Full Circle Magazine FR

I’ve mentioned Computer Recycling in previous articles for Full Circle Magazine and talked a bit about some of our processes, but I’ve never really given a glimpse into what it’s actually like at the project. The Working Centre is something of an octopus, the main body helps provide employment counselling, but there are a lot of different tentacle projects. Computer Recycling is one of the many projects that include: a used furniture and housewares store called Worth A Second Look, the Green Door, a used clothing shop, Recycled Cycles, a bike refurbishing and repair shop, Maurita’s Kitchen (a kitchen where volunteers can learn to cook vegetarian food), the Queen Street Commons, a cafe that sells vegetarian food, the Hacienda Sarria community market garden, and the Commons Studio (a space for amateur filmmakers to work on movies). One of the common factors for each of these spaces is that they tend to be overseen by one or two individuals, but it’s the volunteers that often help shape the direction. Computer Recycling started out more than 20 years ago when an individual who couldn’t work decided that he wanted to help others who were trying to get work. The individual cobbled together a handful of computers that were sitting unused, added some software, and made them available to people of the community. For several years, the project went on like this with volunteers and staff coming and going. Initially the project was very small, occupying part of a basement. It grew to include part of the second floor of the same building and expanded to being open to the public two days a week, one for repair and one for sales.

Suggestion de titre : Le recyclage au Centre du travail

J'ai mentionné le recyclage d'ordinateurs dans des articles précédents du magazine Full Circle et j'ai même parlé un peu de certains des processus, mais je n'ai jamais vraiment donné un aperçu de comment cela se passe au sein du projet. Le Centre du travail est un peu une pieuvre : le corps principal fournit des conseils aux chercheurs d'emploi, mais il y a beaucoup de projets tentaculaires. Et le recyclage d'ordinateurs en est un ; les autres sont, notamment, un magasin de meubles et de produits pour la maison d'occasion appelé « Worth a Second Look » (Vaut ue deuxième coup d'œil) ; « the Green Door » (la Porte verte) pour les vêtements d'occasion ; « Recycled Cycles », un magasin de recyclage et réparation de vélos ; « Maurita's Kitchen » (une cuisine où les bénévoles peuvent apprendre à cuisiner des plats végétariens) ; « the Queen Street Commons » (un café qui propose de la nourriture végétarienne) ; le potager de la communauté Hacienda Sarria, et le Commons Studio (un endroit où les cinématographes amateurs peuvent travailler sur leurs films). Un des points communs à chacun de ces espaces est qu'ils sont pour la plupart supervisés par un ou deux individus. Mais ce sont les bénévoles qui aident souvent à choisir l'orientation des projets.

Le Recyclage des ordinateurs a démarré il y a de plus de vingt ans quand quelqu'un qui ne pouvait pas travailler décida qu'il voulait aider d'autres qui cherchaient du travail. Cet individu a rassemblé une poignée d'ordinateurs inutilisés, y a rajouté quelques logiciels et les a rendu disponibles à des gens de la communauté. Pendant plusieurs années, le projet continuait comme ça, dans un va-et-vient de bénévoles et de personnel. À l'origine, le projet, dans une partie d'un sous-sol, était minuscule. Il

