[geeks] 2008 iMac brought back to life

[Lionel Peterson]

Hi all,

Just wanted to share, I came upon a 2008 iMac a while ago (left in a rental
property, wouldn't boot, no disk), and I got it up and running Ubuntu 20.04
LTS tonight.

Briefly, I trumped to find info about Linux on older hardware, the consensus
was to just do it, no special steps needed. So I took a Linux boot usb drive,
stick it in a USB port, pressed 'option' after the "bong" chime, and held it
for a moment. I selected the EFI boot option, and we're off to the races! Sort
of.

The booting took several minutes, but eventually I saw the Ubuntu desktop,
with the option to install or run off the boot image. I shut it down, put an
SSD on a USB port, and booted off the USB drive again, and I could install the
OS on the USB 2.0 drive. It installs fine, but it is SLOW to boot.

Having seen the system boot Linux, I felt it was worth getting a small SSD,
drive bracket, and I ordered 2x 2Gig DDR2-800 SoDIMMs, about $50 in parts.
(The iMac currently only has 2 Gigs, can take up to 6 gigs.)

So the needed tools are collected, the system torn down, dust bunnies blown
out of it, new CR2032 battery put in, and the SSD and bracket are installed. I
patiently reassemble it, put it on the bench, and it powers right up!
Everything looks great.

I put the USB boot drive on a USB port, boot, and install Ubuntu. Four-fifths
of the way through the install it crashes. I power-cycle it, all goid - boots
up just fine. I update the install, and everything looks fine.

So, now I have a workbench linux desktop running on 2 Gig RAM (upgrade on its
way), running a Core 2 Duo at 2.66 GHz, with a beautiful display, clean
aluminum case, and working webcam, all for about $50 out-of-pocket (I decided
to not use a spinning rust SATA drive I had on the shelf, I thought an SSD
would give best possible performance (and at $31 for 256 Gig SSD + $16 bracket
to hold SSD in 3.5" bay I have no regrets), and while a 6 Gig upgrade would
have been best, I couldn't justify the expense when 4 Gig was $11 and 6 Gig
was about $60 Two gig was usable under Ubuntu 20.04, 4 gig should be better.

The only problem to sus out is the Broadcom Airport+ WiFi - others report it
working, but I can't get it working... all I see are an outline and a question
mark, even though it properly sees WiFi SSIDs, let's me pick one, and uses my
passkey.

Wired Ethernet works fine, tge WiFi is a battle for another day.

Bottom line: Current Linux supports older hardware very well, it's a great way
to resurrect older Apple hardware.