So, my latest eBay conquest came with a bit of a saga...
It began as a poorly titled ShopGoodwill listing for an "Apple A10 Desktop". Looking at the pictures (and entering the "Apple Certified Refurbished" serial number into EveryMac) revealed a 17" 2.0GHz iMac G5. It was listed as powering on, but said "Needs Apple ID to reinstall OS". The starting bid was $6.99, so I decided to take a gamble and won it for that price. After shipping and tax, the total cost ended up being $31.71, which I thought was a nice win for a working G5.
Turns out though, it wasn't working. When it arrived, I turned it on to find that only half the screen lit up. I then opened the machine to find that it didn't just need an OS installed, it was missing a hard drive. The hard drive I had already half expected, so cloned my Powerbook's SSD to a spare SATA drive I had lying around, and stuck it inside. Still, booting into OSX revealed that only half the screen worked.
I contacted the seller (Goodwill of North Georgia) expecting them to tell me something along the lines of all items being sold as-is, but was very pleasantly surprised when they immediately admitted the listing must have been incorrect and sent me a full refund without wanting the computer back.
So, I set about investigating a repair on what was now a free iMac. The logic board on it looked pristine, with not a single bulging capacitor, so I tracked down a mini-VGA to VGA adapter and determined the problem was the panel itself rather than a GPU/logic board issue, because it worked fine connected to an external monitor. "Awesome", I thought,
until I learned how expensive these screens are ($70 for a used panel!? Really!?). I put the project on the back burner for a few months, thinking I may try to do something like remove the stand and set it up as a sort-of wall-mount tower, but still checked eBay for screens every couple weeks when I thought about it, hoping for a deal to pop up.
Then a couple weeks ago, a deal did pop up. Someone listed a screen as "untested", but claimed it was working when it was removed. They said the rest of the computer had been parted out so they could no longer retest it. Normally, I would be wary of a listing like that, except this seller said they would "price it accordingly", and that they did. The bidding started (and ended) at $1.00! So, after shipping and tax, I was only in for about $11!
When it arrived, I installed it to find that the entire panel now worked, but had a weird blue tint. On a hunch, I swapped the cable from the old broken panel, and it was perfect!
So, I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, stuck in a 7200 RPM 3.5 inch drive from my stash, and installed
@wicknix 's excellent MacBuntu Remix 12.04. This thing is shockingly quick! I'm typing this right now on InterWeb and it is surprising how well this machine handles the web, compared to my DLSD Powerbook, which already is fast enough for me most of the time.
Edit: I forgot to mention the old SuperDrive didn't work either. It would spin up but not read anything, so I swapped in I still had laying around from my deceased A1139 that another forum member now has the other parts from.
TL;DR: 2.0GHz iMac G5 for $11 + RAM/HDD/SuperDrive from my stash and a bunch of time (fun).
