Burning iMac - Seriously

I bought an iMac from a PC show this weekend. $40 for it, iMac DV 400mhz with DVD-ROM & FireWire. It had no HD in it or the IDE/Power cables and the AirPort wire looked cut off. Now I can't boot the machine alone with nothing to boot off of so I hooked up my FireWire Hard Drive with Mac OS X on it.

It booted into OS X fine and after 20 min or playing with it I was gonna turn it off. I went into system profiler but it only detected 128mb or RAM (1 of the 2 sticks that I had in there), I thought well maybe the other stick isn't' in all the way (doubt it though...) or maybe it's not compatible? Well anyway I turned off the iMac and noticed an electrical smell. The top of the iMac was pretty warm, not really hot but it was quite toasty. Well burning I should say, I wafted my hand around and the smell was coming from the iMac, no doubt about it. I unplugged it and now it's sitting under the stairs for now.

I wonder what could have happened. Before I booted the Mac without the FireWire drive and it was fine but also it was only on for a few minutes. Maybe the RAM burned or something or the exposed AirPort wire touched something inside of the iMac?? (should have duct-taped that...)

I mean I only spent $40 on this but, then again I just ordered the $10 special internal IDE cable for the HD and DVD off eBay but still...

Does anyone have any idea what this could be? I'd take this to the Apple Store near me maybe but I guess they'd want to charge me a bunch for even looking at it.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated !

slooksterPSV said:

Open up the iMac, look and see if everything is in place. Where the airport wire was cut off, that one has me a little worried. You might want to remove that - if you haven't done so already - check all connections, make sure they are tight. If all else fails, take out things piece by piece.

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Ok thanks a lot. It's a bit late now but I went over near the iMac and I could still smell something still. It wasn't hot anymore probably because it was unplugged for about 20 minutes. I'll take out the RAM and tape the end of the AirPort wire so it can't touch anything. I mean the iMac still functioned while it was 'burning' so it can't be too bad...or it can and I just don't know.

I'll have another look at it when I get home from school.

Yeah I'll be sure not to touch that. I've always been afirad of those things anyway.

Can't wait to get open and open it up...betcha the RAM is all melted

ZAP!

rainman::|:| said:

If it's been sitting unplugged somewhere for a few months, you may just be smelling the dust/electronics/plastic warming up, those iMac DVs really needed fans in them, but Apple went convection... The DV+ I used to have would get too hot to touch, and it would definitely smell funny sometimes. Eventually the CRT burned out, I have little doubt the poor ventilation contributed to this.

Take care of the Airport antenna problem, then be careful with it... Only leave it plugged in when you're using it, and only when you're in the room with it. If it runs fine for a couple of weeks, the smell should dissapate, and I'd say you're in the clear. If something melts/smokes/burns/explodes with the force of a thousand a-bombs, you may have a serious problem.

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I took it apart and it didn't smell too bad. I guess the Mac was probably sitting somewhere for a long time and it probably collected it's share of dust. I have some compressed air maybe I'll blow some dust out. A user replied on the Apple forums too saying:

"The smell could be because it sate for a while and dust was building up, and no matter what if that iMac gets to HOT they trune off to stop any damage it may cause. HTH"

So I guess it's just old and dusty. The mac gets got so maybe me and my friend can mod a fan in there, that should cool that puppy off a bit. Thanks!

EDIT: Here are some pictures, I noticed the DVD drive may be 'semi-working' since it looks a bit damaged or something. It's ok I can always use a FireWire external one if need be.