andy Isaacson]

We have a ton of interesting and useful donated PC hardware at 2169,
including
 - many SCA hard drives in various hot-swap chassis, some working, some
   trash.
 - various rackmount servers, some working some trash.
 - various desktop and mini-PC machines
 - various motherboards, CPUs, memory, etc
 - a bunch of donated laptops in varying states of missing-parts (many
   of them missing only the hard drives!)
 - a few IDE and SATA 3.5" hard drives
 - various ATX power supplies in standard and proprietary formfactors
 - keyboards, mice, LCD monitors, and wierder peripherals

We also have a lot of projects that need computers for one reason or
another, such as
 - CNC mill
 - Makerbot
 - library PC
(all of these currently have machines, so we're not in critical need
right now, but the general idea is pretty well-proven.)  I spent most
of an afternoon in September trying to put together a functional PC with
a parallel port and 256MB RAM for the CNC mill.

Our general policy has been that we don't need or want to run many
machines at Noisebridge, and that has served us well so far.  But
there's clearly some pent-up desire for machines, and with Rubin's
E-Waste plan and Rachel's E-Waste Bin (awesome work on that BTW!) we
have a clear outlet for really useless hardware.

If someone with some skill (or the interest to build some skill!) and
some time to kill would like to step up, I think there's a good amount
of work to do here:
 - cull the busted trash from the working stuff
 - organize the existing donated hardware
 - evangelize the project to other members
 - build a system for inputs (donated hardware) and outputs (working
   hardware, tested spare parts for existing projects, etc)
 - build a storage solution (shelves + bins) that works for this project
 - build a testing setup so that it's easier, given a random component,
   to answer the question "Is this $FOO toast, or is it good?"

The above are the hands-on parts of the project, if you want to get
{ meta, political, philosophical } about it the following would also be
helpful:
 - facilitate a conversation about what it makes sense for Noisebridge
   to do in this area -- should we build PCs to donate to needy
   families?  to non-Noisebridge projects?  to Noisebridge members or
   friends who need a machine at home?  strictly to Noisebridge
   projects?  etc.

I got a bit of a start on this yesterday afternoon, organizing some of
the hardware (in the "hack shelf" area near the Mission St windows) and
labelling some machines with "working/nonworking" stickers describing
their failure modes, but I don't have the time to put into this that it
needs -- for me at least this kind of work needs >2 hours of time, and
my next uninterrupted free time block at 2169 is Thanksgiving week. :(
(I'll be around between now and then but all of my time is scheduled
and/or broken up into smaller time chunks.)

I can help with material (buying shelves/bins, tracking down labels and
pens, etc), with project definition, and with evangelizing /
communicating.  I'd like to hear from people who are interested in
helping and have some time to contribute.

Note, of course, that communicating the project to other members is at
least as important as doing the work -- the larger goal is to build a
system that is sustainable, with an immediate goal of sifting the gold
nuggets from the piles of stuff.

We obviously don't want to dedicate an enormous area to this project
(see the ACCRC for how overwhelming this can easily get), but I think
that one shelving unit and associated workstation would be a reasonable
place to start.

-andy