[rescue] anyone ever work on imacs

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:

> Someone has removed the bottom panel and removed the hard drive and memory.

The hard drive is regular IDE, and, IIRC, the 500MHz model uses plain
ol' PC100 DIMMs.

> I don't know IMacs much, but there is another slot there too with a small
> connector... some board that fits in two plastic rails....

That's for the Airport card.  If you don't need wireless Ethernet,
you don't need that card.

> Also, I'm trying to figure out how to open this thing to remove the picture
> tube, and to disable the HV, etc of the internal monitor (my plan is to
> use it with an external monitor till I can locate a dead unit/parts unit
> someday (presuming this one will even work again))...  I'm having a
> hell of a time figuring out how this thing comes apart !

Well, that's because they're not designed for the end-user to take
apart.  You need the Apple service manual.  These show up from
time-to-time on USENET in the alt.binaries.e-books groups.  If you post
a request, someone will probably post the PDF you need.

> So, anyone out there familiar with iMacs enough to know if I can disable
> the internal monitor and run this on the external VGA connector ?

It's possible, and I have run across an article or two on how to do
that, but I can't remember where.  Google is your friend.  If you wanted
to get even stranger, you could look into an iRack:
  http://www.marathoncomputer.com/irac.html

> I'd like to play with MacOSX sometime, and this is the only thing with enough
> horsepower to be able to possibly do it... so I'm hoping I can bring it back
> to some kind of usefull life....

OS X runs nicely on a 500MHz iMac.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  *)  "They're like candy for your ass."
Thorndale, TX      (*                       --Doc Shipley