My neighbors never throw out stuff like this!! Nice find! I'm glad you'd experimented with Ubuntu Linux in the past and were familiar enough with it to install it and can use this new treasure as a dedicated firewall/proxy server! Way to go Mike

WOW, only you could "fix" it. I'm so proud of you. No, I know there are others who could, but you are kind of special to me
. I'm glad for you!!!!!

Love you,
Mom

How many computers are you trying to possess? lol. I still think it would be a good idea to fix up this new computer, and then sell it at a good price. Make some extra money doing something you love. Just an idea! =)

Wow! Kinda like the microwave that Dad threw out with the magnet on the bottom. How many computers do you have now? Like Dad said...nice find.

I wish my neighbors dumped trash like that!

Great story. I put it on Digg. Hopefully others will 'dig' it too.

Wow! My first Digg! I'm not worthy!

Well I do DIGG this blog

I don't understand why you couldn't install OS X on it. I have a G3 Lombard (400mHz) that I installed and run 10.3.9 easily.

I've grabbed an iMac from a used computer shop. 5 bucks, and got OSX on it with no problems.

Can't watch videos on it (what I was dreaming for it to do), but it plays mp3's just fine.

My dad and I have collected Macs for a long time (not really on purpose, but they added up quickly over the years! He's got 3 first and second gen iMacs now, as well as plenty of older OS 6-7 ones...) That iMac will probably serve you for YEARS to come as a steady ol' firewall!

Congrats on your first Digg, I just spotted this link on the homepage! Get ready for some heavy traffic!

Vero
PS - Hope the neighbour doesn't read this and decide to ask for it back

Kick ass man. Anyone who throws a good mac away like that is just foolish.

Awww, that was such a nice post by your Mom. Anyway, good going, the wonderful world of skip diving is a...wonderful... place to...be?
Anyway. Congrats, reminds me of the "calculator" that a friend pulled out of a skip (dumpster?) near here. It was about the size of a server tower and had a tape drive, 6 program tapes and a 400 page A4 ring binder manual.

do you think they threw it away because the unseated memory chip made them think the computer didn't work?

hey this is my iMac.. my mom threw it away coz she thought it was busted.. but in fact i removed the memory chip so that she wont be able to turn it on and find my pron..
can u give it back plz

happens all the time in Manhattan... I've found and converted 3 different computers into parts/1 server

Come on, don't you think you should tell them what the problem was, how easy it was to fix and give it them back?

"the neighbor who had just moved out"

I have found numerous computers in the apartment dumpsters. People either buy new ones, or their old ones stop working and they chunk them. Recently, I found a IMac PowerPC G3 at a local thrift store for $20. I bought it and am typing this post on it.

My iMac has a similar story. A friend of mine found it on the side of the road during a rain storm and for some reason decided to grab it. The thing sat in the back of his truck getting rained on for a few hours until he brought it up to our class in the computer lab (vocational school).

We dried it out and somehow it booted half way in to OS 9 and then crashed. Disabling extensions got it to boot the whole way, but it was still unstable. We traced this to a bad hard drive, replaced that, and installed a copy of 10.3 that I had laying around.

This was some time in 2002 and it's still running to this day as well as could be expected for a 233/B G3 iMac.

A couple of years ago, a woman (in her 40s) that I didn't know give me a 500Mhz iBook. For free. Met her right before our art final, and she mentions she has an old iBook that her husband won in a contest, and asked me if I was interested. My reply "Well, sure if it's free." Her response: "Okay." Didn't have to give her any sexual favors or anything. She just... gave me an iBook. No strings attached.

@micheal

"I don't understand why you couldn't install OS X on it. I have a G3 Lombard (400mHz) that I installed and run 10.3.9 easily."

The imac required a firmware update, but holding down the programmer's key while rebooting never gave me the long tone I was supposed to hear, so it wouldn't perform the firmware update. There have been tons of horror stories about installing OS X on this model without the firmware update.

The best thing I ever got from the trash was a bunch of those Wendy's/AirTran coupons...and even then I had to pay a wino to dumpster dive for me. Nice find!

Mmmmm...Wendy's.

I found a iMac Ruby last year on the upper Eastside here in Manhattan, NY. Just yesterday, a friend of mine found a iMac Snow in the same location. It's a school and I guess they just put them out to the curb when they upgrade to newer computers. I put Tiger server on mine which I donated to the super at the Bank Building Condo. I am a computer consultant so it's great to be able to extend the usefulness of these perfectly fine computers. Cheers to you.

As A Dell PC owner, I gotta wonder about finding so many MAC's in the trash....mmmmmm....and I agree with Robyn...sell it for plane fare.....or movie tickets...

To be fair, the firmware upgrade would have probably fixed the speakers. Also, on those machines, in my experience, Yellow Dog Linux runs better than Ubuntu.

I'm sure it would have, but for some reason the programmer's switch wouldn't work. I haven't seen Yellow Dog in years. It was my first Linux experience. I ran it on a Powermac 6500. I imagine it's come a long way. I'm really liking the speed of Ubuntu on the iMac, though I might give Yellow Dog a shot again. Thanks for the info.

cool! and you get credit for recycling, too! Eric just bought me a MacBook (or some such laptop). I thought I wanted one, but it is making me MISERABLE. I really, really want to like it and its killing me. Now I'm just sick thinking we've wasted the money for it. I'm glad you have good computer karma!

Hi Meg,

What don't you like about the MacBook?

A similar thing happened to me: a female acquaintance gave her old notebook to a friend for "repair", because the harddisk made weird sounds. When the friend returned it to her saying that she should throw it away since the harddisk is malfunctioning I was luckily nearby and said "Hey, before you trash it, give it to me!"

At home I figured that the harddisk was indeed beyond usage and the the battery was damaged as well, but I simply use an Xubuntu LiveCD now to boot the machine and store/load data from a USB keydrive. The notebook is not fast, so even Xubuntu runs a bit lame, but it's got definitely enough speed to read downloaded articles, write documents and play a few games. I always have to plug it in somewhere, though.

0 € for a new (and my first) notebook, yay!

Hey Mike,
I have an old G3 notebook. I tried to install OSX and now it will start but nothing else. Suggestions?
Jeremy

That's so cool. How come I never get lucky like that?! Best deals on imacs and accessories buyappleimac.com

Ok, I was taking a dead TV to the County's free dump day, and saw an iMac Snow in the pile. On speculation, I took it with me. Turns out the hard disk was dead, and this iMac is just 50 MHz faster, so I just cannibalised the Snow's memory chip and this is now a 256 MB machine.

But my best story is a 1.8 GHz Dell machine I rescued just in time on trash day, at the end of few days vacationing in Brooklyn. The fan was clogged with dust, and I couldn't be bothered with keeping Window$ on it, so it's running Ubuntu now.