NSW status report

[Ken Yap <ken@nlc.net.au>]

Not much to report, but might as well deliver the news.

My friend is still getting his Linux bearings; no status report on the
non-English speaking student he's teaching.

I've received a pile of donations from Patrick Jordan, Terry Collins,
and Jim Donovan: cases, motherboards, monitors, video cards, keyboards,
and sundry.  Most of the MBs are XTs or ATs, one SX. No problem, I have
a pile of 386DX MBs I can use. The monitors and video cards are EGA or
VGA. Some of the cases are usable but many are XT (power supply has no
power good line), so they are only good with XT MBs (anybody need some
diskless VT100 terminals?). So I can easily make up a few more text mode
Linux machines, but...

I don't have any hard disks to put into the machines. This makes sense:
MBs, cards and monitors tend to get tossed out, but disks are retained
and soldier on or die of old age. Memory is not currently not a problem
but could be later for the same reason: people hang onto them. Keyboards
could also be in shortage later, unless one is willing to put up with
the odd misfunctional key (who cares about the scroll lock).

I have had email enquiries from some people wanting to donate shucked
off office equipment but strangely I don't hear from them again after
I reply. Maybe it's because I mention that we are not incorporated yet
and can't give them tax deductions, or receipts or whatever. So perhaps
someone else might like to call a Sydney meeting and start the process
of getting incorporated and all that. Perhaps having some official status
might persuade donors to liberate those 260, 330, 540, whatever MB drives
living in their Pentiums boxes to a good cause. And we'd get machines
earlier in their life cycle if there were a tax benefit to organisations.

	Cheers, Ken