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| COMPUTERS COME TO RABI ISLAND |
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COMPUTERS COME TO RABI ISLAND As published in our August Issue of 'Sigbits' near the end of August I spent 18 days on remote Rabi Island, part of the Republic of Fiji, but privately owned by the Banaban people. They were transported there in 1945, after WWII, rather than being returned to Banaba (also known as Ocean Island) which is in the Kiribati Group of Islands. Banaba itself is now mostly uninhabitable, having been mined extensively for phosphate fertilizer between 1900-1979. The primary purpose of my visit was to donate and install some computer equipment in the Rabi High School (RHS) at Tabiang Village. I am glad to say that there was a good response to my previous 'SigBits 'article and to the speech given by my Banaban "niece", Luisa Sakabula, at the August Brisbug General Meeting, at the end of her three-month stay in Australia. THE EQUIPMENT I received: * Donations of money (towards shipping costs); * Software and a portable Overhead Projector (OHP) from the Club; * A 386 portable computer from Club member John Edenborough; * A 286 Compaq portable computer from Club member David Sykes * A new Star Wintype GDI Laser Printer from Club member Hermann Schraut (won as a prize 7 months before) * Computer books and software from a number of other club members. I also donated a number of items: * OHP spare bulbs, blank transparencies for both standard (low temperature) and Laser use & OHP pens, storage folders. * Panasonic KX-P1124 24-pin dot matrix printer with 3 extra ribbons; * 386DX/25 desktop computer, EGA, 8 MB RAM, 60 MB HD. * 586/100 desktop computer, SVGA, 16 MB RAM, 1.5 GB HD (2 separate HDs), 6x CD-ROM, Vibra-16 sound card (highly compatible with a SB-16), various educational CD-ROM titles. The last machine came about when I decided to build up a cheap computer for RHS. Originally I was going to use a baby AT case & power supply, 14" SVGA monitor, 2 x 245 MB Maxtor HDs and a 4 MB Tekram VLB IDE caching controller I had lying around doing nothing. I didn't take long to realise that it was not going to be economically feasible to do this. 486 VLB Motherboards and cards are very hard to get. (I wanted to use the VLB caching controller.) At one stage I thought I was going to use a cheap 486SX/66 (clock doubled) VLB motherboard a dealer had that belonged to his friend who was overseas. Unfortunately, it has the CMOS password protected and we couldn't clear the password. (Oh I tried: the method mentioned in the motherboard booklet; pulling out the BIOS chip; unsoldering the CMOS backup battery; multi-brand password sniffing program.) Also my old power supply was faulty. Once I found out how cheap a Cyrix 586/100 motherboard ($245 at the time), 16 MB of RAM ($180), a 1.3 GB HD ($290) and a new case/power supply ($50) were then it became obvious that complete replacement was the way to go. Throw in a PCI video card ($130), 1.4 MB HD ($50), 6x CD-ROM ($160) and a Vibra-16 ($180 - getting a close SB16 clone cost more than I expected), keyboard ($25 - I bought 3), mouse ($25 - I bought 3) and about $350 of CD-ROMs with my old SVGA monitor and you have a good, cheap computer. In fact this is more powerful than my current 486DX/50 machine. I was also given a lot of other books, older software, and two 286 desktop computers. This equipment was far too heavy to go by air in my luggage. (A mono monitor on one of the 286's went to heaven as soon as I turned it on.) The thing that I most regretted not be able to send by air was over 10 years of Scientific American magazines donated by Brisbug Ex-President and Life-Member Ron Lewis. These items will have to wait until we can afford to ship them by sea. The Zen of Going to Rabi: Arrival at the destination is not the goal of the exercise; it is the act of undertaking the journey that cleanses the mind of all distractions. We come to the luggage check-in at Brisbane Airport. I was also accompanying Luisa back to Rabi. Between us we had 50 Kg luggage allowance and my sister had got permission from Air Pacific Sydney for us to be given an extra 100 Kg for computer equipment (thank you very much, Air Pacific for the gift of $1,000 worth of airfreight). My sister also gave us about 15 Kg of pharmaceutical samples for the Rabi Hospital. I had 13 large boxes of equipment. I was carrying the OHP (10 Kg) as hand luggage and had a very heavy bag (with the heaviest books in it) across my shoulder. These were not weighed. As it was, our shipment weighed in at 170 Kg! Oh dear, 20 Kg over at $10/Kg. We decided to leave one of Luisa's bags behind. (It had clothing materials in it. My personal luggage for the trip was only about 12 Kg.) So, at 155 Kg they waved us through. Phew! Round 1 to us. Round 2 We had heard disturbing stories about Fijian customs problems with donated computer equipment. My sister gave me a letter of clearance from a Fijian minister that we thought would ease us through. I was very worried with the large quantity of pharmaceuticals that she gave me a few days before the trip. This had not been mentioned in the letter. Anyway, Luisa and I got our 4 trolleys of bags though OK. Round 3 We arrived at Nadi International Airport at midnight. We had to be up next day at 5.30 AM to catch our next flight. We were staying with a Banaban friend (Teri Nanton) and she had a lot of relatives at her flat to greet us. At this time of the day, partying was not on our minds. We managed to get to sleep around 2 A.M. When we got to the airport we were in for another shock. Teri who works at Nadi Airport, arranged with Sunflower Airlines to take our gear to Taveuni for free (I estimate, at $1.65/KG for excess luggage, we would have been up for almost $300). We were told there was not enough room on the small plane for all our gear! (In the immortal words of the airline official: "This is a passenger plane, not a freight plane.") I was told that about 30% would have to wait for a day or two until room could be found. So I had to sit down and work out what packages we would need to have on Rabi for a few working systems. I had to leave behind the EGA monitor, both printers and some books. So, wondering if we would see ever these again, we bordered the little plane (my sister calls it the "flying coffin") and took off into the blue yonder. Round 4 The route we normally take is a Nadi-Savu Savu flight, then a three-hour taxi ride, mostly over rough roads, to a small deserted inlet (near Karoko village) opposite the island. Then we sit on the embankment and hope that the council boat from Rabi has been organised and will turn up within the next hour or so. Then we have a 30-minute boat ride to Rabi. This time we decided to try a different method and fly from Nadi to Taveuni, a big island south of Rabi. This has a tourist industry and a permanent airport. (Rabi, being a closed community, only has an scary looking grass emergency airstrip leading up the side of a hill.) Disaster struck again. Nobody on Taveuni wanted to take a boat on the 60-minute trip up to Rabi. "Maybe tomorrow". We drove around for a couple of hours over rough roads visiting different harbours looking for a boat. (I worried about the computer equipment getting bounced around in the back of the truck. I hoped that my styrofoam packing would be effective.) Finally we found a dive boat operator who was willing to take us in an hour or so, when he had prepared the boat, for $100. We sat in a 20' open high-speed boat with all our bags and boxes up the front, covered roughly by a tarpaulin. We fought a running battle keeping the cover over the equipment as it flapped about in the breeze and the spray started to came over the front. I whiled away the time entertaining myself with pleasant daydreams about the effects of salt water on the EHT electronics in a computer monitor. |
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