7.003 fopal, music, concert

Thursday 12/04/2025

Had a quick planning session with Joanne in the morning, to check on the availability of the car, and her preferences for a couple of possible outings. Then I headed down to FOPAL where I spent 3+ hours finally getting everything settled down in my section. I put up the “Hold” sign in the sorting room, meaning, “Computers” could not take any more donations until after the sale, which is a week and a half away.

I put special labels on some shelves that I populated from this last donation, and I priced at least 100 old software discs. What is an AOL CD worth, still shrink-wrapped in mint condition? You go on eBay and check. Price it at half that or less. What is a set of install CDs for MacOS 10.2 “Jaguar” worth? On eBay, $14 to $30 depending on how complete it is. $5 sticker. All these filled two boxes that will be put away for the vintage computer fest next summer.

I took home the Palm, what I’ve been calling the sweaty palms. Palm Pilot was the original hand-held personal digital assistant, starting in the early 1990s. Somebody donated four of them and a couple of the docking stations they need to charge on. Two were a pair of early ones, M500 models. These had been in this box in somebody’s closet for who knows how long, probably 20 years. So I plugged in the docking stations and set them on to charge.

After an hour I pulled one off to see if it would boot or show something on its screen, but immediately I noticed — it was pregnant. The battery had swole up. Checked the other: same deal.

Lithium-ion batteries fail this way, and it’s a bad sign. It means the battery is generating gas. It could burst, it could catch fire. I put both of them out on the porch in a flower pot. If they want to catch fire, go ahead.

That left two of the much later Tungsten model. In their original packaging, no less. Unfortunately the first of these I opened had a ruined screen.

So that’s a goner. The remaining one has some blemishes on the screen but might be usable. I will try to charge it up tomorrow and see.

Anyway after all that fun I went to dinner, I’d been invited to a table of 7 by Karen Morrison. And immediately after, at 6:55, I joined Joanne in a packed auditorium to hear the Gunn H.S. choir singing holiday music. Massive group, at least 50 highschoolers in tuxes and black gowns, singing very good arrangements. Nice show.

OOPS, Scott is correct, the Apple Newton MessagePad was released in 1993. The first Palm Pilot was released in 1996s.