So what kind of machines are we talking about? COMPAQ Pentium ones with fully proprietary innards. 486/33’s with 16MB RAM and 150 MB hard drives. Crotchety IBM’s with network cards that looked normal enough to the untrained eyes, but... well a picture’s worth a thousand words:

The current lab is housed in the clinic. Here’s a shot of the outside:

I mean this is a real, honest to goodness building with glass windows and doors (steel bar reinforced, of course). The windows are left closed when no one’s inside, but it got so hot in the room (for us Mzungus) that we had to open up all the windows to get a decent breeze. Propping open the windows seems to be a regular occurrence, because the red Ugandan clay dust had infiltrated every nook and cranny of these systems.

The dust choked out at least half of the systems’ power supplies. Most of the keyboards and mice fell victim to the dust as well. The dust choked the like out of two-thirds of the equipment we had to work with, leaving us to salvage parts from as many systems as possible to get things working. No stranger to hardware work, I rolled my sleeves up, and together with my fellow “Geek squad” members, we set out to salvage what we could. Our wreckage trail was depressing:

So we resurrected as many installs as possible (defrag, scandisk, deleting old student docs) and installed fresh copies of Windows on the Frankenstein machines that had risen from the ashes of fallen systems.

Out of twenty or so machines we started with, less than a third survived to become “working” systems. Fortunately, just about all the (sturdy, heavy) CRT monitors survived the dust’s vengeance, but there weren’t enough keyboards and mice to go around. Armed with working hardware, we next set out to get the software ironed out. Most of the machines were only capable of running Windows 95 or 98, and we were forced to dig back into the recesses of time to remember how to talk to these old OS’s. For starters, the machines wouldn’t boot from CD, so we needed to make system disks with CD-ROM drivers in order to even start installing the operating systems. Anyone remember those days? Finding a working floppy was difficult (red clay dust, remember? everywhere!), and after getting it working, I instinctively reached for a disk label. Finding none, I reached for a post-it note. (I was still thinking like a spoiled American at this point.) I settled for a torn piece of paper, some magic markers and a clear piece of (ancient) tape that had sortof turned into glue because of the heat. It wasn’t pretty.

I was personally saddened by how little we were able to rescue. I was even more saddened by how crappy this stuff was. Trust me, I’m trying to work out ways to get them more/better equipment, but it’s no small problem. First there’s the taxes on imports, and the unfortunate things that seem to happen to interesting things at customs (one of our bags filled with donated meds vanished mysteriously).

 

So, what am I thinking? Well, for starters, laptops are a decent alternative, since we can hand-carry them, or put them in our luggage (one per bag to deter any sort of scheming). The problem is that laptops, even P2’s, which are useful enough, are delicate to the rather adverse conditions there. Fortunately, the new lab at the Rehaboth school (half of which is shown below, under construction) will be better suited for the machines. The dust level is much lower (being away from main roads, and at a higher elevation) and even delicate machines will fair better under the watchful eye of school administrators. So, want to donate a laptop? See the link at the top of this page. (“How can I help?”)

And it worked... mostly.

After several days, our collection of  useable systems looked rather paltry. Don’t worry, there’s a few Compaq 486’s not pictured that are working just fine. =/

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