Its March 2, 2002, 11:06 am on a Saturday morning. A group of high school students, freshman through senior are at Waterman building taking apart and putting together computers and helping to build a UVM Upward Bound web site. Other Upward Bounders are doing art projects and public speaking in L/L center.
Here, at waterman we have three teams
working for a purpose. One of those teams’ purposes is to work with HTML and
create a web page. Another group, the hardware team is actually taking a
computer apart and returning it to working condition. Sounds like wholesome
technological fun!
We also have two wonderful
photographers documenting the general goings-on, taking photos of computer
parts and web designers in the process of their activity. Documenters are
writing about what is going on and typing it up. Some documenters are finding
links to other sites concerning similar topics.
HARDWARE
DISASSEMBLY/RE-ASSEMBLY
Parts:
Motherboard
CPU
Expansion
slots—place for video and sound cards
HD
FD
Power
Supply
Ribbon
Cable
Disk
Controller
Extra
Notes:
The floppy drive cables look like seat
belts…
Chips?
Where? I’m hungry!
There
seems to be lots of wiggling and unscrewing of the parts and cables.
It’s
easy to take apart, but once you put it back together…uh-oh…
I’m
glad we didn’t have to do it!
And
here are some final thoughts from Rachel!
“Computers are tricky machines. Everything has to be buzzing and clicking exactly right or you are in rough shape. You would think that such a delicate and sophisticated piece of technology would be easy to take apart, and the most challenging part of the operation would be not breaking any of the dozens of components. Imagine my surprise to find that the main strategy for disassembling a computer in known as the “wiggle and yank” method favored by destructive two-year olds. Does anyone in Upward Bound have the guts to grab onto one of a computer’s many complex parts and give a good, strong pull? I cannot speak for my peers, but I would be afraid of breaking the thing! Add to this the pressure of having to reassemble the machine to working order (before the rival team does) and pretty soon no one even wants to touch the thing, much less take apart the intimidating array of drives and ribbon cables. In the end though, both teams got the hang of it, got their machines apart, and learned a lot, too.”