Old computer ….
One or two of you might get a kick out of these pictures
The other day I got a call asking me to pick up some “old computers and stuff” for secure data deletion and green recycling (see, Proper Disposal of Old Computer Gear– eWaste). When I got there, I learned what she meant by “old”.. I would have said “prehistoric”!
This unit dates back to the first PC’s.. circa 1990 (actually, toward the end of the first gen era, as it actually has a hard drive [800KHz, 1 MB of RAM, and a 20 MB HHD. That’s right. “Kilo” and “Mega”]) and is a fully working Macintosh SE.
“Welcome to Macintosh”
and roughly two minutes later…
I did shred the user’s data, but this is the unit that basically completes my Apple wing at the Tech Paul Museum. (And it has a darts game that’s kind addicting..)
This Mac SE is easily the oldest unit I’ve ever been asked to recycle. (For those wondering, yes – I plugged it in and it booted right up.)(And no, it’s not the oldest Apple Desktop PC in my museum.)
Remember folks, simply deleting something by dragging it to the Trash (or, Recycle Bin) does not really erase your files. If you want something gone gone, (aka “unrecoverable”) you need to actually write over them (several times) using a “secure delete” tool, such as can be found in Apple’s Disk Utility, or physically destroy the drive.
Today’s quote: “If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” ~ Ray Bradbury
Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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Tech - for Everyone 
Hey Paul, such a Relic… Interesting! I have not seen a real relic of any of the tech world…(well maybe I have a little.) I have 3 generations of computers, simply because my closet has space to store them and I am sort-of-attached to them.
I think it’s great to create a museum of the generations of the many things we’ve used and enjoyed in life.
Also… some other interesting info. here… some good READS.
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Gaia,
The Tech Paul Museum is a couple of closets. A real museum can be viewed here.
There’s really not much point to hanging on to obsolete tech.
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Well, Paul, my husband is a writer and he still uses his Apple Macintosh Performa 580CD (first sold in 1995 and discontinued the following year) to do his writing. He bought it secondhand in about 1997. Of course, it only has a floppy disk drive, (no usb ports), and cannot be connected online, nor to a printer, so he saves his work on a floppy disk and I load it into my Acer laptop via an external floppy disk drive, print a copy for him to do revisions, and repeat this process until the piece is ready to be sent out for publishing, again via my laptop. He only uses the Mac for his writing and is very attached to it. I dread the day when the poor thing expires, but at the rate it’s going, we may expire before it does!
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Well… I’d say he’s gotten his money’s worth out of that purchase…
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No kidding! He hates buying new stuff if the “old” stuff is still functional.
And my apologies for commenting days after your original post–but now you know that when I miss some of your blogs, I check them out later, which I don’t do for other tech blogs! There is always something worthwhile in yours.
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hermit2003,
What a wonderfully kind thing to say. Thank you!
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