Slashdot Mirror
New iMac disassembled
wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."
From the blog: "There are no less than 3 blowers inside the machine" I wonder if the machine is quiet(can anyone comment from firsthand experience?) Some of the Rev. A iMac G5s sounded like a jet taking off, but it appears they fixed it in later revs. I want to get one of these bad boys, but only if they are silent.
Monstar L
No Disassemble iMac (5)
or something
T.
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Hooray! We have now entered the nerd porn phase of the Apple Product Cycle.
Sigh... if only the cached site wasn't so slow.
Something to remember about the last few batches of socketed processors in Macs (G3s and G4s): the FSB, voltages, and processor frequency settings were controlled via a series of unlabeled jumpers on the motherboard, which had a prefabbed jumper block taped onto them (warranty void if removed blah blah blah). I'm sure if they're using a similar mechanism that it will only be a matter of time before someone figures out the jumper scheme and posts them. Then again, maybe EFI handles all of this now. Anybody familiar enough with EFI to know?
This guy's the limit!
http://mactree.sannet.ne.jp.nyud.net:8090/~kodawar isan/imac_intel/imac_intel01.html
Take-off every
In a way, the new iMac is like a laptop - you can pull it apart and replace components, but it isn't as if it was designed for home user disassembly (like an ATX beige box.)
On the flip side, there are Mac designs like the eMac, which require significant disassembly to upgrade the drives. And to upgrade the CPU, your only real choice is to overclock with your soldering iron. And you have to deal with the high voltage CRT.
I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade. Sometimes you open up an old Mac and you go "woah, it is shocking that they made it so fancy on the inside of this computer". No wonder they sold the translucent iMacs. But that pretty inside was designed for ease of factory assembly, not for ease of upgrades.
I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.
... ever. IMO ugprading is not worth it. Usually when I upgrade it's more than CPU only, I need new type of RAM, new stuff like USB 2.0. And at the end, new mobo + CPU = better choice than simply a bit faster CPU that would run in the old machine.
(A commercial-grade desoldering tool is also useful.)
I haven't upgraded a CPU for like
My good ole' 486 wasn't worth upgrading with Pentium Overdrive, my Athlon Thoroughbreed neither with a faster CPU, and so is my current Athlon 64 3000+ (939). I could upgrade my 939 3000+ with a dual core, but then again I don't need it now and when I would need it, probably early next year I would be better off with a AM2 socket (or whatever it's called) to get DDR2.
No way. Do you think they're really going to use "We Just Don't Give A Shit Anymore" for all their future branding?
I mean, it speaks to *me*, but I doubt it speaks to, say, my mom.
The original iMac G5 had a series of diagnostic lights inside that showed possible problems. Does this one have that?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States - Rockhurst College in Kansas City. I don't understand why people go so ga-ga over OSX - it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!
I guess the top schools aren't taking very many bright students these days, sigh. OSX is absolutely a preemtive multitasking OS. It's built atop the Mach kernel which is preemptive.
Perhaps you're thinking of MacOS 9 and below which were cooperative. Either way, get your facts straight, esp if you're gonna start your post all puffy chested.
If you are, could you check something for me?
:\
Will these things come up in target disk mode? Can you boot from a firewire device?
People seem to mod me down for this, but it is critically important to me to know whether or not I can still do ye olde CCC, keep a dmg around, and restore as needed.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
As an owner of a PowerBook G4 1.5GHz (which amazingly is not only, predictably, obsolete at a year and three weeks, but was in fact more or less obsolete when it shipped; that the MacBook Pro is reportedly only 4-5x faster in benchmarks is surprising) I'll have to disagree.
I'm a programmer. OS X has some of the best tools I've ever used, and it gives me access to both tools I used before (most of the unixy goodness like the scripting languages and simple, focused command line tools) and now continue to use, and to some completely awesome new tools (Cocoa). This isn't me being a zealot (I'm presumably much more annoying when I'm a zealot), it's just facts.
