A four year-old program at the school has students in one of the computer classes restoring old computers that have been either donated or ones the school no longer needs, and making them available to people who either don't have one or who may want an additional one to experiment with new software.
"It's sort of like we're giving these computers a second life," said Kevin Morrison, the instructor of the school's Hardware and Networking class where a group of about
Most of them are older desktop computers that run on Microsoft Windows operating system software. The first step is to replace that with what is known as "open source" software created by Linux, an umbrella term for computer operating system code that was originally created by Linus Torvalds, who in the early 1990s was a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The software is designed to be easily added to by developers from anywhere. In addition to the fact that Linux software is adaptable, efficient and unencumbered by the multiple lines of computer code characteristic of the better
This Monday, step one for Morrison's computer class was to download a version of Linux that would serve as the new operating system for the rebuilt computers. About 20 computers were lined up to get the installation, and some went smoothly. Other machines balked and the troubleshooting began, swapping out parts until a machine cooperated, Morrison said.
Isolating the source of a troublespot is the hardest part of rebuilding one of the older machines, said Ben Kainen, a BBA sophomore and one of the students in the class.
"There's so many different things to try to find out what the problem might be,' he said. "Since it (the computer) can't tell you what's wrong with it, sometimes it takes a lot of time to figure that out."
The Linux operating system they were preparing to install had another virtue, he said - its chances of catching a computer virus, or packet of malicious code that can either pirate information to another location, or disable a computer entirely - are much less than with a Windows-based system, he said.
Paradoxically, since Linux is "open source" and can be written by almost anyone skilled enough to understand computer code, it's usually not a target for so-called hackers to compose viruses that can wreak havoc on unprotected machines, he said.
"People who write viruses won't write in Linux because it's not a challenge - it's too easy," he said.
In its first year, computer teacher Adam Provost and his class received a donation of used computers and overhauled 15 of them, which were donated back to students who didn't have one at home. Opening doors for students to experiment and play with computers was one of the purposes, Provost said.
"A computer is one of the most advanced instruments ever made," Provost said, " If you can use it to a higher capacity, so much the better." The school has identified about 80 families who do not have a computer or a means to access the Internet from home, and their first priority is to make the rebuilt and Internet-enabled machines available to those families. After that, some may be sent to an organization that ships them to schools in the Dominican Republic which are totally without computers; Morrison said.
So far the students have fixed up 12 computers this year and plan to repair another 12 by Christmas. They have also given away 6 laptops, he said. The computers the class rebuilds are desktop models that come with a computer monitor and keyboard, but would like to refurbish laptops as well, which are popular for their mobility. The class would be happy to get their hands on older laptops whose useful commercial life may be over, but would still have some utility for a less-intensive user, he said.
However, they are not in the market for machines that are so old that the best outcome for them is a trip to a recyling center. Nor are older monitors from the pre-flat screen era useful - they simply take up too much room and are hard to ship out to the recipients of the rebuilt machines, he said. "Our goal is to give these to families in the community who don't have a computer at home," he said. "At the very least they can get a computer and bring in Internet service."
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