Last year I offerred to share ideas on how we did our computer refurbishing in the old small scale TCS-Bethesda Boys Ranch operation (http://www.apcug.org/reports/jan02/r020106.htm), but there was a problem related to getting permission to use and distribute old Microsoft Operating Systems. I had hoped there would be an announcement of a solution to that problem by August of this year, but it is the last day and no announcement, so I must say that if somehow a solution to that appears, then I would repeat my proposal, and would add the expanded procedures that our new HelpingTulsa (http://helpingtulsa.org) project uses. (That announcement, called the Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher Donation Program has been made, and at the time of writing this it is in a Pilot Program mode. HelpingTulsa is one of the projects that are participating in the Pilot Program, and we expect the program will soon expand to include other U.S. nonprofit & school computer refurbishers.)I have submitted an article "Refurbishing Computers" for the October 2002 issue of "APCUG Reports" with a list of some of the freeware/shareware software we can install on machines we refurbish, and have set up a APCUG Computer Refurbishing WebBoard Conference where I am encouraging other projects to exchange information about how they do their projects.
Basically we use an Imaging Computer which uses PowerQuest's Partition Magic and Boot Magic to provide both a Clone and a Ghost partition (we have tried using PowerQuest's Drive Image instead of Symantec's Ghost, but it requires two floppy disks and I have not been able to get both of them installed a Drive Image partition, while I can put Symantec's Ghost in one partition and we can create and load images from that partition).
In our Clone partition we copy not only the operating system, but also any of a number of freeware/shareware Bible Programs, Education Programs, Game Programs, Educational Programs, Free Office Suites, Internet Related Programs, or Utility Programs into a C:\Install folder on the target computer.
If we are refurbishing a number of identical or almost identical machines for the same school, church, or non-profit organization we will get one machine loaded with all of the desired programs, and have it fully setup, then remove the HD and put it in the Drive Tray on our Image Machine, use Symantec's Ghost to make an image of it, then by loading the hard drives of the target machines one at a time transferring that image for another machine for that project.
I propose we collect the operational procedures from other Computer Refurbishing Projects, and make all procedures available to all Computer Refurbishing Projects.
We don't have pictures on all of these yet, but in November we distributed 23 computers (20 desktops and 3 laptops). We would have distributed more (we have requests for 10 machines from a church, and 50 machines from a school, among others, but we are still waiting for 20 promised machines to come from one donor, and 200 from another donor.
For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here