So, I bought an iMac

Thomas93

Thomas93

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It was ?10 in a computer shop, thought for that price it was well worth the risk.

It came in with a broken display, which could not be fixed, and he's took the DVD and harddrvie out,i've pictured everything I got with it.

To get this working again what do I need? Presuming the logic board and what is there is good?

Or should I just sell it on as spares on ebay?
 
As payment for letting me stay with them for a weekend, my friends demanded that I take the iMac that had been left in the closet by the previous renters.

I thought, "oh cool, a Mac at an art institute! I'm sure it has all sorts of interesting things on it!"

No.

It had 2 450mhz processors, 512mb of RAM, and manga porn on it.

It can't even play YouTube videos.
 
Dogbert said:
As payment for letting me stay with them for a weekend, my friends demanded that I take the iMac that had been left in the closet by the previous renters.

I thought, "oh cool, a Mac at an art institute! I'm sure it has all sorts of interesting things on it!"

No.

It had 2 450mhz processors, 512mb of RAM, and manga porn on it.

It can't even play YouTube videos.
Click to expand...

At least you have manga porn... :p
 
Does it work if you connect an external monitor to it?
 
From the photos, I can identify one of the latest G5 iMac iSight (the intel ones have different ram slots). I believe they go from 1.9 to 2.1GHz depending on the size (you can find that under the foot).
The hard drive is a standard 3.5" SATA and the optical drive is an Apple part as far as I know but you should be able to find one on eBay).
The logic board embeds 512MB of ram so it should be able to chime even without filling the slot, hard drive, optical drive or even a display.

The display will be the hardest part to find, a new one at an Apple service center will cost an absolute fortune and I'm not sure if you can find that on ebay, or maybe you can find an iMac with a fried logic board for cheap and combine the two.
Another solution would be to find a mini-VGA adapter on the back and unplug the built-in display, that should do the trick.

I wouldn't invest too much money on a 5 years old machine though :-D
 
The adapter can be had for less than $20. One quick way of testing would be to put some memory in and if the speakers work listen for the startup chime.
 
Well, there were two generations of G5s, the one you open by the back and this one that you opened by the front and had a camera. The one you have looks very similar to the intel ones but the processor speed confirms that it is a G5 as an intel would either be 1.83GHz or 2GHz :)

So technically, you should be able to make it start like that. You can even plug in the display, I'm sure you'll have at least half of the picture on it.
 
OK find for ?10 :p

Also, epic win at the first pic :lol: I see it arrived safely then :)
 
Is anyone going to ask about the significance of the train or am I going to have to do it myself? :D

I have no idea about iMacs, they all look the same to me. Hope it serves you well for a tenner.
 
Well, as far as I know, a white light with no chime usually means that the logic board is toasted :-(
 
Anything with an Apple logo on it = nothing more than paperweights. Glad you bought yours so cheap. :D
 
Matt2000 said:
Is anyone going to ask about the significance of the train or am I going to have to do it myself? :D
Click to expand...

See my post above :p The significance of it is it used to belong to me. And he bought it from me on eBay - neither of us realised it was the other until I got the email through saying a 'Thomas93' had won the auction :p
 
First of all, I had the HST there as it was being tested upon it's arrival from Speedtouch, as noted above! I found the Mac by chance so just placed it in the middle of the track to get a picture.
No chime may be because of broken speakers, (fingers crossed). To avoid sounding like a creepy mac fag I informed the vendor my G5s logic board fried and I am in need of a replacement, to which he suggested a Frakenstein G5 using this ones Logic Board as it is a working unit.

If it's indeed broken beyond repair at a acceptable cost, I shall gut it and sell some parts on and keep it as an ornament :)

Matt, what do you mean by it's significance?

Sorry Viper, will fix that tomorrow pal :)

Ta guys.
 
There is a way to see if the system is booting even though the white light is still on, on the left of the RAM slot, you'll see 4 LEDs named 1, 2, 3 and 4.

LED 1 should be ON as soon as you plug the power cord, it means that the power supply is working.
LED 2 should be ON as soon as you press the power button, it means that the power supply and the logic board are communicating well.
LED 3 should be ON is the internal display is plugged in and detected by the system. Once the display is detected, the White light on the front should turn itself off.
LED 4 is useless in this case, it means that the processor is overheating.

If the LED 3 is ON and the white light is ON, then I'm pretty sure it's a logic board failure.
If the LED 3 is OFF then it means that the display is not detected at all, which means that the white light on the front should stay ON.

Hope that helps :)
 
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