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Separating the iMac
Emous Pratt writes: "There is a neat article up on iMacLinux.net which talks you through separating the monitor and computer parts of the iMac. It is very detailed, with lots of cool screenshots including this one of the completed machine, and this one showing the machine is still working. This is useful if you want to run Linux and not run the monitor, or if your monitor is broken." Update: 02/03 19:37 GMT by T : Note for the curious: this is about the old iMac (CRT equipped), not the new lampish G4 variety.
It should be noted, that the article is about older iMacs, not ones with pivoting LCD screens.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Was that the fastest slashdotting or what? Anyway, I came accross the PDF file for the new iMac, it's very detailed and it explains how to dismantle it without breaking anything...
Here's the url.
I'd rather have a bowl of coco-pops.
iMac Revision A/B rehousing guide
:)
This guide provides information on how to rehouse your Revision A or B iMac into some other type of casing. This guide SHOULD also work for Revision C and D iMacs. This guide comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRENTY and we DO NOT RECOMMEND that you follow it unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing, or (like me) you had NO OTHER CHOICE.
Tools
You'll need a non-magnetic philips screwdriver, snips or pylers, and a sheet (or something to protect the screen while you have the iMac face down on the table).
Background
Revision A and B iMacs came out in 1998/99, making them about 2 or 3 years old at this time. Many of the revision A iMacs were plagued with monitor problems. I originally had a Rev.A iMac, however after 2 weeks, the monitor started to turn green, and the local retailer exchanged it for a Rev.B iMac, since the store no longer had Rev.A iMacs. This evening, I noticed my Rev.B iMac was powered down and cold, when I attempted to power it back up, nothing happened. I tried plugging in a different power cord which had no effect. So I moved the iMac out of the rack, and placed it on the workbench and tried to power it up again, this time I held the power button, and the iMac chimed and started to power up, then there was a big flash, some smoke and the iMac was dead. Luckily I happened to be looking at the iMac when the flash occured, and it looked like it came from the HT transformer on the iMac. This was somewhat good news, as it meant the monitor part of the iMac was probably fried.
Solution
Since I wasn't about to shell out to have the iMac repaired, I figured the next best thing was to try to fix it myself. Since this iMac is used as a server, the monitor really wasn't needed anyway. So I decided that the best thing to do would be to remove the logic board, drives and power supply, and see if I could get the unit to power up by itself. This meant of course, taking the entire thing apart.
Pass the screwdriver..
Taking the iMac apart wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. First, you need to remove the screws that keep the system board in place underneath the iMac, the system board has a handle you can pull it out by, remember to unplug all the connectors from the system board first. Once removed, place this to one side, you will need it later.
There are several pairs of screws along the back of the case, you need to remove these, the hardest one to remove is the one near the door (one that is used to route the cables). Once you have removed all of these, the rear plastic casing comes out. This is the piece that has the speaker covers attached to it. Once it is off, you will see two screws in the front of the iMac (either side of the hole where the CDrom drive goes), you need to remove these, and the front facia (piece of plastic with the iMac part written on it) comes off. The next bit is a little tricky, you are left with this generic grey plastic cover on the front of the iMac, at the very top of the monitor where the grey plastic meets the coloured plastic, there are two capped screws. You will need to remove the caps, then remove the screws. Once you have completed this, the coloured plastic can be removed, exposing the tube.WARNING: BE CAREFUL WHEN HANDLING THE TUBE AND SHIELDING, EVEN WHEN OFF, THE TUBE ELECTRONICS CAN HAVE A NASTY RESIDUAL CHARGE IN ITS CAPACITORS!!!USE EXTREME CAUTION TO AVOID ELECTRIC SHOCK!!
The next thing you will need to do is remove the shielding that protects the monitor. There are about 8 or 10 screws you will need to remove. You can see a picture of the removed shielding here . Now you should be able to see the electron-gun, and two logic boards on either side of the monitor. Make sure you do not put pressure on the electron gun itself, it is very easy to break it, and since it is made of glass, you could injure yourself or have a nice mess to clean up if you break it. If you are facing the screen, the board of the left is for the monitor, and the board on the right is the power supply. We want to remove the power supply board so we can use it to power the system board we removed earlier. If you click here you can see a picture of the monitor section with the power supply board removed. It takes 3 screws to remove the power supply, two on the side and one on the top. There are two connectors you need to unplug in order to remove the power supply board. The first is a 2 pin brown connector that leads to the monitor board, the other is a block connector with lots of strands of grey thin wire that also go to the monitor board. You need to be very careful with the connector block as it can easily be damaged. You should be able to remove the power supply board now.
Now we have the system board and power supply board, but there is a catch. We need the logic board that is screwed into the front of the iMac's casing so we can switch on the power supply. You can see a picture of the removed board here . The board is pretty small, and you need to remove the entire front casing before you can get it out. This means you must remove the 4 shielded screws around the tube (monitor) as well as the 4 additional screws on either side of the monitor. Once you do this the screen and remaining boards are pretty loose, so be careful not to scratch your screen. The board has two connectors, we are just interested in the long one, the short connector seems to pull power from the monitor board to drive the led. If you really want the LED, you could probably pull power from somewhere to drive it.
