Found a 1998 repair log tucked in a donated PC at the Tacoma Goodwill, and one entry stopped me cold

Thea Anderson · 2026-10-07T02:20:04.066562+00:00

I was at the Goodwill on 6th Ave in Tacoma last Saturday dropping off some old clothes when I wandered over to the electronics bin. There was a beige tower sitting on top, an old Pentium II machine with a sticker that said 'works, needs cleaning, $15.' I bought it for parts and cracked it open on my bench that night. Taped inside the side panel was a handwritten repair log from a tech at a shop called CompuCare, dated 1998 through 2001. Most entries were normal stuff, reseated RAM, swapped a dead CMOS battery, cleaned a jammed floppy drive. But one line from March 2000 said 'customer cried when Word docs came back, drive was not dead, just loose cable.' I sat there for a minute thinking about how that person must have felt getting years of work back. We deal with dead drives and corrupt files every week and it gets routine, but that one line reminded me there is a real person on the other end of every ticket. Anyway, I kept the log and taped it above my bench. Anyone else ever find old service notes or logs inside donated machines that stuck with you?

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Found a 1998 repair log tucked in a donated PC at the Tacoma Goodwill, and one entry stopped me cold | Computer Technicians - Librear