ORANGE : A Lesson in Computer Anatomy

The new computers in the science classroom at El Rancho Middle School were not assembled by factory workers in Japan, Taiwan or Northern California’s Silicon Valley.

Instead, they were assembled Monday by eight of the school’s recent eighth-grade graduates--all of them computer science honor students--who gave up a day of their summer vacation to install mother boards, chips and the rest of the computers’ innards.

By assembling the computers “we learned how the different parts work and how the electricity follows certain paths to make the computers work,” said Tommy Lambert, 14. He and the other assemblers will all become Canyon High School freshmen next month.

“It was interesting to see how the stuff inside a computer works,” said Cameron Aljilani, 13. “I had never seen the inside of a disk drive.”

Armed only with screwdrivers and under the direction of teacher Gwen Davis and recent Canyon High graduate Pejman Roshen, the students spent four hours assembling seven New Technologies computers.

Davis said she had promised the computer honor students last winter that they could build the machines, thinking that the parts would arrive in May. But the shipment was delayed, and Davis called the students to ask if they still wanted to assemble them. Those who were not on trips jumped at the chance.

“These are students who have built working robots,” Davis said. “They have a working amateur radio station, and many of them have received their radio licenses. We wanted them to have the experience of building a computer.”

She said the students will now know how to build or add-on to their home computers.

The machines were purchased using a $10,950 grant from the California Educational Initiatives Fund, a foundation formed by 12 California corporations, including Bank of America, Arco and Pacific Telesis.

“Without the grants, we would not have been able to afford these computers,” said Davis, whose full-time assignment in the Orange Unified School District is to write technology grant requests for El Rancho, Canyon and Orange High School.

Jarrod Walter, 14, said the reward for the day’s work came when the students finally turned on the machines.

“It was really neat to see that they worked,” he said.

Cameron said it was no effort to give up a summer day, particularly one as hot and muggy as Monday.

“This was an opportunity of a lifetime to build a computer,” he said. “Besides, it’s rather boring on vacation. It was nothing to give up a day.”