It was around this time, late 2001, that I learned about the project - accidentally. For a couple of years I’d been attending the Kitchener Waterloo UNIX User’s group - a group made up of UNIX professionals. Most of the group had years of experience with UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems in the industry. By comparison, I was just a hobbiest and felt a bit out of place, so I posted a message in a local USENET group (back when people actually read USENET) asking if people were interested in starting a Linux User Group. One of the responses I got back was from Bill Rieck, who, along with a handful of other people, had started a Linux User Group called the Kitchener Waterloo Linux User Group - http://www.kwlug.org/. As it turned out, KWLUG was hosted by Bill at The Working Centre. At my first meeting, I heard one individual, Paul Nijjar, talk about how he was working on a Linux distribution for The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project. I joined Paul’s project helping figure out how to get PS/2 mouse support (serial was easy back then, but we needed to do a bit of trickery to get PS/2 support working with our Debian 2.2 kernel). Our goal for the distribution was to create a desktop environment that would work on a 486 with (initially 8MB) 16MB of RAM and a 400MB Hard Drive. We accomplished that, but were a small group of volunteers: Paul, Daniel Allen, myself and R.K. Ammann - a volunteer we never met but who ended up being a huge help designing our web presence: http://wclp.sf.net/. For some crazy reason The Working Centre decided to take me on to run the Computer Recycling Project in late 2005. Bill moved to System Administration, and Paul was ever present as a volunteer in both Recycled Cycles and Computer Recycling. A couple of years later, Bill started his own consulting firm, and Paul was hired as a System Administrator. In 2005 The Working Centre was largely a “Windows Shop.” Much of our infrastructure was driven by Windows Servers (it still is to an extent) but I was quite fond of Linux.

One of the directions we wanted to head towards with Computer Recycling was a more full-time operation. In order to do this, we needed a better space and the infrastructure to support a more active project. Although the space on the second floor was perfect because it was bright and sunny (and we nerds could all use a bit more sunlight), I (and I expect many volunteers) never enjoyed sales day because we were often faced with carrying 22” CRT monitors that had lead shielding up 3 long flights of stairs from the basement to the floor, all the while avoiding bicycles (Recycled Cycles was hosted in the space across from us at the time). We found that space in the basement of a new building, 66 Queen Street, just across the street and down a couple of doors. And we found a part of that infrastructure in open source software. Computer Recycling already had a SAMBA server that was being used as a file server for cloning computers. We also had an NFS server Paul had set up to serve Linux up for Linux installs. What we didn’t have was a point-of-sale. Being mostly a Windows shop, we looked at Microsoft Dynamics. We were starting to look at Sharepoint for other things and Microsoft Dynamics looked like it might fit in, but it was (at the time) lacking support for Canadian taxes. We also needed some reporting that was simply easier to do with open source tools. Cost was a factor, but ultimately we decided open source would suit our needs better because anyone could maintain it and make changes. I had some experience using OSCommerce, an open source eCommerce suite, but I had only a smattering of PHP and MySQL experience (enough to set up OSCommerce and fill it out with stock), so we decided to hire someone to help create a Point-Of-Sale front end on top of OSCommerce.

The Working Centre already had a skilled programmer, Paul Harvey, but much of Paul’s time was divided among a number of other projects. Paul and I worked closely together laying out the framework for what the point-of-sale would look like. Paul created all the graphics and helped with a good amount of the PHP code, but we also hired a programmer, Tim, to help finish the point-of-sale in a short time. Linux at The Working Centre was very much an under-the-radar effort. While Computer Recycling was putting out machines with WCLP Linux installed, it wasn’t until Ubuntu 6.06 that we started to look at it in a larger way. I had used Ubuntu since version 4.10 Warty Warthog, and used it at the project to create signs using Inkscape and GIMP. It looked good and provided simple driver support that volunteers could easily learn to implement. But I waited until Ubuntu 6.06 to change from WCLP to Ubuntu. WCLP had suited our needs initially, but, as we got more powerful machines and as Ubuntu matured, it was clear that our project simply couldn’t keep up given our schedules. Even though Computer Recycling was by-appointment-only at that time (early 2006 to mid-2007), everyone in the I.T. Group had several responsibilities. In August 2007, Computer Recycling opened “full time” with the initial hours of Tuesday to Friday 10am to 6pm and Saturday 10am to 4pm. In 2009 we changed the hours to Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm. Saturday was cut to allow me to come in Mondays and take care of administrative work and participate more in the normal I.T. work that goes on at The Working Centre.

