Hi All,

Two or three weeks ago I've started a small chat with one of our company janitors. His name is Angel. During the conversation, he told me that he is doing three jobs per day ( 2 x waiter and at the evening janitor ). He told me that his wife has 2 jobs, I do not remember what kind of jobs anymore. All I know, they are not paid very well.
They have 3 kids (7, 9 and 13 years old). Ervin, the oldest, needs to prepare some of the school assignments on computer using WORD .doc format.
Unfortunately, Ervin's parents do not have enough money to buy, even a second hand, computer. For them is unthinkable to buy official copy of the MS WORD.
Few days ago Angel told me that he got an OLD PC for free from his friend. This PC was an 6-7 years old Packard Bell Multimedia D1000 computer which runs on 133MHz Pentium. It has 32MB RAM and 1.2GB disk. He said that the PC does not start and he asked me if I can fix it. So, I've taken it home.
Yes, he was right. PC did not boot because of some kind of file corruption. Supposedly it should boot as WIN98. I could not fix it, because my household is MS WINDOWS free. Thus, I could not copy/repair corrupted file. So, I've proposed to Angel to install Linux on his box.
First thing I've done on his PC is to replace his 1.2 GB hard disk with an old 10GB disk I've found in my garage. To my regret, I could not find more RAM.
Installation of the RH9 was painfully slow having only 32MB RAM. It took me almost 9-10 hours from the begining to the end. Then I've replaced GNOME/KDE with XFCE4.2. XFCE is very light desktop. It does run on 32MB RAM.
Unfortunately, the main goal was not achieved. I could not start OpenOffice. 32MB RAM is not enough.

So, why did I write this e-mail ?

I am asking readers of this forum to donate 2 memory sticks of 64MB. This is 72-pin type of memory. I am prety sure that some of you has two 72-pin 64MB memory sticks laying around.

I would like to make Ervin happy and successful in school.

Igor
Silicon Valley, California

I don't have any, but for $10 you can get 32MB at
http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?ca...-pinSIMMMemory

I've got a 166 with 32MB RAM running with Abiword which opens .doc format files. XFCE is lightweight as Desktop Environments go but is still way bigger than and WM use something like fluxbox or I put IceWM on the 166.

hit me up at goodbeef@gmail.com--i have some ram that i can't guarantee will work, but couldn't hurt. I'll mail those out as soon as I get home (i'm at school right now and will be home at the LATEST on friday--I will try my hardest to have them shipped by next monday--but it could be sooner)

That is if you still need them. I also have a hard disk I could send for more data (maybe one could be home and the other could be root and swap) I might even have a cdburner i can donate. Just let me know, I have all kinds of junk hardware (including a couple athlon-xp mobos that may or may not work--we can discuss more later as I really would like to help them out)

While there is no question that this is well-intentioned, unfortunately LQ is not the right place for these kinds of requests, and I regret that I need to close this thread. As an alternative, I would suggest taking a look at Craigslist, specifically the "Free" category in the "For Sale" section.

The issue is simply that LQ must treat all members equally, and thus if we allow one person to post a solicitation for free equipment, we would need to do so for all members, and I think most everyone would agree that could have the potential to quickly spiral out of control. Additionally, LQ is a 100% volunteer effort, and does not have the resources to act as either a broker or a middleman in terms of people exchanging equipment.

I admire what you're trying to do, but LQ is not the right place for it, and therefore this request will need to be pursued outside of the LQ forums. -- J.W.