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iMac hit by lightning...

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BFrost

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 25, 2013
2
0
A few days ago our house was hit by lightning. Needless to say, my Imac of 6 years was affected by it. (My IMac is a 20" Aluminum Imac manufactured late 2007). I can turn on the machine, it gongs, it sounds like it is working, but I am only getting a black screen. I have seen other threads with resetting the SMC etc. and they are not working. My real question is on how to hook up an external monitor to my Imac just to see what is really going on with it. I have seen a VGA port on the back of the machine but I wasn't sure if I could just hook just any old monitor or does this monitor have to be an apple monitor? Also, does this take some special kind of cable that might be hard to find? If I could get some help on this I would really appreciate it! :)
 
S

spykthomas

macrumors member
Nov 19, 2012
52
1
You should be able to plug in any monitor to the VGA port.

You should at least see the grey screen as it boots up, I'm not sure whether it would default to mirror the display or have it as a secondary display once it has loaded the OS (providing it is able to do so).
 
I

iancflam

macrumors member
Mar 16, 2013
48
0
BFrost said:
A few days ago our house was hit by lightning. Needless to say, my Imac of 6 years was affected by it. (My IMac is a 20" Aluminum Imac manufactured late 2007). I can turn on the machine, it gongs, it sounds like it is working, but I am only getting a black screen. I have seen other threads with resetting the SMC etc. and they are not working. My real question is on how to hook up an external monitor to my Imac just to see what is really going on with it. I have seen a VGA port on the back of the machine but I wasn't sure if I could just hook just any old monitor or does this monitor have to be an apple monitor? Also, does this take some special kind of cable that might be hard to find? If I could get some help on this I would really appreciate it! :)
Click to expand...

That should be a mini dvi port...
 
gnasher729

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
BFrost said:
A few days ago our house was hit by lightning. Needless to say, my Imac of 6 years was affected by it. (My IMac is a 20" Aluminum Imac manufactured late 2007). I can turn on the machine, it gongs, it sounds like it is working, but I am only getting a black screen. I have seen other threads with resetting the SMC etc. and they are not working. My real question is on how to hook up an external monitor to my Imac just to see what is really going on with it. I have seen a VGA port on the back of the machine but I wasn't sure if I could just hook just any old monitor or does this monitor have to be an apple monitor? Also, does this take some special kind of cable that might be hard to find? If I could get some help on this I would really appreciate it! :)
Click to expand...

Don't know where you live, but your home insurance might be paying for the iMac. Worth checking.
 
Arran

Arran

macrumors 601
Mar 7, 2008
4,847
3,779
Atlanta, USA
spykthomas said:
...I'm not sure whether it would default to mirror the display or have it as a secondary display once it has loaded the OS (providing it is able to do so).
Click to expand...

Good point. So I just tried it with my own 2007 iMac and an old VGA monitor with the $20 mini dvi to vga adapter. It booted with the external as a secondary display (not mirrored) which meant I couldn't even see the login screen. :(

However, pressing Command+F1, toggles between mirrored and non-mirrored. So that did the trick:)

Good luck OP. Nothing worse than a dead Mac.
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,327
12,450
You can try fiddling with the old iMac, but this thunderbolt from the gods is probably their hint that it's time to go out looking at the _new_ crop of iMacs and/or Mac Minis.

Rumor is that the new Haswell Mini may be only weeks away...
 
henry72

henry72

macrumors 68000
Jun 18, 2009
1,523
913
New Zealand
At this point, your data might be the most important thing. Try it with an external monitor and back it up to an external hard drive, otherwise you will have to take the hard drive out :)

ifixit.com is really helpful ;)
 
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