The main entrance to Computer Recycling is off the side of the 66 Queen Street South building. The official address for The Working Centre is 58 Queen Street South, that address and 66 Queen are joined together and the 66 building is on the corner of two streets, Queen and Charles Street. The Charles Street entrance has no official number, but it’s the simplest way to get to the project and the shortest path to bring in or take out equipment. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of equipment come and go. When The Working Centre first purchased the 66 Queen Street building, the project got a donation of 80 x Pentium Pro-based computers. What made those computers particularly interesting (and still does) was the large amount of gold on the CPUs. We’ve seen Commodore 64’s, Commodore Vic 20’s, even a couple of Commodore Amiga’s over the years. While most donors tend to donate PCs, we’ve also seen a smattering of UNIX machines including a few Sun Microsystem-based machines and an SGI O2 in mint condition with the original SGI carrying case. It’s rare for the project to see Apple-based computers, but they do get donated and refurbished from time to time (we just finished refurbishing a recently donated 2007-era Mac Mini). When you first walk into Computer Recycling, depending on the time of the month, you may or may not see a pile of boxes, system units, printers, scanners, and other devices. These devices are the project’s ewaste. While we prefer to refurbish items instead of recycling them, the realities of the Internet make this difficult - Pentium III’s and Pentium IV’s can’t handle 1080p video and tend to stutter on streaming 720p video. We get the odd request for older items, but even these are becoming more scarce. In 2009 we joined the Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES) as a computer refurbisher. As part of the OES, our electronic waste goes from our facility to a large fenced off primary processor who provides end-of-life processing of equipment. These are the folks with giant shredding machines that can shred an entire computer into pieces. Besides helping us process things that Computer Recycling doesn’t focus on, the primary processor helps us fund Computer Recycling by providing the project with a bit of money for the electronic waste.

A little beyond the ewaste is a door that leads into the main volunteer work area. The main area has 9 computers set up, all but 2 of which are Xubuntu Linux computers. Even though Computer Recycling is a Microsoft Registered Refurbisher, I chose to stick with Linux for most of our workstations to help expose volunteers to Linux and cut down on the amount of administration we might have to do due to viruses and malware. Each workstation is on a KVM switch (keyboard, video, monitor) so that volunteers can work on a computer on top of the desk and switch to the computer below for support. On the back wall we have a similar setup for 4 monitors except each KVM switch can handle up to 4 computers - allowing us to ultimately set up 16 computers at once on the back and 8 in the middle (the 9th machine isn’t on a KVM switch). This setup caused us several power problems as we started to build more machines at once and required us to call in electricians to add more outlets on more electrical circuits. The other side of the wall, back in the room where the ewaste is stored, there’s another shelf for small ewaste items: fans, heat sinks, expansion cards, motherboards, non-motherboard/expansion circuit boards, cables, RAM, and other assorted items. Once one of the labelled buckets on this wall is full, a volunteer transfers the contents to a box and labels the box. The waste is then added to the ewaste pile closer to the shop entrance. Across from the small item ewaste wall is a workbench that’s used for a number of functions: memory testing, soldering, and cleaning computers. Three motherboards are screwed into the wall. We boot Memtest86+ from USB key on each of these boards to test RAM covering SD-RAM, DDR, DDR2 and DDR3. On the odd occasion we get RAMBUS RIMM RAM we usually test the RAM in the machine the RAM originally came in. This is also the case for “Registered” and “ECC” RAM.

Earlier, I mentioned that while staff oversee projects, volunteers tend to help shape projects. One of the ways this happens is with the services the project offers. Volunteers tend to bring a lot of different skills beyond computer knowledge to the project. In Computer Recycling, I first started noticing this when communicating with a couple of volunteers from Colombia who spoke a small amount of English. It turned out that one of the volunteers had a lot of experience fixing industrial printers and copiers - it had been his business in his home country. He taught the other Colombian volunteer who spoke a bit more English, who taught another volunteer who was interested in printer repair. Over the years this has happened time and time again where volunteers bring skills like soldering, shipping and receiving, programming, and cabling to the project. Some areas, like the soldering/memory testing area, have changed based on skills volunteers have brought to the table. Back on the other side of the wall where the main volunteer area is, there’s several shelves for parts. On the shelves are boxes with parts that range from video cards to hard drives and processors. Everything is open to the public to browse through though not everything is labelled with a price simply because with thousands of items we simply don’t have enough volunteers to do it all. We could store the items in a storage area, but then they’d sit for a long time. We decided it was better to have items visible than to hoard things in a back room.