We are almost done, we still need the connector to connect the power button to the system board. You will need to snip the tie-wraps that are pinning the wiring that goes to the microphone along the side of the monitor, there are two tie-wraps, and you will need to remove the tape from the wiring for the right speaker. You will also need to disconnect the microphone, and speakers if you have not already done so. The speakers come out pretty easily with a single screw, as does the Infrared box. You should now be able to pull the cable out. The cable should have the connectors to link the system board to the powerbutton, as well as 2 speaker connectors and the microphone connector.
Thats it, now all we need to do is reconnect the parts we want to use. You'll need to connect the power supply board to the system board, the power button board to the system board, plug in your keyboard, ethernet and plug the power into the power supply board. The power supply board was grounded off the metal shielding we removed, so you may want to find a means of grounding the power supply board. Then power it up, and see if you can telnet/ssh into your Linux system (assuming you had Linux running on it before). If something goes wrong, you will need to either type blind, or get a monitor. The iMac Rev.A and B units have an Apple RGB (db15) connector. You should be able to pickup a RGBVGA adapter or pickup an Apple RGB monitor. You might be able to pickup an Apple RGB monitor from PowerMax or eBay.
Picture Gallery
* Empty iMac Shell Casing
* Casing with front facia removed
* iMac Tube
* Electron Gun w/PSU removed
* iMac IR unit, and screws
* iMac power button board
* iMac speakers removed
* Power Supply Unit
* Working iMac
* iMac connectors
* iMac Case Parts
* iMac is on-line
Next...
Now that we have successfully brought the iMac back to life, we can't leave it hanging around on the desk. We will bring you the next installment, as soon as we find something to put the iMac in. For now, it has been rehoused in the plastic shell casing without the tube from the monitor. We need to address cooling issues, especially with the fan being in the monitor half of the casing.
Author: John Buswell
Version: 1.00
Last Update: 2002-02-03 02:19:15
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Once you have released the computer from its fruity prison, you can then give it a proper rectangular computer case with the iRack
1U rack mount box. Sadly, it only handles rev A through D, so you will get topped out at 333MHz, still for many network applications thats way too much CPU anyway.
I'm still hoping Apple will make G3/G4 computers in a form factor similar to briq. Something I can cram in 3 or 4 to the U. As long as I'm dreaming, no video hardware, just Quartz over ethernet and a discovery protocol that lets me connect by MAC address from my management station.
in this article. Appropriately titled "Rack an iMac".
http://w3.one.net/~johnb/imaclinux/
this site is being run by a guy on roadrunner running apache on linux. i always wondered what would happen if one of those boxen got /.ed
> if your [built-in] monitor is broken
The iMac has a VGA output on it as well as its internal display. You can also boot it with the T key held down and it will mimic a FireWire drive, so you can plug it into another machine and get data off it. These are more useful to people with broken internal monitors than disassembling the machine.
It's a display with a computer in it, a computer that includes both hardware and software making a seamless whole. The only use for disassembling it is to enjoy the experience, just like wiping the hard disk and installing Linux on an iMac.
Apple has "take-apart" guides for all of their models, that show each and every component, including screws, and where and how they fit where they do and how to disassemble them.
The CRT iMac one was also made into a set of posters by a third-party, I believe. It's a very cool set of documents, with the distinctive egg-shaped shell coming apart fully exploded right down to the screws.
The LCD iMac take-apart guide was also posted recently, showing the full guts. Quite ingenious.
you haven't got an El Capitan Powermac, have you? The IDE connector is easily accesible as are the RAM slots, PCI slots and the Airport slot. Putting drives in is the funniest part. 1 screw is all it takes, pop out the little cages, screw the drives into the cage and pop it back in. Takes about 5 minutes to put a new drive in an El Capitan.
That was classic intercourse!
Actually, no, you can get an adapter to connect an ADC monitor (which includes DVI, power and USB in a single connector) to a DVI-compatible video card, plus a USB connector and power source.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Lets see here...
I can go to Grand Vitesse Systems' online store [gvstore.com] and buy a 2U, dual 1Ghz mac with a gig of ram and all the other apple goodness (gigE, superdrive et al) for around $3500.
For compairson, we next go to dell [dell.com] and price out a similar 2U server using wintel, namely the PowerEdge 2550. Put in dual 1.4Ghz Intel pent III (G4's will eat this for breakfast), 1GB of ram, Red Hat 7.2 pre-installed, and basic everything else what do we get? $4,871!!! Granted this comes with an 18GB SCSI 10K drive vs. the mac's 80GB and 40GB ATA hard drives, but I think you can get a SCSI controller and a 18GB HD for less than $1300.
Face it, since OS X macs have been better than anything that runs on Intel for any application.
--InfinityEdge
Remove the obvious spam catcher to e-mail