It's true that lots of people who are 'in an artistic field' appreciate Macs too, because it's what they've been using all these years. But I, as a programmer, find that I write apps much easier and that the other tools in my toolbox are plenty and good. I like the industrial design (swap out with 'pwetty boxes' if you seriously think they're the same thing) as much as anyone, but aside from a fleeting fascination with it, it's not why I bought it - I bought it because of an awesome OS and some very good tools. And so far, I have not been let down.
Can someone with one of these beasts tell us how long the thing runs unplugged?
Couple of nanoseconds.
KFG
I just got a 20 inch Dual Core iMac yesterday. Screen is a monster. The mac, for everything except games (cal of duty, battlefield, etc) is DEAD QUIET. I can't hear ANYTHING. I love it.
\ Dual Core 2 ghz iMac is do damn fast it's not funny. Editing home movies while 10 apps run in background is nothing short of a delight. I'll exit fanboy mode now, but if you are thinking of Dual Core, go for it.
Who marked this guy a troll? It was hillarious! I particularly loved the Rockhurst College bit.
MacWorld covered many of these questions.
2 006/index.php
See http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/intelfaq
(particularly the bottom of the page "Does this mean that Open Firmware is dead?")
I am sorry, but as a long time victim of the iMac G5 series, I have to question these pictures.
Background:
I have one personal iMac G5 20", and five work iMac G5 20"s all within the serial number range affected by bad capacitors and bad power supplies. A coworker also has a personal iMac G50 20" within the affected range.
Out of these seven machines, three have already killed one motherboard and a power supply. Two of these machines have burned at least two motherboards.
So yeah, I have a damn good idea of what the innards of an iMac G5 20" looks like. Because of this I am having a hard time coming to terms with these pictures. They look shoddy as hell, like they are pictures of a pre-production mule or mockup. Tear open any Apple product from the last 5 years and you will notice the fanatical attention to detail in the way the hardware components are laid out. They are very clean and pretty. The iMac G5 20" is extremely well laid up, everything is tucked in, there are no lose wires, and there is basically no space left unused.
Either these pics are a PS job, or somebody leaked pictures from older test mules. There is no way in hell that Apple is going to sell something that looks so messy.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
It's interesting to note that the new iMacs are using a standard Intel 945 Series chipset, and an Intel 82801GBM southbridge, as well as other standard Intel chipsets and features:
Other interesting hardware features can be discovered by browsing the output of system_profiler, kextstat, and ioreg .
Of note:
- Full 802.11a support is present, though unadvertised, as well as 802.11b/g
- Intel High Definition Audio is used
- the iMac's optical drive does have dual layer support, unlike the ultra slimline 9mm drive used in the MacBook Pro
- the iSight is USB
- a TPM entry is present in ioreg
- com.apple.Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X is an active kernel extension
I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States - Rockhurst College in Kansas City. I don't understand why people go so ga-ga over OSX - it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!
No, OS X, built on the Mach kernal, does have pre-emptive multi-tasking. Think of it as an evolutionary improvement over past versions of...
Oops! Sorry Kansas.
On one of the pictures you can see a Infinion-TPM module. Is that activated on the Mac?
hfoo
"I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence." - TripMaster Monkey
"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." - Stephen Wright
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
I never see the "beachball" mouse curser (the Windows equiv. is the hourglass mouse cursor, indicates OS is busy). I can have iDVD, iMovie, Call of Duty, iTunes playing, 10 Tabs open in Safari, FTP serving files to active connection, and no beach ball in Windows, game still plays nice, and iTunes "skipped" once in three hours of all this crap running while playing Call of duty.
And to the anti-fanboy like-dells-balls people out there, the above is simply a subjective review of my experience. Simple real world usage. And remember, it takes almost NO desk space and I plugged in electric, mouse and keyboard usb, and was using this thing, including registration, in 4 minutes. Have fun loading spybot/adaware/ms antispyware/clam av/avg/zonealarm just before you can even use your box. ha. the only windows I have in my life is now Virtual PC, and as I find good mac replacesments, eventually that app will go the way of the DoDo bird.