Just up from this area is a small storage area consisting of 3 shelves to hold computers volunteers have started building, but haven’t quite finished. When volunteers build a computer they work from a checklist of steps. This checklist has undergone many iterations over the years as our infrastructure has changed. At one time we did almost everything from CD or floppy disk. This was particularly unwieldy as we used a lot of different tools and needed a lot of disks and discs. Both floppies and CDs tended to get left in computers even though checking the drives was a step on the checklist. Accordingly, we added quality assurance to the checklist and made it mandatory that the volunteer building the computer was not the volunteer providing the quality assurance. The “sales” area is a bit beyond the “on hold area” and is divided with Linux-based computers on the left-hand-side of the shelves and Windows-based computers on the right-hand-side. There are approximately 80 steps on our checklist to build a Windows-based computer, building a Linux computer consists of about 15 fewer steps (mostly due to licensing steps). Computer Recycling focuses on building desktop computers, and what you’ll see on these shelves are mostly desktop computers, LCD monitors, and the odd Laser printer.

Almost opposite the “sales” area is a small glass table on which our Linux laptops sit. Approximately once a month, always on a Saturday, we invite volunteers into the space to help refurbish laptops. Because the laptops tend to be older individual donations, and because the project relies entirely on donations for computers and parts, we don’t offer any warranty on the laptops. As such, we never install Windows on laptops since one of the requirements is offering a warranty. While we do test the laptops (and anyone can try them in the shop), once they’re sold they’re all yours. Given this, we’ve adjusted the prices of laptops accordingly. In the past two years we’ve sold notebooks ranging from $40 to $125 (for a Core i7 that was in terrific condition). Demand far outweighs donations so we frequently go for stretches where we don’t have laptops available. Sales of desktop PCs still make up the bulk of income for Computer Recycling and help offset the operating costs and licensing fees for the Windows desktops. At the very back of the shop lies our storage area. The storage area consists of several rows of shelves for approximately 30 feet and on 4 different walls. At capacity, we can store around 600 computers, however half of this space is shared with The Working Centre I.T. team so they can maintain the computers in use at the resource centre and in the other projects. All told there are approximately 120 computers in use at different parts of The Working Centre.

It’s in this area that we also store rackmount servers. The Working Centre uses rackmount server hardware for some of its computer infrastructure, but some of the rackmount servers are just machines the Computer Recycling project hasn’t processed yet. Rackmount servers, particularly the single-core or dual-core generation we’ve tended to get in the past, don’t seem to attract the kind of attention we once used to get for them. As such, they tend to sit until we get to them or end up sending them to our primary processor. Computer Recycling is always looking for volunteers, particularly volunteers with knowledge of older systems. Linux expertise is an extra plus as we now use a number of systems, including a PXE-boot server for all our installations and tools (we kept losing CDs and floppies in systems). Our current longest-serving volunteer is only 26 and has been a volunteer with the project for 8 years. Volunteers range in age from 16 to well into their 60’s, but we’ve had both younger and older volunteers. Most volunteers are men, but we’ve had periods where women outnumbered men. We’re also always looking for hardware donations, particularly anything of Core 2 Duo or newer vintage. As a community-oriented refurbisher, we tend to receive a mix of donations, about 50% from businesses and 50% from individuals. Business donations are fewer, but tend to be larger. Individual donations are sometimes quite surprising and have included UNIX-like systems, older systems that were once top-of-the line gaming systems, and non-mainstream systems. For more information about The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project, check out the website at: http://www.theworkingcentre.org/cr/, or contact Charles (me) via email: cr@theworkingcentre.org. You can also message me on Twitter or G+ by sending a message to: Chaslinux.